Happy Birthday! to my the booka-lellie…
She’s reached the big 2 mark! That’s right! Bookalellie (b-oo-kah -lell-ee) aka. Booka, Bookie, or just Booke. Its hard to believe 2 years has gone by. This week I also celebrated my 7 year anniversary. This is actually the first year since our wedding day that we got to spend the actual day together. Its hard to believe, but there seems to be something that has always fallen on those days. We had a great time. We went to NYC for the day and ate at our favorite restaurants and enjoyed the company of our best friends, Sam and Sandra Luce. Today, Im leaving to go speak at a youth conference in Canada. Im very excited about it as I feel Paul Dunk and the Altitude Conference is one of the best in the Northeast. I’ll miss my family while Im gone, but we’ll have a great “hello-kitty” birthday party when I get back.
My reflection from my Daily Bible reading…
Rom. 12:16 Live in harmony with each other. Don’t try to act important, but enjoy the company of ordinary people. And don’t think you know it all!
I haven’t had time to finish my blogs on communion. I know they have been popular 
, but this scripture just stood out to me in light of a lot of things I have been thinking about. I love the Bible and the way the Holy Spirit just zooms you in on something. This scripture was both convicting and comforting for me…And is one I have memorized as of today….and will be a scripture for my life knowing that no matter how significant God may or my not use me, this would be my testimony.
Status Symbol -Communion 5 (For You)
We’re talking about communion and the power of reflecting on what Jesus did for us on the cross. Their is one story in the Bible that clearly illustrates the powerful affect of seeing what Christ did for us personally- the story of Joseph of Arimithia Check out the Story:
John 19:38-40 Afterward Joseph of Arimathea, who had been a secret disciple of Jesus (because he feared the Jewish leaders), asked Pilate for permission to take Jesus’ body down. When Pilate gave him permission, he came and took the body away. Nicodemus, the man who had come to Jesus at night, also came, bringing about seventy-five pounds of embalming ointment made from myrrh and aloes. Together they wrapped Jesus’ body in a long linen cloth with the spices, as is the Jewish custom of burial.
Think about it. There was something about Joseph and Nicodemous seeing what Jesus did on the cross that caused them to go public with their faith. This is before Jesus’ resurrection by the way. I heard Bill Hybels do a message on the cross using this passage and it was one of the most powerful messages I ever heard on the cross. When Joe and Nick (my nicknames for the two) saw the price that was paid for their sin they received a boldness they did not have previous! I believe in reflecting on what Christ has done for us as we approach the Lords table it can give us boldness to go out and be public with our faith!
Addition: There are some people who make people feel condemned for their lack of boldness. Notice the Bible calls Joe a “secret disciple”. Another passage calls him a good man! Condemnation never works in making people bold for their faith, but gratitude and an understanding of the work of Christ is the GREATEST motivation for boldness!
Status Symbol 4 (For You!)
Okay, back to Communion. I wanted to apply the whole power of the FOR YOU in Communion. There are three stories specifically I want to talk about over the next few days. Each one illustrating the power of a personal revelation of “for you”. The first is Peter. We all know the story of Peters denial. Jesus predicted it, Peter vehemently said he wouldnt, but in a moment of pressure he did exactly what Jesus said he would do. One of the Gospels actually tells us the on Peter’s last denial his eyes met Jesus’. Can you imagine that? Caught in the act. Shame. Guilt. Humiliation. I cant even imagine what Peter was feeling or thinking at the moment. Have you ever been there? There have been more than a few times in my life where I have been- wanting to do the right thing but in a moment of pressure doing exactly what you swore you would never do. All we know is that the Peter ran away and wept bitterly (NLT). When Peter saw the crucified Christ he saw his sin, he saw first hand the price that was being paid for that sin, and he was deeply convicted. Conviction is a good thing. Conviction is something the Holy Spirit specializes in – not condemnation. Just real quick: the difference between conviction and condemnation: Conviction is always specific, condemnation is always broad. Conviction always gives a way out, Condemnation always offers no hope. Conviction point us to Christ, Condemnation will lead us away. Condemnation, well, The Devil specializes in that. However this story shows the uniqueness of the convicting power of the Lord. While Peter left crying bitterly, when he heard of Jesus’ resurrection he RAN to the grave. When they were in the boat and John called out and said, “look, it’s Jesus!”, Peter jumped into the water and swam to shore. Do you see what I’m saying. While when we approach the table we see the incredible price Christ paid for our sin, when we also see that he is resurrected we can approach the table with conviction and hope. Truth and Grace met together at the cross. To be repentant of our sin and know there is a God who loves us more than we can ever imagine and forgives us based on the cross of Christ is a gift to wonderful for words. There have been times in my life when Communion has been presented, and as I reflect on my personal struggles I am deeply convicted, but as I confess them and ask forgiveness my heart runs to embrace Jesus who loves me more than I can ever know.
