There is a value system at ThatChurch.com that makes us unique.  I like to visit it often for a tune up in direction and focus.  Take a look and see:

 1.         We will do anything short of sin to reach those who are far from God.

-We are relentless in fulfilling this mission.

 2.         We are an “all in” risk taking, big thinking, and faith filled kind of church.

-Security is not a high priority for us. We refuse to insult God with small thinking.

 3.         The church does not exist for us. WE ARE THE CHURCH and we exist for God.

-The idea that the church exists to provide a place for Christians to be comfortable is a myth. We are a movement on a mission.

 4.         Jesus is the subject. Always.

-It is all about Jesus, it has always been about Jesus, it is only about Jesus. We will speak of Him, pray to Him, look at Him, and listen for Him.

 5.         We are a leadership factory.

-We are constantly looking for, listening to, and letting loose leaders. Equipped, unleashed leaders change the world.

 6.         The church is unstoppable so we approach life with a “go until you get a ‘no’” attitude.

-We pray, but we also understand God expects us to do something.  We choose to pray, go, and fail/succeed rather than pray, stay, and do nothing.

 7.         We do not fear failure.

-We realize that the only people who do not fail are those who do nothing.  Failure is part of the process.

 8.         The only constant in our church is the reality of change.

-God is always up to something new, therefore we refuse to let traditions, habits, or rituals keep us from enjoying His pleasure in His new endeavor.

 9.         We channel our energy into what we are for, not what we are against.

-We are for Jesus, His word, His work, and His life change. The world has enough righteous jerks; therefore we refuse to become a defensive culture.

10.       We laugh hard, loud, and often.

-Nothing is more enjoyable than serving God.

 11.       We reject the idea that our community knows Jesus, regardless of how religious they might act.

-We are not a church that is raising support for missions we are a church actively working on our mission field. 

 12.       What we do proves what we really believe.

-Therefore we are heavy on action, activity, and accomplishment. Words are cheap. Say it, mean it, do it.

13.       We teach the truth not as a means to tear people down but to build them up.

-The word Gospel means “Good News”  it should be good news.  We get excited about letting people know that through Jesus God has provided HOPE!

 14.       We are grateful for what God has done so far but we also whole heartedly believe the best is yet to come.

It’s day 2 of the Daniel Fast…today and most likely tomorrow will be two of the toughest.  Today the affects of extracting caffeine out of your body will show up, usually in the form of a skull-cracking headache.  The absence of your normal over abundance of sugar will also make you feel lethargic with almost flu like symptoms.  At this same time the left over toxins of the mounds of horrible food you’ve consumed are being flushed out of your body.  This cleansing process hurts. TODAY IS NOT THE DAY TO GIVE UP! This will pass and on the other side will be clarity and a feeling of being alive you have not felt in a while.  This is an opportunity to ask God to rescue you from your distress.  Pray, ask, and watch.

It is day one of the Daniel Fast. Based on some of the text and conversations I have had with a few it has gotten hard already for lots of us. Stacey my wife has already given me the same look she gave me when she was in the birthing room when she was having our first child. It was that kind of look that says “This is all your fault.” Which is laughable since she is the driving force in our annual Daniel fast. But I don’t mind.

When I think about Daniel, the part of his story that most often crops up in my mind is the one when he stared down the pack of hungry Lions in the den and wins the heart of the King. Today I realized he had a much larger battle. Based on what he ate Daniel had to have been hungry as a lion pacing in the den wanting to win the heart of Burger King!

Day one is always a shock and a drag. I have made time to pray often, read my devotional, and walk with Stacey. All in all it has been a very good day.

Probably one of the most difficult lessons I have ever had to relearn is the discipline of living while I live.  I say relearn because I find myself needing to be taught this lesson over and over again.  Sounds crazy that you can forget to enjoy living while you are busy at life but it is so true.  Living while you live is much like breathing while you walk, forget to do either and the trip will be a short one. Specifically living while you live is to take in the good things God has given and enjoy God Himself while you go through life.  At times the deadlines, struggles, and difficulties take center stage and we forget what we have and who we are in Christ.  I would love to say that this is a one time lesson and when you get it you’ll never have to deal with it again, but with life’s twists and turns we easily get disoriented and forget that God gave us life to enjoy.

