There is a difference between a hug and an embrace. A hug is casual and often forgotten. An embrace is so much deeper. It’s hanging on in love and desperation. It’s an unforgettable exchange between two people that desire the same thing – a deep, long-lasting connection. The grip of an embrace is tighter. It’s longer. It’s felt deep within a person’s soul. That’s why the release of an embrace is that much more noticeable than the release of a hug.

We often I often hug God instead of embrace him. It’s forgettable. It’s casual. But I want to embrace God. I want to go to the grave embracing God. I don’t want there to be any gap between the first embrace and the second embrace when I meet my Savior face to face.

“Worship God in adoring embrace,
Celebrate in trembling awe.” Psalm 2:11(Msg)

Are you hugging God instead of embracing him?

What do you need to do to turn your hug into an embrace?

Here are the top 5 posts on my blog in 2009.

I appreciate all of you that take the time to read my blog and comment. I’m looking forward to a new year of blogging.

5. 18 things I’ve learned from 18 years of marriage

4. 5 essential sexual boundaries

3. 5 steps to a successful affair

2. The Freedom in Not Defending

1. The path of most resistance

Thanks again for reading my blog in 2009. Happy New Year!

- Mike

Remember when your relationship with God was so vibrant that you couldn’t imagine your having anything less? You were so in tune with the Holy Spirit. Your awareness of hurt and needs around you were at an all time high, and your desire to serve those in need was even higher. There was no dream too big. There was no pain that you weren’t willing to endure for Christ. Back then your Christian life seemed to have the song “The Eye Of The Tiger” perpetually playing in the background of your life.

Do you miss that? Do you want that again? Primal will take you on a journey of rediscovery back through the catacombs of your story and lead you back to the very beginning… When it was all about Jesus, the cross, and your response to Him and what He has done.

Mark has a masterful way of piquing thought and wonder, giving us a 360 degree view of both the simple and the complex that will bring you back to the beautiful mystery of God and His love for us.

I would challenge you to make this the first book of this brand new decade. Because I believe this book is that important, I’m giving a copy away on Christmas Day.

Leave a comment telling me you that you want to win and share this post on Twitter and/or Facebook and you’ll be entered to win. I’ll draw a winner on Christmas Day using random.org and you’ll have the book in your hands before January 1, 2010.

Merry Christmas,

Mike

Update: We have a winner! It’s Jason Gordon. Congrats Jason…Merry Christmas!

I woke up on Sunday incredibly excited about the days events. Mission breakfast at 9:15am. Worship at 10:30am. I was ready to go. I got up at 5:30am to put the final touches on my sermon and to pray. I was excited to celebrate the Lord’s Supper. I was excited to go to church.

My Father-in-law, two of my kids, and I got in the car and headed out. We made a quick stop at Starbucks for a Grande Christmas blend and a couple of hot chocolates. Everything was working out just how I imagined it would. Sipping on Christmas in a cup on my way to celebrate the Christ that came in a manger. Perfect.

As we made our way down the road, my picture of a picture perfect Sunday faded quickly. It had just started raining a few minutes earlier creating some icy roads. We began to see cars in ditches and wrapped around trees all over the place. There were stranded motorists on their cell phones calling for help. We drove by with our windows rolled down asking each person if they needed help secretly hoping they would say they were fine. Because we were on our way to church and that was important.

We drove a little further and approached a hill. At the bottom of the hill we saw an overturned car with a man walking away limping from it. He said he was fine and help was on the way. We continued on and watched in panic as car after car crested the top of the hill unaware of what they were about to face. Each car began their unplanned and out of control decent down the icy road that would end up in some sort of collision. We watched as if in slow motion an SUV begin to lose control, climb an embankment and crash head on into a tree. At that moment nothing else mattered. Someone needed us. The mission breakfast seemed unimportant. Unloading the trailer and setting up the church didn’t cross my mind. Preaching the sermon that I’d spent hours crafting seemed meaningless. The only thing that mattered was the people in that car. We pulled off the road and ran to the scene of the accident. Thankfully the woman and her two little girls were all ok. She recognized me as she had visited our church a couple of times, which I think comforted her to know that the person helping her was not a axe murderer or something. We didn’t do much other than give them a dry place to wait until the road was reopened. Then we drove them home.

After dropping off this family my 4 year old said, “Dad, are we going to church now?” To which I responded, “honey, we just did church. What we just did, in helping that family was church today.”

