WholeHeartedLife

Get Your Head in the Game!

In Sunday's message, "Deliver Us...", I used the analogy of sports teams and the purpose of their practice during the week and the way that it applies to us in times of trial. Think about it like this:

Sports teams practice all week - on game day it is their job to EXECUTE what they've learned all week. If they make the same mistakes over and over they're not learning anything. 

This analogy reminds me of the church sometimes - we keep coming to practice (church services/classes/work with me here ) but when gameday comes (a trial) they totally forget everything coach (pastor, teacher and ultimately, Jesus) has been teaching them. Some of you say, "well, if the players/people aren't learning it's the teachers fault", and I would say yes and no. Sometimes it may be that the teacher isn't communicating well (I don't think that would be the case at hyde park); Sometimes it may be that the guys coming to practice are sitting under "coach's" teaching but they are thinking about their girlfriend/boyfriend instead of learning the playbook.

Never forget: Just because you show up for practice doesn't mean that you are actually preparing for the game (or in this case, a trial). Let's get our heads in the game.

Who Would be to Blame?

"Worship demands purity. Over and over we have seen that the prerequisite to the privilege of entering God's presence is the recognition of personal sinfulness and a willingness to abandon that sinfulness. A consuming desire to be pure and clean is the normal result of being with God. The closer we draw to God, the more overwhelmed we become with our sinfulness... if the corporate worship in the church leaves people unchanged, the church is not really worshiping. If what goes on in the church service does not spur the saints to greater obedience, call it what you will, it isn't worship. Worship always results in a transformation, and the church is edified by it." - John MacArthur, Jr. 

What about you? Have you experienced transformation through worship lately? Who would be to blame? Maybe it's time to get to the root of the challenge.

Prayer Conference This Weekend!

I'm looking forward to being a part of the "Call to Me Southeastern NC Prayer Conference" this Friday and Saturday in Pembroke. The conference is sponsored by the Baptist State Convention of NC and features guest speaker, Dr. Henry Blackaby.

Henry Blackaby was huge in my development as a follower of Jesus. His study, "Experiencing God", helped me to be open to the leading of the Holy Spirit in my daily life and guided me to understand what it means to be a Spirit-led believer. When I was struggling with my call to ministry and didn't know what to do or where to go next, my friend Eddy Covil (truly by God's intervention) gave me Dr. Blackaby's study, "God's Call". "God's Call" helped me to totally surrender to the call of God upon my life - I have since suggested this study to others hearing God's call.

It is with honor that I have been invited to lead worship at this conference this weekend and look forward to God once again speaking to me through the ministry of Henry Blackaby.

Do you know what would be awesome??? If you let God speak to you through Henry Blackaby and you can do that this week - the conference is TOTALLY FREE - it's not a "preacher conference" - it's for regular people who want believe in God's power in prayer and are open to diving in deeper. Here's the schedule:

Schedule
Friday, August 28
5:30 p.m.     Pastor & Staff Dinner (invitation only)
7:00 p.m.     Message
8:00             Prayer Time

Saturday, August 29
9:00 a.m.     Fellowship & Refreshments
9:15             Prayer Time
10:00           Worship
10:30           Message & Prayer Time

Remember, God has promised, 

³ 'Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.' (Jeremiah 33:3 - NIV)

Silence

Isaiah 55
Invitation to the Thirsty

 ¹ "Come, all you who are thirsty, 
       come to the waters; 
       and you who have no money, 
       come, buy and eat! 
       Come, buy wine and milk 
       without money and without cost.

 ² Why spend money on what is not bread, 
       and your labor on what does not satisfy? 
       Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, 
       and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.

 ³ Give ear and come to me; 
       hear me, that your soul may live. 
       I will make an everlasting covenant with you, 
       my faithful love promised to David.

 ⁴ See, I have made him a witness to the peoples, 
       a leader and commander of the peoples.

 ⁵ Surely you will summon nations you know not, 
       and nations that do not know you will hasten to you, 
       because of the LORD your God, 
       the Holy One of Israel, 
       for he has endowed you with splendor."

 ⁶ Seek the LORD while he may be found; 
       call on him while he is near.

 ⁷ Let the wicked forsake his way 
       and the evil man his thoughts. 
       Let him turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on him, 
       and to our God, for he will freely pardon.

 ⁸ "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, 
       neither are your ways my ways," 
       declares the LORD.

 ⁹ "As the heavens are higher than the earth, 
       so are my ways higher than your ways 
       and my thoughts than your thoughts.

 ¹⁰ As the rain and the snow 
       come down from heaven, 
       and do not return to it 
       without watering the earth 
       and making it bud and flourish, 
       so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,

 ¹¹ so is my word that goes out from my mouth: 
       It will not return to me empty, 
       but will accomplish what I desire 
       and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.

