choices

1 Sam 16:8-11 - Then Jesse told his son Abinadab to step forward and walk in front of Samuel. But Samuel said, "This is not the one the LORD has chosen." 9 Next Jesse summoned Shammah, but Samuel said, "Neither is this the one the LORD has chosen." 10 In the same way all seven of Jesse's sons were presented to Samuel. But Samuel said to Jesse, "The LORD has not chosen any of these." 11 Then Samuel asked, "Are these all the sons you have?”

Choices. It would have been easy and very tempting to Samuel to pick the 'last' of Jesse's sons. For all he knew, he had seen all the sons, but he was sensitive enough to God to know that he had not yet seen what God was looking for, so he asked the question, “Are these all the sons you have?”Most of us have read the story and know that his question prompted Jesse to call for his youngest son David, who was God's chosen king.

I want to live my life like Samuel in this respect. I don't want to settle for less than God wants just because it's all I can see at the time. Lord, please help me to search out Your best, even when it appears to be hidden.

get to vs. have to

Check out this thought for the day. Man, I love how Seth Godin thinks.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/09/get-to-vs-have.html

This mindset is especially important to those of us who are in or aspire to ministry.

free range kids

I'm watching my favorite show, Dr. Phil and the topic is "Excessive Moms". The question is "can you be too reckless with your kids and can you be too protective with them? Of course, the answer to both is yes. I was turned on to a cool new blog www.freerangekids.com. Check it out.

church today

Can it be? It's 6:25am and all my kids are still asleep - even Jude. Things really are getting less intense when it comes to my kids. Take church last night, which was fantastic by the way - if you've never been to the Saturday night service at Freedom Valley you should check it out, anyway back to last night. It used to be such a stressor for me to bring all my kids to church (or anywhere), but now that they are bigger and more independent it is really fun. They love it and so do I. I think one of the biggest changes has been my outlook. I've loosened up some and that's made such a difference. I think I have been guilty in the past of wanting to be such a good dad, that I've stressed myself and the rest of my family out trying. I don't miss that and I'm sure my family doesn't either.

Last night was so much fun that I'm sore from it - I was the guy all the kids were supposed to jump higher than in Kids Connect worship last night. Boy am I feeling that! But the joy on those little faces jumping around praising God is worth it all. So, I better go get ready for church. I'm sure God has some great things in store.

the last 5%

This morning I was reading in I Samuel about King Saul. The story today was God telling Saul to go and completely destroy the Amelakites. Well, he (Saul) did about 95% of the job. He killed all the people with the exception of the king and killed all the weak and undesirable animals only keeping the good ones to sacrifice to the Lord later. What he did sounds pretty good to most people; he did mostly what God asked. But God was not at all impressed or even pleased with Saul's almost obedience. In the end, this rejection of God's instruction was the act that made God decide to remove his blessing from Saul as King.

The thing that just make me feel a little sick about it all is that I'm so much like Saul. I'm no king, but I'm a leader and I can justify and even feel good about completing 95% of a task that God gives me. But what I'm learning lately is that just about everyone can do that and 95% in that sense is not like 95% on an exam in school. 95% is no longer excellent. 95% when it comes to obedience to God is unacceptable . . . disgraceful. It's the 5% that requires most of the effort. American culture says "doing enough is good enough". God's not American. God is God and his standard is higher. Lord, help me get out of the mindset of mediocrity and do all You've asked me to do with excellence. Help me to do the last 5%.

volunteers . . .

This week's Harvard Business Idea Cast (podcast) talks about a relatively new and seemingly revolutionary idea. It seems that businesses have realized that their customers are quite willing to help in research, development and even execution of their products and/or services at very little or no cost to the company. It's very interesting to listen to the specifics, like Intuit's online community answering tax prep questions for each other as opposed to paying a bank of experts to do so or Amazon's idea years ago to have consumers rate products as opposed to experts once again.

As interesting as this might be, I must point out that the church has been operating like this from it's inception. Or maybe I should say that it should operate this way. If God has taught me anything lately, it's the incredible value of volunteers in His Kingdom. That handful of paid church leaders are not there to do be God's hand on earth, but to enable the church to be God's hand on earth. This concept is alive and well in certain pockets of the church, but I fear that it's not widespread enough. Lord, please help me not marginalize your Kingdom by doing too much myself.

two in one day!

Unheard of! I've written twice in one day. I had a light day meant for catch up, but then an afternoon meeting was canceled. I finally caught up on e-mail, did some good reading in my favorite blogs, subscribed to some new podcasts and worked up some teaching for a kids lesson I'll be doing this weekend . . . and that was all after I had an incredibly productive meeting with the world's greatest youth pastor, Daniel St. Armand. I love days like this!