Stop Complaining!

We complain about EVERYTHING it seems. We will ask God to provide us with money to pay for new shoes, but then when we get the money, something comes up and we have to use the money to pay for new tires. What do we do? We complain and argue to God because he interrupted our plans. We complain because we are 25 and still single and all of our friends are getting married, even though we are closer to God than ever before. Or, God will give us a new job, but we will complain when people at work don’t do as much as we do and still make more than us. Or how about when we pray for God to heal us of a sickness, only to get sick again right after he heals the first one. We even complain when we tithe consistently, yet don’t receive anything in return. We don’t want to do something because we’re tired, or our back hurts, or because then we won’t have time to go to that movie with friends. We will find any reason to complain to God, even when he’s done nothing but show us love.

We start to complain and argue when our attention shifts from what we have to what we don’t have. We seem to stop being grateful for what God has given us and start thinking about what we would like to have. We can’t allow our unfulfilled desires cause us to forget God’s gifts of life, family, friends, food, health, salvation, and work. Philippians 2:14 says, “Do everything without complaining or arguing.” When we constantly complain and argue about every little thing in our lives, it starts to become harmful…especially in the church.

If all that people know about a church is that its members constantly argue, complain, and gossip, they get a false impression of Jesus and the gospel. Complaining won’t do anything but turn people away from salvation. If a church is always complaining and arguing, it lacks the unifying power that Jesus has. We need to stop arguing with other Christians and stop complaining about people and conditions within the church, and instead unite and let the world see Jesus.

Complaining leaves God out of the situation. Are you willing to tell God that your plans are more important than his promises? Stop complaining about what happens in your life and start accepting God’s provision for what happens in your life.

Love in a Hopeless Place

Recently Rihanna has come out with a song entitled, “We Found Love”, and in it is a message about finding love where it is impossible to find. The phrase that repeats itself over and over is “we found love in a hopeless place.” As catchy as this song is, it is an outcry of modern culture that wants to find love and acceptance. So many people are struggling to find someone to love and love them back that they will do anything it takes and try anything it takes to find love. They turn to drugs, sex, violence, and empty relationships. They feel hopeless because they’ve done everything they can to find love, but all their efforts lead them nowhere. The same was true for all of us…until Jesus showed up.

We were all separated from God, making our chances of having a loving relationship with Jesus hopeless. We had no chance of ever finding true love, but Jesus came to earth to crush that separation and show us true love. We were in a hopeless place, having no way of ever being in a loving, eternal relationship with God; but Jesus laid down his life despite our failure to love him. Romans 5:8 says, “But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” God knew that we could never experience his love in the hopeless state we were in, so he sent his son Jesus to die for us. By accepting Jesus and believing what he did for us, we are able to find love even in the hopeless place we are in.

He has promised to love us when we least deserve it. He selflessly acted on our behalf on the cross. He is our refuge, and he is ever protective. He modeled the love we are to express, and as he lives in us, he empowers us to love like only he can. We were weak, helpless, and hopeless because we couldn’t do anything on our own to save ourselves and find true love. But Jesus came to rescue us and die for us because he first loved us. That’s what it takes to come alive.

If you are looking for love in a hopeless place, remember that Jesus came and died for you to bring that love to you. Have you found love in a hopeless place?

Tired of Praying

Have you ever grown tired of praying for something or someone? Have you ever found yourself giving up on God because you haven’t heard or seen anything remotely related to an answer from him? Have you ever given up because it’s been years and there’s nothing to show for it? We’ve all been there, and God doesn’t hate us for it. In Colossians 4:2 it says, “Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful.” Paul is speaking to church people! He says we should devote ourselves to it. When we are devoted to something, our goal is the outcome not the process. Too many times we want the result and not the process, but God honors people who are thankful even when it seems their prayers are going unheard and unanswered. Our persistence is an expression of our faith that God answers our prayers. Faith shouldn’t die if the answers come slowly because the delay may be God’s way of working his will out in our lives. Whether it’s praying for a family member to get saved, or for a friend to come to church, or for a new job to provide for your family; God will always come through in the way that is best for that situation. When you feel tired of praying, know that God is present, always listening, always answering…maybe not in ways you hoped, but in ways he knows are best.

