Ok… I’m Listening…

Yeah get off my back… my posts have been few and far between. The Sunday Night Mind Dump has gone to the… well dump. I’m telling ya I will start it back, but as we all know T-I-M-E is such a commodity in 2010.

As 2011 approaches my mind is already beginning to explore the new challenges, the new aspirations, the new goals, and the renewed vision for the new year. And one of the things I hope to reignite is my presence through the social networks including the regular use of this blog. The challenges of planting a relevant church in “old school” tradition rich east Tennessee has perhaps been even more challenging than I gave the enemy credit for. For the church planters and young leaders out there that were checking out this blog in the past, check back soon for my interesting take on those challenges and more in the coming weeks… But that’s for another time, another post…

As for tonight… I had to share this anecdote/story. I love when God gives me messages to preach and then follows up that week with the real life application. It’s been happening quite a bit lately actually.

We began a series on Sunday called Do You Hear? Focusing all on HEARING from God. You know usually when you hear preachers preach about prayer, it’s always about the “what to say” aspect and rarely do we learn the “what did He say” part. We just finished up in our Sun Stand Still series learning how to pray big prayers and asking God for big things. But you know, it’s great to pray those things, and God wants you to DREAM BIG, and ASK AUDACIOUSLY, but if we fail to LISTEN and hear from God, we’ve blown the whole deal.

So last week it was all about laying the foundation to how we HEAR from God. Because I still contend that the greatest life skill, the greatest ability for any pastor is the skill and the ability to HEAR God’s voice and the COURAGE to DO what He says. And for YOU, although you may be a housewife that’s changing dirty diapers and trying to manage the dishes, laundry, and supper, or you may be working at Wal-Mart listening to grumpy holiday Scrooge’s all day complain about the weather and the lysol going up 2 cents or you’re a student that feels like you’re never going to graduate and “real life” is so far away… Regardless what you do or how insignificant you think your life is at the moment, the greatest skill you can ever develop is the ability to HEAR God’s Voice and the COURAGE to do what He says.

I told you though, if you really want to hear God speak, you’ve got to pay attention! Because the truth is He is speaking every single day! But you’ve got to tune in. You’ve got to have the antenna up, you’ve got to clean your ears out, sit up straight, and have your eyes alert. He’s speaking… are you listening?

Well if I wasn’t listening before… believe me… God’s got my attention tonight. As I said on Sunday your burning bush may come from the most normal, ordinary objects. It was a freakin bush, an ordinary, natural bush, that had no meaning whatsoever, UNTIL God set it on fire. And soon the ordinary became extraordinary. You better pay attention to the regular, natural, ordinary things in your life, because they can become supernatural in a few moments with God’s presence. Teenagers listen to your parents, believe it or not God can speak through them. Yes, even a spouse can have some wisdom from God every now and then. And you know what? Would you believe me if I told you… God can speak LOUD and CLEAR through a 2 year old?

One of the moments I look forward to all day is the moment after I read Jackson his bed time story, and then I pray for Him (tonight before I prayed, I told Jax how awesome he was and how much potential he really had. And then I prayed to God asking Him to ignite the talents that He has given him, and I prayed that Jackson Riner would be the best in the world at that talent. That he would be a leader for his generation to make a difference in the world, using the talent [whatever it may be] as the springboard to changing the world) By the way it’s never too early and never too late to pray those prayers for your kids. Encourage them and empower them to be the best they can be, with the skills and talents God has given them.  Anyway… so after we pray, and turn out the lights, we always just have a moment where we just talk. These are some of my greatest times, just sitting there having a conversation with a 2 year old. It is absolutely hilarious at times, and actually insightful at times. He’ll go on talking about football and Tyler Bray, and Du-fense (defense). He’ll talk about what he did at Mimi’s and what he ate for dinner. I love it!

But tonight it was daddy’s turn to vent to son. Without going into detail, today was very stressful on multiple levels. And there are some MAJOR decisions and some IMMEDIATE needs that MUST be taken care of in the coming weeks to launch theROCKchurch into financial freedom and to take us to the next level. But today has just been a crossroads time and I’ve really been trying to put into practice my message on HEARING God’s voice. I’ve asked God to speak to me all day, and I just wasn’t hearing it… UNTIL…

I said “Jackson, let me just tell you… I’ve got some things that are just weighing heavy on me” “Heavy?” “Yes, son, weighing heavy on me.” He sat in silence as I continued “I just don’t know what to do? I need some advice, and I need to hear from God. Can you give me some advice?”… The next words and I promise you I’m not exaggerating this or adding. But God began to speak through a burning bush/ahem a 2 year old… “Daddy, preach the Bible… pppreach the Truth.” “Umm, that’s pretty good son, what else?”… “Lift the people up. Daddy help people, lift people up. Preach the Bible.”… I sat in silence… Preach the Bible? Lift people up? Help people? “Daddy, the people… the truth… people need truth” hmm, God? Umm, is that you? “Daddy… football” and we’re done. haha…