Great Weekend!!!
This weekend we broke our attendance records at our weekend service. We had close to 1300 people in all of our Utica/Rome services. WOW!!! The greatest part for me was seeing all the new faces. I got to talk to about 8 new families in the hallways who just loved what we are doing for kids. The mayor came and brought his whole family. Thanks Mayor Raffero! What makes this weekend greater than the record breaking attendance is something a gentleman in the church shared with me. He came up to me at the end of the Saturday night service and told me how great everything was. He said, I believed in this, I invested in it, but something happened tonight. He told me his wife saw a friend come to church who she never thought would come to church. She hadn’t seen this friend in 5-6 years. The friend loved what we were doing and was excited to come back next week. This guy just kept trying to get across to me how much he “got” what we were trying to do. To me that was one of the greatest highlights of the weekend. To all of our children’s workers…Im proud of all of you. Pastor SAM you’re the BEST! I look forward to all God is going to do this year!
Uptown Grand Opening this weekend!
The week has finally arrived. Preparations are being made. The mayor is coming. Our local assembly woman is coming. Friends and family are coming. The media will be here. It is the grand opening of our brand new kids center called Uptown. This is also the week we launch a brand new 9:00am service at our Utica campus. Our children’s pastor and team have done a great job preparing for this day. 25000 postcard invitations have gone out and 2000 personal card invitations that people gave out. It should be a full house. Lets keep the weekend in Prayer!
Status Symbol 3 (For YOU!)
Things have been a little light lately, so I hope Im not being too heavy- but I was so struck by my study of the Lords table that I swore that when I had time to blog I would do it.
Two of the greatest words you will ever hear – FOR YOU! Jesus said it. He said, in reference to communion, this is my body broken FOR YOU! There is something about approaching the Lord’s table and reflecting on what he has done for ME that makes it so powerful. Over the next couple of days I will unpack this more but for today let me illustrate it to you through a personal story. In the last few years there have been a couple of movies that came out about the work of Christ on the cross. One was a portrayal of the actual events of the day of Christ crucifixion and the other an allegory about the events. Those movies are The Passion of the Christ and The Chronicles of Narnia. The Passion of the Christ was a great movie. Well done. Realistic in every way. I sat glued to me seat through the whole thing and sat speechless as the credits rolled at the end. It showed me what Christ did for us in a way that only a movie could do. Surprisingly, it was the Chronicles of Narnia that sucker punched me and evoked emotion like I had never experienced before. I had read the book as a kid and even saw the cartoon but was unprepared for what was about to happen to me. If you saw the movie you know what i am talking about. The movie sucked me in and I didn’t even realize it. Edmund was a jerk, a pompous jerk. Someone who the movie just built you to almost hate so well. He deserved prison, maybe even death. If that would have happened you would have been sad but it would have been justified. As the story goes in Narnia, Aslan didn’t give his life for Narnia he gave it for Edmund. As i sat in my chair in the stadium seats at my local movie theater, hating Edmund, but there is that moment when the witch comes and demands her rights to Edmund’s life and Aslan decides to take his place. At that moment,I realized I am Edmund, I was that person that I hated on that screen. I was the one who deserved punishment and even death…. And I began to cry like I had never cried before. Why did I cry at Narnia and not during the Passion? Narnia showed me personally…this is my body broken FOR YOU! I sat in my seat long after the credits were done. The people around me must have wondered if i was crazy, but in that special moment i had a revelation of what Christ did for me! not so much the whole world but ME! I hope we never forget the power of those awesome words…This is my body broken FOR YOU. They are two of my favorite words in the whole Bible!
Status Symbol 2 (Remembering and Proclaiming)
Jesus instituted the practice of communion for the sake of remembering his death. Paul tells us In 1 Corinthians 11 that when we participate in communion we proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. Remembering and proclaiming. Two great words. The first one to me was odd- remember, I mean how could we forget? The answer, Jesus knew that we would not so much forget that he died on a cross, but the meaning for which he died. What do I mean by that? The cross is simply to good to be true.
