Being Remolded

I'm having one of those times where God is stacking things together in my life to do something really big in me.

He's been orchestrating events lately to bring pressure on me as a leader and as a man, and I have this real feeling that He's trying to break through a stronghold in my life.

Everything I read right now, everything Katie and I talk about, circumstances going on around me, teaching I'm exposed to, conversations of people I've never met before, and the needs of the church are all bearing right on a particular area of my life that God wants to shine a light on and clean out something I've walked with since I was a kid.

It's really hard to feel the weight of change that is needed, but the pain of staying the same would be worse.

Right now, I'm meditating on

2 Corinthians 9:8 and 2 Corinthians 12:9

All prayers are welcomed!

State of the Church, September 30, 2008

Talking points from my report to the Elders last night.

Basically, my message was that God has done something AWESOME in each area of C4 or we’re poised to make significant progress just around the corner.

To God be the Glory!

C1 Gold Rush / House of Blues Success

311 people (100 kids!)

284 people (82 kids)

Great Response to series

C2 11 Connect Groups

111 People Connected (More than ever before!)

Discover this Sunday

C3 Greeters, Guest Services, full

Need to Fill Jobs in CM, FIT, SM needs a guy D-Team leader

Pray for Discover to produce some of these

Tracy, Donevan – specific people I think are next

C4 3 salvations this series

Probably need to schedule a baptism after Discover

Blues - Most successful felt-need series

Using Money series as a felt need series in Heroes

Ideas: “Fireproof” series in Feb.

“You Asked For It” series

C5 Gearing Up for 2009 Planning

Financial Planning for 2009

David registered CP Coaching Network at MLC

Perhaps the Lord will act on our behalf

Love this quote from Mark Batterson:

Here's one of my favorite phrases in Scripture. I Samuel 14:6 says, "Perhaps the Lord will act in our behalf." I love that modus operandi. But I honestly think many if not most Christians take the opposite approach. Perhaps the Lord WON'T act in our behalf. We let fear dictate our decisions. We have a better-safe-than-sorry mentality. We live as if the purpose of life is to arrive safely at death.

Maybe it's time for a paradigm shift. When did we start believing that God wants to take us to safe places to do easy things? Here's a thought: the will of God is not an insurance plan. It's a daring plan.

I think we've made a false assumption that the will of God gets easier as we grow spiritually. Some dimensions do get easier with the consistent practice of spiritual disciplines. But I also think God will give us more difficult, dangerous, and daring things to do!

I love this phrase. It's so hopeful. It's so optimistic. And it's the key to living with holy anticipation. Perhaps the Lord will act in our behalf. May God give us the spirit of Jonathan!

End of Summer Mind Dump

Wow, except for yesterday, I haven't posted since June 11.


It's been a full summer.


One of the New Year's Resolutions I've made was to blog for me, not for anyone else. (Not always the right answer, but got me over the hump of feeling like I needed to say something spiritual in every post, which made me approach blogging like preparing a message, which made me hesitant to post.)

Here I'll catch up with what's been going on:

1. I love motorcycle riding! Since I got my motorcycle in June, I now ride it to work almost every day. Yesterday, Katie rode 30 miles with me.

2. Adoption paperwork! It takes a LONG time. But we finished all our paperwork yesterday!!! (We celebrated with a motorcycle ride.)

3. Preaching through Romans - this has been awesome for me. I love getting a handle on the message of a whole book, and I understand Romans so much better than I have before, and it has really clarified lots about our walk with Christ. Romans 6:13 and Romans 12:1-2 were the best for me.

4. Getting ahead on Message Prep and Service Planning -- Peachtree is officially four weeks out on service planning (sermon AND music and creative elements). This is a first! Clinton, Sheila, and I have worked really hard all summer to get ourselves ahead. We've also got series mapped out through the end of the year.

5. Writing a book - I'll save this one for a post by itself.

Adoption Progress and How it All Began

Today Katie and I turned in the very last of the paperwork for our adoption from China. Praise God! It is now in China's hands (and the Lord's). We should get our LID (log-in date) sometime next week.


This process began May 2007. We were bike riding at the Silver Comet trail and actually were talking about dream travel plans we had (it you don't make a regular habit of dreaming with your spouse, you're missing out; it's so fun to share your biggest, boldest thoughts with someone, and it's amazing how many dreams we share with each other that God ends us bringing about) I changed subjects and mentioned that I had thought about adopting from overseas as a dream, and Katie promptly told me she'd been thinking the same thing recently.


We both confessed that we'd thought the other one wouldn't be interested and that it would be a hard sell to the other. (I thought she'd prefer biological children, she thought the cost of adoption would turn me off to it).


We agreed to pray about it and look into it further.


The next month we had the privilege of going with our youth to SuperWow and David Platt preached a message on theological adoption (God adopted us into His family) and ended it with a slideshow about the the number of orphans around the world (145 million!) and challenged Christians to consider adoption.

God was speaking right to us. We skipped the next session and walked around for an hour on the beach processing what we'd heard. We decided that the only reasons we could come up with not to adopt were selfish, that it felt like every call from God (to seminary, to church planting) we've had, and that as we've always decided with God's calls: we'd be crazy not to do it.

We spent the next weekend praying and researching on the internet. Two documentaries really go to us: The Dying Rooms and China's Lost Girls (National Geographic).

I'll write the rest of the story in another post.

Romans 1

Preaching through Romans this summer.

Key verse of Romans 1 and Paul's reason for writing to explain the gospel:

Romans 1:16-17

(mouse over to see the Scripture passage)

Insight of the week: Paul

The Shadow

Here's my bike. Ventured on the main road today for the first time. Got up to 60 mph.