Biggest Loser Daily Devotional - Psalm 1

This post is from the Biggest Loser Daily Devotional that we're doing at Family Church. I'll post my entries here at the Stomp Box, but if you would like to receive all 47 blogs from the FC staff, then email me and I'll your email address to the distribution list.

Opening Prayer
Thank you, Lord, for meeting with me now. I desire to seek Your face. I want to know you better. I ask that you come and visit with me now as I read from Your Word and mediate on its message for my life. Thank you for guiding me into Your presence and truth. Help me to make and keep this commitment to a daily time or prayer and Bible Study. I pray in Jesus' name, amen.

Psalm 1
1 Oh, the joys of those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or stand around with sinners, or join in with mockers.
2 But they delight in the law of the Lord, meditating on it day and night.
3 They are like trees planted along the riverbank, bearing fruit each season. Their leaves never wither, and they prosper in all they do.
4 But not the wicked! They are like worthless chaff, scattered by the wind.
5 They will be condemned at the time of judgment. Sinners will have no place among the godly.
6 For the Lord watches over the path of the godly, but the path of the wicked leads to destructionPsalms 1:1-6 (NLT)

Devotional
It's appropriate, I think, that we're starting this Bible study and devotional with a Psalm that is all about the power of Bible study and devotions in our lives. Over the next 46 days you'll receive a message just like this one. It will have a prayer, a Psalm, and a brief inspiring message that hopefully will help you experience a little of God's presence in your life before you jump into your busy day.

When you think of meditation what comes to mind? For me, it's Buddhist monks sitting cross-legged in the Himalayan mountains, saying "umm" and searching for the elusive state of nirvana.

For the author of this Psalm meditating is thinking about the laws of God day and night. He is processing God's character, His eternal qualities, His divine nature, His personal activity in our lives, and His love for each of us.

What's the result of thinking about God's law - His character and words? We have joy. We begin to take delight in God. I'll take a cup of that with some cream and sugar to go, please.

Today, take a moment and think about our God. Let's meditate on God's nature. Who is God? What is God? What has God done for you? Right now ask yourself those questions. Maybe even write down your answers in a journal.

God has been so good to us that it's hard not to get all happy when we think about God. What better way to kick start our day than by remembering our creator and savior?

Look again at verse 3. What's the end result of this meditation and joy? I'll let you meditate on that for awhile.

Closing Prayer
God, I thank you for who you are and what you've done. I can rely on you. You never change and you love me always. Fill me with your joy today and help me to think about you all day long. Bless my day with your presence. Let my thoughts be thoughts of you. Let my words be the ones you are speaking. Let my actions be from your will. I praise you and thank you for who you are in Jesus' name, amen.

The Fence

I know you're here looking for some witty commentary on church life or Christian living or eschatological hermeneutics. No. Sorry. Not this week. I'm going with the mundane.

I have to build my son a fence. Not a treehouse. Not a custom tube amp. Nope. A fence. Why?

Because my son is getting a dog for his birthday, and before we get a dog we've committed to building a fence to contain said dog.

I'm sure that my wife will attest that I'm reasonably handy. I'm at the least handy enough to have a lot of cool ideas and designs about all kinds of home improvement projects that get started and occassionally even finished!

Anyway, I guess you could say that my son, unbeknownst to him, is relying on me to come through this time. So, here's to you, Jacob! I'm all in for three weeks worth of splinters, concrete, 4x4 posts, post hole diggers, black and blue thumbs, and most likely one ricketty but well conceived privacy fence to contain one man's best friend for one boy who is certainly worth the hastle.

Meanwhile, while I run off to Lowe's to buy things that might or might not help me construct the fence, you can take a glance at a very cute beagle pup that could very well look just like the one that will hopefully reside within the afformentioned fence...




Now if that pic doesn't get me some more readers I don't know what will!

Vision & Membership

Family Church has a vision. I hope that you all know that. I hope even more than you can tell me what that vision statement is. Can you? I say it every Sunday that I give the announcements. It's printed on all of our publications. It's all over the website.

Family Church. Helping people find their place in God's family.

This past Sunday night I taught the membership class called Starting Point. It was a great honor to be able to teach that course. For the past 8 years Pastor Brett had taught it as a way to connect to new attenders and potential members and share in detail and from the heart the vision, mission, and direction of Family Church. Inheriting that mantle, at least temporarily, is not something that I take lightly. Membership is very important to me.

I think that inherent in the term membership is the concept of ownership. In this season as much or more than any other, we have to realize that church isn't about one person. It's not about Pastor Brett's vision. It's not about Dr. Frisbie's or mine. It's not about the board's vision.

This is our church. It's your church. It is what we members, the staff, and the leaders make of it.

