Choosing a Spouse

Wow - Pastor Rick just says it as it is!!  What are your thoughts?

 

“The righteous choose their friends carefully.” (Proverbs 12:26a NIV)

If you’re supposed to choose your friends carefully, you should be even more careful about who’s going to be your life partner. Notice it is a choice. God doesn’t do this for you. God says you make the choice. God leads us, God guides us, and God gives us guidelines. But ultimately, it’s your choice.

However, many people believe the myth that there is only one right person for them.
That’s very romantic, but it’s just not true. It’s also not biblical. And it’s not even logical! If there were only one right person for everybody in the world, it would only take one person to make a wrong decision and break the chain for everybody else.

Let’s say I was supposed to marry a woman named Susan. Instead, I marry Kay. Then all of a sudden, it upsets the apple cart for everybody else on the entire planet! It is a total myth. It’s romantic, but it’s a myth.
In your life there are multiple people God would say it’s OK for you to marry. There are millions that he would absolutely rule out, but there are multiple opportunities that God would say “OK” to. It’s your choice. It’s your preference.

There’s another myth that many people believe: Love alone is enough reason to marry.
I talk to people all the time who are getting married. I look at them and think, “There’s no way.” The family background isn’t right. The spiritual background isn’t right. The personalities aren’t right. They don’t have the same amount of energy or ambition. They don’t even have the same values and goals. But, they “love each other …”

Just because you love someone does not mean you should marry that person.  God doesn’t tell you who to marry. But he does give you a description of the kind of person that he desires for you to marry. If you want God’s blessing and protection on your marriage and you want success in your marriage, then you need to listen to what God has to say about the kind of person you should marry.

Talk It Over

• What are the right reasons to get married?
• When do you think is the best time to consider what God wants you to look for in a partner?

To Build or Not To Build?

A great post by by Jody Forehand.  Ask yourself these questions before you build.

Oftentimes I have found when touring a church facility that they have a very inefficient layout and that some simple first steps could buy them more time and create “space” for growth. Sometimes this has little to do with the building or site, and everything to do with programming or tradition.

If you are only offering one worship service and you are out of space, the obvious answer is to add another service and instantly you have doubled your capacity without building a square foot of new space. I’ve heard some churches push back and say that they can’t do this because they would no longer see all their friends, but if your church’s goal is in alignment with Jesus’ command to reach the unchurched then this won’t be an issue.

Other times programming for children or adults can result in supposed space issues. As a preacher’s kid I grew up going to Sunday School every week, but there is nothing more inefficient than a building carved up with dozens of small single-use classrooms that sit empty all but 1-2 hours a week. At current construction prices, can anyone really justify this as good stewardship? Multi-function group rooms with some small group breakout spaces can achieve similar results in less space for less money. Adult small groups meeting at other times of the week either on site or in people’s homes can also not only solve your space problem but increase your impact in the community.

If none of these scenarios apply to you, the next question to ask is, “Do we really need to enlarge our facility or can we just reconfigure it?” Churches, especially older ones, typically grew up haphazardly with addition after addition and little foresight or planning for the future. The result of this is usually a maze of confusion for visitors and tons of inefficient space. A good designer can help you review your actual needs and come up with a phased renovation plan to help you get the most usable space out of your current building, while planning for future growth and expansion. Pairing up a good designer with a good builder ensures your renovation will be cost-effective allowing your church to grow and save for larger facility needs such as a new building in a future phase.

Renovation is not the answer to every building need, but after implementing programming changes, it is usually the least expensive and simplest way to buy some more time. To quote Mark Twain, “To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” Many design-builders take that approach. However, Visioneering is interested in answering the “To Build or Not to Build” question first, and we have more tools in our toolbox than hammers. Our team of experienced staff with backgrounds as architects, designers, planners, construction managers, developers, facility managers, and financial analysts are our human resource tools that each can bring potential solutions from various viewpoints. Our alignment process, facility assessment capabilities, Strategic Feasibility Plan reports, and “Blue Sky” planning process are some of the other tools we have in our tool belt. Bringing all these resources together we can help your church determine if you should move, stay, renovate, expand, tear down, build new, or do nothing…and whether to do it now, three years from now, or never. We’d rather tell you up front that your best option for now is to add a second service and grow than to sell you on a bigger building that you may never fill up or be able to afford. Before you commit your church to a project that might not be needed, spend some time getting philosophical with us first. To build or not to build, that is the question.
This is a sponsored post from Visioneering Studios

Incredible Bass guitarist - love it!

How relevant are you? R

This is a brilliant talk on relevace by John Maxwell

Anger Yields Anger, Wisdom Yields Patience

A great post by Rick Warren

 

“A person’s wisdom yields patience; it is to one’s glory to overlook an offense.” (Proverbs 19:11 NIV)

Hurt people hurt people. When someone hurts you, it’s because they’ve been hurt. Unkind people have never felt kindness. Unloving people feel unloved. When someone is rude, bitter, unkind, sarcastic, mean spirited, or arrogant, they are shouting with all of their behaviors, “I am in pain! I need massive doses of love! I do not feel secure!”

On the other hand, the person who feels deeply loved and deeply secure is generous and gracious to other people.

