Kingdom Minded (Part 4)

Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ~Matthew 6:33

I'm a firm believer that spiritual maturity is when you realize that everything you need in life, God has already provided, and you're able to live your life making an impact on other people. Life no longer is about you - but about changing the world for the Kingdom of God.

I believe the first step to becoming Kingdom minded is to daily renew our minds to what God's Word says about our call to change the world.


Here are some principles that I am always going over and reminding myself of. These need to be embedded in our hearts if we're going to do what God called us to do:

We're Called to the World, Not the Church - Mark 16:15,16 and Matthew 28:16-20 we're COMMANDED to go out and change THE WORLD (Not the church). The church should be a place where we get equipped and matured to go out and change the world. If we're not changing our communities, cities, counties, states, and nations...we're off.

We'll Never Change the World for God if we Don't Die to Ourselves - Jesus said in Mark 10:39 and several other places that we have to lose our lives FOR HIS SAKE in order to find it. I truly believe that...so many people are looking for purpose in life. They'll never find it aside from God. We have to be willing to let go of our dreams, our desires, our passions and exchange them for His. Paul understood this when he said in Gal. 2:20 that it's no longer I that lives, but Christ that lives in me.

We Need to See People the Way God Sees Them: Romans 3:23 says we've all fallen short of the glory of God. I think as Christians it's easy to forget that the only difference between me and someone in the world is God. Without the grace of God I too would be lost... it's so easy to forget where we were before we met God isn't it? Aren't you glad He loved you where you were at? We need to do the same for people...

We Need to Love People - In John 13:35, Jesus said that people will know your His disciples if you love one another. I think one reason the world has such a bad view of God and Christians is because we're not loving one another. The best definition I've heard of love is: Love always does what is most beneficial for the other person. If a stranger met you on the street - would they see love? Would they see Jesus?

That's enough for now... Thoughts?

Read more...

My Trip to Atlanta: Life Changing

The Cadre: Phoenix Fall Retreat

I've mentioned it before, but I am in a youth ministry mentoring program with Jeanne Mayo called The Cadre. It is a program where Jeanne mentors youth pastors all over the country and twice during the year you get to fly down to her house to hang out with her and the other youth pastors in the group. If I had to summarize my 3-day experience in Atlanta in two words it would be: Life Changing. I won't go into detail on everything we did (if you'd like to know ask me in person), but I would like to leave you with some lessons I learned and some things God did in my heart:

The Power of Love - if I had to describe Jeanne Mayo in a word, it'd be love. As I watched hundreds of people call her "mom", I realized the power of loving others. She is a mom to everyone that comes into her life. I asked Jeanne how she got to where she is today and her response was, "I've made the decision to add value to people everyday". In other words - she chose to love people everyday and as a result thousands of teenagers, twenty somethings, and youth pastors lives have been changed.

The Power of Family - I love learning about raising great families (because I'm preparing for mine!!!). As I looked around Jeanne's house I could tell family was at the top of her priority list.
One thing that really stuck out to me was a "Mayo Family Creed" a document with 11 or 12 principles on it that defined their family and that they live by. The whole family had to sign it and at her sons wedding, he got a framed copy and had his wife sign it (that fires me up!). Her son actually wrote a book on how he was raised... they were very strategic with raising their family and it worked - I can't wait for mine!

The Power of Relationships - One of the things I enjoyed the most about the trip was forming and building new relationships. I met pastors and students from all over the country who love God. I would have paid a million dollars for that part of the experience. Having friends that I can go to that don't know everything going on in Pittsburgh and I can be totally transparent with and they'll love me for who I am. I love everybody I met!

The Power of Refreshment - I'm now convinced that we need to take retreats once or twice a year away from everything and just take time reflecting on our lives, meeting new people, and get refreshed. This was one of those weeks!

My Future Wife - Someone spoke into my life about this - they said... You think having a wife will fill a need in you only God can fill. Unless you fill that void with God, you'll get married and be terribly disappointed because you'd be expecting your wife to fill a void that she was never created to fill. (Sick stuff!)

The Unlimited Potential of Young People - There were over 80 Masters Commission students ages 18-23 serving us for the week. These are some incredible people who love God with all of their heart. Seeing what God was doing in and through them go me so pumped up I can't even put it into words. They are all going to go on and be world changers - we really do need to believe in the upcoming generation.

Respect - Jeanne "slapped" me in this face with this one. She said, "Some of you are sarcastic and try being funny all the time because that is how you find security. You need to quit that - if you want people to respect you and take you seriously - grow up and be secure in who you are." That hit me deep... reminds me of the whole "Am I going to be a leader or a clown" lesson.

Wherever you are - Be there - Jeanne stressed this principle! This is something I struggle with - a thousand things always going through my mind and I'm not always "there". She not only taught it, but modeled it. Making every second count - I need to work on this.