As I kissed him goodnight and walked out of the room… it hit me. God Still Speaks. God Is Able to Ignite the Ordinary. And God’s Voice Reminds You of His Promises. (3 of the 4 points from Sunday’s message) Are you listening? I’m listening… Don’t think this stuff don’t apply to you. It’s time that you started believing God for the impossible in your life. I’ve heard God’s voice, now I’ve got to have the COURAGE to do what He says.

What about you? Do you Hear Him?… He’s speaking… Shhhhh…. Listen….

 

Sunday Night Mind Dump 1-3

Well tonight is going to be a quick mind dump… because my mind feels like a dump of mucous as I’m trying to get sick. (Don’t ya love that mental picture). I’m trying to fight it off early so going to try to rest up. I do have some blog ideas through the week though, so in place of a long Mind Dump, I’ll blog away the week…. So let’s do this!

• If you missed the first week of iLife’10 oh my goodness you have GOT to check it out online… I will post the link on facebook, twitter, and here once it’s up!
• I can’t tell you how awesome it is to look on facebook and see theROCKchurch fired up about finding their mission in life. I mean THAT is what it’s all about!
• Again if you were not there for the first week, check it out on our website where we will also have resource tools for you to discover your core values and mission.
• As Andy was away learning, growing and worshipping at The Passion Conference, Chris Vaughn stepped in and was awesome!
• We had at least 1 more to step over the line and surrender their lives to Jesus Christ today… THAT NEVER GETS OLD!  And that’s why we do what we do!!!
• So the Pennsylvania trip was a success… had a great time with family. Jax had a ball (no pun intended, if you know my son this makes a lot of sense) with his aunts and grandparents. Hopefully we’ll (ok Elaine) will have the pics up on Facebook soon.
• Got to read through “The Genius Machine” and almost all of “The Back of the Napkin” on the trip and they were EXACTLY what I needed. Huge plans ahead at theROCK as God guides me to creatively look at the future.
• DISAPPOINTED does not even come close to my thoughts after hearing that 4 Tennessee basketball players (Melvin Goins, Cameron Tatum, Brian Williams, and Tyler freakin Smith) were arrested on Friday afternoon.  The leadership has been lacking for 2 years now and it is no coincidence that Tyler was in this mess. I hate it for him because I know he’s been through a lot with the passing of his father and all, but I seriously believe it’s time to let them all go.  I’m normally the calm headed guy that says “let’s see how it plays out”, but I’m sick of it. I know Mike Hamilton is too. It is embarrasing and will most definitely effect recruiting in all sports at The University of Tennessee until these messes are cleared up.  Sad day to be a Vols fan… {Rant over}
• Speaking of Cameron Tatum… He was one of my favorite Vols, and I mean no disrespect by this but he is the perfect look-a-like with Donkey from Shrek.  Don’t believe me… You be the judge.
  
• I refuse to believe that Tennessee played in a bowl game this year… Sorry didn’t happen.
• Jax is up to over 45 words now… not a bad vocabulary huh… Yes BUTT is most definitely the favorite.
• Ok time to take some meds and hit this sickness before it hits me.  More to come in the week ahead…

 

Sunday Night Mind Dump 12-27

Although I’m stashed away in Pennsylvania with the in-laws and didn’t preach this morning, doesn’t mean I’m not giving the weekly installment of the dumping of my brain… So here we go.

• Admittedly I can not stand to miss theROCKchurch EVER, but I think it’s probably good at times for me to get away and evaluate things and it’s good for the church to hear somebody other than me running my jaws. If you weren’t there today… You HAVE to check out the experience here…  The Big Mo!
• Big shout out to Mark Tribble for filling in for me this weekend. God has some huge things in store for Mark and his family… Excited to see what the future may hold for these guys.
• Every time I take these trips I take the opportunity to really do some things that I don’t get an opportunity to do in the busyness of my life back home. And that is read as many leadership/business/creative/spiritual books I can get my hand on.  My favorite gift for Christmas was a $75 gift certificate to Books-a-Million.  So I purchased 3 books, “The Genius Machine: The 11 steps that turn raw ideas into brilliance” by Gerald Sindell, “The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures” by Dan Roam, and “What the Dog Saw and other adventures” by Malcolm Gladwell. I’m ready to devour these in the next week, and come back ready to implement what God gives me!
  
