God wants His will done more than we do.

I have started to get momentum on what Jesus has called me to do... Since July 2007, I have seen the dream of a 16 year old in High School start to unfold. Thanks to my mother and father that taught me the ways of God when I was a kid. Since childhood, I have always thought I would be a pastor of a church. Disappointment filled my life after seeing ministries crumble... I still wanted to pursue the dream and vision that only Jesus could put in my heart.

This past year has been a wonderful time of learning and researching the world of Churchplanting. It is scary, though (and I only speak of what I feel). Sometimes, I think I have read so many books, prayed enough, researched enough data, interviewed countless churchplanters that I think I'm ready... But at times, I think to myself, What if I fail? A frightening thought.

A friend told me this week that God wants it more than we do. Thats true. I believe that God wants His will done more than we do.
All I know is that God's plan will succeed.

In these last 4 months of this year, I have committed myself to a period of what people may call "consecration." It will be a time of fasting, more praying, and since God speaks through His word, more Bible reading.

I don't want to start another church just to call it home.
I don't want to start another church just to have recycled christians come.
I don't want to start another church just to add another church to this city.
I do not want anther church just so it can be a burden and an eysore to the community.

I want a church that can teach the bible.
I want a church that can preach Jesus.
I want a church that embraces the community... even on the weekdays.
I want a church that produces life-change.

Elders And Leaders.

I was reding Ed Stetzers blog and he wrote a something that I wanted to share with you.

He was writing about Todd Bentley, the guy directing the LakeLand revival. "Now it appears Bentley is stepping down after filing for separation from his wife and admitting to an inappropiate relationship with another woman," Ed Stetzer writes.

Ed also says, "A prominent Pentecostal evangelist called me this week after Bentley's news hit the fan. He said to me: "I'm now convinced that a large segment of the charismatic church will follow the anti-Christ when he shows up because they have no discernment."

He continued saying that no one in ministry today should be out on their own, living in isolation without checks, balances and wise counsel.

Those are some pretty strong words.

I can honestly say that going into ministry is one of the most frightening things that a person can do... and lately it has been real easy to just say, "I am called of God, give me a mic and a pulpit." I am convinced that if we look in the bible we see qualifications for pastors (Elders) and most of the people inpultpits nowadays, are so disqualified.

The apostle Paul writes the quealifications for a pastor... the conduct of a leader, and I tell you I had to check myself.
If we will impact this generation, we have to have biblical leadership.

My friend, Daniel Rodriguez, recommended a book to me that I had hears another pastor talk about. So, I made a little field trip to Lifeway Christian Store and got me a book by Gene Getz, "Elders and Leaders- God's plan for Leading The Church"

I have read the first 10 chapters and it has been amazing!
I know that this book will have to be reread again and again.

It is a "Biblical, Historical, and Cultural Perspective on ChurchLeadership."

Go and get it.

Gessner Rd.

I love driving through Gessner Rd in the Spring Branch area of Houston, Tx. It's hectic going through that street. But I tell you, you can smell the need for Christ in that community.

Let me take you on a cruise.
As soon as you get off the I-10 and see Memorial City Mall, you just take Gessner all the way. You encounter Long Point Rd. If you turn to the right and follow Long Point for a couple of miles you will see that there are a lot of hispanics that need Jesus here.

I'll bring you back to Gessner. You keep driving on Gessner and pass neighborhood after neighborhood until you reach Hammerly Blvd.
On your left hand side you will see Spring Woods High School. The High School that I graduated from. Go Tigers!

If you keep driving on Gessner you will get to Kempwood. Here is where the demographics change. There are neighborhoods on these streets if you turn left or right. On Kempwood... On Clay all the way until you reach 290. That is where you stop and go back down on Gessner and pray that God will start a work in this area until you get to I-10 once again. Redo that all over again.

I'll take you into the neighborhoods of Spring Shadows, the ones on Blalock St., and on Bingle another day.
I noticed that there are a lot of churches on Gessner Rd not counting the ones that are all over Spring Branch. There are about 5 churches that have their own building and seat around 250-350 people each Sunday just on Gessner Rd.

There are many churchplanters that will not start a church here bcause of the overpopulation of churches, and I understand.

Here is the problem.
On any given day of the week, there is no BUZZ... there are no COMMUNITY EVENTS... there are no SIGNS that there is a church that cares for the people that live around them.

What is the purpose of the church?
To seat lots of people in a service for 2 hours on a Sunday?!
No way, man!!
We need a church that is more concerned of the SENDING capacity than the SEATING capacity.
That's where new vision comes in and let's Jesus transform that situation.

Whats the point of this post?
One of these days there will be a church in the Spring Branch area of Houston that exists: To be biblical and relevant to the culture, bringing the people to JesusChrist and sending them out to bring others.

Still gotta work on that Purpose Statement. Hehe.
Pray for me.

Special Petition.

Back in the day.. back, back in the day.. when I was a kid.. I'm not that old either, Hehe.
I remember going with my mother to laldies prayer meetings.
You remember those? No, ok.

