Success is natural. The river of life leads us there. But there are dams on that river that prevent us from arriving at that point called success.  My life is about helping people identify those dams—we’ll call them blockages—which prevent the river of their life from delivering them into that great ocean downstream which we’ll call “Success.”

What are those blockages? They could be anything: How you grew up; Some little, silly something that a teacher said; Erroneous teachings from unknowledgeable leaders in your religion; The Great Depression’s influence on your parents or grandparents. Today, blockages are being created in the lives of young people who are growing up with a parent gone to war. Blockages can come from anywhere. And we’ve ALL got them.

I recall one man who, recently divorced, was asked why he ever married the girl in the first place. He said “I thought she was pretty. As a child my parents had always teased me about growing up to marry the “ugly” little girls in class; the dirty haired ones with snot bubbles hanging out their nose.  So when I got the chance to catch a beauty, I did.”

Turns out she was beautiful on the outside, but broken on the inside. The result was a divorce devastating in its emotional, personal and professional impact even a decade later.

Wow! That was a messy blockage, producing bad thinking, and leading to a personal  train wreck. How much better it would have been if that blockage could have been identified and removed earlier allowing the flow of the river to lead to a successful marriage.

We often feel guilty about our blockages, so much so that we may be reluctant to admit them, and therein lies the first lesson: There’s no shame in having a blockage. It’s not your fault. It’s not a weakness. It’s just an “is.” It’s a factor that affects your success. The first key to blowing up that dam on the River of Success is recognizing that it exists, admitting it, and moving beyond the false & improper guilt and shame to look for a solution. We want to dynamite that dam—blow it up—so the natural flow of the water carries you downstream to the Ocean of Success.

Exactly what is that blockage? Is it a circumstance? Or, is it a mental paradigm; a way of thinking that needs to be changed? It could be either, but more often than not its simply a way of thinking or a “false belief” that needs to be eliminated. Sometimes those false beliefs may be so deeply rooted that it’s hard to get to the tap root eliminate them. Our strongly-held, false beliefs may even be so comfortable we don’t want to let them go. There can be a sense of security, even in false belief!

Removing the dams on the River of Success requires willingness on your part to #1. Look into yourself and discover the blockage. #2. Delve into your thinking to ask yourself why you think that way. #3. Be willing to challenge your own belief to be sure it is correct or to change your thinking if it needs to be changed. When you remove those blockages, you’ll be amazed at how quickly the current of the River of Success will deliver you to higher and higher levels of achievement and personal satisfaction.

Core Value #5 in our company is Winning. The theme Bible passage for that core value comes from Jeremiah 29:11 where God said to his people “I know the plans I have for you. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you hope and a future.” I taught this core value in our team training last week, waxing eloquently about why winning was important, about why God’s design for us to win, and about attitudes and attributes of winners. My team bought it hook, line & sinker.

Unbeknownst to me, the day before friends of mine had lost their son-in-law to a car accident. He died leaving a young wife, and two primary school aged children. Today the mother-in-law posted to Facebook that the last two days (which included the funeral) had been the hardest of her life.

Plans to prosper you………not to harm………hope…….a future.

So where is the prosperity, the hope, the future in this? Where’s the God who wants us to win that I taught about last week? I’ve been struggling with that thought. My guess is that its hard to offer praise to God in a household that has experienced such loss, I get that. How can we maintain our faith and reconcile the death of this Daddy with a God who says he wants to prosper us, give us a hope and a future. This is hard math. I just can’t make it add up.

I remember Job had everything taken from him, and he said “Yet if God slays me, I will still trust him.” Nice poetry. But none of us want to have to do it.

Understanding why this young man died is beyond my grasp. But I do remember hearing Babbie Mason sing once at our church in Columbia that “God is too wise to be mistaken. God is too good to be unkind. So when you don’t understand, when you don’t see His plan, when you can’t trace His hand, trust His heart.” His heart is pointed toward us, toward that young widow, her children and even the young man that was taken from them.

I believe that.

We who trust Him do so because we know Him. We know His character. We know His voice. We know His deeds. We know what He says about His desire and intent for us. That’s enough to allow us to continue trusting Him when nothing makes sense. We’ve read the end of the story. And it allows us to say with Job “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.”

A friend wrote his daughters a letter entitled “Could be rough being a girl?” Its a worthy effort from a Dad to his daughters. That’s why I’m reprinting it just as he wrote it here.

Most teenage girls I believe are unhappy with who they are. They define their happiness by how they look, how many friends they have, whether or not they have a boyfriend, what kind of grades they are making, or if they made the softball team or choir/play. There are so many reasons to decide why you may not like yourself  if you are focused on exterior things or people to make you happy. True happiness comes from the inside. God wants you to enjoy your life and celebrate YOU! How do you celebrate YOU in a world that is so focused on material things? You keep your focus on the things of God. Don’t compare yourself to other girls, don’t qllow what boys might say about you to affect the way you feel about yourself. Who does God say you are? God says you are the apply of His eye, and that He loves you (He loves you)! God’s word tells you that you are more than a conqueror and that you can do ALL things through Christ who strengthens you (sing, play softball, or whatever your passion is). God loves you and has a perfect plan for your life, start today by looking in the mirror and telling yourself how SPECIAL you are! Don’t forget Jesus died on the cross because HE loved you. God wants you to be happy, and happiness is a decision that you make! Decide today to be happy about who you are! Celebrate who you are and others will begin to notice that there is something different about you! God bless you and have a happy day today.

I spent some time writing this girls. I love you very much and want the best for you as God does (you are SPECIAL). Be comfortable in your skin. You shall achieve what you beleive. Always believe great things. Please don’t forget these words. Believing in you tells God that you believe in him.

