1. Be a wiseman when it comes to eating… Did you know that the Calorie Control Council has calculated that the average American will consume 4,500 calories on Thanksgiving alone!¹ I think i have heard that an adult should be around 2,000 calories a day.  Here is a  link to a sight that will give you some alternatives to your T-giving meal.

As a rule: if I eat everyday, I should exercise everyday.  So if you eat two days worth of food in a day you probably need to exercise three-four times as hard as the average athlete each day after  for a week.  I don’t know about you, but I have learned “it” goes on faster and easier than “it” comes off.

2. Be angelic with your consumerism.  They don’t call it “black Friday” for nothing.  It’s when sanity and serenity are thrown out the door as we trample people to spend money we don’t have, on items we don’t need, to impress people we don’t like (some of them anyway).  AW Tozer said it well: “Christ came to bring peace, but we make peace impossible for six weeks each year.”

3. Be a good Inn keeper with space.  If the Inn Keeper that had no room for Mary, Joseph, and the soon to be King of Kings only knew then what we know, now don’t you think he would have even given up his own bed to make room for THE baby to be born (Luke 2)?  Life is really crazy over these months and weeks of holiday celebrations, office parties, gift exchanging, vacation taking, family visiting, and the list goes on.  Decide now and make time  to be a good keeper of your resources (time, talents, and treasures) and make sure the Savior of the World is noticeably INN your space.

1. accessed 11/23/11  http://eatthis.menshealth.com/slideshow/top-swaps-thanksgiving?cm_mmc=ETNTNL-_-736160-_-11232011-_-dek

1. Set a Spiritual goal (you new I would go here:)).

How is your time in God’s Word, the Bible?  Set a goal of reading a chapter a day.  Maybe go for reading the entire Bible through in  a year.  How is your prayer life?  Write out 5-6 simple sentences, yet specific issue you want or need God to show up in.  Date them and pray for them daily. Wait and watch God work. Lead someone to faith in Christ.  Ask God to people in your life this year who are far from God and pray that He will use you to bring them close to him.

2. Set a Physical goal

Get moving. Wait, I didn’t say go get a gym membership to sooth your conscious or buy a couple thousand dollars worth of home gym equipment that will set idle and gather dust.  Identify a sport and activity that you like or moderately like to do and start doing it.  Daily!  Spend no less than 30 minutes doing it.   Push yourself.  If you are not breathing so hard you can’t talk and your body feels like it is going to die, you aren’t pushing yourself hard enough (how is that for a little coaching).  Dr. Vonda Wright MD, assistant professor of Orthopedic surgery at the UPMC Center for Sports Medicine said: “the problems typically attritbuted to aging have less to do with actual aging than with the sedentary way more than 70% of people in this country choose to spend their lives.”²  If you want to know what I am doing personally, talk to me one on one. I would be glad to tell you what I’ve done.  I feel the best I’ve felt physically in 15-20 years.

3. Set a mental goal

Start reading.  Grow your brain.  Learn to think beyond you own limits.  “Leaders are incurable learners,” Bill Hybels once told me.  I have 9 books lined up on my book shelf right now within arms reach of where I sit that I am going to be plowing through over the next 3-4 months.  I can’t wait.  I am like a kid with a new set a of Lego’s for Christmas, fighting for the time to get my hands on them and start building my life up.  Make your list.  Set a goal of one reading one valuable book a month.

4. Set a noble goal

I have found in my life that I get more out of life the more I pour into life.  I so enjoy giving financially, giving my time, seeing a life move forward instead of backward.  I like it when the light comes on in some eyes, but I love it when the light comes on in someone’s soul and spirit. Invest into a place and people that is under resourced and unreached. Grace Point is sending out 12 team to do Global Development work.  Find a place to invest and be enriched as you enrich others.