My First Tattoo

Yesterday I got my first REAL tattoo…not henna, or airbrushed, or stickers…a REAL tattoo. I’ve gotten a lot of amazing feedback on it, and it truly looks awesome, haha. I wanted to blog about this because there isn’t enough space on a comment on Facebook to truly explain the significance and meaning behind the tattoo. Before I go into it, let me say that this is not a post about whether tattoos are wrong or not…if you want to read my stance on that, check out the post I wrote about it 3 years ago: http://bit.ly/sGowgI. This post is simply about what the meaning of my tattoo is.

I got a Hebrew tattoo because it looks awesome, but it also opens up conversations I can make with people where I can share the gospel without it being obvious what the message of the tattoo is. The only reason I got this tattoo is so that I could use it as a tool to share the gospel and remind myself of who Jesus is and what he has done. The Hebrew word is “Hamnatseach” (hom-nat-seka), which literally translates into “the one who has overcome.” I got it on my wrist because that is how Jesus overcame…by being crucified and having nails driven through his body. Originally, I wanted to get Job 31:1 which says, “I have made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a woman”, because that is the biggest sin I struggle with and it was repenting from that which led me to salvation. But then Jesus rocked my world. He showed me that it wasn’t just lust that he has overcome in my life, but everything sinful. That’s when I realized that everything good in my life is because Jesus has overcome its enemy. He hasn’t just overcome lust; he has overcome sin, the world, depression, hate, envy, anger, sexual immorality, greed, etc. He has overcome EVERYTHING! That’s why I got this…because Jesus is the one who has overcome. So any time I am faced with a temptation or a circumstance I’m struggling to go through, I can look down and be reminded that Jesus has already overcome the situation I am waiting to overcome.

The Scripture it connects with is 1 John 5:4-5 which says, “for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.” This verse teaches that Jesus never promised that obeying him would be easy; but serving him isn’t a burden to those who love him because we can always trust him to help us bear it because he has already overcome it. So in this context, the tattoo means, “Jesus has overcome.”

What are you facing today? Don’t worry…Jesus has overcome it.

In The Meantime

There’s nothing we hate more than waiting. Patience is not a virtue that we strive for because it wrecks our plans of the “now” mentality. We like things to happen when we say they are to happen in an amount of time that doesn’t take up time. Unfortunately, Jesus doesn’t work that way…he works on his time, not ours. But God is worth waiting for.

Waiting is something we never do because while we say we are waiting, we are actually finding something to do in the meantime. Think about when you are stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic…you start texting or checking Facebook on your phone. Or how about when you are waiting to hear back from an interview, you have already sent in 20 applications to other jobs in the meantime. It’s crazy how we always find something to do when we are waiting, except when we are waiting on God. It seems like the times we are waiting for God to answer that it’s easier to get mad and selfish and lose our temper rather than find something to do for him in the meantime.

In Psalm 27:14, David had to wait on God after he told him at 16 that he would one day reign as king, only to have to wait until he was 30 for it to happen. Imagine God telling you that you will have an amazing job one day, only to have to wait 14 years for it to happen. Waiting for God isn’t easy. It seems like God isn’t answering your prayers or doesn’t realize the urgency of our situation. But that kind of thinking implies that God is not in control, and that’s not a good place to be. God is worth waiting for because often God uses waiting to refresh, renew, and re-teach us. You may find yourself waiting on God to answer, but just remember that in the meantime he has already overcome the situation you are waiting to overcome.