I tell this story not to make myself out to be some hero that swooped in to save the day. I wasn’t the hero. I was the student. God reminded me of something valuable. I re-learned that while going to church is a good thing that obviously we need to do, it’s not nearly as important as being the church. I never want to go to church at the expense of being the church. I never want to serve in a scheduled ministry at the expense of a God-directed appointment. I never want to be so focused on the good things that I miss out on the greater things. Instead I want to be ready at a moment’s notice to be the church. I want to carry out my day to day life with an asterisk(*) beside my to do list that reads…

*This To Do List is subject to change with or without notice

What recent event in your life triggered a re-learning experience for you? Please share it.

I have heard so many good talks on leadership and have read so many great blog posts on leadership and so have you. The question is do you remember where you saw it, read it, or heard it? If you’re like me, often times the only thing I remember was that it was good. So good I wish I would’ve captured it, but didn’t. I’ve learned to do a better job of organizing my personal development and capturing the nuggets so that I don’t lose it. I’m generally not an organized person, so I’m still refining how I organize, but here are a few ways that help this ADD – fly by the seat of his pants – mistake maker organize his thoughts on the fly.

1. My Moleskine. I write thoughts, blurbs, comments down while they are fresh on my mind. I often will interrupt a conversation in order to write something down. Thoughts that I write down today have the potential to become…a future sermon series, a new idea, or a spiritual breakthrough. By writing them down and reviewing them periodically. I give room for a thought to turn into an action.
2. My Resource Email Address. This is a separate email address that I set up that I use solely to store articles, website addresses, and anything else that I may want to access later. If I read a great blog post, I’ll use the share button to email the article to my resource email address. If there is no share button(shame on you if you have a blog and don’t use one)I’ll copy and paste the article in an email and mail it to my resource email address. It’s a way for me to organize and catalog information that I may want to process more or not forget.
3. My iPhone Notes App. There is a simple App on the iPhone that allows you to type a note an email it. If I’m somewhere and I don’t have my Moleskine, I’ll write a note and email it to my resource email address.

How do you capture thoughts on the fly?

Think about the errands that you ran today. Maybe a trip to the grocery store. A quick pick up at the cleaners. A deposit at the bank. Gas at the convenience store on your way home. Now let me ask you a question. Did you come home with anything other than a few groceries, a claim ticket, a deposit slip, and a full tank of gas? What was it about those establishments that brought you back? Was it purely convenience? Was it price? Was it the fact that there was no other choice for you to go to? Or was it that the experience was so special that you are compelled to go back time and time again?

In Scott McKain’s latest book Collapse of Distinction, he outlines beautifully what it takes for your organization to stand out and be noticed. He shares three destroyers that have the potential to be the demise of your organization. He also delivers four foundational cornerstones that will bring distinction for your company in the marketplace.  I found myself reading familiar individual thoughts, but packaged together in a way that we’re fresh, unique, and made perfect sense. I was very pleased with Scott’s “nuts and bolts” style of writing. After every chapter I was left with several very practical steps that can be implemented today.

Is your business experiencing a decrease in sales and you can’t quite figure out why? Are you a new business that desires to be noticed in the marketplace? If so, this book is a must read. This is a great book to read as a team and promises to provoke some serious questions about how you are doing business. This book is about the “heart” of your business. It focuses on the “why” and not just the “What” of your business. I believe that this book will bring back excitement and passion to your organization as you stand out and move up!

We want our guests to feel welcome don’t we? We understand how important first impressions are. So we launch a greeting ministry complete with “My name is…” name tags. We go after the bubbliest people that we can find and we strategically place them outside and at the front door. (If you are a smoker it’s a double bonus. You get to smoke and greet…two things you love to do at the same time.) Then, just to make sure that people feel welcome, we force you to stand up in the middle of the service and shake someone’s hand and pretend like you are happy to see them. As you are shaking their hand, you might as well say, “Hey, aren’t you the same person that I walked by and completely ignored earlier as I was in a hurry to catch up with my real friend?”

We do a pretty good job of being nice to our guests. But they aren’t looking for nice, they are looking for friendly. And friendliness cannot be achieved through a program anymore than lowering your cholesterol can be achieved by eating a Big Mac. A nice greeting program in an unfriendly church is like putting a pretty bow on a cow patty and thinking that we’re giving someone a nice gift.

