Figuring it all out one day at a time
Last Sunday, Oakway United started a new sermon series entitled “One Day…Some Day.” This was inspired by a blog post from Pastor Steven Furtick. For week 1, New Year’s Day, the topic was procrastination elimination. As a rural pastor, one of my goals is help people achieve their God given dreams. Here are some great quotes I found on procrastination elimination:
“Until you value yourself, [Read more…] about Procrastination Elimination
I’m a huge fan of Mark Batterson. Chase Your Lion dot com came about after I read In a Pit With a Lion On a Snowy Day
He emphasizes that God is not a genie in a bottle whose wish is our command. As a matter of fact he writes
His command better be your wish. If it’s not, you won’t be drawing prayer circles; you’ll end up walking in circles.
We live in a society where God has become little more than a short order cook: on call for us 24 hours a day to serve up our hearts desire. Perhaps that’s why so many people today are walking in circles(just like the children of Israel wandering in the wilderness). We aren’t praying for God’s will as much as we’re praying to will God.
Here’s another challenging thought from the book:
The more faith you have, the more specific your prayers will be. And the more specific your prayers are, the more glory God receives.
I’m starting 2012 by praying some very specific prayers and walking in obedience to see them through. I believe that the God who designed the human eye is uniquely qualified to hear our prayers down to the smallest detail.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012, The Techology Show will be interviewing Mark Batterson about The Circle Maker
Here’s our first interview with Mark:
Last week was the 2nd annual community Trunk or Treat that our church puts on with 6 other churches in the community. Last year, we had around 2000 people come out to the elementary school so we moved to West-Oak Football stadium this year. Around 400o people came out for the event! It was a dream come true for me for several reasons:
1. I have always believed the Church is at it’s best when the church works together. None of the churches could have pulled off an event this size on their own. By pooling our resources we were able to create an unforgettable event. Size the day God called me into ministry I have desired to be a pastor that see’s other pastor’s as partners instead of competitor’s. Great to see that in action last night.
2. My wife has always dreamed of us being Johnny and June Carter Cash for Halloween and we pulled it off last night with the duet playlist playing. People seemed to like our singing. Most people knew more of the movie “Walk the Line” than the actual couple. It was stressful, but a lot of fun for us to pull off.
3. People from Oakway Wesleyan and Common Ground Community Church were involved. We even shared candy as the crowd grew and the supply shrank! As we move toward a merger between these 2 churches I see more events like this in our future. It’s about the Kingdom. As part of this merger discussion we distributed a vision packet. If you’re a pastor and haven’t read Church Unique
Over the next few days(weeks, months) I will be taking you through the process from excitement about vision to frustration when you can’t find the vision to receiving the vision to sharing the vision to building the vision. I’m no expert, but I’ve been on the journey.
To the future….
A while back, I picked up Chazown: Define Your Vision. Pursue Your Passion. Live Your Life on Purpose.
Everyone ends up somewhere. But few people end up somewhere on purpose.-From page 6 of Chazown
There are a lot of things I love about this book. First, each section is really short, 2-3 pages. It makes it easier to digest everything. He also speaks of our Chazown
There are lots of exercises in the book as you are encouraged to write down your goals and dreams. It includes an appendix that lists some core values and spiritual gifts to think through and see how God has gifted us and wired us. I had never thought of things like endurance and zeal as core values, but it broadened my thinking as to how God wanted to focus my life on certain things. Groeschel’s
It’s been almost two years since I started Chase Your Lion and it’s time for some Blog Renovations. It has been such a great learning experience and blessing for me. I know I’ve been hot and cold with the blog. My brain knows what to do, but yada yada yada. I’ve discovered two great blogs since October 2009 that have been a tremendous encouragement and guide to great blogging. Michael Hyatt and John Saddington(aka The Tentblogger) have two of the best blogs out there and give great tips and advice. A lot of what you see here is a result of what I see them do as far as look and feel. We all use Tentblogger’s Standard Theme. Believe me, it is the easiest premium theme I have purchased and used by far.
With all that in mind, it’s time for some Blog Renovations around here. It’s going to be a lot of work, but here’s an overview of what’s happening.
In the past few weeks, two of my favorite bloggers announced they were starting over with twitter. First Chris Brogan and then Michael Hyatt declared that the recent proliferation of spam had led them to make the decision. Note to self: don’t click on any DM links that says “I laughed when I saw this picture of you.” These guys both had huge followings and it got me to thinking about my twitter strategy. I have had two Chase Your Lion accounts for a while and today made the move to merge the two. What I found is that their follower lists are almost identical. It has taken some time this morning to get Tweet Adder and Hootsuite back up and running properly. I actually had to delete Hootsuite on my iphone and reinstall it. So, now I’m pointing all my followers to http://www.twitter.com/chaseyourlion. It is the former @chaseurlion account and now the old Chase Your Lion is now @chaseyourlion2 until I’ve got everything moved and delete it. I will then keep up with who’s spamming me by running Twitblock once a month and blocking them. Now, the next phase is changing all the old links on my blogs to reflect these changes.
The top 3 reasons for doing all of this:
What are your thoughts? Have you noticed an uptick in the twitter spam you receive? Are these guys crazy to unfollow tens of thousands of people?
