Awning

Today we did some more work on the ONE24 building! We took down an awning that was over the front entrance. Good times. I'll try to post some pics & video of the event. We ended up using the truck to pull the supports out of under the awning after using a massive saw to cut through the steel (BOOM)!
I've finished some interesting books lately: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team & Death By Meeting, both by Patrick Lencioni. I enjoyed these two books about teamwork and meetings: I definitely found some things I need to be putting into practice!
I also finished reading The Gospel According to Starbucks by Len Sweet which looks at the Starbucks experience to see what the church can and should learn from what they're doing as he exegetes culture and the Bible. I just started with the first few pages of The Missions Addiction by David Shibley.

Well, Sarah's been out of town since Friday afternoon helping a great-aunt of mine and she will be getting back tomorrow afternoon. Between now and then I will be getting some much needed sleep, then leading worship in the morning and finally going to play some paintball with the guys from the Radiate CORE group I lead.
Until next time: same bat time, same bat channel!

CRU

I got to speak at Campus Crusade in Moorhead, MN last night. Sarah and I were able to go up a bit earlier to catch up with Kory Wolter at Qdoba (love that place, although not quite as much as Chipotle :). Anyway, it was great to be able to share some reflections from the book unChristian together with some thoughts on Acts 4:13 where the Jewish leaders were amazed at Peter and John and "took note" or "knew" that they had been with Jesus. It was a call to be like Jesus, or as Len Sweet says, be the "spittin' image" of Jesus. Let's stop being known for what we're against (and hypocrisy, judgmentalism, etc.) and let's be known for being like Jesus: kind, loving, compassionate, brave, risk taking, gracious, genuinely caring, radical about the right things, supernatural, the list would go on, but basically characterized by the same kind of radical love.

Fear Factor

Today will probably go down in Radiate history as the most disgusting day ever. We were talking about fear and it's effects this week and decided to have a little Fear Factor competition tonight. We started out dropping marshmallows covered in ketchup into people's mouths, there was a lot of missing the mark that went on there. Then we had a Chubby bunny style game with Warheads instead, that was hilarious, I think Izzy got 30 in his mouth! (there was lots of drool!) After that we went into digging coins out of a bowl of worms followed by the return of the Diaper Delicacy...this year we had to (I say we because I was one of them) pull 3 worms (gummy) out of the bottom of this disgusting goop in a diaper and eat them...I came in second :( (I almost puked!)
Anyway, a few thoughts on fear: I think that the spirit of fear (be it of man, rejection, the unknown, death, etc.) controls and manipulates us and keeps us from attaining what God has for us in every area of our lives. What's worse is that many times we open ourselves up to fear for thrills (like horror movies or other activities intended to give you a rush by making you scared) and then wonder why we struggle with fear, anxiety or self-esteem problems. I think that that rush from fear is satan's counterfeit for the Fear of the Lord...the kind you have when you have experienced him and realize how truly awesome He is! God is waiting to show himself to us and teach us experientially what it means to know and fear Him, but instead we chase after cheap thrills to give us a rush...it's like he's saying: "come to me and ask me to teach you to fear me (to know my awesome power even be freaked out by it) and you will have life, peace, rest, knowledge, wisdom, fulfillment, etc (check out Proverbs for more, also read Psalm 34).
So don't buy into the counterfeit of the spirit of fear and get some of the Fear of the Lord and you'll realize that you don't have to fear anything else anymore!

Too Much Espresso

So yesterday between noon and 5 p.m. I had 4 shots of espresso. Apparently that is a little too much for me, I didn't really feel the effects of it until I tried to go to sleep: I didn't fall asleep until 4 a.m. So the good news is that I finished reading Deadly Viper Character Assassins. It was a great book, with some very creative writing styles, that deals with ways the enemy would ruin our lives by messing with our character. I am also almost done reading unChristian, which has really helped make me more sensitive to the way Christians have hurt other people, many times without intending, and unfortunately sometimes intending to.
I had to meet someone at ONE24 at 8 a.m. and I slept through my alarm! Thank God I only showed up 5 minutes late...phew.

Well, I'm gonna go get another espresso :-)

Faith/Trust

Tonight we talked some more about Faith/Trust in the book of Proverbs.
Proverbs 22:17-19 (NLT) "Listen to the words of the wise; apply your heart to my instruction. For it is good to keep these sayings in your heart and always ready on your lips. I am teaching you today—yes, you—so you will trust in the Lord."
It's interesting how Solomon keeps pointing us back to listening to what he has to say and diligently studying it out. In the last couple of weeks we looked at how to find faith and benefits of faith listed in Proverbs. In these verses Solomon is reminding us to get into what he is teaching us as a basis for trusting God. So, it would seem that if we're having a hard time trusting God we need to read more of what he has to say and "apply our heart" to it...he even goes as far as saying that we should memorize it so that it is not far from our lips! What a crazy thought! :-) I think it's awesome that we can trust God and that not only does He want us to trust Him, he helps us trust him by showing us some things we can do to grow in our trust of him! He's that good!

Transforming Love

Last night at the college ministry Collette Michal (she's the InterVarsity staff that has been working on the NDSCS campus for several years now) shared on Luke 7 where it talks about the woman that was a "sinner" and came and washed Jesus' feet with expensive perfume mixed with her tears and then dried it up with her hair. There are many different things that we could have focused on from that passage, like her using her "glory" to wipe his feet, or the extravagant worship she showed, or hypocrisy of those who saw her worship. Instead Collette led the group in digging into the transforming power of God's love. How she was a new person who left that place not only forgiven by Jesus, but also validated. Imagine the sense you would have when the Messiah acknowledges your worship, forgives your sin AND dismisses the judgments and labels that had been put on her by the world and the religious!
I think a lot of times we forget where God has brought us from and we are like the Pharisees that judged the woman for her past life. How many times do we pounce on people for their sin, but rationalize our own? How many sins are we "against" as a church while we dismiss or ignore those things in our own life? Do you judge a person who has not experienced the love and grace of God more harshly than you judge yourself? I know I have. God help us to be more like YOU!

First Concert

We had an awesome ONE24 fundraising concert tonight (our first one). Clyde Bauman (Mylo Hatzenbuhler) and The Chancellors Quartet did an amazing job. We had a great video that outlined the ONE24 vision and were able to talk to a lot of people that were able to hear about the project and many others made a decision to get involved! God is so cool!