Living consists of much more than respiration.  It is much deeper than consciousness.  Living is the discipline of drinking in and tasting the moments, it is being fully present in the relationships God has blessed you with, it is noticing and celebrating a sunrise with your husband or wife, it is watching and actually seeing your kids grow.  You will find that when you replace living with life’s busyness you will have huge gaps in your memory.  Why?  Because you weren’t paying attention… you were busy.  I call it living in the land of “ing”… DoING, EarnING, WorryING, or gettING.  Very often we are so distracted with life that days, months and even years pass without our engagement.

You have forgotten to live when your Child takes his or her first steps and you’re not there to applaud.  You have forgotten to live when your spouse sits alone on the back porch enjoying the breeze of spring while you hammer away on your laptop keys.  You have forgotten to live when someone’s criticism of you lingers in your mind and causes you to miss a moment of time with your family. You have forgotten to live when deadlines, document feeds, deliveries, debacles all distract you from divine moments of life.  Forgetting to live is like going through life with muted hearing, blurry vision, bland taste buds, color blind, and in a drug funk.  You miss out on the saturation of color God is painting your life with.  Worst of all is you miss the experience. Money can be made up, careers can be rebuilt, failures can be fixed, but lives cannot be relived.  Live now.

Today I listened to Mark Driscoll outline his life’s mission that God gave him at age 19.  He didn’t stumble over one word, he confidently and quickly laid out three things God wanted him to do with his life.  Mark has been doing those things for the past 21 years.  His life’s impact is apparent.

I find that the most effective people know what it is God has asked them to do.  They are confident, resolute, and passionate about it.  When you know you have heard from God and you know what He has said you can press toward “the mark” as Paul calls it.  A person with clarity of God’s calling are undaunted by set backs, difficulties, and failures.  Even when it seems the entire body of work has crumbled they seem to get up from the rubble, dust off and continue the work.  They never seem to loose sight of the finish line.

A life lived with trust in what you have been told by the One who knows all things and is your King of Kings results in clarity of life, and clean actions.  In other words when we know what God has asked us to do and we see God as the absolute voice of authority in our lives we see the path way clearly (clarity) and we waste little time and emotional energy on things that do not contribute to that mission (clean actions).

The other byproduct of a clear understanding of God’s life direction is it creates cooperation.  Plenty of great leaders find it more than difficult to get things going and get help doing them.  The problem they don’t see is they themselves are easily discouraged, or they change their “passionate pursuits” often. Depending on what mood they are in or what has happened this week they are excited about something totally new or they are sad about the end of the last mission. People who commit to following a person who is the leader of a cause don’t like when that cause decides to change.  A leader who is tossed back and forth by every new thing or new thought that enters his or her mind will see his help leave.  Proverbs 29:18 says “Where there is no vision the people perish”, Rick Warren re translated this verse to say “Where there is no vision the people find another parish.”  It is true.  It the leader can’t articulate his life mission and personally sell out to it won’t get people to sell out to it either.  You cannot attract or keep high level leaders in what you are doing without a clear, consistent, steadfast vision that you, yourself are not passionately pursuing.

A shadow mission (fake mission) of a life mission is to define ourselves by what we are not or what we are against.  A life mission has to be about WHAT YOU ARE, AND WHAT YOU ARE PURSUING.  Not what you are against.  People are not attracted to a leader that is against something, that is a shadow of the real mission.  Seven-Up got away with being the UnCola but leaders don’t get such a pass.  You must be able to define what you are for.  The Atheist movement has seen little growth because the very nature of being an Atheist is to define what they are against.  A-theist- Against God.  Ok, so what are you for?  No one climbs out of a fox hole,  or charges an armed robber because he or she is against something.  They do it because they know what they are for.