So, in the coming weeks we're going to start asking more of our members. We'll be praying more. We'll be fasting. We'll be reading and studying the Bible together more. We're all going to take ownership, at least I hope, of the spiritual health and direction of Family Church. Watch for ways that you can be involved. Listen to that small still voice in your head encouraging you to take a step forward and to embrace a new mantle of responsibility and depth of spiritual awareness.

We're on the verge of good things. I believe it. I'm excited about it. Together we can do great things. We can help a whole new group of people who walk through the doors of our church find their place in God's family just as we've found ours. That's a high calling. Perhaps the highest calling. How will you help fulfill it? Think about it!

The TRANSITION

When I first heard that Pastor Brett was leaving Family Church for Florida I went into temporary shock. I have read Nazarene Polity. I knew what this meant for me. I would resign as our policy dictates, and pray the Board and the new pastor decided to keep me (and the rest of the staff) on. There was little or no risk of us being let go, but it doesn't mean the process didn't create sleepless nights.

I've devoted 8 of the best years of my life to Family Church and while I could accept that God was moving Brett on to something new, I wasn't getting that same feeling in my spirit. In fact, I entered 2009 with a tremendous hope that we were on the verge of new and amazing things. I could feel it. I knew it. It was palpable, tangible. It was exciting.

When the call came, my hope was momentarily shattered. A phantom of uncertainty rose over everything that I did and thought. All the strategy, praying, and planning I had done seemed wasted now as we entered crisis management mode.

Could God bless us and take us deeper without a senior pastor? Could I still bring about positive change in the church while in the midst of a transition?

As a wannabe theologian, I turned first to the Bible. What I found was both surprising and yet comforting. Transition, change, is a primary theme of the New and Old Testament. It's central. God chooses His leader, directs His leader in how He is to lead His people. Then, just when things are getting interesting, he moves that leader on to something new.

Why?

That's the question that I think everyone in Family Church should ask themselves and God. Why does God move leaders just when things are getting good?

I don't have an answer for you. I can just tell you the result. Transition and change in leadership bring crisis. Crisis spurs action. Action results in ministry. Ministry produces life change.

I'm amazed at what I'm seeing in Family Church. For the past 3-4 years we've seen the cancer of complacency spring up in pockets throughout the congregation. As staff and leaders we sought to battle that not realizing that the cancer was covertly invading our own hearts.

In the last few weeks God has healed our congregation of that debilitating illness. The entire church has sprung to new life and a willingness connect and minister like we haven't seen in years. We've created new ministry teams. We've installed new ministry directors. We have ministries writing strategic plans for growth and outreach. It's a beautiful thing for an administrative pastor charged with keeping this church and staff moving forward in a time of transition.

Change is good. Why do we fear it? Why do we dread the unknown? Our God who changes not sure changes us a lot.

My hope and excitement for new ministry in 2009? It's back and it's stronger than ever. This is going to be a great year for Family Church.

Psalms (for the worship team)

I used to do a lot of songwriting back when Jessica and I were leading worship at the church we attended while in college, but I got away from it when I started at seminary and got into other ministry areas here at Family Church. I've always wanted to get back into it both because I enjoy writing but also because it's such a great way to stay in touch with God and what He's doing/saying.

Today I decided to do something a little different for my daily devotional. I opened my Bible up to Psalm 1, read through it, and decided to write some lyrics based on the theme of the Psalm. I put some stuff down, wrote a little melody, even worked on some of the lead and guitar lines.

Anyway, we've been talking and thinking a lot about doing a Family Church worship album and to do that, we need original songs and music! I think that we have a very, very talented group of musicians and some creative song writers. We could put together an album that would bless our congregation and potentially be a great tool for other churches in our denomination to use in their worship.

So, I would challenge all of you to join with me as I go through the Psalms, one at a time. Tomorrow I'm going to go through Psalm 2. Psalm 3 will be Thursday. I might not write songs every day, and not all (and maybe not any!) of the songs that I write will be worth recording. But, doing this will get us all in the spirit of worship. It will be contagious. It will change the attitude and atmosphere that we see on Sunday morning. I would encourage all of you to join with me as I go through the Psalms, and to start writing down your thoughts and prayers! It's out of our personal experience with God that our best worship will flow and the deeper we go with God, the deeper we'll take the congregation.

Pay Attention, the sequel

Have you read my last blog? Probably not, since I noticed that I have all of 27 views on my blogspot blog so far. (Thanks for clicking, mom!) It dealt with God speaking. I want to indulge this topic further, if that's alright with you.

Tulsa is hot. This time of year (July) the average temperature is in the high 90's. Our air conditioner runs 24/7. We had to put that expensive foil film on our west-facing living room windows just to keep half our house tolerable in the afternoon/early evening.