If we just want to get even with people, that’s fine. But it means we’re no better than they are. The Bible tells us to overcome evil with good. This means, we respond with love. It means we look past their words to their pain.

Here’s a myth that everybody’s been sold by modern psychology: When it comes to anger, there’s only a set amount you’ll get throughput your life. It’s like you’ve got a bucket for anger, and when the bucket gets full, you need to pour it out — and that will be cathartic.

The problem is, you don’t have a bucket of anger in your life. You have a factory! That factory can keep on producing and producing and producing. When you get rid of the anger, you’ll just produce more.
In fact, the more anger you throw out, the more it produces. Study after study has shown that aggression only creates more aggression. Angry outbursts lead to more anger, more often, until it becomes a habitual pattern in your life.

The answer is not just to throw it out. The answer is to let it go. “A person’s wisdom yields patience; it is to one’s glory to overlook an offense” (Proverbs 19:11 NIV).

Talk About It

• Why do you think it is so hard for us to let things go, particularly with the people we love most?
• If you fill your life with love, what will overflow from your life?

A growing church must multiply it's small groups

Why?  You might ask.

As the New Testament church grew it is recorded for us that they not only met in the temple courts but went from 'house to house'.  The home is the centre of family life and love, of good conversation, of great food, a place of discipleship and learning, a place of sharing, of giving, of safety of joy and of peace.  

I believe there are four advantages of meeting with other Christians in small groups as the church grows:

It is infinitely expandable

It is unlimited geographically.

It is good stewardship.

It promotes relationships

There is great benefit and wisdom in God’s way of multiplying small groups.  As a result, the Bible says that the Lord added to their number daily those that were being saved.

Four Things Keeping You from Reaching Your Potential

An exceptional post by John Maxwell

Wilma Rudolph, the Olympic track and field champion of the 1960s, said, “Never underestimate the power of dreams and the influence of the human spirit. We are all the same in this notion: The potential for greatness lives within each of us.” Like Wilma, I believe that we all have potential. God has designed each of us to do something great.

But why do so few people actually realize all of their success potential? It’s a question that I’ve asked often over the years. If success is a hot-air balloon, then what are the sandbags hanging off the basket, weighing us down and keeping us from rising to the height where we’re designed to fly?

There are many variables that affect our ability to succeed in life. But I believe the following four things have a lot of power in our lives. If you can eliminate them, you give yourself a much better chance of achieving your goals.

Four Things Keeping You from Reaching Your Potential

1. Choices that limit you.
The thing about decisions is that they have consequences. And some decisions have more damaging consequences than others. If you’re not reaching your potential, the first thing you should do is examine your past choices. There’s a poem that I really like that goes,
“There is a choice you have to make
In everything you do.
So keep in mind, that in the end,
The choice you make, makes you.”

Your choices do make you. But if you’ve made bad choices in the past that have kept you from reaching your potential, the good news is that every day holds new opportunity.
You can make right choices today that move you in the right direction. Make the right decisions, no matter how hard. Then manage those decisions daily. I wrote about this in Today Matters. It can teach you how to manage your decisions after you make them.

2. Impatience with the process.
“Are we there yet?” If you’ve been on a road trip with a child, you’ve probably heard this question more than once. That’s because it’s normal for a kid to be impatient. The problem occurs when we become adults, and we’re still unwilling to wait.

Every good goal usually is more difficult, takes longer, and costs more than we anticipate. When we rush or abandon the process, we often keep ourselves from reaching our potential.

Teddy Roosevelt said, “Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.” Expect the process of success to take time, and embrace it. You’ll free yourself to reach your potential.

3. Failure to pay the price.
In Leadership Gold, I wrote that for everything you gain, you give up something. My father taught me when I was very young that in life you’re either paying or playing. If you play now, you’ll pay later. But if you choose to pay now, you’ll be able to play later. But no matter what, you always have to pay.
Have you counted the cost of achieving your goals? Have you been paying the price, or did you hope you could avoid it? Charles Schwab said, “When a man has put a limit on what he will do, he has put a limit on what he can do.” We all need to be willing to do the work necessary to reach our potential.

4. Failure to think creatively when problems arise.
Problems will arise. That’s a “when,” not an “if.” Like expecting a process to take time, anticipating problems allows you to prepare for them. Then you’re able to be proactive in your approach to them, instead of just reacting emotionally when they occur.
In my organizations, I value problem-solving more than problem-spotting. I want team members to come to me with more than just an awareness of a problem. I ask them to come to me with at least three possible solutions. The discipline of looking for more than one solution makes them recognize options that they wouldn’t otherwise see.

If you anticipate problems, you can prepare a reaction ahead of time. And even when they catch you by surprise, searching for more than one solution means you’ll think more strategically and react in a way that takes you closer to, not farther from, your goals.

The “seed of greatness” exists in each of us. You are more likely to reach your potential if you keep your eyes on your goals and remember why you’re chasing them. The more valid reasons you can list for pursuing your dream, the greater the chance that you will achieve it. By keeping your eye on the prize, and eliminating the behaviors I’ve mentioned, you improve your odds of rising to the height where you were designed to fly.