In a world that is hungry for the next new thing, sticking to something is truly being drowned in the idea that nothing is worth being sold out to.  The limited pursuit of what God has said is far more important than the diluted drift of a life lived like a buffet.

What is your life’s mission?

 ”My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me;

John 10:27 NASU

Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, So are the children of one’s youth.

Psalms 127:4 NASU

Let’s face it… parenting is tough. It’s brutal.  It’s exhausting.  It is one of the most important things we do.  As a parent I want nothing more than for my kids to be all that God wants them to be.  The question is: “How do you do that?”  This is a list that I have gleaned from scripture and Godly counsel.  It is solid.

1.  Model everything you want them to take seriously.  If you want your kids to love God, then you must love God.  Let them see and hear you pray.  If you want your kids to serve, then you make it a point to serve (without griping).  If you want your kids to be generous then you must be generous.  Model everything.

2.  Give them less.  Meet needs not wants.  Over indulging our kids makes them feel entitled to what they get.   The learning curve for the kid that thinks he or she deserves everything will be very steep in the real world. Stop handicapping your kids with stuff.

3.  Partner with others.  Putting your kids under the influence of others who love God is a powerful tool in reinforcing their commitment to God.  Have them in student ministry every time the doors are open.  Send them to camp (even if they don’t want to go).  Have them around men or women who love God.  Partner with others as you mold your kid into the image of Christ.  How many hours each week is the world and your Enemy influencing your kids?  That’s the problem, work to even out the time.

• What if they don’t want to go? It’s not their choice, you’re the parent. My kids get to pick what they do when they can pay their own bills and live in their own house.  Stop giving options.

4.  Stop pretending they are adults.  You do your kids no favors by pretending they are adults.  I have watched parents let their kids surf the internet with no supervision, date when they are 10, give them cell phones as soon as they can push the buttons, all because the kids are treated as if they are adults.  Kids have been on the planet a short time, they don’t know what you know (or what you should know).  That is the very reason you are in the place you are in so YOU CAN PARENT.  Because they can talk and spell doesn’t mean they can make adult decisions.  You should make the lion’s share of those decisions until they leave your home.

5.  Keep the Word open and out front.  There is no substitute for God’s Word to change lives. Read the Bible with your family constantly, and consistently.

6.  Know your identity in Christ and parent out of THAT IDENTITY.  Many parents, parent out of guilt because of their past failure, so they give to their kids things that are not good for them.  It is sort of a way of paying for their mistakes.  That guilt prevents parents from disciplining consistently so the kids develops a false idea of what right and wrong is.  You must discover who you are in Christ.  You are FORGIVEN, you are LOVABLE, you are more than a CONQUERER, you have a FUTURE.  Parent out of grace not guilt.  Not setting standards for your kids to live by isn’t helping them but hurting them.

7.  Teach them to take risks.  Following Christ is anything but safe.  Teach them that He is worth everything so accept nothing as a substitute.  Walk away from the things the world chases after to pursue Him every time.  Teach your kids you will off anything like a dirty shirt for the cause of Christ.  Radical faith proves what is truly important.  401k, insurance, stability, good job, careers are all smoke and mirrors to make us feel like things are settled here, they are not.  You can loose your job, the stock market can crash, your career can end, and insurance can refuse to pay.  Only Jesus is worth living for.  Teach them that by every time God calls you to act… you do it.

Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.

Proverbs 22:6 NIV

I am inspired by radical generosity.  I have a friend that simply blows me away by how he and his church are so radically generous.  Chuck & Dama McKennell hands down are the most generous people I have ever met.  Since I have known them they have helped countless people get back on their feet.  They have launched numerous churches.  Chuck has given away central heat and air-condition units to churches that needed them and what’s more he along with his radically generous church have gone as far as to install the units they gave away! They have been known to install plumbing for churches and pay for it.  They are constantly doing, giving, loving and sharing.

One evening, sitting in Chuck and Dama’s living room, I mentioned we were looking for a bus. Immediately, his eyes lit up and a huge smile came across his face.

He said “We have one!”.

