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A friend and fellow LifePointer, Jeremy Moore, twittered yesterday that he was working on his personal motto. Which got me thinking that I have never talked much about the topic or even shared my own. So I thought I would share the reason for having a personal motto as well as share my own life motto and why I chose it.

What is and Why have a personal life motto.

In brief, a personal motto is a word, sentence or phrase that explains how you approach life in general. It’s a small glance at a much greater world view. The real reason for having a life motto, or creed if you will, is to choose how will live your life.

My Life Motto

My life motto is one I have had for years and comes from Romans 8:31. It’s simple and drives why I do what I do and how I face various challenges. Here it is.

If God is for me, who can be against me?

Why is my life motto significant to me. It’s simple really. The first part is a reminder of where Christ has positioned me. God is for me. The second part is really rich with meaning. The “who can be” in this passage can also be translated “who is”. As in, if God is on my side who is there to oppose me. What can possibly stress me out when I am walking with God? What can stand in my way when God has told me to do something? What trials, criticisms, disturbances, devils, financial woes, health problems, temptations or anything else for that matter, can stop me from living the life God has chosen for me?

God wants to do huge things through his children. If God is for us, what person or circumstance could ever stand in the way?  This is not a question of uncertainty but a challenge to remember who I serve.

Do you have a life motto? if so, please share.

I didn’t get to share a small but actually very important part of my message this past Sunday. In our current series, Tempting Faith, we are looking at the temptations that every human being faces during their life journey. We are joining Jesus through his three temptations to simply make us aware of some things we will face.

In the passage, I glazed over a small portion of the text. In Mathew 4:2 it says, “And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.” I mentioned that it was kind of a strange and obvious thing to write and promised that I would get back to it. I didn’t, but here is what I wanted to say.

Sometimes, in the midst of our temtpations and wilderness periods, we wonder if God is even aware of our suffering. Does he know what we are going through? It’s kind of like when my wife wants to tell me how hard of a day she has had or how bad she is feeling. She usually doesn’t expect me to be able to solve the problem. She just wants to know that I am aware of it.

I feel the same way with God at times. I know that God is not always going to swoop down and solve all of my problems. Many times for reasons that I don’t know and probably wouldn’t understand, but it’s sure nice to know that he is aware of the storm. He was hungry, I’m weak and God knows. And somehow that’s conforting to me.

Today almost a million Christ followers are fasting and praying for miracles in the lives of their friends, family, churches and the communities. How about you? Do you or someone you know need a miracle of God in their lives. Join us in this One Prayer today.

If you haven’t gone to oneprayer.com yet, you need to. For more on todays fasting focus click here.

I have been counting calories now for 15 days. I have watched my weight go up and then down just a little bit and then up again. Weighing everyday can be frustrating because your body can fluctuate a couple pounds throughout the day. Yet I press on.

This morning I weighed myself and I have lost 5 lbs. in the past 15 days. I am right on schedule to lose the 60 lbs. that I want. I am also twi and a half weeks off all soda. Not to bad.

The purpose of all of this. I am on a discipline journey. I have lived a long time eating whatever I want and not doing everything that I should. I started with a disciplined spiritual routine, which is still a constant struggle, and now I am working on my physical self. This week I start doing a once a week fast to combine the two.

My desire is to bring my spirit and my flesh under the control of Christ. It has definitely been an interesting process but I am loving what is taking place. I’ll keep you posted.

At this point in the exploration you have to feel a little sense of accomplishment. It is right now that we are getting through 2 and almost three books in a week. Does that make the reading easier for you. It always helps me.

My favorite passage of the week is Galatians 3:15. I love how Paul subtly teaches, teachers. In this verse he starts by saying, “To give a human example”. In other worlds, let me teach this to you plainly. I love it. It’s definitely good advice for all who are called to teach God’s Word.

Here is you reading for this week. Sorry I am a little late.

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 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.

“The quality of expectations determines the quality of our action.” - A. Godin

It is a known fact that we get what we expect. If you expect business as usual then open your eyes, that’s just what you’ve got. If you expect lives to be changed, look out.

The level of our success in fulfilling the mission that God has given us is directly related to the level of our expectations. Here are some simple questions to help you take inventory of your own expectations concerning Sunday mornings.

• What does God want to do on Sunday mornings?
• What do I expect to happen on Sunday mornings?
• Why are my expectations different (lower or higher) from God’s desires?
• Am I working to raise, meet or harm those expectations?
• How do my expectations affect the expectations of others?

These are tough questions but wrestling with them could mean the difference between changed lives and business as usual. I invite you to share and discuss your answers.

A few weeks ago when I got up to get ready for work I turned on the TV to listen to the news and found a local preacher giving a message to his congregation, although televised for us all to experience. I am not going to even get into whether or not this particular ministry really needs to have a TV ministry or not but the preachers topic and the crowds reaction is what got my attention.

The message was on kindness and how we as Christians should be known for our kindness more than our treachery. I couldn’t agree more. Now I have to admit that I am not a fan of this preachers speaking style nor was his content well developed. This particular church was an amen corner church. You know the kind. Every word that the preacher says that remotely sounds right, and even some that don’t, gets an amen shout or someone stands up and raises there hand as to say…that’s what I think.

The peculiar thing about this message was that all the while the preacher was talking about kindness the congregation was silent. No amens. No shouts. No one standing up and clapping. In fact there was no response at all. I assumed that perhaps the audio wasn’t picking up the audience or that there really wasn’t anyone in the seats and he was really just preaching to the camera when all of the sudden he said something that got a response.

Once he mentioned that he didn’t think we were suposed to give to every person on the corner holder a cardboard sign, the crowd errupted with amens and shouts. The more he talked about not giving to those we might call deadbeats the crowd was lively and excited but as soon as he returned to kindess the congregation soon grew silent once again. It seems they cared more about not getting scammed than taking a risk on kindness.

The moral of the story…if he was preachig to the choir…the choir sucked. When we lean more on conspiracy than compassion we live a corrupt gospel.

There is something that consumes my thoughts and my prayers. I don’t just take it seriously as whole but I take responsibility for it on a very personal level. Communicating God’s word is my responsibility. Many can do it and some even assist me in it but when it all comes down to it, it is my responsibility.Seth Godin wrote this in a post a couple weeks ago and it struck a chord with me.

• If you read a blog post and misinterpret what I said, that’s my choice, not your error.
• If you attend my presentation and you’re bored, that’s my failure.
• If you are a student in my class and you don’t learn what I’m teaching, I’ve let you down.

God has given me the very serious task of presenting him before many people. He is always at work doing his part so if the message doesn’t come across. it’s my fault. That is a very solemn thought to me.  Seth went on to say…

What’s helpful is to realize that you have a choice when you communicate. You can design your products to be easy to use. You can write so your audience hears you. You can present in a place and in a way that guarantees that the people you want to listen will hear you. Most of all, you get to choose who will understand (and who won’t).

The truth is that we all have this responsibility. We may not all teach in front of an audience but we are all called to communicate God’s message to those around us. The question we need to ask ourselves…is the message getting across?