Long before Israel entered into the Promised Land, God told them He would clear out a lot of the nations living there, and the rest they were to destroy. They were also to destroy their idols. Sounds crazy, but God explained that they would turn away from him if they didn’t.
When that day came, years later, they did not destroy the idols, or the idol-worshipping nations. Instead, Joshua tried to make peace with them, letting them live alongside and with Israel. His plan to was enslave them. That didn’t really work out:

“…And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel.” Judges 2:10b

In the end, Joshua died and a generation later no one knew God. God was right. When you try to enslave your sin rather than destroy it, the one on the leash ends up being you. Confess to God, and Godly people in your life, actually repent of your sin, then thrust the sword of the spirit into your sin.

Some things I’ve learned:

• God is faithful, ALWAYS.  Seriously, He’s relentless. We have been through a lot, and Jesus has never let us go without and provided more than we could ask for; I guess that’s grace right?
• Ministry is hard work!  Like Driscoll puts it, ministry isn’t just a way to work inside and avoid manual labor.  It’s rough, stressful, and also rewarding knowing that you are working for Jesus directly.
• Your wife is more important than your job.  Always.  Jesus is God, not the church.   It’s okay to love your wife more than the church; in fact, God wants it that way.
• Get a planner and manage your time, because it runs from you.  Either software to plan your time, or old-school day planner [I use both], just something to make sure you do something.  I have a problem with procrastination; this is one way to try to kill it.
• Read.  A lot.  Immerse yourself in the scriptures.  Absorb everything you can from guys who have been there before.  Who cares how much wisdom and experience you lack, you can learn from great men in books, blogs, tweets, conferences, etc… It’s so easy to learn from some of the greatest minds in the world, block out time to read.
• Communicate.  The only time you talk to people in your church can’t be on Sundays during your sermon.  I have to try [that means put forth the effort] to be plugged into the heartbeat of my congregation.  God created us for fellowship; do it.

Looking at college I tossed around creative writing, music, design, and other creative avenues and never really felt like any of them were “the one”.  Here I am now several years later beginning a long journey as a lead pastor of a growing congregation which regularly includes me writing sermons, leading worship services and eventually training others in this, and creating various elements of a graphic design nature along with much, much more.

Now looking back I see that those areas I was interested in weren’t necessarily ‘bad’, or ‘wrong’; just that what Jesus had in store for me was something that rolled all of those elements plus more into one big life calling.  In a sense I was very near-sighted [actually metaphorically and physically] and only saw the events immediately in front of me, all the while the Good Lord was trying to show things to me far off.

Sometimes if it feels like God is leading you in 17 directions, there just might be something that combines most of them far off that you just can’t see yet.

Will she join Tulsa’s new WNBA team?
Will she be the first female president?
Will she be a bigger Sooner Football fan than her dad?
Will she acquire more toys than Solomon had horses?

Only time will tell..  But I do know that we are super excited.

Total different experience, going from New Testament to Old Testament, and from a more literal translation to a paraphrase.  It was refreshing.  I remember reading in one of Mark Batterson’s books how one of the best things to do once you get your routine down, is to change it.  It really helps to keep things fresh, and to keep yourself from viewing whatever it is as the same old thing you do every day.

Try it.

P. S.    If the Sooners can catch the football, and not just a couple of completions every quarter than Texas will be going down.  However, if they drop every pass like last week, we better pray the defense is ready to do-work.

So, I have been without my MacBook since January.  I blame Obama.  Sims and I were trying to watch inauguration videos and junk when it killed my Mac’s hard drive, seems logical, right?  Sure it’s been nice to be ‘unplugged’ for close to a year now, but I’m not even sure my iPhone knows it’s an iPhone anymore.  Poor guy, he’s been playing the same Coldplay album for 9 months.

The only biblical example I can think of are the churches in Revelation.  Jesus is writing to them through John, and from human standards, they seem to be great churches, and I am sure they would have made a top 50 list.  Yet, apparently it’s not the case.  A couple have false teaching, one is rich but arrogant, another is  actually following God’s word, and Jesus says another one is flat out dead.  No human could see these things, because we cannot look into the hearts of people or that of a church.  Only God can, it is Jesus’ job to judge people, to ‘rank’ churches. Maybe a more important question would be why do we think we can do God’s job?