1. http://www.barna.org/culture-articles/465-americans-resolutions-for-2011
2. Your Best Body At 40+, Jeff Csatari, pg 5

I was intrigued by San Fran’s closer Brian Wilson.  Every time I have seen him close a game out he quickly turns faces center field, with his eyes to the sky, he goes through some quick hand motions and finishes with a clenched fist and pointed finger.   I knew it had to mean something, but what?  So my lovely wife and eye turned to where any good investigator or inquirer turns: Google.  This is what we uncovered.  Here is portion of the article that is in the words of Brian Wilson himself when asked by a reported what he was doing with the gesture…

“… I also give respect to Christ, the audience of one that I play for. I don’t play for anything else. I play to impress Him and only Him and I must honor Him through defeat and also successes because I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for the strength that He gives me. Talent only goes so far. But faith gets you a little farther. So that’s what it is. It just represents my faith and trust in him, and letting him know and the world know that any believer that walks with Christ, or any walk of life you have, no matter where you are, I’m showing respect to you for your hard work, too. Because it’s not easy living in this world.”

“I just thought it would be a good time. It shows no disrespect toward anybody. It’s all positive praise. It’s not for showboating. It’s not to start an epidemic. It’s just me getting a quick message out to the world and to Christ and that’s it. I just thought, `What more perfect time to display my faith than at the end of a game?’”

[The reported said] I knew that Wilson came to Christianity later in life. His father died of kidney cancer when he was 17, and for a long time, he was disillusioned.

“I had to go through my struggles in life. My alienation towards Christianity was very prominent through my adolescence. One day it hit me. I felt I needed to start correcting my life. This happened when I was 23 years old. I was in Augusta, Ga. (playing for the Giants’ low-A club), and I was just playing cards, going about my business, and every Sunday a group of guys would go with the team chaplain. I didn’t even know what `chaplain’ meant.

“Well, my father passed away when I was 17 and you know, I was praying he wouldn’t die. And he was taken away from me. I didn’t understand. It had nothing to do with your prayers not being answered. It was just his time to go. But me being 17 years old, not a very mature kid, I just took that as Him turning his back on me, so I turned my back on Him. When I put my cards down and went in the dugout to speak to the team chaplain, I soon learned that wasn’t the way it worked. No matter how many times I turn my back on God, He’ll always be in front of me. I could stray away from Him for 90 years but as long as I know Him for one day, He’ll honor me in heaven. So I thought that would be one heck of a life-altering change that I should make.”

I asked him about teammates dropping the X, including Omar Vizquel who does it every time. (Omar doesn’t know what it means. “I just like him because he’s crazy,” Vizquel said.)

“Yeah, we’ve got the first baseman doing it, too. Usually you cross your arms when you’re playing behind the runner, every once in awhile they’ll throw it up for me just to ease my mind. (Rich) Aurilia does it jokingly, but I take it as a reminder of why I’m out here. It’s, `Remember what kind of gift you have, and most of all, don’t let your team down.’”

Brian Wilson is a world champion in my mind and in the rest of Baseball too. The full article and interview can be read online.

I arrived on the island of Java in the Asian sea yesterday. Indonesia is an island nation made of 6,000 inhabited islands. “Indonesia” itself means “Tanah Air Kita” – Our Land and Water.  I have been here less than 24 hours, of which most of my time here I have slept.  I arrived yesterday afternoon, met fellow colleagues from the States and international personnel for dinner and then went to bed.

