This year, that changes. My resolution this year is to trash resolutions. Instead, I am focusing on Christ and what He wants to change in me – focusing on the work He wants to do this year through my life.

Are we going to live out our God-created, Spirit-anointed, Jesus-saved being? Or are we going toady and defer to eunuch professionals?

First off, I had to look up the word “toady” in the dictionary. When I look up words in the dictionary I often find it more valuable to look in the thesaurus for words that mean the same…

Toady means:

brown-noser, lickspittle, flatterer, flunky, lackey, trained seal,doormat, stooge, cringer; bootlicker, suck-up, yes-man; kiss-ass, ass-kisser.

Yeah…Those are strong challenges by Peterson, but I am personally stretched by his words. How often have I spent time following the dreams of others and left God’s dreams for me sitting on the sidelines. I want more for my life. I want to chase after Christ with everything.

Have you ever wondered if how you’re living your life is worth Christ’s sacrifice? I know all the churchy stuff to say about that. I don’t need you to give me a lecture about the theology of how that’s not correct.

What I’m saying is have you ever been so disappointed at where you are with Christ that you actually wonder if what Christ did for you was worth it?

I know that God loves me. I know that I am worth more to Him than anything. I wonder if I frustrate Him sometimes and I know He’s got more for me than I’m taking advantage of. That’s the bottom-line. That realization drives me to live out my God-given awesomeness.

What about you? 

Are we going to live this life from our knees imaginative and personally? Or are we going to live it conventionally and second-hand?

Have you ever described your prayer life as imaginative? Me either. I too often lack consistency in my prayer life, let alone imaginative.

What would an imaginative prayer life actually look like? I know that I long for a prayer life and faith life where I am no longer surprised by how God answers prayer. An imaginative prayer life would boldly ask and faithfully anticipate God’s answer.

How often do we live out our faith in safety and comfort instead of risk and imagination? I find it easy to sit in mediocrity and live my faith secondhand through the extreme faith of others who are risking everything for the cause of Christ.

What about you? How do you see an imaginative prayer and faith life?

1. Are we going to live this life from our knees imaginative and personally? Or are we going to live it conventionally and second-hand?

2.Are we going to live out our God-created, Spirit-anointed, Jesus-saved being? Or are we going toady and defer to eunuch professionals?

3. Are we going to be shaped by our fears of Goliath or by God?

4. Are we going to live by our admiration for Saul or by God?

Surrender is a hard word to swallow. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I think of waving the white flag in humiliating defeat. I think of being held at gunpoint by the enemy that has captured you.

But surrender is the heart of worship…

Surrender is powerless because we no longer are in control. We have been backed down and have lost. We exchange our freedom for captivity, right?

Surrender is the heart of worship…

Surrender calls us quitters, yet, surrender is the heart of worship?

Which is it? Who owns the rights to the word surrender? Is it the heart of worship or is it at the heart of Satan’s plan to destroy us?

Yes…

Satan has perverted God’s plan for surrender (what hasn’t he perverted right?) by convincing us that we are somehow weaker or less important if we give up our agenda for God’s. I find myself doing this All. The. Time.

I find myself trying harder (there’s that word again…) to hold on to control, to not let things spiral out of control under my own strength and while on my watch. If things are chaotic or messy, I’m afraid of what people will say. Will they think I can’t handle my business? Will they think less of me or talk about me behind my back?

The truth is, I can’t handle my business. I’m not capable of living on my own. And people are imperfect humans. They will talk about us behind our backs. But here is where I find hope, rest and peace…

Surrender is the heart of worship.

In God’s dictionary, surrender is defined as strength, maturity and growth. We can’t be in the middle of the heart of worship of the Most Holy if we can’t get surrender right. How do I know this? I know because I surrender and un-surrender like on a weekly basis. Why do I let Satan tell me lies? How does it get such power over my life? Those are questions for another day, but you get it don’t you? You’re living there too aren’t you?

