1. Happiness Is A Symptom Of Your Circumstances.
2. When happiness is the goal, you are one circumstance away from emptiness.
3. Joy Is The Product Of My Relationship With Christ.
4. Happiness is based on what’s happening around me, but joy is what’s happening on the inside of me.
5. We rejoice and we tune in to our inner sense of joy.
6. Joy is not something you chase; it’s actually something you release.
7. Joy is on inside of you, it’s there, it’s already there if you have a relationship with Jesus Christ.
8. Joy overrides circumstances.
9. …happiness might be out the window, because it’s circumstantial, but joy is here to stay!
10. If you’re chasing happiness you’re chasing the wrong thing, it’s time to release joy in your life.

1. These are three changes that you probably need to make if you want to chase kids God’s way.
2. You must Model The Way.
3. What you’re modeling for your kids today is what they will do tomorrow.
4. You must Guide Their Hearts.
5. Your greatest job is to guard and guide their hearts to a relationship with Jesus and if that is not your number 1 aim, you need to let the chase change you.
6. Nothing you involve your family in will prepare them for life, will point them toward eternity, and will guide their hearts toward Jesus as much as involving your family in church.
7. You need to Pray Them Through.
8. Without Him and without His ways, all you’re doing is ensuring that your kids get from point A to point B safely. And I want to say to you parents, your role is so much greater than that! You have the highest calling known to man, it’s given to you by God Himself, your children are a gift, your children are a reward, don’t waste it!
9. You can be the mom who makes the best chocolate chip cookies or the dad that helps the most with homework, you can nurture and care and instruct but unless you give your kids Jesus, you’ve build the house in vain!
10. There’s nothing greater you can do as a parent than model the way to Jesus, and guide their hearts to Jesus, and pray them through to Jesus.

1. The birth of a dream begins with the belief in a God who gives dreams.
2. Often there is a discrepancy or a gap between that truth that God has great plans for us and what we are currently experiencing.
3. God has a way of taking the struggles that you and I face and if we’ll allow Him He has a way of leveraging those for great things in our life.
4. The product…is only as good as the process that it took to create it.
5. In the pursuit of the dream of God for your life, it is not setting back and waiting for God to drop the big thing in your lap, it is learning to become faithful in the little things.
6. “Very well” – it would be good for us to incorporate that into our vocabulary and our way of living.
7. Here’s something I’ve learned about God, if He can’t trust you with little, He is not about to give you something great.
8. When we do everything that is right and experience everything that is wrong then our expectation of God isn’t met, but here’s what I want you to know, is that You and I set the expectation, God never did.
9. What He did say, is that if you’ll follow me I will walk with you through everything life ever throws at you.
10. I’m not saying He threw you in the pit but I am saying that He has a way of allowing nothing to be wasted in your life and everything to be worked together for His glory and for your good because He loves you and He has a dream for you.

1. Paul and Silas were worshipping; Paul and Silas were recognizing that God holds the key to every door, opened or closed in their life, that God holds the key.
2. If you want to know today what to do when the ice is breaking, what to do when the circumstances have overwhelmed you, what to do when you’re sitting behind a closed door and you feel full of doubt and despair and hopelessness and discouragement, if you want to know today what to do, I’ll tell you, the Bible says you worship!
3. Worship means something, worship does something, worship becomes something in the life of a Christ Follower when darkness sets in and the door is closed and there’s nowhere else to turn and the hurt and the frustration and the fear all hold you captive, that’s when worship does something.
4. Don’t tell me you don’t know how to worship. ‘Cause I’ve seen you. I’ve seen you at the ball field, okay?
5. Worship is saying, this has worth and I’m showing it right now.
6. When we come together to worship…we are collectively saying in this moment Jesus you are most important. Jesus, You are worthy of everything we have.
7. It’s our chance to say God, I am overwhelmed but You have overcome.
8. Then they’ll know you did the web notes and you love Jesus more.
9. When you worship your circumstances get smaller and your God gets bigger.
10. I want to lead you to worship despite the closed door in your life, and to see every closed door as another opportunity to worship the greatness of our God because when you do, it gets God’s attention and closed doors open.

Your life-stage, weekly schedule, season, and annual calendar all create the rhythms of your life and you must learn to live according to them. Living according to the rhythm allows you to make the most of the moment you’re in. You’re able to work hard when the rhythm is fast because you’ve rested when the rhythm was slow. I once had an employee who every few months was on the edge of burnout. It became a cycle of “this is too hard” or “I can’t keep up” or “there are too many demands.” Ministry is hard and at times it’s difficult to keep up with the pace and certainly there are many demands, but I tried to help this individual see that they weren’t living in the rhythms. They weren’t taking a day of rest. They weren’t refueling during vacations. They weren’t building rhythm into their daily schedule. Without rhythm, you certainly won’t last long in ministry!

So you have to be strategic about the rhythms of your life and organization or else you’ll miss the beat. If you miss a slow rhythm and fail to rest, you won’t be ready to go hard when the rhythm picks up and the demands are great. If you miss the fast season when the rhythm is really kicking, you’ll get bored and unsettled in your life when the rhythm really slows down. And here’s the real danger in that…you miss the beat and you mess up the song! Your work, your family, your ministry, your schooling, your life is the song – so pay attention to the rhythm!

Here are a few of my favorite quotes:

1. Things Aren’t Always As They Seem When Doors Are Open.
2. When there is an open door your response is to obey.
3. The door is wide open; the hand of God is on the door inviting you to walk through the door of baptism.
4. Sometimes when you have gone through the door, as instructed, on the other side of the door things aren’t always as they seem.
5. You can only see one step ahead but God can see for eternity.
6. Things Aren’t Always As They Seem When Doors Are Closed.
7. Our response when doors are open is obedience and our response when doors are closed is trust.
8. This is like “Desperate Housewives” kind of stuff right in the Bible.
9. …God’s got a plan and He holds the key, so obey him…The next time a door is open, go through it, obey Him. And the next time a door is closed, trust Him.
10. ‘Cause you can’t see it today, you might not know it right now, but on the other side of every door, God’s a bigger plan in store for you.