It consisted of a bunch of ladies standing in a circle and letting their needs be known to the group so they could enter into intercessory prayer and sabotage the enemy with loud voices... You know those. Hehe.
I remember some ladies saying, "Pray for my husband because he is __fill in the blank__" Others would say, "Pray for my kids because they are..."

But there were those that when it was their turn to lay their need before the Lord, they would just say, "I have a special petition."
Huh?
What just hapenned?

What is a special petition?
I never got the meaning of that, until I had a special petition of my own.
A special petition was a need or a problem or a situation that you wanted someone to pray for but did not want to tell them what it was. It was too personal. More known as a special prayer request.

Ahh, good times.
Well, Let me tell you... I got a special petition.
Anyone that reads this, when you kneel for prayer tonight or tomorrow morning, I ask that you think and pray for me.
Im not going through depression or anything like that. Hehe.
So, rejoice with me while you pray.

God will do awesome things.

And this is my meditaion of today:
"1I waited patiently for the LORD; he inclined to me and heard my cry. 2He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure." - Psalms 40

Has God ever drawn you out?
Maybe you did not want to come out, but... He.. DREW you out! I feel a praise comin. Hehe.
He has drawn me, taken me from destruction.
He is an amazing God.

Pray for me and rejoice with me.

It has been awhile...

I have taken a break from blogging...
Dont get me wrong, I have been reading a few of the blogs that I like since March... but have not written any myself.

I guess I'll start again. Hehe.
Maybe.

OF FIRST IMPORTANCE...

Guys like Mark Driscoll, Matt Chandler... John Piper are rocking my world right now..
These guys can teach the Word...

I'll give you some of Matt Chandler...
Here we go..

We find ourselves within the confines of the Bible Belt, and there’s all these kind of oddities and kind of weirdness to a life in suburbia, Bible Belt, (Houston) area. And as a pastor within that cultural context, I find myself in the same conversations over and over and over again when it
comes to spirituality.

Like, people want to talk traditional vs. what we would call ourselves, more missional and focuses. They want to talk music.

They want to talk about dress, whether it’s right or wrong for me to be wearing blue jeans right now,
-whether this angers the Lord or not if we should wear hats or not wear hats,
-how loud should the music be.

You know, you have to deal with weird statements like, “Well, I want my kids to know the hymns, and they don’t know the hymns.” In the end, I want my kids to know Jesus. I don’t care what song they’re singing.

-I end up getting into these questions about whether beer or wine is sinful whether it’s not. I always try to be really honest: light beer is sinful, regular beer is fine…according to the Scriptures.
-We get into whether we’re allowed to see certain movies or not.
-I always end up once a week, no matter how hard I try to find it, over a cup of hot tea, talking about the end times. And I try to be honest: I don’t know. I know He’s coming back. I know I want to live today like I actually believe that, but if you get too deep outside of that, you’re
going to get into a lot of conjecture. And so, we end up talking about that often.
-I end up talking a lot about philosophy of ministry in terms of small groups and Sunday school
and why we do them. And on and on and on it goes.
-Eldership vs. deaconship vs. staff led. We’re in the Bible Belt, this is what we do.

I’ll even find, “Hey, what do you think about this church? What do you think about that church?” Like, everybody’s been wounded by some church around here. If you stay here long enough, we’ll light you up too, but that’s a part of…everybody’s sinful.

You’re not going to find a non sinful place. It’s going to happen. Wherever you gather sinners, redeemed or unredeemed, sin happens. They’ll try to bait you, “Did you hear what such and such is doing? Hmm?”
-This is what I find myself in. And then, if the seminary guys get through the filter that we’ve built to try to avoid them, I end up having to talk Calvinism vs. Arminianism and I end up talking gifts, whether the gifts are dead or whether the gifts are alive and well. And this is what we do, because if you’re a churchman in the Bible Belt, these are kind of consuming ideas.

I mean this is what we talk about, “How do we…My church doesn’t do Sunday school…Well, beer is evil, it’ll kill you…”

And we love to get together and talk about what in the end, although important, are peripheral things.

They’re not the main thing.
In fact, in some of those instances, they’re so far down the line, they’re not even
numbered. So, what’s the main thing? What is, as the apostle Paul will soon tell us, what
is of first importance? Because I think that if you get the main thing down, then there’s
all this grace all over the place. If you get the main thing down, then all of a sudden,
there’s a lot of grace and there’s a lot of freedom and there’s a lot of friendships vs. nonfriendships and a lack of grace and a whole lot of judgment. Yeah, if we could just get
the main thing down, then all of a sudden, maybe all the other things aren’t as important.
Maybe I’m wrong, but maybe I’m right.

Let’s get into 1 Corinthians 15:1-2. “Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I
preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you--unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance...” Everything else gets melted away here because Paul, who wrote 75% of the New Testament, the guy that wrote this book that we’re in, is going,
“Of everything I wrote, of everything I talked about, of everything I unpacked for you, let me give you what’s of first importance. Let me give you what you can’t mess up. If you mess this up, everything else is off. Even if it’s right, you’re off in how you operate in it. You’ve got to get this right.”

