There has been a lot of conversation going on within our ministry about the idea of hyping God. It has spurred a lot of questions and talk which is always a good thing. I’ve traveled and led worship in many different churches, venues, and festivals and have seen worship come in many different styles. After seeing all that I’ve seen, I do not believe you can hype God. Here are my reasons why:

   To hype something, in a basic term, means to make something bigger than it is. When you think of hype, you generally think of people talking something up bigger or more extravagant than what it is. With God, He is bigger and more extravagant than anything we can imagine. Therefore, we cannot talk Him up bigger than what he is.

   Where we often get mislead or confused is seeing a time where people come in to a service or event, shout, go crazy, jump, yell, etc, then leave and don’t act the same. Is this hype? If they aren’t living the lifestyle that they showed in the service, then what are they doing?

   I have seen people shout, jump and lose it during a service and walk away still messed up and broken making dumb choices. To me, this is all part of the walk with God. If we have the mindset that we can’t worship God because we have messed up or aren’t perfect, we don’t understand what worship is completely. We worship because God commanded it, not because we feel like it.

    God made all of creation to worship Him. Trees, nature, human beings, everything. We are the only creation that has a soul, feelings and emotions. This is why so many times, our shout is shut up in our worship.  The Bible is very clear on jumping, shouting, dancing, having quite intimate times, lifting hands, kneeling, etc; the outward expressions of worship. So when I am not lining up with those actions, which are commanded, I need to change my feelings to line up with the Bible. The inverse would be changing the Bible’s commands to line up with my emotions, which never ends good.

   I never want to be someone who judges another for his or her worship. That is between them and God alone. I would much rather see someone who is completely engulfed in sin, worship through it, jumping, shouting, and dancing in worship then see someone who has become so indoctrinated that the shout is shut up.

   There is a strong difference between hypocrisy and hype. We can’t hype God but we can become hypocrites. This is the person who jumps, shouts, dances and has no intention of changing his or her life to line up with Go; just doing it for the fun of it. Very rarely have I seen this. What I usually see is someone who may not understand all the way what they are doing in regards to worship in the beginning but eventually the heart lines up, which always is an amazing thing to witness.

   What do you think? Can we hype God? 

Everyone has dreams. Some dreams are huge and take years to develop and grow. Other dreams are small and will happen quickly. But what about when reality doesn’t match the dream? 

I have seen many people question even the existence of God because of this matter. Why would God give you a passion and a dream but not let it happen? Here is what I have found to be true:

- Every dream has a time of sowing and a time or reaping. We can NEVER expect a dream to happen if we don’t know that it needs a time to grow inside of us before it is let out. And once it is let out, we must realize that it will take time for people around us to catch it and eventually for the public to understand it. 

- The dream usually happens suddenly. This is why it is so important that we don’t give up. You never know when the right moment will come along and suddenly, everything changes.  If you keep moving and keep trying new ways of developing your dream, you will eventually get to the dream that you have. If you quit, you will never get to the dream you have. 

- When it feels like reality doesn’t match the dream, learn to look into your life and change what needs to be changed. Look into your worship team, organization, church and change what needs to be changed. Ask mentors, leaders, friends and family around you what they think you need to change, but never give up on the purpose you feel you are set out to accomplish. 

Harvest it, grow it, wait for it and change what you can. Never give up on the purpose in your heart. When reality doesn’t match the dream, keep dreaming and don’t lose hope. 

I wrote a blog a couple of days ago about making good choices. This is a follow up to that entry on how we can train ourselves to make good choices:

1) Learn your emotions and how to control them.  

Emotions can be a killer and we all have them. Fear, insecurity and anger are just a few that commonly effect our decisions. Learn what each of those emotions feels like and control it. When it rises up, wait until it passes to make your decision. 

2) Trust the advice of mentors.

         First, make sure you have mentors and people in your life that speak into you. If you are stuck on a decision that seems incredibly hard to make, talk to them and get their advice. Most likely, they will be able to give you better advice than what you can give yourself because they aren’t swayed by the circumstances within the decision you need to make. They are on the outside looking in and can give objective help.

3) Don’t make rash decisions.

        Have you ever heard the expression, “Don’t make decisions when you are tired or hungry?” This is SO true. We want to be in a normal. calm state of mind when we make our choice. If we aren’t, chances are we are going to be swayed to make a rash decision. 

4) Stick it through.

        When is it time to call it quits and when is the time to keep going? It’s always a hard thing to decide. John Maxwell wrote a blog recently that implored us to not change our lives when we are in a difficult time but only when things are successful. When we uproot and change our situations within a difficult season, we can’t fully see all that is really happening because we are engulfed by life’s circumstances. We must stick it through until we have returned to the mountain top before we make the decision to move on in life. 

5) Look to God’s Word.

         Reading scripture will bring us to Truth. You will be shocked at how applicable God’s Word is to today’s situation. Getting lost in studying this Word will shape our character to make good decisions naturally. 

Every small decision you make will add to what your life becomes. We must remember this with every choice we make. 

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This last weekend, we had the privilege of getting to minister in Chicago. As we were walking down the streets of Michigan Ave near the John Hancock building, a son got out of a car and I heard the Mom tell him some simple advice in three words, “Make good choices.”

Such power in such a simple statement. Too often, we forget how powerful our choices are; where we move to, our job, our friends, where we spend our money, where we attend church are all relatively small decisions in the moment, but looking at the big picture these decisions shape us into who we are and mold our lives. 

If we make good choices, what’s to come? I would say a great family, happiness, financial prosperity all would follow. If we make bad choices, the opposite would ensue. 