• Tonight as family we had some really hardcore, heavy, deep conversations on the “issues in our lives”… You know we are all messed up people with a lot of baggage and sin. Why do we try to hide that? Why do we try to cover it up? Why do we try to pretend we’re different? We’re NOT, you’re NOT! We all have CRAP, we all have SIN, we all have deep JUNK that we’re dealing with. But it’s not until we begin talking about it, and sharing our struggles that true freedom can be found. Tonight I have witnessed some awesome forgiveness and the work of healing and restoration in life. It’s not an easy process, but it’s worth it!
• Here’s our schedule for the week…
  Monday: Huge family party with people coming from as far as Boston, whoa
  Tuesday: Our friends Todd and Erin Weitzel with their son Laird come to visit
  Wednesday: Taking Jax to an Aquarium in New Jersey
  Thursday: Visiting grandma in York, PA. Back home by 4:30pm to watch Tennessee basketball @ Memphis. And then Chic-Fil-a Bowl at 7:30pm.
  Friday: Day with the family
  Saturday: Traveling back home…
• As for the sports world… I guess Urban Meyer has flip flopped on his little decision to “retire”. I don’t wish any ill-will towards him and truly hope he gets his health taken care of… But seriously? This just seems like a prima donna move to me. So one day it’s all about the family, the next day he doesn’t even tell his family that he’s planning on going back.  Really Urban? Really? Check out Pat Forde’s article on this here. I was sad to see him leaving because I wanted Lane to have at least one more shot at him. Looks like we will get that in 2011.  Here we go!
• Looks like Tennessee found their man to round out the coaching staff. Rich Bisaccia will soon be hired as the Running Backs/Special Teams Coordinator. Needless to say, this is a HUGE hire. I thought the losses of Frank Wilson and definitely Eddie Gran would be signficant… But Lane Kiffin has proven once again that he’s an even better recruiter of coaches (by hiring Kippy Brown and Bisaccia) than players, which is AMAZING! Pumped about 2010 and beyond!
• Speaking of 2010, you have GOT to be at theROCKchurch for our January teaching series called “iLife10″… You know we all end up somewhere in life, but few people end up somewhere on PURPOSE. Come and learn how you can develop a personal vision for your life in all aspects. And may you end up somewhere in December 2010 on purpose! Go to iROCKdoU.com in the next few days for more details… INVITE and COME!!!!!

 

Sunday Night Mind Dump 12-13

Lots to unload from the mind since I didn’t post much through the week. So let’s get to it!

Church Stuff

• What’s happening at theROCK is exciting the heck out of me.  In our 2010 planning, I can barely keep everything in.  Get on board now!
• This morning was just a little of the overflow of what God has been wrecking me with this past week…
• It still amazes me how strategic and intentional Jesus’ miracles were.
• And still can’t grip my mind around the idea, that Jesus allowed the little girl (Luke 8:40-48) to die, by stopping and healing the woman. Of course He just went and raised the little girl from the dead, but STILL don’t ever forget your issues in your life no matter how insignificant they may seem to you, are very SIGNIFICANT in God’s eyes.
• Even more amazing is the fact that God allowed His Son to die because of us. Good grief, you matter to God, don’t ever say you don’t!
• As for next week you have got to be there!  Christmas @theROCK is going to be awesome!
• The totals are in for week 1 of our ROCK Kingsport 2010 Christmas Gift.  And in Week 1 people gave close to………  $750!!! I think some people are serious about Dominating the city of Kingsport with Jesus!