Okay, so here we go. “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures.”

And then, God in the flesh, Jesus shows up on the scene and has His blood
drained and carries away the sins of the world. So, what's of first importance? The
sacrificial, ransoming, expiating, propitiating cross of Jesus Christ.

But he doesn't stop there; he keeps going. “For I delivered to you as of first importance
what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.”

Now, here's something very intriguing.
Mainly, when you hear the cross of Jesus taught, it just kind of stops there. But it doesn't stop there when New Testament writers address it. They don't address the cross of Jesus Christ and the resurrection as two separate instances but rather one in the same event.

Over and over again, you'll hear about the cross and the resurrection, the death and the resurrection. These ideas are inseparably linked to one another. Christ died on the cross, absorbed the wrath of God, carried away the shame of mankind, was buried...this is the idea that He actually died. There's a lot of National Geographic and Discovery Channel speculation about whether He was dead or not.

I still contend that when you get beat nearly to death and hung on a cross for at least eight hours, lungs filling up with blood, and then get stabbed in the heart underneath your ribcage by a spear, you don't pop up two days later.

I'm just contending that you don't just show up two days later going, “Touch My side. Go ahead, feel My hands, Thomas.”
I'm just contending.

MY NOTE:

Let's focus on the thing of first importance... not the peripheral things.. not the opinions based on speculations... not man-made traditions that we are so full of.
The thing of first importance is that God loved you so much that he came down and clothed himself in flesh and dwelt among us... and he Died and Rose again.

done.

More Matt Chandler...

I love the way Matt Chandler demonstrates the points that we sometimes miss when reading the bible...
This guy preaches sermons an puts them on the church's website so you can download the sermon notes. Unbelievable!

Matt Chandler got it going on...
Take a listen.

Let's look at one more, and then we'll go ice down our drinks. Let's go to Matthew 19. We'll pick it up in verse 16. “And behold, a man came up to him, saying, "Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?" And he said to him, "Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments." He said to him, "Which ones?"”
I love this dude. He is all of us. “You want eternal life? Keep the commands.”
“All of them?” I love this guy.
He's like, “Surely there are certain ones that are more varsity and then other ones that I don't really have to follow.”
I love this guy because he is us.

So Jesus plays the game and He says to him, “You shall not murder, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother, and, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Now, let me talk with you because I want to give you a type of person in here, I want to give you some insight. If you tend to fall into the category of those who struggle with religion, and what I mean by that is if I could type cast it, it's a person who's grown up in church their whole life and for whatever reason, everything in you makes you want to be the “good kid” and you do everything you can to follow all the rules and you do everything you can to appear like you're perfect, if you struggle with that, then you need to pay attention to what happens next, because listen to what the rich young ruler says. “The young man said to him, "All these I have kept. What do I still lack?"”

Did you see what just happened here? All the rules, everything he's supposed to follow, everything externally that he's supposed to look like, he looks like. He's obeyed the commands, he's done what he's supposed to do and he's following Jesus around now going, “Something's still missing. Something's still wrong.”

Could it be that observing religious rituals just might not bring you anywhere close to salvation? It seems so. Let's finish this story out because Jesus is going to do what Jesus does.
Verse 21, “Jesus said to him, "If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me."”
He just did it again. Jesus never asked that of anyone else.
He goes to the fishermen and goes. “Hey, follow Me and I'll make you fishers of men.” He never tells the Pharisees, “Quit being Pharisees.”
But this guy? This guy says, “How do I follow you? How do I have eternal life?”
“Alright, sell all you have, give it to the poor and come on.” Now his response is going to be wildly different from everyone else's response that we've read so far. So let's watch him. “When the young man heard this he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.”

Now, the similarity is the sorrow. Zechariah had sorrow, David had sorrow, Paul has some sorrow in him and the woman at the well definitely had sorrow. So the sorrow isn't the difference. The difference is this man's sorrow led him away from the Lord rather than towards Him.

So in every other moment, this catastrophic thing and men and women humble themselves before God as God presses on that raw nerve, they press into Him and they find Joy, depth and salvation.
This man gets that nerve pressed, and instead of submitting to it, he immediately goes, “I'll find another way,” and he leaves the Messiah and we never hear from him again.

The difference between this man and everyone else we read is that in everyone else we read, there is a rejoicing, a transformation of life, a fullness of life and a conversion that takes place. And in this man's life, we never hear from him again. The last we hear from him is he's
filled with sorrow as he walks away.

So here's the spiritual truth. Maybe when we get busted in our sin, when He disciplines us when we're defiant, when He confronts us in our ignorance or He wounds us in our strength, when business starts to fail, when marriage gets difficult and we don't understand calamity, when disease infects the body and isn't going anywhere, when sorrow enters the life, what if these things aren't happening to us because God's angry with us?
What if they're happening because God loves us too much to save us from them?
What if in them God is displaying His deepest mercy?