Huddle

Greater are things are yet to come and great things are still to be done. Are we content? Are we content with just sitting in church on Sundays, sitting in our small groups, sitting in our quiet times and our prayer times saying,"God it would be really cool if you would make this happen." We are too content with just wanting stuff to happen. How many times are we asking God for things, but we aren't assertive enough to stand up next to him and work with God as the things of boldness we ask for begin to happen? I hope that I can repent from those things. It's not enough to just sit in the huddle and never watch the play progress. If we never get up and meet God where he is at then we are going to sit there and watch our lives pass by, while others who are assertive enough will stand up and run next to God and see things beyond their wildest dreams.

When Peter said to Jesus, "'Lord, if it's you,' Peter replied,'tell me to come to you on the water.'" Immediately Jesus responds to Peters claim,"'Come.'" If we dare to listen you will hear the Lord saying to you, "Come." Once Peter stepped out onto the water he immediately experienced something that no other human had ever or will ever experience. That is what God promises to us. If we get out of our huddles and actually play in the game we will undoubtedly experience things that we have never.

Greater things are have yet to come, and greater things are still to be done.

Promise

ἐπαγγελία (Epaggelia) or Promise.

If there is one thing that should wake us in the morning it should be the promise of God. The promise that we have been set free from our transgressions and have been given the opportunity to experience him.

I keep thinking about Philippians 1:6 "being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus." I feel this has been kind of the synopsis of my thought process lately. For some reason I can look at myself right now and be okay with what I see. Notice I don't say fine because I want to continue my pursuit of Christ and his holiness. I may sound arrogant right now, but like I've stated I don't want to beat myself up so much for where I am not that I can't see what I've become. The beauty and majesty of God is him in his perfect holiness. I'm not there, but each day I say to God, "I choose you." He takes me one step closer to conforming to him, and less of myself. Once we realize that holiness of God, we must first decide whether or not we are willing to give up this sinful life and follow our true calling. The pursuit of Christ is exactly that, a pursuit, so we must act, we must move and get up and go after him.

That is the promise, we will be made like him one day.

I hope that I speak these things out of humility, a humility that has come through falling flat on my face, but having God find me there and lifting me up.

An Unearned Gift

One question: Do I strive for obedience for God because I want to be with God, or because I am afraid of not being with him? I believe there is a difference in that. I often desire the things of God because I don't want to be wrong. We are called to have reverent obedience to God. It's hard to put what I am thinking in my head on paper, but what I am trying to say is my fear of not really being chosen by God often inhibits my actual pursuit of Christ. This is not how I want to follow Christ, I don't want to follow Christ because I am scared of what my happen after this race is finished. I want to follow Christ for the now. I want to follow after Christ because each day when I wake up I want to be a different person, a person that is more dead to what I once was and more alive to what I am becoming. I need to constantly be reminded that I am chosen by God to do what he wants me to do now. I have too much life left to worry about what is going to happen after. My destination is set, who I will be with the rest of eternity is set, so I need to realize that I WANT to follow the Lord now.

What does obedience out of fear lead to? First off I am not following a cruel leader that demands only results. If Christ judged me today for how I will be when this race is done, I will fail. I'm not who I am going to be right now. Thankfully, Jesus does not expect that. Sanctification is a process. I honestly don't think I want to wake up tomorrow and be done with the sanctification process, allow me to continue to experience grace. That is why I follow, that is why I hope to have reverent obedience, because I want to experience grace and the gospel of Jesus Christ that was revealed to me, and which I am called to continually preach. Not fear. Submission out of fear leads to revolt, submission out of love leads to continual love. When I am standing in front of God, I don't want to say that I lived my life in fear of him saying," I don't know you." I want to live my life say to the Lord,"God, I was able to tell people that they are loved by you more than they will ever know."

"But we ought to always thank God for you, brothers loved by the Lord, because from the beginning God chose you to be save through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in truth. He called you to this through our gospel, that you might share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the teachings we passed on to you, whether by word of mouth or by letter. May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed in word." 2 Thess 2:13-17

Community

Merriam Webster defines community as:

1 : a unified body of individuals: as a : state, commonwealth b : the people with common interests living in a particular area; broadly : the area itself c : an interacting population of various kinds of individuals (as species) in a common location d : a group of people with a common characteristic or interest living together within a larger society e : a group linked by a common policy f : a body of persons or nations having a common history or common social, economic, and political interests g : a body of persons of common and especially professional interests scattered through a larger society
2 : society at large
3 a : joint ownership or participation b : common character : likeness c : social activity : fellowship d : a social state or condition.

I was asked to prepare a message for our young adults community, The Lift, on the basis of community. This message will kick off our February series on relationships. I began asking myself, "Well, what is community?" "What is community from a believers perspective?" "What is community from a non-believers perspective?" Is community something we just live and work in? Or is this thought of community supposed to mean something more?

I feel there are times where we beat this idea "community of believers" into each others heads that we eventually forget the meaning of how amazing it is to have such a privilege of community. That's why community means is something more than just living and working together. The people I look at that are in my community aren't people that I see on Sunday morning, but these are people that I am sharing life with. The good and bad things about life. Regardless of what they are I want to be involved with my community. If you are involved in a community that is sharing life together then you know first hand how important community is. Next time you are with your community turn to the person next to you and say,"I couldn't be doing this without you." Because we can't. Our most important asset is Christ, but the way he lived his life shows the importance of having believers around you that are pushing you toward our heavenward goal.