“Awesome how much?”

“It’s yours.”

Without a blink, that night Chuck and Dama gave ThatChurch.com the black bus. It was a gift that is still blessing.  Over the past year, that bus has been driven into numerous iServOthers projects, storm damaged areas,  took 40+ passengers to the launch of ThatChurch.com/Medina TN,  carried 35 passengers to Joplin MO to help tornado victims,  just returned from carrying 45 students to camp, and Lord willing it will do much more for Christ in the days to come.  On that warm Oklahoma evening, Chuck and Dama gave me way more than a bus.  They gave me a seed.  A seed of generosity.  I have watched God bless H2O Ardmore (The Church Chuck and Dama pastor) beyond imagine.  I know that blessing is the direct result of two people having the heart of God beating in their chest.  Fearlessly they give.  I want to be like that.

What do you have two of that someone else has none?

It came today.  It’s arrival is a signal that the soul scorching, skin blistering, surface of the sun Arkansas summer experience will one day end.  As the rainbow was a sign to Noah so it is a sign to us that the earth won’t be consumed by fire starting with Arkansas this year.  What is this sign that is more valuable than the any astrological arrangement you ask? Well it is the Mack’s Prairie Wing catalogue of course.  It is a sign to all hunters of the fowl that winter will once again get here. I think it’s getting cooler already. 123 ½ days until duck season.

Thursday & Friday AD 33

I felt it important to share with my close friends what has happened in these past days. It troubles me to report the events that have unfolded. Thursday evening we reclined at the passover table as is customary. Later that evening, as we were in prayer in the garden East of the city, soldiers arrested the Master. He put up no fight. We couldn’t believe it had happened. But as we followed at a distance, we overheard the religious leaders conspiring lies against Jesus. After hours of trials and false accusations, it was determined they should flog the Master. A possible release was discussed but the crowd was controlled by the lies of the religious elite, and orders to execute Jesus were given. We couldn’t believe our ears! Our Jesus was walked by us… His face was so swollen we could hardly recognize Him. His eyes looked tired as one who had been on a long journey, yet there was a solid determination also present. He seemed broken but not fragile. It was early Friday morning.

The cross bar of His cross was fixed but the weight was too much, so another man was selected to carry it. As He traveled through the city streets, people mocked the Master and shouted at Him. At about 9am, just outside the city gates on the side of a hill where executions were held, they nailed Him to the cross. Each time the hammer fell, cries could be heard from the crowd. It all seemed very unreal. I longed to wake and discover it was all a horrible dream.

At about noon, something happened that none of us could explain. The sky grew dark…we heard voices. It seemed as if the Master was speaking with His Father, however, we couldn’t make out the conversation. It was as if we weren’t allowed to see or hear. Then the Master cried with a loud voice and breathed His last. About that time, thunder sounded so loud that it dazed us and rocks split at the sound!

Just moments ago, they took His body down from the cross. Ever since, we have sat in stunned silence. Jesus is dead

Tuesday AD 33

“We left Bethany early this morning. On the outskirts of the Old City the Master wanted the fruit from a fig tree, the tree had none.  So He cursed the tree and it withered.  Some of the disciples took note that Jesus expected the trees to bare fruit as they were supposed to.  We entered the city and there was a huge commotion, with people shouting and praising Jesus. They shouted “It’s Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.”

The Master pressed through the crowds and went straight to the temple. When we got there Jesus began driving out those buying and selling animals.  He then over turned the tables of the money changers.  Money, and goods spilled on the ground as He knocked the tables over.  This wasn’t the first time the Master had done this.  He forced them all out of the temple and began to teach about how His Father’s house is to be about prayer not individual’s gain.  The people hung on every word.  Even His enemies didn’t say a word.

A few Greeks wanted to meet the Master today.  They believed His every word but the Jews refused to believe in Jesus. The evening came and we left the temple and returned to Bethany.”

Matt 21:12-19, Mark 11:11-19, Luke 19:45-48, John 12:20-50, & John 2:15 (the first time he removed the money changers),