 ¹² You will go out in joy 
       and be led forth in peace; 
       the mountains and hills 
       will burst into song before you, 
       and all the trees of the field 
       will clap their hands.

 ¹³ Instead of the thornbush will grow the pine tree, 
       and instead of briers the myrtle will grow. 
       This will be for the LORD's renown, 
       for an everlasting sign, 
       which will not be destroyed."

**Silence**

Clap Like a Seal, You Might Get a Treat

³²But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers." (Luke 22:32 NIV)

In praying for a friend I had a thought (which I'll credit to God)...

This friend has struggled with getting to a "new place" with God. The person often expressed a discontent with where they were at spiritually (tell me about it). What if this new place that the person sought after was actually driven by faith rather than experience? Let me explain what I mean.

As new believers we are often driven by spiritual experiences: a great service, a moving testimony, a successful project/mission, a stirring message. In all of these instances experience is at the core of all of them; they feel good, they made you cry, they made you proud, they made you feel ashamed.

What if, as you grow in your knowledge and experience of God He expects you to go where He's telling you despite the fact that it doesn't "feel good"? What if the last place He sent you to had to "feel" better because, at that stage of your walk you needed to feel more, to experience more? What if this new place more faith is required and less "chill bumps" will be experienced?

What if "experience" is the bunny slopes of our walk? What if your experiencing "chill bumps" is like rewarding a child who has done well with a treat? Abraham walked by faith, not having the ability to see how great the next place would be - what about us?

As you can see, this post has nothing to do with seals (or any other marine animals) but has everything to do with us moving beyond the baby steps of our faith. In the end it's like the prayer that Jesus prayed for Peter in the beginning of this post - I, Mike P, pray that your faith not fail, but that you will persevere in following Jesus to that next place and that you will strengthen others as you do so (remember: your discouragement can be quite contagious). The next place that God calls you to spiritually may have less "chill bump" moments than the past but a higher adventure in correlation to the amount of faith you are willing to show; your willingness to take bigger risks and follow to completion may be key in finding that next place you know in your heart is before you. After all, you probably ain't gonna get a treat after every right movement you make - unless you've got a job perfoming at Sea World.

Does this make any sense to anyone besides myself?

In All His Fullness

In Pastor's message Sunday, "My Prayer for You", Pastor Harrell outlined 5 things that he wanted to share with us. Those things would be that:

1. You would experience God's faithfulness
2. You would become intentional about other's faith
3. You would become financially free
4. You would honor God's plan for intimacy
5. You would see the importance for ministry

In the message he deeply shared these things in such a way that we would be take these things with the upmost of importance. Though all of them hit me, the one that really hit me was Number 1, that we would experience God's faithfulness. In it he spoke of "Stepping out of our comfort zone" and told the story of being called to the ministry. What a trip back for me as I thought of my own calling to the ministry.

I will never forget struggling with the feeling that I had inside that God wanted more; reading scripture and literally feeling God telling me that He wanted me to serve Him. It wasn't long before I was feeling (and hearing) his leading towards full-time service...

"this is CRAZY!!!", I would say outloud to myself - "I can't be a pastor! I wanna be a rockstar!".

I remember telling my Pastor that I thought that I was called. It was a Sunday nite after church - we were hanging out and I didn't quite know what to say. I still don't know that he totally "got" what I was trying to say. I was SO vague - i didn't want to say too much... and make it seem, I don't know... like I was crazy. I just almost felt embarrassed.

And then there was Keyna... telling my wife that I was called to the ministry was by far THE HARDEST conversation I have ever had in my life! How do you tell the person you're sharing your life with that your whole life path is gonna change? How do you tell her that everything you thought was gonna happen might not?

Then there were my parents. Explaining to Dad that I was leaving my great job... my DREAM job to be a pastor. And the cut in pay I was taking - the whole situation seemed a little much for him to handle. He was cool - but I could definitely tell that he thought I had lost it.

And speaking of my job: telling my bosses (and mentors) that I was leaving the company that I felt I had a very promising future with was REALLY hard. Luckily they weren't too hard on me and were fairly supportive. Let's face it, they totally saw the change that had happened in me and the way that JESUS had taken firm control of my life.

In the end leaving my job to serve Jesus full-time was the best thing that happened work-wise, period. The amazing thing though was that I TOTALLY experienced God's faithfulness! I HAD to step out in faith because going to work at a church was a total faith thing. Would it work? Would they like me? Would they accept my dreams, my vision, my music? How do you come into a place that has been doing what they do for over 30 years and begin to change stuff? The answer: you spend a lot of time on your knees and face in prayer - you surrender your heart to JESUS - you beg Him to show you His plan for you and His church.