What is Community?
E-mail me your thoughts: Sizemore@vineyardcincinnati.com

Fix You

Whenever I hear this song I can't help but to love it. Who exactly knows what Coldplay meant this song to be used for but I just get this view of God looking at us, brokenhearted because we're broken. That is why I love this song, I can look at my life and say no matter how off I am I have a God saying "I will try to fix you." A lot of times I can't admit my brokenness. I allow my pride to take hold and try to fix myself instead of just stopping and saying, "God I am broken!" Often it takes being in the stomach of the whale before I can see how faithful and true this God is. Psalm 34:18 says,"The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit." Here is the truth, a truth which I feel is right in front of us, but often difficult to grasp, is the fact that no matter what he wants to be there close to our broken hearts to fix us. The hurt is still going to come, that's life, but we will be repaired, renewed like we've never felt before. Picture this: you are put in charge of this small child whom you love, you care about this child more than anything in the world, this child faulters, stumbles, fails, what are you going to do? I'm going to run after that child as fast as I can and grasp them and show them that they have not failed in having my love, they have not faultered in having my love. I will run to them throw my arms around them and say "I will try to fix you." That's our God.

One of my many flaws is that I don't know how to cry. It's just never happened, but I hope that if I ever do learn how to cry that it is because I can't stand to see people broken and only desire to lead them to Jesus. "Lights will guide you home and ignite your bones and I will try to fix you."

I feel the most dangerous prayer you can pray is asking God to give you a heart like his. Loving that lost, oppressed, poor, blind, lame and rich. Breaking for the poor, lost, lame and rich. Do I have the courage to pray this prayer, and watch life as I know it begin to turn upside down and start loving like God does as opposed to my selfish way now? Who is there for those people?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73YjnOPM324

The Good Fight

The last few weeks the Vineyard has been doing a series called, "The Good Fight." This series dives into the person of Paul and takes us through his story of redemption through who he was a man of the Lord. I always ask myself the question, "What does it mean to be a man of the Lord?" I don't want to settle and give some cliche answer. Whenever I think about this, I always get frustrated where I am at now. I begin wondering, "God, why don't I get it? I'm selfish, hardened and frustrated." For those that know me they know that I am extremely competitive. This is for every aspect of my life, I love winning. That's how I am I give 100% all of the time, because I want to win all of the time. So when I look at my walk with the Lord and it's not where I think it should be I don't like it because in my eyes I'm not winning.

Here's my thought to that:
Do I believe God loves me? Do I believe he sought after me, died for me, cares about me more than I could ever realize? Do I believe God loves me right where I am? A sort of "come as you are" idea. I'm not ever going to be where I think I should be, that's not how this works, and honestly if I ever say in this life, "I'm where I should be", then I am worse off than ever before because I have forgotten how to experience grace.

So what does it mean to be a man of the Lord? I don't know exactly, but I do know if I am ever going to start in that direction I need to quit having such confidence in myself, and being frustrated where I am because there should be only one thing I am after...

"But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith-- that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you.
(Php 3:7-15)"

Paul was about as close to being a man of God as there could be and he did it by forgetting everything he ever thought was righteous and having only dependence upon Christ.

Wish me luck.

Doors

I always say I want to see doors opened, but am I willing to be there when they're closed?

I love when I'm successful at something, everyone loves that though. The question we must ask ourselves is: In ministry, are we only showing up when doors are opened, or are we pounding at closed doors with the confidence of the Lord behind us waiting for them to be open so we can walk through those very doors side by side with our maker? We cannot simply turn around just because a door is closed, we should be loving those people even more. Is our mindset of evangelism that of someone with an agenda, or as that of someone who has no confidence in themselves or only Jesus?

What does it mean to love extravagantly?

Dating from a single guy.

Due to some reoccuring pushes I've decided to start blogging. I'm one of those people that are always thinking. Every hour of the day I am thinking about something. Sometimes they're thoughts that I feel I could share with others, sometimes they're just things that I can just laugh about. (I'm one of those people that always thinks about funny thigns and laughs out loud, makes me look like a loser quite a bit.)

After work today I had a couple of minutes so I was reading and listening to a Mark Driscoll sermon. It was one of those Q & A times he has, and someone posed the question, "Should women pursue men?" I adding my disclaimer now, I am not a relational expert. Although I might want to give this question a stab in the dark. At no point should a woman pursue a man. A woman that feels that she should pursue a man needs to tell this particular person to man up, and decide. Now subtle hints don't work, guys just don't pick that kind of thing up. We as men do need help, but not to the point where a woman feels as though she needs to pursue the man and lead the courtship, relationship, marriage or even friendship. Men are meant to do the pursuing and the leading. If a guy doesn't feel that they are, then they must repent from that feeling and take the lead. Men: pursue, Women: allow yourself to be pursued. Should a woman pursue a man? No Can a woman strategically put herself in the path or view of the man? Yes. If a woman doesn't feel as though she is being pursued and she is in "courtship" with a man, then that conversation needs to be had. It takes two people to have a relationship. Woman you can help the man lead without taking the lead. Guys if you aren't pursuing a woman that you're "courting" then stop wasting her time. You're not treating her well enough, and she deserves better than that. I'll be the first to admit I am guilty of being a coward at times, I am guilty of not pursuing as a I should, both in my friendships and any relationship I have had. I once asked my good friend Tom who has been married to his awesome wife Carolyn once,"Tom what has made your marriage with Carolyn a success?" He then answered,"Team work." Two words: Team Work. Team work in following Jesus, and team work in saying,"Let's make this work" Men pursue your woman past the point that you think will make them feel pursued. Maybe two people can team up and make this work.