Legacy - The Cadre (youth pastor mentoring) is the legacy Jeanne Mayo wants to leave behind. A legacy of raising up leaders who will raise up leaders and change the world. It was amazing to see this unfolding before my eyes - I was seeing a legacy being lived out. I would love to do a mentoring group like this one day... What do you want your legacy to be?

I learned about 10,o00 other things and had one of the most incredible experiences of my life at Jeanne's. I wish I could go on, but once again, I've seemed to blog too much!!! I'll probably have more to come on this series... stay tuned.

Ask anything Friday tomorrow...get ready!

Love you guys - I missed all of you! - Bubs

Read more...

Without Love, We are Nothing

"If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing."

I Cor. 13:1-3

I want to talk about love for a minute. No, I'm not talking about love in relationships or in marriage, but it certainly applies in both of those arenas. I think love whether it's in our families, friendships, community, or any other arena of life is a journey. We literally have an unlimited capacity to love don't we? A husband and wife who are in love and have a child don't split the love they had for each other and give 50% to their spouse and 50% to their new child do they? Their ability to love increases. Literally our ability to love is limitless.

While I don't think we'll ever come close to tapping into our full capacity or potential to love, I do believe love is a journey, love is something that grows. Most importantly I believe that we'll never learn to love anybody the way we should until we experience the Love that God has for us. We can't give something we don't have and if we've never experienced God's love (He is love!) then we'll never know how to love the poor, the lost, our friends, our families, our communities, our nation, and even our world.

I Cor. 3 goes on to say that love has these characteristics:

• Love suffers long and is kind
• Love does not envy
• Love does not parade itself
• Love is not puffed up
• Love does not behave rudely
• Love does not seek its own
• Love is not provoked and thinks no evil
• Love does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in truth
• Love bears all things
• Love always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres
• Love never fails

I think often we hear these things and think that is nice and I'll rehearse those versus at my wedding and everyone will think I know what love is! If I were to be honest with you, I think I am just starting to tap into (only touching the surface) of what true love is. It's one thing to quote a scripture, it's an entirely different thing to live it.

It's easy to love someone when you get something in return and everything is going alright. It's hard to love when we get nothing in return and perhaps, frankly, the other party doesn't deserve to be loved (the poor, the lost, someone who hurt us, our families, etc.). When these opportunities present themselves in our lives, I believe they are some of our first opportunities to love.

It's when we realize that when we didn't deserve to be loved and even though we deserved to go to Hell, God chose to love us. In fact, the Bible says that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Thought I'm not going in depth on that, that is a love I cannot comprehend or understand.

If you want to experience a love that suffers long and is kind, does not envy, does not parade itself, is not puffed up, does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked and thinks no evil, does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in truth, bears all things, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres, and never fails then you need to run straight to the feet of Jesus. It's only when we're willing to lay down our lives and all that we are: our faults, failures, dreams, and desires at His feet that we'll experience His love. And I would submit to you, until we've experience love (God) we'll never truly know how to or have the ability to truly love anyone else.

Read more...

Love Never Fails

"So Many People Want a Love they can Feel Instead of a Love that's Real"

-Erwin McManus

This is an area that God has been teaching me a lot in. Love... I used to think love was when you feel all warm and toasty inside or when I felt good because of the way somebody treated or loved me. I would hear leaders and pastors constantly say that in every situation you need to ask the question, "What would love do?" and I'd think to myself, I know that! That makes sense! But I didn't have a clue what real love was, I only knew what love on the basis of how I feel was.

I Cor. 3:1-3 basically says listen... I could own everything on the planet, I could have achieved more than any other human being on the planet, be more popular and influential than anyone on the planet, love what I see in the mirror, and yet if I don't have love, I would have gained nothing. When I see things in that perspective I start to realize that if what I am doing with my life isn't building the Kingdom of God and adding value to people, then ultimately it's worthless. When I die, everything that wasn't done in love and didn't build the Kingdom of God will instantly burn up into a pile of ash before my eyes.

One of the greatest statements I've heard on love, I heard from Doug Jones. He said, "Love always does what is most beneficial for the other person." I'm really coming to learn that Love is about giving yourself away. Laying down my wants, my desires, etc. in order to benefit another person. I like what Erwin McManus said, "Part of the product of Love is being aware of how our lives affects other people."

Real love isn't about me, what I can get out of something, how other people can make me feel.

Real love is about giving yourself away, laying down your desires to lift up somebody else's, adding value to people regardless of whether or not you get anything in return... I could go on and on.

I constantly ask myself and encourage you to ask yourself:

• Are you overly focused on yourself?

• Do you treat people based on what they can do for you?

• Am I doing whats most beneficial for the people I love the most in everything I act, do, and say?

• What am I doing for the Kingdom of God and how will the way I treat this person impact their lives and their eternity

What would real love do?

Read more...