And you experience God's faithfulness in all it's fullness. I join with my pastor - I pray that you will experience God's faithfulness in such a way that you must wait for Him to come through - that you will tackle something that is so big that if He doesn't show up and rescue you, you WILL fail. Everybody needs to experience that.

Join Me Online Tonite - LifeShare

Welcome to LifeShare, a 7 day online challenge for all of us to extend the love and compassion of Jesus to our friends, followers and online communities. We will be live streaming through the LifeChurch.tv video player in the right sidebar (click on post title to see it) to launch LifeShare on September 17th at 8pm Central Time. 

What will we be doing?

This LifeShare online challenge will have 5 different types of sharing opportunities you can choose from as you get involved. They go from easy and quick, to more and more involved, to the point where you are taking your own time to specifically care and invest in the people around you. Here is the run down list:

1. Share the Experience

This is where you can invite your friends to come and share an online experience at LifeChurch.tv,

2. Share your Space

All of us have a space online, whether our social networking profiles (MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, etc.), our blogs or even micro-blog sites like Twitter. To “Share your Space” all you need to do is something like posting an update about the LifeShare event,

3. Share His Message

The internet is an amazing tool to share the messages and information that are important to us. In Sharing His Message we are putting some of the LifeChurch.tv weekend series into our blip.tv account so that you can go and embed them on your blog, your myspace or point to them for people in your online communities to come and interact with.

4. Share your Story

All of us have a story of how God is continuing to save us, shape us and heal us. Whether it is the story of how Jesus saved us from our own sin, or even a the story of what we are learning about faith and life currently. Sharing your Story is about what God is teaching you and encouraging others to share along with you. This could be a video in Youtube, Facebook or even Seesmic, a blog post, a MySpace bulletin or a Twitter “tweet”. The point is that we Share our Story of how God is moving in our lives, and in a way that could bless, encourage and influence those in community with us.

4. Share your Story

All of us have a story of how God is continuing to save us, shape us and heal us. Whether it is the story of how Jesus saved us from our own sin, or even a the story of what we are learning about faith and life currently. Sharing your Story is about what God is teaching you and encouraging others to share along with you. This could be a video in Youtube, Facebook or even Seesmic, a blog post, a MySpace bulletin or a Twitter “tweet”. The point is that we Share our Story of how God is moving in our lives, and in a way that could bless, encourage and influence those in community with us.

Schedule

• Wednesday; September 17 8pm CST
• Thursday; September 18 8pm CST
• Friday; September 19 11am CST
• Saturday; September 20 11am CST
• Sunday; September 21 8pm CST
• Monday; September 22 11am CST
• Tuesday; September 23 Off
• Wednesday; September 24 8pm CST

 

For a Moment all eyes were on...

HIM.

I was just thinking about this and writing in my journal and felt led to share with the world...

7 years ago this morning we were going into our staff meeting, we had not really gotten in good yet. I remember it was a Tuesday. I remember that we were having our stage renovated/enlarged and Bobby Speights was working down there. All of a sudden he runs in Pastor's office saying, "an airplane just slammed into the world trade center!!". We stopped what we were doing found a tv. The questions were running: "was this an accident? Did someone do this on purpose?" There was a lot of speculation until all of a sudden that 2nd plane comes into the picture and showed us one of the most horrifying thing we've ever seen - we watched someone use an airplane and innocent lives as a bomb to attack our country.

We immediately responded, "let's go pray" and headed down to our auditorium and got on our faces before the Lord...

We called an impromptu prayer meeting/solemn assembly for that night (it was packed) where we had no plan - we just called upon the Name.

(a Prayer for this morning) "I had never seen anything like this before and never have since - All eyes were on You, Lord - for a moment our nation remembered our God. Too quickly though, their eyes shifted from You to us, your followers... they then shifted from "WE" back to "ME" to the place where September 11th is just another day that we "remember" (and briefly, at that). I remember, Lord - I remember that I hoped that the change would be lasting, deep - transformation at it's core. Oh, How we need You, God!".

At hyde park, within the month everyone went back to living their lives (except when they would raise the terror alert to a higher level or a holiday rolled around) - we saw no lasting impact.

So this morning I remember - not just those who lost their lives senselessly on that day; I also remember the fact that for a moment "our Nation looked to YOU, Lord.". God, move on us that we would turn our eyes to You.

On the Horizon - Part 4

Hopefully you've been with me this week as I've shared the things currently "on my horizon" - check out the post about Men's Conference here - Worship here - "The Gathering at UNCP" here

So the last thing on my horizon this week would be the usage of an increased spiritual boldness that God has made me aware of this summer. I have to admit that God has rocked my world this summer. That is a good thing. The thing that will shock many of you is how He's rocked my world:

HE HAS MADE ME MORE DEPENDANT ON HIM THAN EVER.

