JamesLaws.com

As many of you know I am in the process of trying to get healthy again once and for all. Now this means that I am dieting, exercising and overall torturing myself. But maybe I have been wrong about what healthy is. Maybe I need a new point of view. Below are some of my favorite health tips that I found here. Please enjoy this most profound insight.

Q: I’ve heard that cardiovascular exercise can prolong life; is this true?
A: Your heart is only good for so many beats, and that’s it… don’t waste them on exercise. Everything wears out eventually. Speeding up your heart will not make you live longer; that’s like saying you can extend the life of your car by driving it faster. Want to live longer? Take a nap.

Q: How can I calculate my body/fat ratio?
A: Well, if you have a body and you have fat, your ratio is one to one. If you have two bodies, your ratio is two to one, etc.

Q: Aren’t fried foods bad for you?
A: YOU’RE NOT LISTENING!!! …. Foods are fried these days in vegetable oil. In fact, they’re permeated in it. How could getting more vegetables be bad for you?

Q: Is getting in-shape important for my lifestyle?
A: Hey! ‘Round’ is a shape!

And Finally…

For those of you who watch what you eat, here’s the final word on nutrition and health. It’s a relief to know the truth after all those conflicting nutritional studies.

1. The Japanese eat very little fat
and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

2. The Mexicans eat a lot of fat
and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

3. The Chinese drink very little red wine
and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

4. The Italians drink a lot of red wine
and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

The Germans drink a lot of beers and eat lots of sausages and fats and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

CONCLUSION:
Eat and drink what you like.
Speaking English is apparently what kills you.

Man, getting healthy is so confusing.

On this Thursday, April 3rd it will be mine and Angela’s 10th anniversary. WOW! 10 years that feels like 3. Time flies when you are married to the one you love or love the one you married. There is a problem with time going by so fast though. You have a ton of regrets of all the things you’ve missed. I thought I would share some of my regrets over the past 10 years to help other couples avoid them. These are not exhaustive but perhaps will get your imagination flowing enough to avoid some of the others.

I Regret…

• Not taking more vacations with just Angela and myself when we had the money.
• Spending countless hours in front of the computer “working” when I could be spending time with her.
• Not losing more arguments.
• Not spending nearly enough time growing spiritually together.
• Getting us into debt and placing undue stress on Angela.
• Not making each anniversary the most special day of the year.
• Not doing more around the house to serve her.
• Filling up my schedule so much that time with her suffered. I am the one who lost out on that one. I’m not really that fun to be around.
• Not closely paying attention to every word that she has attempted to share.
• Not treating Angela in everything the way my Dad treated my Mom. I had the perfect example, it’s a shame to ignore it.

Regrets mean nothing if when given the opportunity to correct them you do nothing. I can promise you, Angela and everyone who reads this blog that I won’t have the same regrets at year 20 as I do now. Later I will share what I am thankful for over the past 10 years.

Another week down. It has been a very eye opening journey for me so far. I will explain in what ways in some later posts. I can say this hasn’t been easy with my current schedule but I am determined to make this journey a priority.

I have question for all of you who are also on this journey. What are your biggest struggles in you daily reading and what have you done to deal with them? I look forward to your answers but until then hear is the next weeks reading schedule.

Here is my favorite passage from week 13.

In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. - Proverbs 3:4

I haven’t quite got the hang of it yet. I want to make sure that I don’t go Twitter crazy.

In my previous post I shared how many times pastors and leaders follow the coolest churches and pastors on the interwebs while at times not giving enough attention to Christ our true leader. In this post I want share some things that distract me from that very thing and a few ideas on how I plan to deal with it.

• The Internet - This is one of the most effective time and focus stealers for me. I make my living working on it and then I come home I spend a great deal of time on it some more. Let me break it down for you item by item.
  • Blogs - I subscribe to 86 blogs. Now granted, 22 are work related and 8 are just for fun, but that leaves a whopping 56 blogs related to pastors, churches or ministry related topics. My strategy - Cut the clutter. Most blogs of mega-church pastors are on hold. I am not saying that they are not great blogs but they are not useful to me in this particular season. There are a few that I will read that have consistently provided me with spiritual and professional encouragement. As of the writing of this post I have already cut 23 blogs from my daily reading and more cuts are coming.
  • Email - I am addicted to checking my email. The strangest thing about it is I rarely ever get anything so interesting that would warrant my interest. Definitely nothing that couldn’t wait. My Strategy - I am going to pick three specific times when I will check my email. Once in the morning when I get to work, once in the afternoon at lunch and once during the evening. That’s still probably two times too many but I have to start somewhere.
• Random Projects - This is another huge category that gets me off track. I am an obsessive compulsive project driven individual with A.D.D. That means I always have to be in the middle of a project and when I am bored with that project I have to be in the middle of another project. No project = Kryptonite. I am aimless and many times unmotivated when I don’t have a specific project at hand. This is usually what drives me to the internet to read blogs and check my email incessantly. My Strategy - This one isn’t easy. I have to make a list of what is most important to my leadership and turn them into various projects that I can jump in between. Even dealing with the issue of this post has become a project. In another post I will write of the struggles of being a project driven individual.

