Thanksgiving.

Does it feel like Thanksgiving to you?
I don't know you'll, but it does not feel like it.
Maybe its just me, you know? Maybe.

I personally have not heard about turkey much... and the weather in Houston was so warm.
For thanksgiving, I'm used to it getting cold.
What do you think?

Anyway, it does not matter if its cold or hot...
It does not matter if your family is cooking or not...
It does not matter if your cousins are coming over to your house or not to eat on thanksgiving day...
Let me take you to a scripture in the Bible, where we can focus on this last part of the week.

Although we can look at the context of the scripture and come out with some good things.

But concentrate on this verse and look at it closely.

Ephesians 5:20

"giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,"

Remember:
IN everything that happens in your life... give thanks to Jesus.
FOR everything that happens in your life... give thanks to Jesus.

I thank God for the life that He has given me because of His sacrifice on the cross.
I thank God for my loved ones that surround me in my everyday life.
I thank God for the calling that He has place in my life.
Thank you, Jesus!

People are in need of Jesus.

People are in need of Jesus.
Really. we are so used to "just" saying that and we don't really know how much they are in need of Him... or know of any friend that needs God.
I was that type of person.
I used to say to all my friends, "People need Jesus."
Of course, all my friends were Christians... and we HAD Jesus, you know? We had Him!
Now that I look back on it, we were thought we acted like Jesus, but were so far from it. We were full of arrogance.

I cant tell you about it enough without bringing up that one time where Jesus was hanging out with sinners.

Matthew 9:10 says,

"While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew's house, many tax collectors and "sinners" came and ate with him and his disciples."

He ate with them at their house. Imagine that!

I bet he heard a couple of words that were inappropriate.
I bet he heard some nasty jokes from these men.
So, when you meet someone that does not go to your church... does not go to your youth group... does not believe the way you believe... then and only then, (hehe) you can ask that one question, WWJD?

Really, what would Jesus do?
He would sit and talk to them.

I was waiting for my friend Joe at Starbucks and was killing time. I opened my calendar and was thinking about Thanksgiving, Christmas, my girl, the upcoming weekend (already!)... you know, just killing time.
On my right side of me there was this young guy that was reading his bible.
I was intrigued.
I started to make conversation with him.
We eventually got the point where I asked him ,"What church do you go to?"
He responded, "I don't go."
He then told me that he had moved here from another state, so I thought, well, he has not found a church.
He then told me, "No, I just don't approve of churches."
Oh God, this is about to get interesting, I said to myself.

If I was still hanging around my "Christian pals", I would have said, "Sinner!"
I would have said, "He is not part of us."
I would have said, "He doesn't get our vision, lets move on. Forget him."
I would have judged him wrongly.

But, I asked myself, WWJD? (Yeah right! Hehe)
For the next 30 minutes (Joe was taking too long to meet me), my new friend took me through 1 chapter of Acts and 1 chapter of Galatians.
We talked about God's righteousness, the law, believing in Jesus through faith...
He obviously knew his stuff.

People are in need of Jesus.
I have come to realize firsthand that they do.

I came out of that conversation kind of shocked at the views that many people have about the church.
Its one thing to hang around with your church camp friends... its another to make friendships with people that need Jesus.

People are so full of bitterness towards the church, but yet they still realize that they need Jesus.
We all need Jesus.
Go out there and make a friend this week.
Talk to them about Jesus... because deep down... deep, deep down, they know they need Him so much.

"I pray for my friend. I pray that God reveals to him that Jesus said that the church was His... That He was going to build it. I also pray that the church starts acting like the church. Jesus, help me act and be your church."

Church Planting Boot Camp: Day 2

Im so tired... but its all been worth it.
It took me 4 hours to get to Houston from Dallas, but it was 4 hours of dreaming, some phone calls, listening to John Piper and dreaming some more... I actually dozed off a couple of times on the road.. Not good.

Before I go to bed, let me leave you with the experience that I enjoyed so much today.
As you all know, I have been learning some amaing things at an Acts29 Church Planting Boot Camp in Dallas, Tx.