Pixel Ark: Online Church Bulletin

So there’s a new website that has come out that is changing the way churches are communicating what’s going on at their church. A lot of churches are looking for ways to lower costs, but still present an excellence in their appearance/branding. Hence the major uprising in online communication with Twitter and Facebook. But it wasn’t until recently that someone thought, “Hey, let’s stop printing bulletins and start putting them online so people can access them anytime”. Now, there is a website devoted to just that: Pixel Ark…Online Church Bulletins.

Usually, bulletins are printed and passed out each week to everyone who walks into a service. Then most of them are left on the floor under the seats with the pens missing. Basically, it’s a lot of money that went to waste because now it has to be recycled or trashed. But now churches have the option of having an online bulletin that can be viewed at anytime without wondering which drawer you’re going to put it in. It can be updated at any time, so you won’t have to worry about whether that event you were supposed to volunteer at was this Saturday or last Saturday.

Pixel Ark was started to change the way old, traditional, ineffective printed bulletins communicate. Instead of printing events every single week, you can create an online calendar and email it whenever you want. In an age where almost EVERYTHING is going digital, paperless, or online; Pixel Ark has created an avenue where bulletins can be viewed on any electronic device that has internet access. Most people who attend, visit, or volunteer at churches spend most of their time on email, Facebook, and twitter so it just makes sense to provide an outlet where they can keep up to date with what’s happening at their church using those media platforms.

This is an amazing tool with tons of features, but the top would be: it’s affordable, easy to use, everywhere, traceable, easy to manage. Every account comes with a customizable page you can direct your members to, so they can sign up and receive your bulletin via email. Everyone that signs up receives a confirmation email letting them know to expect the bulletin, so it gives people comfort too of knowing what to expect.

Now a church can communicate more effectively and save thousands of dollars each year. The only drawback is that if churches don’t hand anything out to people at their services, most people would feel like the church didn’t care to give them any information. So I think this is an amazing tool, but it’s still good to hand out something people could take notes on. My church hands out a bulletin each week that is specific to that week’s message with note outlines…it’s an AMAZING tool to use because people get to interact by taking notes and filling in blanks; and they get to go back and re-study what they learned. My thought on the online church bulletin is that it should be used to communicate events and what’s happening, but there should still be something to hand out to people when they come in.

This is a great idea to help churches become even greater at spreading the gospel. For more information, check out: http://pixelark.com/

Robbing God

In Malachi chapter 3, God straight up lowers the boom on the people of how they are robbing him. It seems weird to think of walking up behind God and pointing a gun in his back and saying, “Give me all your money” but that’s exactly what we do with our tithes and offerings. God said in chapter 3 that we rob him with our tithes and offerings and that because of that we are under a curse. The people in this passage ignored God’s command to give a tithe of their income…and the same goes for today. We give up tithing because we are afraid of losing what we have worked so hard to get. We ask God, “What good does it do for me to tithe?” Our focus is selfish. Everything we have is from God; so when we refuse to return to him a part of what he has given, we rob him.

Every time we refuse to tithe, or even every time we tithe the last little bit we have left after spending the rest, we are robbing God. It sounds silly to say that we would walk up to God and rob him, but we do it all the time. So often we will tithe and expect something in return by looking to God and saying, “Here’s your money, now bless me.” In a way, we are saying to God, “Give me all your money”, or “Give me all your blessings” every time we rob him of our tithes and offerings. When we give, we have to remember that the blessings God promises are not always material and may not be experienced completely here on earth, but we will certainly receive them in our future life with him.

Everything we have is from God; so when we refuse to return to him a part of what he has given, we rob him. Are you offering what God tells you to give, or are you selfishly keeping to yourself what belongs to him anyway? Stop robbing God, start giving back.

Always Been There

Have you ever driven past a road that you have passed by all the time, but you see a house there that you never noticed before? Or one day you are driving and you look over and you say, “Since when has that business been there?” Even though you’ve seen it thousands of times, for some reason you haven’t realized it until that day that it’s there. It’s crazy that we could pass by something every single day and be so familiar with it, but never notice what’s truly there until one day it becomes apparent. The same goes for how God reveals his presence in everything we go through. We know something is true, but we tend to ignore it actually is true until one day God grabs our attention and makes it apparent.