A couple days ago I was sitting on the couch minding my own business when a rather random and innocent thought passed through my head. "You really should change the air filter." I can't remember the last time I changed it, so it seemed like a good suggestion. I was proud of myself for thinking about it, since I don't normally do a fantastic job of thinking about things like air filters for the furnace.

Of course, I didn't actually change it. Today when I got home from church it seemed a little stuffy, especially since it was a relatively cool 88 degrees outside. I took a nap. I played with the kids. I checked my email. All the while it's getting hotter and hotter. Finally, I wise up and decide there's something wrong with the air conditioner. Apparently (according to the internet) it's possible for the air filter to get so dirty and clogged that it stops air flow within the system, somehow causing the coil to back up or something, and then freeze over. While my house was sweltering, the line from my air conditioner up to my furnace was frozen solid.

What if I had listened to that little, innocent prompting that I had a few days before? "You really should change that air filter." Obviously, my air conditioner never would have failed us. This is just one example of many, many, many others where if I had listened to the little voice inside my head (whether it's God or not) I would have saved myself a great deal of hastle and/or really blessed someone else.

As Christians, we have the Holy Spirit. Whether we chose to believe it or not, God does care about the little things in our lives. Even dirty air filters. So, I'm in process, learning to pay attention and act on those daily, innocent impulses that might just be God tapping me on the shoulder.

It's Going To Be OK

Has God ever spoken to you? I can almost guarantee that He has, whether or not you can identify a specific time/place. I’ve tried to become more conscious of God’s voice in my everyday life. Hindsight is 20/20 and recently there have been situations where I had an impulse or a thought and had I acted on it, I would have saved myself trouble down the road. Here’s one example where I DID pay attention.

You might not know much about me, so let me give you a little background on Jason, the pastor. I went to seminary at Oral Roberts University, graduating in ’03 with my Masters in Divinity. The Church of the Nazarene requires pastors to complete a Course of Study and then appear before a credentials board for approval for ordination as an elder, the highest ministerial order in the denomination. I had two courses to take after graduation, which I completed just this year, and I was all set to appear before the board to be put through the fire and hopefully approved for ordination.

I’ll admit that I was nervous. I had spent a large portion of my life preparing for this interview. I did not want to screw it up. The night before the interview, I woke up at about 4 am when I heard a voice in my head say, “It’s going to be ok”.

When I woke up the next morning, those words were still in my head. “It’s going to be ok.” I reflected on the voice and quickly decided that it was God. He was telling me not to worry about the interview. It’s going to be ok. I immediately had peace. My stress washed away. I took a deep breath. I knew that God was with me.

You don’t know how much that assurance means until you start recognizing when God speaks to you. I promise that He is. How aware are you of His voice? How often do you have impulses, thoughts, ideas, etc. that turn out to be exactly what you needed and right when you needed it? Seek out God and when you have random thoughts that pop into your head, don’t just ignore them! Recognize them for what they might be and act on them. Have some faith that your God, living and active, is speaking to you daily!

Back to the story. The interview went just fine. I got some tough questions, and I answered with confidence, convinced that God was with me and “it’s going to be ok.” It was less a trial by fire as it was a validation to me that I was ready for ordination. My work and studies had paid off. The board agreed and unanimously approved me for ordination. And they all lived happily ever after.

Well, not yet. Out on the golf course 5 hours later I got a call from Pastor Jim, our District Secretary. I have some bad news for you, Jason. Bad news? Yup, Jim said. We went back and took a look at your materials and records. The ordination rule changed with the new Manual. You have to hold a district license for 3 years before ordination. You’ve only held one for two. It’s totally our mistake, he said. It was clear that he felt just awful for the oversight and for making me go through the interview process for no reason, and just for everything. Sorry, he said. We’ve looked for all kinds of loopholes, but we just can’t ordain you this year.

My first thought to all this? Was I upset? Did I get mad? Nope. One thought echoed through my mind while Jim was explaining it all to me. “It’s going to be ok.”

I finished my round, got in the car, and God and I shared a little laugh. “It’s going to be ok”. God wasn’t talking about the interview. He knew that I would be fine there. He was talking about this, the oversight that the district made. That’s going to be ok. I had peace instead of anger. I had expectation for next year rather than disappointment. I had the impression, again from God I believe, that this was my real test and I had passed.

So, next year I’ll do it again. I’ll probably have to sit through the interview a second time. I’ll be approved then, and I’ll get my ordination. In my mind, though, it’s already done. God did it in my heart this year. Next year, men will publicly recognize that. I look forward to it.

The moral of the story? Pay attention. You never know when God is speaking to you. Don’t take seemingly random thoughts or impulses for granted. Be mindful of God’s activity in your life. Ask Him to make himself clear to you. Ask Him to speak to you. Give Him permission to interrupt your life, change your plans, and lead you on the long and narrow path. He will. I promise. It probably won’t be easy, but “it’s going to be ok.”