Have you ever wanted to do something but you keep putting it off until the timing is right? Or you think there’s something you’re supposed to do, but you’re waiting until you have everything you think you need? Or you’re trying to do something but it’s not going the way you want because you think the things you have just aren’t good enough? I’ll wait until the kids are out of school. I’ll wait until we have more money. I’ll wait until work slows down and I have more time. It would be better if we had a bigger building. It would be better if we had more people. It would be better if we had more money. If we wait until everything is just perfect before we do something, we’re never going to do it because it will never be perfect. There will always be something that gets in the way or tries to prevent us from doing the things God wants us to do. Exodus 4:2 Then the Lord asked him, “What is that in your hand?”  “A shepherd’s staff,” Moses replied. When God wanted Moses to return to Egypt to set His people free, He didn’t tell Moses to wait until he was ready. He didn’t tell Moses to wait until he was a better speaker. He didn’t tell Moses to go and find weapons and warriors to go with him. He told Moses to take what was in his hand and go. It’s a step of faith to go with nothing and to go when we don’t feel prepared. When we do this, we are trusting that God will take care of things and that what we have will be good enough. Mark 6:8 He told them to take nothing for their journey except a walking stick—no food, no traveler’s bag, no money. Jesus also sent the disciples out with nothing but a staff. He didn’t want excuses, and He didn’t want them to wait until everything was perfect. He just wanted them to trust Him and to go. It’s a step of faith to use what you have, even if it’s only a little. If you have a small building instead of a large one, use it. If you have only 10 people instead of 100, use them. Use what you have, even if it’s not as much as you’d like. You do what you can do, with what you have, and God will do the rest.

Definition of a role model: a person who serves as an example. What kind of example are you? To your kids if you have them. To your co-workers. To your friends. You don’t have to be a famous sports player, singer or actor to be a role model. Although, those are usually who kids look up to. They watch them on tv or on the movie screen and they want to be just like them. But what kind of an example are they. I saw the extreme end of the spectrum in famous people who are supposed to be role models. Over the weekend I was watching the NBA playoffs with my family and learned that some of the basketball players have to wear sleeves on their arms. I just always assumed it was stylish or helped them play better or some thing like that. But my sister informed me that the reason they have to wear a sleeve is to cover up the tattoos on their arms. If you haven’t noticed, some basketball players have a ton of tattoos covering their body. And apparently some of them are too vulgar to show on tv. Whether it’s because they are cuss words, naked women or gang signs. These are the men a lot of teenage boys watch and idolize. What kind of an example are these men putting out for people to see? Tonight, I went to a Francesca Battistelli concert and it was awesome! As I watched and listened, I noticed all these girls sitting around the stage and some even on the top step only a couple of feet from Francesca. These girls were anywhere between the ages of 5 and 15 and they were taking pictures of her and singing a long with her. If you don’t know who she is, she is a Christian artist and the words in her songs are all about remember how beautiful you are and how God loves you no matter what. I’m sure you can think of other examples of famous people who are supposed to be role models and the things they do or don’t do that our kids are seeing and hearing about. Kids learn most by watching the adults around them. Who are your kids watching? What about you? Who’s watching you and what kind of example are you being? 1 Timothy 1:16 But God had mercy on me so that Christ Jesus could use me as a prime example of his great patience with even the worst sinners. Then others will realize that they, too, can believe in him and receive eternal life. People are watching you, whether you know it or not; children and adults. I know we can’t be perfect all of the time, I know that I am far from it. But we can choose the way we act in our every day lives and the situations that we face. Sometimes there’s a lot of pressure to be a positive role model; but as long as we are relying on Jesus to help us and using Him as our main role model, we can do it.

I heard this joke the other day and it made me really think about what we ask of God. Here’s the joke:

A grandma and her grandson were sitting on the beach making sand castles one afternoon. All of a sudden and huge wave came over them and swept the grandson away. The grandma looked up and prayed, “God, please bring my grandson back, safe and unharmed.” A few seconds later another wave came and her grandson was sitting next to her again. She looked back up and said, “He was wearing a hat.”