…or am I the only one? I don’t think I am. We’re all there.

My Pastor Steve Trammell said a few weeks ago, “The purpose of wrestling with God is to lose.”

Re-read that statement again…ok, isn’t that amazingly profound and yet so simple? The reason it so resonates with us is because when we lose to God, we win.

WE WIN.

Surrender is the heart of worship. Now, let’s go lose to God.

Tension can be negative. It’s annoying. It builds up over time (sorta like I mentioned here) and distracts. Negative tension is uncomfortable because it can crush you.

Tension can also be positive. It comes when we find ourselves in the midst of a situation where we are no longer so worried about what others think. When we look less at outcomes as positive or negative, and more at who we are becoming in the process of living in the tension. When we live in the tension instead of fighting it, we become stretched and not squashed. We grow through the tension, we don’t shrink under it.

I am learning to live in the tension because that is the only way we can really live. I choose to grow, not be crushed. I want to live my life, not survive it. I mean, really, isn’t that what Jesus dreams for us?

I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of.
John 10:10 (MSG) 

Try harder.

It squeezes me, making me feel increasingly more pressure. Slowly, turn by turn, it begins to crush me. I realize how futile this kind of living is. It becomes futile to every aspect of my life and at the center is my spiritual life.

A life of trying is futile because everything I do in life is about what I can do. The more I live this “try harder” life, the more I realize how incapable to the task I am.

This “try harder” problem I have is probably the most frustrating aspect of my life. Unfortunately when I find myself trying harder, everything in me wants to try harder to stop trying harder!

Am I crazy? Am I the only one struggling with this habit? Where do you find yourself?

I have several close friends in other places that I text regularly and they text me. I occasionally talk on the phone, though I’m not sure my iPhone knows what to do with  itself when it actually has to make and receive a phone call.

I have friends.

The problem is, most aren’t in the same place as me.

We live highly connected lives that are increasingly less involved intimately in each other’s lives. We lack face to face community.

I’ve realized what I need are those people that I can meet at Starbucks with fifteen minutes notice for coffee and convo. The relationships that drop everything for what is going on in each other’s lives. The kind that offer wisdom, straight talk and lots of grace. I have reached the threshold where virtual relationships are no longer enough.

What about you? Do you have those people in your life?

The reason Sara hasn’t been able to leave her home is due to an awful disease. Today as I write this, Sara’s disease is taking her physical life here on earth. Her passing could come at any moment. Though Sara will take a final breath in this life, the gentle force of her legacy lives in the thousands, maybe millions that have heard of and have been impacted by her life and story.

Sara has been peacefully resting this week, awaiting her face to face meeting with her Savior, yet her words have been teaching me some very crucial lessons on my own life.

It’s easy for me to be a complainer.

When things don’t seem to be going my way or I don’t have the job that “meets my needs,” I complain.

When I feel like I don’t have key, strong relationships in my life, I complain.

I sometimes feel like if I’d only find that new ministry job, I’d be able to use my passions…Complaining.

What Sara’s life has taught me this week is that positive outcomes, met needs, strong relationships and passions are in fact – relative.

Relative to my attitude.

Relative to my availability to God’s plan for me.

Relative…

We don’t always get to decide every hand dealt to us, but we do get to decide our reaction to it. That’s Sara’s legacy to me.

Sara taught me that life in Christ is about finding passion where you are, where God places you, regardless of your circumstances.

Sara couldn’t leave her house and yet from that home she impacted thousands, maybe millions. Just maybe, one of Sara’s biggest lessons taught to us is that “go and make disciples” is really all about taking steps toward your mission whether they are physical steps in a village in Africa, down the sidewalk of a neighborhood of at risk kids, or finger steps across a keyboard doing real ministry to real people in far-off places.

Sara taught me this week that I need to quit feeling sorry for myself and

choose joy.

Choose the joy that God has tucked away in the circumstances we’re in. It’s really a gift, not a curse. Sara’s life proves that.