What does all this do? It removes somethings that I have allowed to distract me from my purpose and gives me a chance to spend more time doing the things that are most important. What are these things? Time in my bible,  prayer and meditation. I would say that this should be 75% of my allocated “church work” time.

In preparation for this Sunday’s message and our main passage God is really getting my attention. If you would like you can read it here…John 21:14-22.

After meditating on this passage for Sunday God began to gently correct my leadership. Not so much how I lead but what I allow to distract me. In many casses this is referring to other leaders that I keep an eye on.

There are some amazing churches and leaders out there doing amazing things for God. I watch most of the very intently trying to learn as much as possible. Sometimes this builds me up and sometimes this leaves me feeling very defeated.

So what has God been telling me? “You follow me!” How could anyone argue with that? Isn’t this the call of every follower of Christ? Yes it is and yet many times we don’t. Many pastors, including myself, look back at John as Peter did and ask, “What about him?” And God just tells us that he and John have their own arrangement but we need to follow him and not worry about what John is, or is going to do.

I just read a post from Perry Noble at Newspring,  the last one I will read for awhile, where he was sharing 15 signs that your church lacks vision.   Number 8 was, “You spend more time on other churches websites than you do reading your Bible.” I wonder if blogs count as well.

The point is this, following Jesus is not about doing what Jesus told someone else to do but doing what Jesus tells you to do. I am convinced this comes from prayer and reading God’s word and not the most innovative pastor’s blog.

In part 2 I will share what I am doing in light of this.

Over the next several Wednesdays I want to share a few things that I have learned about communicating. These are things that I have learned from books, observations and experiences. Many of them I learned during my time traveling with the New Life Drama Company.

There are three elements in every speaking situation. The speaker, the message and the audience. Understanding the most important element is the first step in being a dynamic communicator. Here is the answer and the reasoning.

• The Speaker - As a speaker we sometimes want to think that we are the most important element but in fact we are the least important. Given the right message and an attentive audience anyone can deliver information. Remember that God spoke through a donkey (Numbers 22:21-38) the next time you want to toot your own horn.
• The Message - This one is easy to get hung up on, especially for preachers. Don’t hear me saying something that I am not. The message of Christ is the most important message one can communicate. It is THE MESSAGE among all other messages but it is still not the most important element in a speaking situation. Just ask the most prolific speaker with the most dynamic message when no one is there to listen.
• The Audience - Consider the key verse of the entire Bible, John 3:16. Allow me to paraphrase, “For the Speaker so loved his Audience that he gave his Message with purpose.” There was no reason for Christ to give himself if there were no people to receive him. It’s so simple and yet many times we miss it.

As communicators of the most important message of all we need to love our audience more than ourselves. We choose how effective each sermon will be when we place these three elements in proper perspective.

As always, your comments are welcome.

Anyone who knows me or who has followed LifePoint’s website either laughs or cries when the words redesign are even mentioned. I am of the philosophy that if it isn’t right…don’t settle. Strangely though, this redesign is not due to my opinion of the design or my unusual need to have to be in the middle of a project. Well, maybe a little of the latter.

This redesign is for information management. I need to allow other people to maintain the content on the website so that I can focus on my actual responsibilities. In order to do this I need a site that is easy for anyone to administer. There was also a lot of information that I believe is needed on the site. Here us a sneak peak at a portion of the header.

I can’t tell you when it will be available but I can tell you that it will provide the many people who visit it whatever they may need.

In the spirit of Transparent Tuesday I thought I would start off sharing a few of my weaknesses. Some may appear to be more serious than others but they are all things that I struggle with. Most of them will not be immediately evident to you and that is why I am sharing them. Sometimes it helps to know that others struggle with similar vices.

The thing that I would like to expose today is that I have an addiction. It is destroying my body and causing everyday life to be more difficult with every passing day. I want to stop but is has such a hold on me that every time I think I am free I stumble. It has stolen my energy and made it hard to enjoy many things that I once loved.

I am addicted to food. Now before you start laughing, I am completely serious. This is not me being cute about how much I like to eat but an actual struggle that I desire to get control over. I am easily 60 lbs. overweight and unable to do many things I used to. I crave it all day even when I am not hungry in the slightest. I am currently trying to eat small, frequent portion of food throughout the day and all that does is make me think about food all day.

At my job I sit in front of a computer all day and that also make me want to snack all the time. At one point I had food stashed in every drawer and cabinet at my desk. I felt like my desk was a concessions stand and had to make lite of it to not be embarrassed by it.

I am out of shape and I eat unhealthy which makes it difficult to exercise. You can see my dilemma. When you hear some of my other weaknesses you will see why all of this is working against me. If you think of it, keep me in prayer. Jesus and I are going to defeat this thing this year. Although I think he looks great just the way he is. ;)

I know I haven’t been keeping up with our one year bible exploration. Now that all the various blogs have been divided up properly I am going to do my best at posting the week end wrap up and the coming weeks reading schedule.

I have also need to be honest that on top of not posting the week end wrap up I have also been sporadic at best with my reading. Sometimes I get caught up in my study that I let the daily reading fall behind. I would like to also make an honorable mention. Angela agreed to do the one year reading thing with me at the last minute. She really was non-committal to the whole thing but has been completely faithful to the reading. Good job Angela, you are an inspiration to me.

How about the rest of you? How are you doing?

Here is the coming weeks reading schedule.