However, going to bed last night and waking at 4:00 this morning had two things in common; both were accompanied by the Muslim call to prayer.  Daily prayers (5 times a day to be exact) Muslims must pray.  It is one of their five pillars of Islam.  If prayers or salat are missed, they must be made up.  I woke up at 4:00 (thinking it was 5:00.  I failed to move my clock back an hour from Singapore time:) ready to start my day with a  good run.  I set out on the narrow winding street in front of the guest house where we are staying.  The paved road resembles a little more than a back ally in the US.  Little shops, internet café, tire shops, restaurants, stacked side by side lined the streets from one to the next (no easements, ingress/regress or green space in their “zoning” laws).  Some had little more than a corrugated metal tin roof to cover them.  Some have black plastic bizqeen covering the windows.  The path was dark and I hadn’t scoped out my route so I thought it best to keep it simple in this unplanned neighborhood.  I stepped outside the gates of the compound.  looked right then left down the streets. I decided I would run toward the left.  There seemed to be a brighter street light that way.  The sparsely sprinkled street lights, about 250 yards a part, barely lit the path I ran.  The goal was always to make it to the next light.  As long as I counted the lights, I knew how many lights I needed to run back past to get “home.”  (FYI: I ran 5 lights 2 times in case you were wondering:)).  That was the extent of my comfort zone so I just ran laps within that space.

One factor that contributed to the limits of my comfort zone was the fact that in that short distance I ran past or near 5 mosque calling its devotees to prayer.  There is just something eerie about being the only white American on the streets while (it’s our new reality as Americans post-9/11).  I never felt threatened,  It is just real, present, and spiritual reality that is upon our day.   These men and women are awakened 365 times a year to the duty of prayer.  Women stay at home, but men are encouraged to go and pray at the mosque.  A prayer given at a mosque is worth 25 times more than a prayer offered in the market.  Since a Muslim must earn his way into paradise, and the 2nd pillar of the Islamic faith is to pray 5 times a day, it’s best to pray -whether you want to or not.

Safe now back in the compound, I am disturbed by my own lack of dutiful prayer for the loving, living God that I know personally and intimately.  A God who wants to be with me and says that “if I ask anything in his name” He hears my prayer and respond accordingly.  Prayer shouldn’t be my duty…it should be my delight.  “The faithful and fervent prayer of a righteous man accomplishes much” (James 5:16).  Let us pray…

Here are my 2010 Summer reads and my rating of them, so if any of you are looking for what to read next…

1. Radical, David Platt.   – Was my favorite read of the Summer.  I give it a 10 out of 10.  It impacted me the most of all the books that I read.  I felt like Platt picked up where Chan, in Crazy Love, left off.  Radical is Crazy Love on mission.  I felt it was an important enough read that I made sure all the families of Grace Point had a copy to read.

2. Fathered by God, by John Eldredge.  - Was a particular meaningful book.  I read it during my journey “downunder” with Caleb on a father/son adventure g and manhood challenge with Fathering Adventures.  It was literally and memorably a mountain top experience with Caleb.  Eldredge help me touch base with my own development into manhood and to helped me mentor my son through the stages of manhood.  I give it an 8 out of 10.

3. Untamed, by husband and wife combo Alan and Debra Hirsch  - was a good book.  Not great, but definitely good (hey, not every book can be great).  Untamed complemented Platt’s book in a number of ways and with Debra’s passion and work for the sexually alternative culture, she personalized the book and demonstrated the missional lifestyle that impacts.  The only downfall I saw with the book is the theological moorings.  When talking about the heart of mankind, I felt like they wanted to see mankind as inherently good (pg.194), rather than fallen and in trouble.  The heart doesn’t need to be tamed, but redeemed.  I give it a 6 out of 10.

4. The Church of Facebook, by Jesse Rice was the final book that I finished ready Labor Day weekend. I give it a 6 out of 10 too.  It was not the book I expected.  I thought it would be a book that helped churches think through how to use Facebook, but it was more of a book to tell us how the culture has been shaped by Facebook as a whole.  This wi-fi technically connected culture  are living in a new day for relationships.  Facebook is helping to shape our culture and the cultures of the developed world.  Facebook is shaping how we think, live, commune, and do church.  It’s thought provoking, but not life changing.