I like to think of how we relate this to God. How many times do we make terrible choices, then pray for God to make everything great again? Sometimes I think God might be looking at us saying, “What do you think I gave you a brain for? Use it!” But what do we like to do? Make a giant mess then ask for God to bail us out. We have to break out of this.

Ahh…. wouldn’t life be great if every we choice we made was the right choice? I know, I know, much easier said then done. But, if we consume ourselves with the Word of God, it becomes much easier to make great decisions.

Here is my challenge to everyone reading this; Go one day thinking about everything you do before you do it and ask yourself, “Does this line up with God’s word?” From what you say, to creativity, to ministry, to work, it all falls into place when we line up with God’s Word. 

What do you think? How have your recent choices affected you? What changes have you made to make right decisions?

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Have Christians Killed the Church?

            I’ve been thinking a lot on this topic lately. There is so much creativity that flows from people. Being a Christian, how much more creativity and ideas should we have being that we are connected to God? Yet, reality is we look to the world for trends, fashion, design, music, etc and then copy it. Why is that? Why aren’t we as believers setting the standard for others to follow? I believe it is due to the church as a whole. Think about it. We only allow certain songs to be played, certain graphics to be displayed, certain messages to be preached and our justification is that we don’t want to offend anyone or lose anyone.

            The secular world does not have this standard. They create something and if people like it, great; if they don’t, it fails, but the song, idea, blog, etc is put out there for everyone to digest. I don’t know how many times I have thought to myself “Is this congregational?” when picking out songs or looking to make a decision for a service or church. How many great ideas have I thrown away because I was afraid of it “Not going over well” or “it doesn’t fit our style.”

            Let’s face it, we as a church have created the culture that we as a church think is cheesy and dislike so much. SO…. What do we do? Take risks. Break the mold. Be different. Whenever you are looking at making decisions for your set, design, etc, and are confronted with the thought “We have never done this before,” do it! Allow the creativity to flow from inside as never let what people think or may say about it effect you.

            By doing this, I believe we can break a spirit of religion that has so heavily influenced the church and see innovation from believers like we have never seen.  

What do you think? Has the spirit of religion ruined the creativity in believers? What needs to change to become the leaders of innovation?

// Our world and society has set us up to compare our lives to each other. We compare families, houses, cars, jobs, success; the list goes on. Comparing yourself to other people will lead you into a spot that is lonely and where you feel like you are unsuccessful when our success as Christians isn’t based on things of this world but how we line up with the Word of God. Here’s what Paul said, “Oh, don’t worry: we wouldn’t dare say that we are as wonderful as these other men who tell you how important they are! But they are only comparing themselves with each other, using themselves as the standard of measurement. How ignorant!” 1 Cor 2:10.

// Today, don’t compare yourself to other people, instead, see how you line up to the Word of God and change yourself to be more like it. If we strive to be more like God, all the other issues of the issues seems to dissolve and our lives are then compared to the creator of the world, not to the world itself.

Trusting sometimes can get hard. 

I heard a statistic for where I live yesterday in Modesto CA that our unemployment rate is 18%… 18%!!! This is obviously very high in comparison to the rest of the country. 

Last night at our weekly prayer meeting, we prayed for everyone that was unemployed. I was so excited to see so many people in a tough situation not give up and still trust in God. You could hear the underlying tone; “No matter WHAT I may walk through, I am going to TRUST in my God.”

Here is the promise I know:

Romans 8:28, “And we know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love Him. Who have been called according to His purpose.”  So often, we look at this and only think that it is going to be “happy” times and easy situations but the scripture says ALL things. This means every hard thing you go through, it will work out FOR you. It is time for us to change our thinking. We need to quit thinking on the past and only look to the future, striving to learn the lesson God is trying to teach us while reaching to obtain all that he has for us. I have heard it said that we only have a certain amount of thoughts per day. Of the total amount, how much are we spending on negativity and complaints? I wonder what could happen if we changed our thinking around to a positive attitude and making solutions?  It’s time to change our perspective. Keep trusting in God knowing that his promises will never return void.

Response:

What about you?  Are you trusting this promise God has for you? What can I with you about?

It’s 12:40 Am right now and, well, I CANNOT SLEEP! Insomnia has gotten the best of me tonight. So, I have decided to blog a little bit. I have been pondering a ton lately on people who I respect, admire, and would some day want to have a lifestyle resembling theirs and those who, well, don’t quite match up to that. We all have people that are role models in our lives and if we don’t, we need to reevaluate that. Here are a few common threads that I have noticed in every individual that I admire:

1)   They never gave up. I see so many people, day in and day out, that simply gave up. Whether it was something that was done wrong to them or an offense, they have turned from their dreams and walked a different path. I would love to tell you that the dream God gave you is yours and yours alone. Where are you passionate? Pursue it! It will get tough, you will get hurt, and chances are, someone will unintentionally hurt you. These are the times that I have found produce the character to keep you going. If I have found anything in respected leaders, they never gave up!

2)   They have tremendous character. Too often, we look only to pastors and ministers to be the ones with character and convictions to live at a higher calling than the world. Every Christian in this world is called to live to a higher level. Rise up and live in the freedom God has given us. Let your character match how big your dream is.

3)   They encourage. Encouragement to me separates the dreamers from the crowd simply because encouragement often involves seeing someone differently then who they are. I have had so many people tell me I could write songs and lead worship way before I even saw it. They encouraged, I dreamt, and it happened.  

I by no means am great at these three things and can only try my best every day to succeed as highly as I can in each of these areas. I’m sure as the years go on, I will find more and more of the basic elements of what it takes to have a successful family or ministry but for now, these are on the top of my heart.

It’s 1 AM now, we gotta record early in the morning. Tracking drums for “Love Riot,” and “My Glorious.” Neeeed sleep.