7 more pages

I am nearly finsihed with my reading of Dan Gilliam's God Touches and have started reading Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People as part of a leadership series we are starting at VCC. I also have several other books in my stack of "must reads" but today, there won't be a lot of reading. I had an eye exam and got my pupils dilated, so everything is blury as I type this.

I find that my vision gets blury when I stay away from the Word of God for too long. I have been doing the One Year Bible as a dialy devotional reading plan for about a decade now, but lately, I have found myself having to "play catch up" because I have gotten away from that daily discipline. Making the adjustment to the end of summer, the start of a new school year, one in college and one as a senior in high school, blah, blah, blah. See? The excuses can roll off the tongue (or the keyboard in this case), but they are nothing more than excuses. Even with blurred vision from the pupil diation at St. Lucie Eyes Associates this morning, I can see that the excuses are nothing more than a futile attempt at rationalization.

It is my prayer that i stop with the excuses, and get focused back on my daily journey with Jesus! It is my prayer that because of my personal daily walk, I will be better able to bring others along on the journey of living for Jesus every day.

On my family blog I wrote the following for today, I'll let it speak for itself, and get down to the serious business of growing closer to Jesus today:
I had my annual eye exam this morning. s I type this, the words are very blury on the computer screen because my pupils were dialted as part of the examination. It will take a good portion of the day for my eyesight to return to "normal" which for me, means the need for a slight correction for distance, and a little correction for reading. Yes, bifocals have been a way of life for me for the past several years. Not that I HAVE to wear my glasses all the time, or even when I am reading, but they help.

As I contemplate the words of the gal who did much of my exam this morning, I can't help but think about the notion that people think if they wear their glasses that their eyesight will actually deteriorate and they will be more dependent upon those glasses. She said that the rality of the matter is that your brain gets used to being able to see better, and recognizes the difference when you don't wear them.

When I spend time daily in God's Word, my life really is more closely aligned to God's plan for my life. Oh, I can "get by" when I don't spend time in the Word every day, but I am only fooling myself into thinking that it is okay. Just like "getting by" without wearing my glasses may be okay, I can "get by" with the reading I do for lesson prep, sermons, etc. But that is not what is best for me.

Just as wearing my glasses helps me see clearly, spending time daily in the Word helps me stay focused on my relationship with Christ. I don't need an annual exam to see how I am doing in this regard, I just need to be held accountable for my personal daily devotion time each day. I have a couple of accountability partners to help me in that regard. Do you?

God Touches, Part 2

Starting at the bottom of page 74, Dan Gilliam writes:
Having grown up in the home of a preacher and later becoming a minister myself, I can safely say that I have spent half my life in a church building. It was there that I was taught, or caught, that the principal place where God worship took place was in the sanctuary services where singing, praying, preaching, the sacramental observances of baptism and communion, and the collection of tithes and offerings formally ushered us into the presence of the Almighty. I was told that we dressed up on Sundays to present our best to God, which led me to believe that God was very concerned with outward appearances. It was often said that we should be quiet and reverent in the house of the Lord, which taught me that God was not much fun and lived in a stuffy building that was empty most of the time. The God I was taught about must have been very lonely. Only a few people were ever allowed to speak publicly in church - mostly men in suits with tight collars and red faces, leaving me with the impression that God wasn't all that interested in what kids or women had to say. From these experiences with worship, I concluded that Heaven, the place where saints and angels would worship around the throne of God for eternity, was going to be a very dull place.

That, my friends, is profound. I couldn't agree more with what Gilliam says in this passage. We have become so fixated on outward appearances, and stifling creativity in many churches in North America that is no wonder why people are fleeing the church. It is time to move past the "Country Club" mode of operation and time to get back to the basics for which the church was intended: Evangelism, Fellowship, Worship, Discipleship, and Service.

I long for the day when you share your thoughts on these matters.

Be God's,
Scott

God Touches, part 1

My friend, Dan Gilliam has a new book out called "God Touches." It is the perfect follow-up read to "The Present Future." Let me share something from Dan's book, pages 65-66:
From the letter of James, the true religion that God considers pure and faultless is, "to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself form being polluted by the world." From what I have seen the former helps make the latter possible. There is nothing like service with a smile and a sacrificial spirit to help relieve one from the bondage of self and the merciless obsession for more of everything. Nothing takes my mind off of me like serving those who have nothing to give in return or loving those who can give me nothing but reasons not to love them. Christ's mandate for the church to love, pray, give, forgive, comfort, encourage, share faith, and make disciples are as much for our own health and well-being as for the expansion of the kingdom.

That is profound and that is the notion I will concentrate on over the next few days. Oh, and don't worry, there are more Gilliam-isms to come in the next few days, I already have my next chunk of this book to share on this blog, and it will knock some socks off (unless you don't wear sock, in which case, hang onto your shoes!).