Get Cut

The title of this blog is terminology we use in the gym to describe the body of a person who has worked hard to "get cut" or physically fit. In the next three blogs, I am going to write about three essential characteristics every person should possess if they want to "get cut" on God's word and develop a strong life of faith.

Hebrews 4:12 says, "For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart."

The first characteristic is a desire for God’s word.

It is impossible to be great at anything without desire. Elite athletes, skillful doctors, successful business men and women, great preachers, excellent parents and brilliant professors all contain a passion for their profession.

Therefore, any great man or woman of God throughout history has had a desire to please God and obey His word. David was a young man who represented this fact. He was known as a person after God’s own heart; someone who would do everything the Lord wanted him to do (Acts 13:22).

In Psalm 40: 6-8 David writes, “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but my ears you have pierced, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not require. 7 Then I said, "Here I am, I have come— it is written about me in the scroll. 8 I desire to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart."

David was able to change his world because he desired God’s will. In other words, God was with him. He administered justice, conquered kingdoms and gained what was promised because he had wisdom and revelation about the purpose of the Lord in his lifetime.

Acts 13:36 says, “For when David had served God’s purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep; he was buried with his fathers and his body decayed.”His desire manifested in a diligence to make sure God’s law was in his heart.

When I first became a Christian during my junior year of college while playing basketball at FSU, I used to take my Bible with me and read it while we traveled to our contests during the week. Many hours were spent on buses and planes reading through the Holy Scriptures.

One time while in the Atlanta airport reading my Bible during a layover, a lady sat next to me and commented about my attentiveness to God’s word. Encouraged to see a young man reading the Bible, she questioned me about my faith and shared her salvation experience with me. I told her that I had recently received Jesus as my Lord and Savior, and explained to her my desire to make up for lost time by learning everything about God and His will. All of a sudden her enthusiasm turned to skepticism as she said, “Enjoy it while it lasts.”

Two things were obvious from talking to this lady. First, she once had a legitimate experience and love for the Lord. Second, she had “lost that loving feeling”. Reflecting back on our conversation, it is now apparent that she was an empty person because she had lost her desire for God and His Word.

What do you do when you wake up and realize that you don’t hunger and thirst for God?

Stay tuned for my next blog and remember: God‘s word is as important to the nourishment of your soul and spirit as food is to your physical body.

Divine Nutrition

Jesus said, "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” Matthew 4:4

When I was working at FSU, my workout partner and good buddy went through a very traumatic time in his life. His girlfriend, who he had been dating since high school, suddenly broke up with him for another man without even a warning. My buddy was convinced he was going to marry this girl. He thought he had found a love that lasts a lifetime.

As you can imagine, this breakup saddened my friend deeply. In fact, he suffered a prolonged period of intense depression. During this time of depression, he had no appetite for food and no desire to workout. Once a paragon of physical fitness, he quickly became skinny and weak as he lost more than twenty pounds.

Although he was physically alive, he was emotionally dead. He became so distraught that he couldn’t even keep pace with me on our runs. I couldn’t believe that one of the top tri-athletes in Florida, and a man who could run a mile in under five minutes, was struggling to keep up with me during our runs at a slow seven minute mile pace.

His despair and anguish of soul caused him to lose his natural desire to hunger and thirst. I remember forcing him to eat PowerBars that I had in storage for the athletes that I trained. He was still alive, but it seemed like he was really dead. He was not the same person I had become so close to in many of our excessive training sessions.

In my fourteen years of being involved in ministry, I have observed that many Christians are like my friend after his breakup with his girlfriend. They are alive physically, but they are dead spiritually. They have lost their desire to pray, worship and feed on God’s word. Many of them crawl into church with their “spiritual gas tanks” empty, and wait for the preacher to shove the Word down their throat. Because of their spiritual malnutrition, these anemic Christians actually despise the very thing they need most.

What do you do when you wake up and realize that you don’t hunger and thirst for God?

My youngest son Noah is full of life and energy. He wakes up singing and he hits the ground running. It is a great thrill to be the first to get him out of his crib in the morning. Without exception, the first thing Noah does in the morning when his feet touch ground is dash for the kitchen. As soon as he arrives in the kitchen, he grabs his little bib and puts it around his neck. Then, he grabs his little eating chair and table and drags it towards the refrigerator while pointing to his favorite breakfast foods and reminding us to not forget the juice.

We are amazed at how much our little guy eats. His appetite is an indicator of the fact that he is full of life and energy. With a full belly, he is ready to conquer the day by putting his fingers on anything within his reach.

I am sure the majority of us start our day by eating or drinking. I am pretty confident that most people schedule their day around what they are going to eat. In other words, eating is not a random event for most people. It is a well planned and well thought out incident in our lives.

We all know that eating food is essential for maintaining health and sustaining life. America is so committed to eating that many of its citizens struggle with obesity. Unless we are fasting, unhealthy or dead, humans don’t go a single day without eating.

My goal in the next series of blogs is to make sure you understand God‘s word is as important to the nourishment of your soul and spirit as food is to your physical body.

Guard Your Heart (Part 2)

The key to guarding your heart is understanding that you are a child of God.

1 John 3:1-3 says, “1How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears,[a]we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. 3Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure."

Understanding who we are in Christ is essential if we are going to live the way he wants us to live on planet earth. Jesus has set a pretty high standard for His followers and that standard in none other than Himself. In fact, the evidence that we are in Him is the fact that we live like Him. 1 John 2:5b-6 says, “This is how we know we are in Him: (6) Whoever claims to live in Him must walk as Jesus did.