Read on brothers and sisters.  As Bill Hybel’s says: “Leaders are incurable learners.”  Reading from well written books is one of the most meaningful ways I stay fresh and grow in the faith.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I embrace, with humility, my own fallen human nature and my proclivity to fall again and again into sin and stupidity. I would love it if I could live in relationship with people who truly, genuinely want to see and bring the best out in me.  I hope that I too can speak into and invest my life in people in such a way that I too draw out the best in others.  It was Paul’s metaphor of childbirth when he speaks of “Christ being formed in you” (Gal 4:19) that gave me a clearer picture of the maturation process we must go through.  “Forming” is a process, it is becoming.  Is Christ becoming more and more my form?

Having people in my life who love me past my fallen state and loves me through the forming process is my picture of accountability.  Let this poem I shared in my February 21, 2010 message give you a visual of for the power and beauty of an accountability relationship.

I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you.

I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me.

I love you for the part of me you bring out.

I love you for putting your hand in my heaped up heart

and passing over all the foolish weak things that you can’t help dimly see in there

And drawing out into the light all the beautiful things no one else looks quite far enough to find.

I love you because you are helping to make out of the lumber of my life  not a tavern but a temple;

out of the works of my everyday not a reproach but a song                           -Lori Croft

In this Journey, it is important to know, and identify key points, stops, items you need for the journey.  For example, when I was a bush missionary in Zambia, I had a full page check list of everything I might need for my adventurous trips (2 extra tires, plenty of water, food, light, etc).  I wouldn’t leave the house unless every item on the list was checked off.  What’s on your spiritual check list for your spiritual journey.

In January we launched the series discussing Worship as a means of exploring deeper who God in and bringing pleasure to Him with our life.  This month, Community.  No one needs to travel alone.  We were not built to travel through life alone and neither is God alone.  God, Himself, loves community.  Here are a couple of facts about God and community to help launch us on this journey…

1. God is communal in His very core and nature – Genesis 1:26, points to the Trinity of God, when He said let “us” make …

2. Man was made for community.  When God made Adam, everything was perfect, life was perfect.  It was a utopia life, yet when God made man he said it wasn’t good for him to be alone (Gen 2:18).   You know the rest of the story.  He then made woman.

3.  God manifest Himself fully when we are living and acting in community with others.  Jesus promised His anointed presence when we come in community around for His names sake (Matt 18:20).

Don’t be the classic American individualist suffering from individualism.  Run to community, live in community, value community.

I have told a number of people that “2009 will go down as my most difficult and challenging year of this decade.”  Moving back from Africa, starting GPC, dealing with the development and educational needs of our children, guiding a growing congregation all has it challenges, but each has it’s rewards.  This year has simply been tough…but it needed to be.  I needed a year of trials.  Why?  There are many reasons, but one reason is for sure…I have been sailing  “to close to the shore”.

I have been sailing “too close to the shore” personally and professionally.  I’ve been living in the safety of an established church, and not moving out; no longer thirsty. I haven’t been motivated to “run the race” as the Apostle Paul said to do.  I am praying a new prayer now.  Stuart Cearly shared with me.  When I read it  and was a reminder to me as to how I once prayed and how I must once again pray.  I am available God – lead me on…

I thought of a couple of more resources that I have read and can recommend for those who want to sharpen themselves a little more :

Powers of Evil: A Biblical Study of Satan and Demons is an older book that is now out of print, but if someone wanted a seminary level book on the practices and works of the demonic then this book is a must.  I found it very helpful from Genesis to Revelation as a systematic study of the topic.  You will have to pick it up used, because it is out of print.  When I read it I felt like I was in a seminary class being taught sound evangelical theology on the subject.

I am not much into non-fiction.  But there was one novel I read in college that to this day I still remember.  I read the first of three novels by Frank Peretti.  You can pick them up in a three set volume now for a decent price.  This Present Darkness, Pericing the Darkness and Prophet would all be worth reading, though I can only say I have read the first.

My final thoughts to any one who has journeyed with us through this series: Study the enemy, but seek the Lord.  Know your vulnerability, but increase your strengths.  Stop looking for victory and start living in the victory.