Daddy

Within your heart keep one still secret spot, where dreams may go, and sheltered so, may thrive and grow where doubt and fear are not. Oh, keep a place within your heart for little dreams to go. –Louise Driscoll

“We spend a way too much time talking about how to do church, and not enough time actually doing church.” That thought popped into my mind randomly today. I don’t know why. It’s kind of weird when random thoughts hijack you. 

The topic isn’t foreign to me. I’ve gone to church all my life. I pastored a traditional country church, and then planted a suburban church 22 years ago—the first seeker sensitive church planted in Missouri which I pastored for seven years. I was pro-seeker when that wasn’t cool, yet. 

Popular Missiologist Ed Stetzer is a friend of mine (I hope I don’t use that word friend too loosely—we’ve shared a few meals, I’ve been in his home, and we’ve shared a common cheerleader for many years in Lizette) and he writes a couple of times a week about different people doing church in different ways. There are studies, and think tanks, and conferences, and books about festivals and fireworks and events designed to reach people. 

I’m really tired of all the talk about how to do church. I just want to do it. 

What does doing church mean?

I can’t answer that for you and fear my answer might be theologically insufficient for God. So, I’ll just try to answer it for me. I’ll guarantee you that I’ll leave something out, so save your corrective replies and emails. This isn’t a definitive and comprehensive tome. It’s me “talking” through my thoughts. 

First and foremost church is about worshipping God. I’ve been to a lot of church where God wasn’t worshipped. In many of the services influenced by the seeker movement, God is not worshipped. Man is. The service is designed around man. I’ve concluded that’s wrong. But the traditional church doesn’t do any better. That’s why we started this who seeker thing in the first place. 

Church is about teaching people. That means we need to open the Bible and explain what it means. I’m weary of services where the big screen is full of pop stars and cultural icons drawing analogies from People Magazine. Aren’t there enough analogies in life to help us clarify what the scripture means? People Magazine and Entertainment Tonight aren’t real life. The people I live among and work around don’t have boob jobs (most of them, anyway) or Botox their lips. They work 8-10 hour days, help kids with homework, clean house on weekends, and worry about mortgage payments and paying for the kids education. Their shoes are Payless, not Prada. 

Church is about community. It’s about knowing each other, caring about each other, serving and celebrating each other. It’s about mourning together when one mourns, about crying your own tears of joy when you see their tears of joy, about helping someone translate the confusing passages of life for which you hold the experience key, and their doing the same for you when your day comes to be lost in the woods. 

Church is about being real. It’s about real answers even when the real answer is “I don’t know.” 

Church is about helping people who don’t know God come to know him organically. It’s about reproduction not evangelism. I’m for soul winning. I’ve led many people to pray the Sinner’s Prayer. But I wonder how many of them over the years, the miles and the towns really became disciples? Heaven only knows and I fear the answer. There are likely way too many notches in my Bible. 

Reproduction comes from relationship, while evangelism is an event. You might liken reproduction to the baby born from a loving marriage relationship and evangelism as the bastard child born from a one night stand where a smooth talker like me convinced somebody to pray the Sinner’s Prayer. 

Now before you start throwing stones please realize I know that people do come to know Christ from chance meetings and go on to develop into disciples. I’ve been the midwife at those spiritual births. But in the big picture, evangelistic events and emphases feel contrived to me while reproduction seems a natural outgrowth of our own maturity in Christ. Yet I also wonder how many of us who call ourselves saved really have anything that is worth reproducing, and I wonder why more babies aren’t born. It seems we might have a lot of spiritual eunuchs in our midst. Hmmm. 

What I want out of my church experience.

I want to be a part of a people who are naturally glad to see each other, and who joyfully express their love for each other when they meet. 

I want to be part of a people for whom God is the central focus—the audience, and we are the actors and singers on the stage performing for the pleasure of the audience of one. 

I want to be a part of a people for whom it’s unthinkable to not have your own copy of the scriptures in your hand (electronic is fine, but I need paper) when you gather, and where the teacher cracks open the words, phrases, concepts and truths so that the sweet nectar of solid truth you can build a life on run down our arms and necks as we devour, discuss, apply, and revel in it.   

I want people who are hurting to be able to say “I’m hurting” and to tell us how without any fear of gossip, only the confidence that we’ll surround and love them. I want people who are experiencing joy and abundance to be able to tell us how great they are doing and how God is blessing them without any fear that they’ll be accused of bragging. 

I want to be able to ask odd questions, even those that might sound heretical. I want to chase rabbits until they help me uncover a new (to me) truth, or dissolve into heresy. 

I want to be able to confess my sinful actions, and let the light of honesty shine on my temptations without fearing that I’ll be thought less of or gossiped about at the next regular meeting of the spiritually superior. I want the brothers and sisters I worship with to be able to do the same, and in the few areas where I have actually obtained mastery I want to be able to help them find success themselves. 

I want to know that I can call those people at 3:00 in the morning and they’ll answer and help, and I want them to feel like they can call me (please wait until 6:00 a.m. I’m honestly not coherent at 3:00). 

I want to be among people who gather not to swap their anxiety-filled uncertainties, but to share their faith-filled confidences because of what God has done for them. I want to be able to lean on their faith when I don’t have any, and to learn from their wisdom when I don’t have any, and to be able to share mine when I do. 

I want to know that when I am sick and needy they’ll touch Heaven for me, and I’ll do the same for them.   

I want to do life successfully. 

I want to do life together. 

I don’t ever want to talk again about how to do church. I just want to do church. 

Now, in the words of that great theological giant Forrest Gump, “That’s all I’ll say about that.” For now.