I think we can be like this a lot with our prayers. We pray for something and when we get it, we look for the thing we don’t like about it or that could be better. Instead of saying thank you, we complain because God didn’t give us more than we ask for. We ask for more money so He may give us a job that pays more but makes us miserable. We pray for a girlfriend/boyfriend but when we get one they are not what we were looking for. God knows what we want and what we need, but sometimes He just wants us to ask. For those of you that have kids, don’t you tell them constantly to ask for something they want instead of pointing at it or whining for it? Or when they need help, wouldn’t you rather they ask instead of trying to fight through it themself? Matthew 7:7-8 ⁷ “Keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you. ⁸ For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.  Jesus told us to ask. He said we will find what we are seeking for. But how can you find anything if you don’t specifically ask for whatever it is you want? And it’s okay to get specific about what it is you want. Otherwise, you may get exactly what you ask for and find out it’s not really what you wanted. Malachi 3:10b Test me in this,” says the LORD Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it. God wants us to ask Him for the things that we want, He even tells us to test Him so He can show us how much He loves us by giving us the things we ask for. Even if we don’t get them right away, He will pour out blessings on our lives if we only ask. So what are you asking for?

Last weekend I went to a thing called 99. For those of you who live in Tulsa, it’s just like Nightmare at Guts. It’s a “haunted” house type thing where they are showing you ways people die because of their negative choices. The point of it, at least from what I perceived, is that they are trying to scare people into giving their lives to Jesus. I can see trying to scare people to stop making their negative choices, but not into loving Jesus. Loving Jesus is a choice that we have to make and I don’t think we can be scared into it. Terror is a negative thing so why would we want to start people’s relationship with Jesus with a negative thing? When Jesus was on this earth, He spoke of hope and love and grace. He never said anything about “turn or burn”. 2 Thessalonians 2:16 Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal comfort and a wonderful hope, Jesus loved us! He came to comfort us and give us hope, not to scare us. So where did we come up with this idea to try to scare people into believing? When I think about this, I compare it to an abusive husband who scares his wife into covering her bruises instead of telling someone. 1 Corinthians 13:4-5 ⁴ Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud ⁵ or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. No where in this does it say love scares you into believing. Helping someone to become a believer is something that needs to be done in love. Jesus loved, that’s perfectly clear in every single thing He did. That’s why He came to earth in the first place. He loves us so much, that He gave up His life for our sins. That is a wonderful thing that we can’t even begin to fathom. Why do we turn it into a 30 minute “haunted” house to try and scare people into believing that? When I hear a parent that is telling their kid “you’re going to go to hell if you lie to me” or something else along those lines, I cringe because they are giving their child the wrong idea about God and Jesus. Yes, it is wrong to lie to your parents; but God is not going to send them to hell for that. If that was how God worked, we would all be going to hell. Thankfully, that’s not how He works. He loves us unconditionally and gave His only Son for us. Jesus came to earth to show us how to love. He came to show us what it means to have a relationship with people based on love and that’s how we need to help people become believers. By loving them and showing them what it means to be truly loved by Jesus. Matthew 3:14 You are the light of the world You are the light, that means you and me and everyone else around you. Being a light does not mean sending people into darkness to try and scare them into believing. It means loving them and living your life as such that when people look at you they know that you are glorifying Jesus.

How much confidence do you have in yourself? What about your confidence in God? I was watching Biggest Loser last night and it amazes me how much the contestants confidence has changed since they’ve been on the show. They showed videos of them talking before they started the show and you could just see the lack of confidence. They had hope that they would be able to change their weight, but you couldn’t see the confidence in themselves. I could see that they wondered if they were really capable of doing this. 5 months later though and they are bursting with confidence. They still have moments of doubt, but they are small and easily overcome. They had to run a full marathon. No one has ever had to do that on the show, one of the trainers said she’s never even run a marathon. You could see it on their face when they first found out that they didn’t think they would be able to do this. People train for months and years to run a marathon and they had 26 days. But after the initial shock wore off, they grabbed onto their confidence and started training and telling themselves that they could do this. Guess what, they did. They may not have done it as quickly as others, but all four of them walked/ran across that finish line! We all have things we doubt in our lives. Things about ourselves, things about others and things about God. We want to trust that God will take care of us, but when we’re going through a rough patch, we lose that confidence in Him and start to question whether He is really there. Matthew 11:2 When John heard in prison what Christ was doing, he sent his disciples ³to ask him, “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?” Even John the Baptist felt doubt, and He had heard the audible voice of God stating that Jesus was His Son. Sometimes when we’re going through something that is causing us hurt and/or pain, we lose our confidence and think that God is not there with us anymore. I think that in moments like this, we are so focussed on ourselves and the pain we are going through, that we lose sight of God. We take our eyes off of Him and think that means He’s left us. It’s in these times though, that we have to remember that He will never leave us. Deuteronomy 31:8 The LORD himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Doubt will pull you in two different directions. In order to get back on track, in one direction, you have to trust that God is in control and that He is fully committed to you. We also have to acknowledge that God is taking care of us through the good times because we can become complacent and think that life is going so well because of the things we’re doing. Then when it goes downhill, we believe it’s God’s fault. When we remember that He is ALWAYS in control, good times or bad, then our confidence in Him will get stronger and the doubt will get smaller. So, how’s your confidence?