Well, here we go.
We started out with JR Vassar telling us to go deep with the Sabbath rest.
Ministry will disorient you at times, thats why you need to Sabbath.
Disconnect from TV, myspace, facebook, email, blogs at least one day a week. Huh? Yea, that was harsh to hear.
He talked a little about not abusing people to build our ministries but build our ministries by building people. Wow.
Hey guys, Christ died for you. Jesus did it all... get out of "performance mode" and chill... take a nap. The Kingdom wont desintegrate.
Sabbath deflates our inflated selves.

Jonathan Dodson was amazing.
He talked on this topic: Spirit-led Ecclesiology, Following the Spirit through Church Planting.
We sometimes rely on our research, books, timelines, and blogs to plant our churches.
We sometimes just plow trough all "obstacles" that arise while we are planting a church.
For example, a guy commits a sin, and is supposed to teach next week. What do you do?
I often see pastors just call that "an attack from the devil." Hehe... and they just rebuke it and continue with their plans, leaving the "brother" to fend for himself.
I learned that the question we must ask is this, "What would the Holy spirit have me to do in this situation?"
Lets restore our brother. Lets help our hurt brother.
What a difference that would make.
What do you do when the unexpected and unplanned things happen?
Stephen gets killed in Acts 7.
Angels tell Peter to go to Cesarea to talk with a gentile named Cornelius.
What do you do? You rely on the Holy Spirit.

Matt Chandler talked about Jesus deconstructing worldviews in Luke 15.
Real quickly. this is what got me the most.
When the prodigal son came back to the house, the father made a party for his son sayiong, "My son was dead, but now he lives."
The older son gets angry and jealous because they are throwing a party for the unfaithful son.
Look at me. Ive been here my whole life "serving" in the "house." I have always "obeyed" my dad's orders.
What does the father do?
Does he tell his servants, "My older son does not gt it... turn up the music and lets party. We get it. Forget him." No Way!
The father goes outside where his older son is at and PLEADS with him to come inside.

If you are reading this bulletin/post/blog and you find yourself feeling like you have serves Jesus and have been faithful to Him your whole life, but still feel down and out, ready to give up, feeling anger, jealousy, bitterness....
I encourage you to drop me a message, send me an email, text me... whatever.
Lets pray together so that we may both go in the house and glorify God.

Goodnight.

Church Planting Boot Camp: Day 1

Humility.
Reluctance.
Repentance.

These are the words that are on my mind as I come out from the first night of the Acts29 Church Planting Boot Camp.
I just couldnt ask for more..

Matt Chandler started off this morning saying, that if we build our churches on INFORMATION ALONE and not TRANSFORMATION, we are headed into big trouble.

He also said (and this is for the legalist religious people), that you cannot have a doctrine of grace and still walk with a swagger.
And thats so true...
You cannot preach grace...
You cannot preach that you are a sinner that needs Jesus every day...
and walk with pride.

Matt Carter followed by declaring that there is a big difference from the Christianity that Jesus taught and the Christianity that we live out.
We must be for the poor, for the needy and not only for the rich.
He described in Amos 5 where people come together for church and God literally says, "Stop it... just shut up." He would not accept their offerings or their noise (songs), because they were not caring for the poor and needy...
Looks like the church that we have today in America and God is telling us to stop it.

Darrin Patrick talked about Cultivating a Culture of Repentance. What a message!
I literally teared up, recognizing that we need to repent well.
These words burn in me.
I am afraid for my life that my gospel proclamation will outpace my gospel application.
We, as leaders sometimes must be weak, because in our weakness, He is made perfect.
He also talked about the sins that pastors face.

We must memorize James 3:16, "For where JEALOUSY and SELF AMBITION exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice."
But James 5:16 says, "Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working."

Mark Driscoll basically called us prideful and arrogant because we think that we can do it better than anyone else.
He told us, that as church planters, we must strive to make Jesus look good because He is good.
He told us to walk in the light.
He told us to be humble and not prideful.
He admonished us to repent well... to repent of our sin publicly.
He told us to turn critics into coaches.
He finished the first night by telling us to persevere.