Proper thinking always precedes and leads to proper conduct. As a young man aspiring to earn a basketball scholarship at FSU, I was constantly told by people that I could not fulfill my dream. For example, when I quit playing football in high school to focus solely on honing my basketball skills, our athletic director and head football coach told me, “You will never amount to anything in basketball.”

Trying to become a great basketball player in a football city was quite difficult. Tallahassee is not exactly a hotbed for college basketball recruiting. Basketball players in this city are at a disadvantage when it comes to getting the exposure needed for signing a scholarship.

Do to the lack of competition, exposure and people who believed in me, I found myself questioning my ability to play big time college basketball. Because of this, I signed early before my senior year with a small Division 1 School named Mercer which is located in Macon, Georgia. After a successful freshman year, I decided to transfer to FSU without a guarantee of a scholarship. During the summer before my sophomore year, one of FSU players decided to transfer to James Madison. I had been playing pick-up games all summer with the FSU team and doing very well. Coach Kennedy watched one of these games when I made six three pointer in a row. So, to make a long story short, I was offered a scholarship to play basketball at FSU right before the fall semester of 1988.

Even though I had been playing well in pick up games, I still was not sure if I could play college basketball at the highest level. My first game as a Seminole was our Midnight Madness scrimmage game. I remember sitting in the locker room after midnight (my time of night) with butterflies in my stomach and chill bumps on my skin as I listened to Coach Kennedy’s pre-game speech with the crowd cheering in the background. We were a preseason top twenty team and had one of the best guards, George McCloud, in the country running the point for us.

Before I ran out on the court, I went to the mirror and stared at the uniform I was wearing. I reflected on how I had dreamed about this moment all of my life and my journey to become a team member for the Seminoles. As I continued to stare at my uniform, all of a sudden a peace entered my heart and a sense of confidence began to resonate in my mind. The Seminole uniform was a sign to me that I belonged on the team. I went out and scored sixteen points scrimmaging against a team that would remain in the top ten throughout the year.

Romans 8:15-17 says, "15For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship.[a] And by him we cry, "Abba,[b] Father." 16The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children.17Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory."

The revelation that we are children of the King and therefore, heirs of God and co-heirs of Christ is the key to correct behavior. Knowing that we covered in the blood of Jesus and our new uniform is the robe of righteousness ensures us that we belong. Living as the children of God, we can now perform at the highest level as we overcome evil with good.

Guard Your Heart

In April of this year I had the privilege of playing in the Blount/Bowden Charity Golf Tournament in Destin, Florida. The tournament always concludes with a fund-raising dinner in the evening. Coach Bowden, as you would expect, was the keynote speaker. The event raises funds to send students to FSU on scholarships. Coach Bowden concluded his speech with words of wisdom for the scholarship recipients. He told the students that one of the most valuable lessons he had learned in life was the importance of guarding your heart. Then he quoted Proverbs 4:23 from the Bible. It says, “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.” In all of his victories, defeats, successes and failures, Coach Bowden has had to work diligently in order to guard his heart.

I listened intently as Coach Bowden spoke and reflected on my application of this timeless truth. Since I became a Christian, I have experienced many relational disappointments in life.

I remember going through a difficult time of transition over seven years ago as Cindy and I took over senior pastor responsibilities of ENT. During this time our closest friends, and key leaders of the church, all moved to Atlanta. Also, other friends and fellow church members, decided to start another church in Tallahassee because they didn’t want to follow our leadership. Then, to add insult to injury, one of my closest friend’s told me as we sat in my driveway in his car after a late night Champions for Christ meeting, that he would be leaving the church to join the dissenters.

A few years back, I received the news that the man who married Cindy and I, and had a huge impact on our spiritual development, was in an adulterous affair with his secretary. The gentleman, who had inspired me to live holy and pure for God, had fallen from grace.

Every year, Cindy and I have people who we love leave our church for one reason or another. Every time this happens, there is an emotional tearing in our hearts because we care deeply about every person who has made a commitment to be a member of Every Nation Tallahassee.

The older you get, the more challenging it becomes to guard your heart. The more you deal with people, the more challenging it becomes to love them unconditionally. The more you lead others, the more opportunity you have to disappoint them by not meeting all their expectations.

One of the hardest things to deal with in life is the discouragement that comes at the hands of people. I have always said that ministry would be a cakewalk if my church was located on a deserted island. I am confident that you can identify with what I am writing about in regard to our relationships with people. We all have been let down and disappointed by people.

The issue is not will we have disappointments in life; the issue is how we deal with these letdowns that ultimately come. It’s been said, “The trouble with life is that it’s so daily.”

A good friend asked me the other day the question, "How are you doing?" I told him that I was doing better than ever. Please allow me to explain why I gave him this answer.

Eight is the biblical number for new beginnings. I told my congregation in January that 2008 was going to be a year of new beginnings for all who would open their hearts to what God wanted to do in them. I am excited to write that after all my hurts, letdowns and disappointments in life, I am still willing to open my heart to people and try my best to love them. As I have learned to guard my heart over the years, God is rewarding me by filling it with a greater increase of Christ and his love.

How do I know? I know because I am still willing to love.

Apostle Paul's prayer for the church of Ephesus in Ephesians 4:16-19 says, “16I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."

Guarding our heart is the only way we can live in the love of Christ, and as a result, care about what He cares about. God, more than anything else, cares about people.

Yes—even the ones who bug you, hurt you, disappoint you and let you down.