Wouldn’t it be awesome if our church was so friendly that we didn’t need a greeting ministry to make guests feel welcome?

We’ve got change this! If the Church is God’s plan to bring the gospel to the World, being nice isn’t gonna cut it. We need to stop thinking that the world revolves around us and start genuinely being excited and honored that a guest would choose to step out of their comfort zone and visit our church. That’s a big deal! It should excite us to no end to think that a guest would choose to visit our church, giving us an opportunity to share the love of Jesus with them. The natural response should be authentic friendliness, not forced niceness.

How do we change this in our churches?

What can you do to help change it?

Human nature is to take the path of least resistance unless there is a compelling reason not to. The job of the Church is to engage people and give them a compelling reason to avoid the wide path of least resistance that leads to destruction and take the narrow path of most resistance that leads to eternal life.

Click here to view the embedded video.

How does the Church engage culture and give a compelling reason to take the path of most resistance?

Like you, there have been times in my career in the business world as well as in ministry where I have experienced periods of great momentum. I felt like an unstoppable freight train whipping around the corners and holding on for dear life. There have been other times where I felt like I was trying to push a freight train up a hill in the middle of a desert. Sometimes, it’s easy to identify the “lack of” or “abundance of” momentum. Other times, we can’t quite put our finger on it. Or, we’d rather not try to figure it out because we have our suspicions that we are the problem or at least a big part of it.

Dave Ramsey defines his Momentum Theorem as, “focused Intensity over time, multiplied by God, creates unstoppable Momentum.”

If Dave’s theorem is true (and I believe it is), then there are several things that could be the cause of No-Mo-mentum or Slo-Mo-mentum. Interestingly enough, I happened to be thinking about the Momentum Theorem and vision while I was cleaning glass the other day with my 4 year old daughter. Here are the lessons I learned from a spray bottle and a 4 year old.

1.   Stream the vision instead of spray the vision – The “Spray” feature on the Windex bottle works best for coating a lot of glass with a little bit of glass cleaner. When it comes to vision, we want to turn the nozzle to “stream”. Focused intensity means we stream as much vision as we can into a smaller area.

2.   Apply liberally - My 4 year old daughter understands this principle when she helps me clean the glass. There is never enough glass cleaner in my daughter’s mind. She sprays and sprays and sprays until the window sill is covered in blue liquid. When it comes to our vision, there is never enough. we need to spray and spray and spray until we have flooded the area and we are standing in the vision.

3.   Don’t dilute – With window cleaner, dilution is important. Without the proper dilution in the bottle, a cloudy residue will appear on the glass as the sun shines through. When it comes to creating momentum, residue is a good thing. We want our vision to be so heavily concentrated that it leaves a residue on lives when they come in contact with it.

4.   Allow Daddy to refill your bottle - When my daughter sprays the entire bottle of window cleaner on the window, she brings me the empty bottle and asks me to fill it up for her. When your bottle is empty, allow your Heavenly father to fill it up. He is the supplier. He never runs short on supply. He knows exactly what you need, when you need it.

My vision and your vision is weak and accomplishes nothing apart from God. God’s vision is strong and changes everything.

Here is my Momentum Theorem as learned from a spray bottle and a 4 year old. “Streaming undiluted vision in large quantities over time with God filling up the spray bottle, creates unstoppable momentum.”

Today our church packed over 200 bags of groceries in our “Extra Mile Grocery Giveaway”. This year was a little different than years prior. This year we didn’t have addresses of people that we knew were going through a tough time. Instead, we asked our people to prayerfully consider who they would give the groceries to. For some people, someone immediately came to their mind. Maybe someone who recently lost their job or is going through a difficult time. For others, they approached complete strangers with the groceries believing that God led them to that person.

I’ve heard the same story from several different “Creekers” today. When they approached the recipient with the groceries, they immediately shared how the groceries came at just the right time. Someone just got laid off. Others just got some bad news from the doctors and needed to see God’s love. There were tears. There was shock. There was gratitude. Here is message that came in on the church line today from a grateful recipient…

A thankful Extra Mile Grocery recipient

I’m so proud of our church for going the “extra mile” in our community today.

We often underestimate the power of small things done in Jesus’ name. Jesus somehow takes the small things and turns them into BIG things! Our job is to freely give what we have to others in His name.

Then Peter said, “Silver or gold I do not have, but what I have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.” Acts 3:6

“Small things done with great love can change the World!” – Mother Theresa