One of my favorite versus in light of this is when on the cross Jesus said, “it is finished”. The word finished there can actually translated perfect. And boy was it ever perfect. It is so perfect it seems to good to be true. See, the best the man can come up with to deal with the guilt and shame of sin is to try and be good enough to make up for those things that they did. To maybe have the good things they do, outweigh the bad so that someday we can stand before God and be somewhat secure in some good works we have done. This is something that I fall into sometimes and don’t even realize it. I think I had shared before that after I had my first child, I was struck by a subtle fear that my kids would be somehow susceptible to the same sins that I had fallen into. A few months after my daughter was born I was talking to a close friend and telling them about my past failures and how I had feared that somehow my children would fall into the same things in the future because of what I had done. After all, I hadn’t done enough penance. But as I was talking about it, I heard the Holy Spirit so clearly speak to me and say, “you don’t believe what you preach. You don’t believe the cross of Christ is big enough to TOTALLY, I mean TOTALLY wipe away that sin.” Even though I had a degree in theology I still fell into the trap that this cross of Christ was somehow insufficient for me. What? It’s true. The cross of Christ is simply too good to be true.
Have you ever had an experience in your life that was to good to be true? Often times, we take pictures or take an object that reminds us that that really did happen. On a wedding day we save pictures and video, when we meet famous people we take a picture with them, etc etc. These things bring back emotional memories but also show others of some of the greatest experiences in our lives. When I went to France it was too good to be true, not only did I take pictures that remind me that that actually did happen, but bought a little Eiffel tower that sits on the mantle of my fireplace at home. These pictures and souvenirs remind me and my wife that we had this experience but they also tell anybody in that comes to our house and sees the pictures and stuff that we really did go to this great place. The communion table is sort of like that. When I come to it, by remembering what Christ did, Im reminded of the price that was paid for sin. Im reminded that my freedom from guilt and shame while free cost HIM everything. It speaks to the world through a symbol that Jesus himself set up that sin & sickness has been taken care of. In essence, It is the greatest picture of the greatest event in history. And by it we proclaim to the world this to good to be true message, that no matter who you are or what you done to be able to partake is the ultimate picture of grace. More tomorrow…
Status Symbol (Communion)
Its great to be blogging again. I have missed it through my summer, but since i have some free time in OKC I’m able to catch up on some things I have been putting off. This past weekend as an attender of Lifechurch.tv I noticed they had communion tables set up through their auditorium that people can go and partake after service at. I thought it was awesome to see people coming, partaking, and even praying together at the Lord’s table. This summer we did a great series on the book of Acts that I hope was as beneficial for you as it was for me. The subject of Communion was surprisingly moving for me. Seriously, Im not that much of an emotional person but through my time of reflection and study I found my eyes welling up with tears more than once. I thought I’d blog on it the next couple of days. I had never spoke on communion, but I really wanted to cover everything the church in the book of Acts devoted (proskatereo) themselves to. One of those things being, The Lord’s supper. I also thought it would be good to talk about because while I don’t believe the bread and wine literally become the body and blood of Jesus, I do think their is something a little more powerful than saying a prayer, eating and drinking, and passing our communion cups to the side aisle before the bread and grape juice have even made it down our esophagus. Anyways, Lets start here….
Status symbols are everywhere. When I say that word you may think of a car like a Mercedes, a certain clothing designer like Armani, maybe even a certain restaurant, or maybe even a certain neighborhood you live in. If you have reached that status they speak to us of having arrived, but more importantly the make you feel like you arrived. A lot of things that are sold sometimes are worthless, but because they are status symbol they sell like hot cakes. It says I have something you don’t, or I have something everybody wants. Probably a better analogy is a wedding ring. I wear my wedding ring as a status symbol, it tells others what my marital status is. However, there is no other symbol that is more meaningful to me than my status as a partaker of the Lord’s Table. It speaks to me of my standing with God and the incredible price that Jesus paid for me to be able to have communion with God and my Christian brothers. Its the ultimate Status Symbol because it doesn’t cost you anything but cost Jesus everything. For the next couple of days lets talk about this thing that was so important to the early church…
Book Review: Going All The Way by Craig Groeschel
Here’s another home run for Craig. Please don’t think that I am hyping this book simply because you may think I have a crush on Lifechurch.tv. or because I am visiting this church this week. I admit I do have a crush on this church, but my opinion is unbiased:) As a former youth pastor and one who worked with the single adults who were about to get married all I can say is I wish this book was available a long time ago. The book’s title is ingeniously titled Going all the Way. Going all the Way is not only about sex but having a marriage that lasts. The book is probably the best book I have ever read for singles that captures how to have godly romantic relationship- married people benefit from it too by the way. More importantly, the book is very relatable and very, very readable for anybody. Craig has a way of getting truth across in a palatable way. Im sure you will find yourself laughing out loud more than once. Youth pastors, buy this book – it will help you pastor your kids in an area they need godly council. Parents, buy this book- Read it yourselves and have your kids read it. With what kids are facing today, they need the content of this book. Single adults, buy this book- I think you will relate to this book and it will help you make one of the most important decisions of your life! Overall, I think what you will appreciate is Craig’s authenticity and how real he can be. It is a must read!