Psalm 51:16,17 (NIV)16 You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;  you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.  17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

• Sometimes God just has to "break you" so He can fix us again. It's not necessarily because He's mad at you - maybe it's because you've lost the ability to hear Him. So with me, He does stuff to get my attention, to get me on my knees, to get me to the place where I can truly say, "Speak, Lord, Your servant is listening."
  
  That doesn't mean I wasn't praying - I was. That doesn't mean I wasn't in the Word - once again, I was. What it means is that He was trying to take me to another level and I wasn't ready. I was reminded that "brokenness precedes blessing".
• I work hard. You can't see it, but my mind NEVER stops. What I have discovered this summer is that I can't solve spiritual issues with human solutions. I thank God for showing me this. No matter how hard I try or good intentioned I am there are some things that He's just gonna have to do (or break). He has taught me (once again) that prayer and what I'll call "face time" (time just listening and seeking Him) is more important than anything I do.
• Remember the message I preached on 6/8, the one where I preached "the wise men built his house on a rock..." (download it here)? God has made me "live out" this message and brought glory to Himself through it. I made a statement in it, "you don't wait until you're in the middle of a storm to begin working on your foundation, because by that time it's too late!". Well, this summer, Jesus has shown me that I DO have a foundation built on Him. And here's what it came to: when the storm began and the wind and waves got scary, I climbed into the home that was built upon the foundation of His word. When I got in that house, I watched the storm from within Him and I felt safe, protected and wasn't afraid. When that happens, my friends, you'll receive a mighty boldness from Him because you recognize HOW MUCH He's in charge and you remember that He cares way more than we ever could.

Because of this we will step out in bold ways this fall. We will do this at hyde park and hyde park will be extended to other places. Some of those places that God will put His boldness in us on display:

• August 19th & 20th - Youth Conference, Bear Swamp, Pembroke - I'll be Preaching
• August 28th - BSU Back to School Jam, UNCP - Narrow Way Band
• September 7 - Burnt Swamp Youth Revival, Berea (Pembroke) - Narrow Way Band
• September 12-13 - Commitment '08 Men's Conference - Galeed Church - Featured Speaker 
• September 21 - GroupLink 1 - Speaker - hyde park (more about this next week)
• September 28 - GroupLink 2 - Speaker 
• October 7 - Youth Nite RC Crusade - Narrow Way Band
• October 19th - "The Gathering at UNCP"

All of these things are on my/our horizon and they are HUGE! And I agree with my friend, Janice's, comment the other day - "when you look up on the horizon, what do you see? The SON, of course!". Clever, Janice, real clever . 

"The Gathering at UNCP" - On the Horizon - Part 3

This week I'm sharing with you things that are "on my horizon" - things that are coming up in my life over the next few months that I'm excited about. On Monday I shared about "Commit '08" - Tuesday we talked about what's on the worship horizon and today we talk about...

"THE GATHERING at UNCP". I have had Pembroke, specifically the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, on my heart for more than 2 years now. The following is the result (at least currently) of those 2 years of thoughts, prayers, musings, speeches, messages and leadings.

Beginning on October 19th, Hyde Park, in conjuntion with the UNCP Baptist Student Union, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Campus Crusade for Christ and the Robeson Baptist Association, will be hosting a one-per-month, on-campus Sunday nite gathering called, "The Gathering" (how imaginative, huh?). "The Gathering" will meet on 3rd Sunday Nites at the brand-new UNCP Annex - centrally located on campus between the Student Center and The Givens Performing Arts Center

 

Music for the event will be provided by local worship leaders, Narrow Way Band - Mike Pittman will bring the message.

 

The purpose of "The Gathering": a place where all Christians from different groups, BSU, FCA, Campus Crusade and area churches can come together for the purpose of worship (in a context purposely designed to reach students), community, glorifiying God and most importantly, evangelism. "The Gathering" is going to be a place on campus where Christians can bring their friends and allow God to show them who He is. Sunday nites are a great time: not much is happening on campus - we are petitioning God to create a buzz among the students.

 

Our churches are struggling with reaching this generation. Statistics (LifeWay research) show the dropout rate of baptist 18-22 year olds is 70% (!!!!). These aren't ALL 18-22 year olds - these are OUR 18-22 year olds, the ones who are currently attending our churches. Tom Rainer, CEO of LifeWay, states that this is because "church is not essential to them.".  It's obvious that we are not "connecting" this generation and their college years are enormously foundational in the direction of the remainder of their lives. None of us is doing a great job reaching 18-22 year olds (often college students) - we want to see that changed!

 

Prayerfully, "The Gathering" at UNCP will fill a place in students hearts that will show them God's plan for them in this time and begin to show them how "essential" their faith is to their whole lives. And that, also on my horizon, is something that FIRES me up!!!