Have you ever been known for something and it becomes such a big deal that you start to feel pressure to keep it up? For instance, I’ve become pretty well known for being good at board games and everyone assumes I’m going to win because of it. What happens when I lose though? Everyone makes a big deal about it. So it puts this unwanted pressure on me to make sure my team wins. I’m also one of those people who are usually early to things, so I’ve set myself up for this one. But every once in a while, I want to be the one that shows up late or lose the board game on purpose. I’m not quite sure why, maybe it is the pressure whether I place it on myself or not. I think one of the biggest things for me is the pressure from being a youth leader. The pressure to always make sure I’m living my life as a good example for them. This is something I would try to do anyway, but just because they’re constantly watching, that adds pressure. I’m sure people with kids feel this way too. I know kids feel peer pressure, I still feel peer pressure as an adult though. The other day at work, some people were trying to convince me that I should start smoking again. I quit more than 5 years ago and I will admit that I still miss it every once in a while. It’s one of those things that I want to give into the pressure every once in a while. The more the people at work talked about it, the more I wanted to go buy a pack of cigarettes. Thankfully I didn’t though. So we put pressure on ourselves and other people put pressure on us, but what about God? I don’t think He pressures us; I think He gives us choices and hopes that we make the right choice. But I think the reason we feel pressure is because we’re afraid of doing the wrong thing and the consequences or even guilt that comes from it. God will never put that kind of pressure on us. He doesn’t make us feel guilt or shame from our choices. The book “The Shack” touches on that a bit. That God will love us no matter what choices we make or what failures we may have in our lives. He won’t love me more if I’m early for every single thing or if I have a moment of weakness. His love is unconditional; Psalm 136:2 Give thanks to the God of gods. His love endures forever. Forever, without end, no matter what! How awesome is that!

Have you ever watched a cat try to open a door? I have a cat that just can’t stand to be in the bedroom. He just has to get out and see what’s on the other side of the door. I can’t explain to him that he is much better off on this side of the door, well, because he’s a cat and doesn’t understand my words. He doesn’t know that there are two big cats that have claws on the other side of the door, and even though he’s pretty big, he does not have claws. There are also two dogs that would love to “play” with him if he got out. But he just can’t stand to be confined and not be able to go where he wants to go. It reminds of the teenagers in my youth group. They are all 16 or 17 now and have reached the point where they really believe that they know what’s best for them. Do you have teenagers? Do you remember being a teenager? So close to being a legal adult and you can just taste that freedom. It’s right there in front of you, you can see it just over the next hill. But they are impatient to get there and think they should be able to make their own decisions and be treated like an adult right now. They just can’t comprehend that they still don’t make good decisions, most of the time. I know I made some dumb decisions when I was a teenager, but I can’t tell them that. They think they’re different and that they know better. I think that’s how we are, even as adults, with God. We think we know what’s best for us. We want to see what’s on the other side of the door, or be free to make our own decisions without someone telling us what to do. We want God to do what think is best instead of doing what He already knows is best. Psalm 139:6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. He has great plans for us, but He may not always tell us because it would be too much for us to handle. I guess I could let my cat out so that he could see first hand that it’s not really better on the other side of the door. We could let our teenagers have the freedom they think they deserve and could handle. God could let us make the decisions about our lives that we think are best. I don’t think I would want that, because usually what God has planned for me is so much better than what I could ever plan. I don’t want to miss out on the wonderful things He has waiting for me because I think I know what’s best for my life. I have learned the hard way, one too many times, that the grass is not always greener on the other side. But if we let God lead our path, even if it’s a little rocky along the way, He will always lead us to the greenest pasture!

