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I gave birth to a sermon this past Sunday morning. I realize if there are any ladies that read my blog, you may be offended, and tempted to write me flaming comments about how I “Don’t even begin to understand…” and you’re right, I don’t. It’s probably a bad analogy, but the only one I can think of.

The short story is that God has been doing some remodeling of my heart the past few months. It’s pretty easy to trace the starting point back to my trip to Guatemala with Journey Church in August. That was the beginning. Another key landmark on this journey has been the reading of Francis Chan’s book Crazy Love. It rattled me to my core… I still haven’t dealt with all of the ramifications from this book. More recently, I came across the Advent Conspiracy video which I’ve posted on this blog twice in the past couple of weeks. I was inspired by the words, imagery, and music. I was shaken by the keynote statistic that Americans spend $450 Billion Dollars on Christmas each year, and it would only take $10 Billion Dollars to provide clean drinking water to all of earth inhabitants. The lack of clean drinking water is the #1 killer of human life in our world today. I actually planned to use this statistic as one of the primary illustrations of my talk on Sunday, and completely forgot about it. When I realized that Monday afternoon, I wished I had a time machine so I could go back and share it.

So basically, God has been working on me in this area of poverty, wealth, America vs. the world, rich & poor, and my place in all of that. This past Sunday I had the opportunity to give birth to some of what I’m wrestling with, and what God is teaching me. If you were not

 at Journey Church on Sunday, I encourage you to listen to this talk. Not because it’s me, but because the Message God is sharing with me, and wants to share with you is so important. It could change everything…

Click here to visit the CincyJourney media page and listen to the talk. You’ll find it as the uppermost link in the list of talks. You can also search for “Journey Church West Chester” in iTunes and subscribe to our podcast.

Whenever I say the word “Remember”, I always want to recite the bit from the movie V for Vendetta: “Remember, remember the 5th of November…” but alas, that has nothing to do with this post.

I had my final opportunity of the summer to preach yesterday to the fine folks at Journey Church. I was called upon to pinch hit because our Lead Pastor was out of town, holding down the shortstop position for the Journey Softball squad. We wrapped up our series entitled: Proverbs – Playbook for Life with a talk on the tongue.

I said all kinds of things related to the topic, if you’d like to listen, you can check out the talk here. My main point was that we just need to gain a fresh realization about how powerful our words are. At one point I shared a quote that I once heard from one of my favorite pastors, Rob Bell. I can not remember, nor find the original context of this quote, but the power is rather universal. I use this quote whenever I get the chance… it has become sort of an anthem for me. Rob says:

It’s important that we remember, because if we don’t remember, we might forget, and when we forget, bad things tend to happen.

This is a really powerful thought. The point is that we have to intentionally remember certain things, or our human nature will kick in, and we will develop spiritual amnesia, and suddenly forget what’s been done for us, or what our responsibilities are. It’s at those times, when we have forgotten, that we are in danger or bad things happening.

So I’m curious…. what do you often forget? What do you need to ask God to help you to remember?

This Sunday at Journey Church we will be looking at what the Biblical book of Proverbs has to say about the tongue (the kind in your mouth). 

I’m 99% sure that the person preaching will be sharing this story about an apology that came years after it was owed. Better late than never…. Read here. 

Oh yea… you might want to keep an eye on Shaun’s blog (the guy in the story above). He is about to plant a ridiculously passionate church in what is without a doubt the coolest venue I have ever seen. God is about to be magnified in a big way in the ATL.

Hopefully we all have heroes or mentors in our profession, or at least in our lives. I’m fortunate to work everyday alongside one of my ministry heroes…. but this story isn’t about him. In this case, one of my ministry heroes is a guy named Louie Giglio. Among a host of other things, Louie started the Passion Ministry movement. I have been to a couple of Passion events, and I have heard Louie speak on multiple occasions at various events. One time in college my buddy and I drove from Central Florida to Atlanta, Ga. just to watch him preach at his weekly venue (at the time) called 7:22. 

Anyway, I still listen to his stuff whenever I can. So naturally when I found out that he was speaking at his home church in Atlanta, I made sure to pull down the podcast and give it a listen. I wasn’t prepared for what I heard. 

I found myself on my couch in my basement in tears at 8:30 in the morning on a random Tuesday.

You MUST listen to this talk. If you don’t have the full 50 minutes handy, just go to around the 24:30 mark, and pick it up there. Although I definitely recommend catching the whole talk. You can download the podcast by CLICKING HERE  (the i-Tunes link is gone. I’ll work on finding another solution. I’ll update if I found a download… see the next option though, it still works) or you can listen or watch streaming in your browser by CLICKING HERE and going to the “Home Free – Even Me” series and finding the “Fruitcake & Ice Cream” talk. 

Find a quiet spot, grab something to drink, and allow God to realign your heart to his.