Other Stuff

• Dealing with a sick baby sucks, let’s just be honest.
• I’m pretty sure Satan didn’t want me preaching the message this morning, or if I did preach it, not preach it effectively because listen to this story…
• So as I was finishing up my prep for Sunday last night. I was getting the car ready and what not, and took the trash outside… To my surprise 2 sets of my neighbors across the street were outside talking and it was 1am! Needless to say it caught me off guard and they proceeded to tell me that a drunk dude started vandalizing people’s property.  Ripped up a mailbox and chucked stuff in people’s yards.  Cops were looking for him. So I talked for a few minutes, went back in to go over my sermon one last time… Then my door bell rings at 2am! It was the neighbors again saying they think the dude may be behind my house to turn on the backyard lights… So can you picture me going to my back deck to flip on lights thinking as soon as I flip them on there’s going to be a drunk idiot standing at my door?  Flipped on the lights ready to swing if I had to… No one there… So I went outside with the rest of the peeps and we looked and they finally found the brilliant first class gentleman in the woods trying to get sober.  He turned himself in and I got to go back in around 2:45am AWESOME…
• The story is not over, so as I finally got to sleep around 3:15ish, my poor sick son wakes up SCREAMING HIS HEAD OFF at 4am. So as I was rocking him back to sleep I had a conversation with God of how important this sermon must be for some reason.  Interesting night/morning to say the least.
• This hostess story that no one wants to let die regarding Tennessee recruiting is absolutely ridiculous… It was determined that Clemson was the team to “turn Tennessee in” and I propose that we schedule Clemson every single year for the next 15 years and beat the living snot out of them. And every year we run the score up, and let the Orange Pride (our hostess’s) stand on the sideline and just wave.
• Speaking of the stupid story that now “I’m not letting die”, Did you check out this little article on the New York Times writer and Pahokee? Very interesting for my little conspiracy theorists… Something Stinks in Pahokee
• I completely nailed the Heisman voting last night… 1. Ingram 2. Gerhart 3. McCoy 4. Suh 5. Tebow
• But Gerhart absolutely deserved it… Check out these stats (Thanks to @kreyflanary for these)…. Gerhart 1736 rushing yards and 26 td’s (with consistent play all year)  Ingram 1542 rushing yards and 15 td’s (with some horrible games vs. UT and AU) “Gerhart plays in the Pac-10 where they don’t play defense” Gerhart’s average rushing defense 58th, Ingram 66th hmmm! Top 40 rushing defenses faced Gerhart 5 Ingram 1. Rushing defenses ranked 100 or worse faced: Gerhart 2 Ingram 3… TOBY GERHART WAS ROBBED!
• I forgot how many chills I get watching “Remember the Titans”
• What’s up with the lack of Christmas shows these days?  I remember back in the “good ole days” back when I was growing up, there was Christmas stuff on all the time. And I loved all the specials like “Bob Hope Christmas” and they would bring all the All-Americans on the stage and talk to them.  Where is that stuff these days?
• I leave you with my favorite car prank of all time… Enjoy

 

“Be Careful What You Wish For”

“Be careful what you wish for”… For those who know me, you know I’m a little bit of a sports nut, and naturally always wanted my kid to be a sports nut like me… Well Jax seriously takes it to a WNL (Whole Nutha Level!) If you’re around the kid more than two minutes you will hear him say “ball” or “bawwwl” 18 times. And if there is a ball within 2 miles he knows it…

And yes the rumors are somewhat true… I have been known to sit there and make him throw me 5 perfect strikes before he eats dinner (I don’t do that every night though! haha) but yes I’m afraid I have created a monster!

If the constant pointing at “BALLL” or throwing whatever ball he can find 120 mph at your head was not enough… he has now found a book, that has a page dedicated to every “sports ball” you can find.  Sooo now every time I turn around he wants me to “read” his favorite page out of his favorite book.  It’s a little Univ. of Tennessee book, and it has a Tennessee football helmet, basketball, football, baseball, volleyball, tennis ball, golf ball, etc… And so I have to tell him what every single ball is over and over over and over and over.  Never thought I would get tired of seeing sports, but shew he is wearing me out!!!

So yes, I guess the old adage is true “be careful what you wish for?”… I have a little sports nut on my hands, and it’s a little more than I bargained for. …  And yes, he throws five perfect strikes at 18 months!

 

Random Monday Thoughts

• I think I went to bed the earliest last night in a LOOONG time (other than being sick)… I laid down with my sick kitty in the guest room, fell asleep and then just hopped in my bed.  Needed, but I’m still worn out for some reason.
• I think I am now officially addicted to Football Coach Scoop. They’ve been breaking news almost every hour!  And they’ve not been wrong yet.  Impressive little site.
• “Be careful what you wish for”… I was going to write a little blurb about my son right here, but as I started writing, I decided it deserved it’s on separate post haha
• Speaking of my kid… He’s a little weird.  The things that amuse him are ridiculous. If you want to know a sure-fire way to make Jax laugh.  Just sneeze! or cough… Just pretend he doesn’t care. He busts a freakin gut laughing so hard he can barely breathe.  We were joking the other night and said it’s going to be bad when we’re in a restaraunt and someone actually is choking and Jax is going to be over there dying laughing… not good.
• Monday’s are my “day off” so I keep Jax with me all day, so be ready for lots of Jax moments on Monday’s.
• I do not like “Clifford the Big Red Dog”… Nothing against him personally, it’s really Elizabeth that gets on my nerves.
• Speaking of Elizabeth, my cousin Elizabeth and her husband Ryan, just had a baby boy last week… Please pray for sleep for them, ha
• And speaking of sleep, it’s time to put Jax down for nap… Have a great Monday all!