Do you really know who you are? As a bus driver of middle school kids and a youth leader of high school kids, I have a front row seat to witness how much these kids try to conform to who everyone thinks they should be. What clothes they wear, what music they listen to, who they hang out with and the list could go on and on. It’s not just middle school and high school kids. Most of us do this our entire lives. We worry about what are friends think of us or what our co-workers think of us. We do things, even if we know they are questionable because we want other’s approval. We can lose ourselves in the maze of trying to be like everyone else as they are trying to be like everyone else as well. It’s kind of like the blind leading the blind. If you truly know who you are though, you can’t get lost. If you’re confident in the person God created you to be, then you have more time to focus on the things that are truly important, instead of constantly worrying about what other’s think of you. Psalm 139:14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. God made you wonderful, just the way you are. You are fearfully made which means you can be confident in yourself without fearing what others may think of you. God doesn’t worry about what people think about Him. He is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. Whether someone speaks bad of Him, whether someone doesn’t believe in Him or whether someone tries to change Him; He will not change. God is God no matter what people think of Him. Why can’t we be who we are no matter what people think of us? People can’t change you if you are confident in yourself. You are still who you are no matter what people think of you. But do you really know who you are? Have you spent so much time trying to be what everyone else wants or thinks you should be, that you have lost yourself along the way? It’s time to figure out who you are and be who God made you to be. He made you for a reason and He loves who you are. If He wanted everyone to be the same and to conform to what others thought, then He would have made us all the same. Be confident in who you are and maybe people will try to be more like you instead of the other way around. Maybe you’ll inspire others to have that same confidence and we can spend more time focussing on the things that are important in our lives.

I think we’re all pretty good actors, at least in one area of our lives. We’re so good at acting like everything in our lives are just fine. When someone asks “How are you?”, our automatic answer tends to be “I’m fine.”. How are you really though? Why do we hold these things inside? Are we trying to pretend everything is fine for the people around us? Or for ourselves? Is it pride that keeps us from admitting something is wrong? Or are we afraid that we will be judged for what we might be struggling with, both currently and in the past. Why can’t we boast about the things that we are struggling with or have struggled with? Why can’t we boast about how God is helping us through things or helped us conquer things in our lives? Why can’t we admit how much we really need God in our lives? 2 Corinthians 3:17 For the Lord is the Spirit, and wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. Part of this freedom is being able to show the things that God has done for you and the things He has freed you from. What good is freedom if we can’t boast about it? You don’t have to pretend anymore that everything is fine, God has set you free. Don’t be afraid to show the world what God has done in your life or what He is doing right now. It’s okay to tell others how much you need God; it shows off the glory of God when you tell people how much God has done for you. 2 Corinthians 3:18 So all of us who have had that veil removed can see and reflect the glory of the Lord. And the Lord—who is the Spirit—makes us more and more like him as we are changed into his glorious image. Are you reflecting the glory of the Lord? That doesn’t mean just showing your joy in Christ, it means showing your weaknesses and admitting that you need Jesus in your life. I know I have struggled with this because I try to act so tough and give the impression that I can handle anything. I don’t need any help. I can get through this by myself. Have you ever said these things when you’re going through something, whether big or small? I’ve also said, I can’t tell people these things, what if they don’t like me anymore? What if they don’t want to be my friend anymore? What if they talk about me to other people behind my back? Jesus didn’t care what people said about Him, He didn’t worry about people judging Him. We like to show off the things we can collect in this life. Our houses, cars, jobs, kids, televisions and any number of collection of things. Why can’t we show off the glory of God?

Have you ever been so afraid of something that every time you think about it your palms get a little sweaty and your heart beats a little faster? Have you ever loved something so much and then at the same time feared it? I feel that way about softball. I love to play softball! I get to play tonight as a matter of fact, and I’m very excited about it. The part I fear though, is pitching. I have always been a pitcher and couldn’t imagine playing on a regular basis without pitching. It gets boring to me if I’m not pitching. But in the last several years I have been hit in the legs by balls that are hit right back at me after I throw it; and let me tell, that hurts! It left bruises that lasted for weeks and months. After the last time I got hit, I swore that I would never play softball again. That was probably 2 years ago I think. Now that some of my youth group have gotten old enough to play, we got a team together for the spring league. I’m not quite sure how I became the coach but I am; and I’m also the pitcher. I am so excited to get to play tonight! The weather is wonderful and it just feels like a good day to play. Then I start to think about pitching and my heart speeds up and I will admit that I feel a little terrified. I just keep telling myself that I can do this though. I tell myself that just because I’m afraid of something, doesn’t mean that I will let it rule my life. I love pitching so I’m not going to let this fear control me and keep me from doing something I love. 2 Timothy 1:7 For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline. I know it might seem kind of silly to talk about my fear of pitching and God in the same paragraph, but He wants us to look to Him in the small things right along with the big. It’s part of my life and He wants to be included in every single aspect of it. So I am trusting Him that I will be okay, there is nothing to fear because He will be right there watching me on while I play softball tonight. My parents never came to any of my tennis matches, softball games or golf matches when I was in high school. But I know God, my Heavenly Father will be in the front row watching my every move and cheering for me every second!