It’s so weird that we would deny God’s ability to provide for us, when he has never failed to before. Yet just like that house we never noticed before, we treat God as if he’s not there until something comes up and then it becomes apparent that he has always been there. Although we don’t always recognize his work, his hand is in everything. It’s not coincidence that everything that has happened today is keeping you from going to that meeting after work. It’s not coincidence that you talk to someone on facebook about an issue and then run into them that same day. It’s not coincidence that you need $100 by Thursday for a doctor’s appointment and then you get a check in the mail for $100 from an unexpected source on Wednesday. God is involved in billions of lives every moment…working out his perfect plan with his perfect timing. It’s an amazing comfort to know Jesus is so interested in and involved in our lives…even when we pass by him and don’t notice him.

God has been there all along, just like that house that you never saw before until recently. God isn’t trying to hide his plan from us. He wants to involve you in his plan because he is able to make apparent all the things in your life that you didn’t know were there, but have been there all along.

Grow Up!

Jesus tells us so many times in the Bible to grow up by daily transforming our hearts and minds to reflect his. In 2 Peter, Peter lowers the boom on the church with a challenge to continue to grow and transform in Jesus daily. He describes how Jesus has given every follower of Christ his own holy and blameless nature through the Holy Spirit. Having received a part of God, they have to strive to avoid the desires and behaviors that the flesh and the world say are significant to having a good time. Instead, they are to grow in knowledge of Jesus and daily transform so that they can learn to have perseverance and self-control over temptations. But they can’t do that unless they grow up. Anyone who claims to be a follower of Jesus who doesn’t grow up in their faith has basically forgotten who Jesus is, what Jesus has done, and how Jesus transformed them. Jesus isnt’ calling you to stay where you are…he’s calling you to grow up.

In order to grow up we need to transform our lives daily into the image of Jesus. He provided us with the Holy Spirit and a model after which we are to live our lives. But, none of this can be accomplished if we don’t develop an intimate relationship with Jesus. The only way you can develop a relationship with anyone is to spend quality time with them. Without spending quality time with Jesus and learning to hear the Holy Spirit’s voice, you will know of Jesus but you will not know Jesus.

It’s time to put away your opinions and grow up so that Jesus can transform your life into something you never even thought possible.

Marriage At War

Conflict will occur in marriage when we place expectations on our spouse to meet needs only Jesus can meet. We can’t insist that our spouse fill emotional, physical, or spiritual needs that only God can fill. Until Jesus fills our needs, we will find it difficult to place our expectations on our spouse in proper perspective. We will always feel empty and unsatisfied when it’s all about our wants instead of what God desires for us. These feelings cause conflict in marriage and if they’re not dealt with, could lead to a break in marriage.

If the husband and wife are both looking to Jesus to fill them up, then they are able to serve each other more effectively. When we focus on our relationship with Jesus as the most important thing in our life, he will supply what we need (Phil. 4:9). We can trust that God will always meet our needs. We have to remember, however, the difference between our wants and our needs. Most people want to feel good and avoid discomfort or pain. Most people want to believe that they have the perfect marriage. But, most people need Jesus in order to fix their marriage. We may not get everything we want, but by trusting in Jesus, our attitudes can change from wanting everything to needing him.

God is able to meet your needs and your spouse’s needs so that you do not look to each other to provide what you don’t have. Your spouse can’t always be there, can’t make you happy all the time, and can’t be the one you love more than anything else. The only way to get rid of emptiness in a marriage is to find fullness that comes from being satisfied in Jesus. It’s an amazing feeling to meet each other’s needs and serve each other, but it’s not healthy to expect your spouse to be Jesus. The only way to conquer conflict in marriage is to keep Jesus at the center of it. The moment he is taken out is the moment war breaks out. Only Jesus can meet your needs.