Without the hubba hubba...
Without anyone falling down their chair because... well just because.
Without the heavy breathing of the preacher catching his breath...
these preachers called every one of us to repent of our sin and look to the work of the cross.

Tomorrow we continue this journey.
I met a couple of people... some young, some older, putting small differences away but all with a heart to serve one another.
What an amazing thing the body of Christ is.

The City: Dallas

Dallas, baby, Dallas!
I'm here and its nice.

4 hours away from Houston and my car did just fine, thanks Jesus.
Its nice... and I find it very different than Houston, but its cool.

Although I have to say, it seems to me that the cops here have noting better to do than to hide their cop cars and stand right next to it and point the speeding gun towards incoming traffic.
Since I'm not very popular with the 5-0 (They like giving me speeding tickets for some reason), I assure you that I'm being careful.

I would like to to give a shout out to a special family, the Perez family, that is housing me for the duration of this chuch planting bootcamp here in Dallas. I have known this fam. for about 6 years and I remember Israel and Sam being 15, 16 years old.

Now, they are older and have their responsibilities... and Sam is still proud to be an avid skateboarder while his older brother Israel rides on his motorcycle. Pretty cool guys.
They live about 20 minutes from The Village Church where the conference will be held.

Well, so far so good!
Tomorrow, I turn on my mind towards church planting 100%.
Can you believe it?
2 full days of straight talk from some amazing teachers.

Can't wait.

Acts29 Church Planting Boot Camp!

Am I excited or what?!!

I just registered and went on mapquest for directions and packed!
I'm going to the Acts29 Dallas Church planting Boot camp!

Pastor Mark Driscoll from Seattle founded this network to help church planters start churches... To give future church planters resources and training on how to plant a church that is bible-based. Really bible-based.

I'm ecstatic, man!
I pray that my car makes it all the way, since it ONLY has 205,000 miles. Only... Hehe.

I will be learning things such as:
-"Developing a Missional Core."
-"Pitfalls of Church planting."
-"The Role of Social Justice & Poverty in Discipleship"
-"Cultivating a Culture of Repentance"
-"How Firm a Foundation: The Sufficiency of Scripture"
That's only the first day!!!

The second day, I will be exposed to:
-"Going Deep with Sabbath Rest"
-"Developing a Repentance Ministry"
-"Spirit-led Ecclesiology: Following the Spirit through Church Planting"
-"Vivification & Mortification: A Process to Holiness"

I am ready to meet some other guys that have planted, are planting or are wanting to start a church.
I pray that I can absorb everything that I hear, see, imagine...

I have not been to a conference in a very long time (2 years maybe), and I am in need to learn something.

I cant wait to get on my car and drive 4 hours all the way into Dallas for this event.
I'll let you'll know how it goes.

Pray for my car.

23 years ago.

November is always an awesome month for me. Important dates fall in this month...
My father's birthday, Ruthie's birthday, our "anniversary", Thanksgiving... you get my drift.

Well, 23 years ago on November 10, I came out of my momma's deal, and I mean womb, crying with a lot of hair. Ironic, now Im just losing hair.

So, last night, I along with some family and friends, celebrated at BJs Brewhouse. Oh man, talk about some good food. I got the Chicken and Ribs combo with the baked potato the size of a football and a coke. I think coke is killing me. But wow... some good food.

The highlight for me was to see and hang out with some special people last night. Thank you guys for coming out and celebrating my "oh so young age" with me. You know who you are.

I was glad to spend this day with my brother, my 2 sisters and my mother.

Ruthie, my girlfriend is just.... simply.... amazing.

It takes a special kind of love to put up with this guy, right babe? Hehe.

I do have to thank her for my wonderful gift.

I got a new Dell Mini9 and now my man-purse wont be so heavy.

I love this thing.

Its so small and it feels like it can get the job done. Hopefully it does.

To all my firends that came out, your presence there was all I could ask for. Thank you.

Well, enough of that.

Why?

Because I just get to feel special for that day.

Huh?

Yeah, Ruthie steals my thunder, since her birthday is Friday!

Dang. Hehe.