Men, remember the message from Saturday?  We all know where we are weak.   If you say you don’t you’re lying to me and to yourself.  We know if we have pride issues, anger issues, etc.  If we know where we are weak, why do we not do a better job at building safeguards and defenses in our lives to protect us in those weak areas? None of us is Superman!   As a man myself, I will be honest…I don’t know a man alive that doesn’t struggle with lust.  If you are that guy then awesome!, please pray for the rest of us!  Men of Journey, let’s not let this area of our lives bring us to defeat.  Go with basic cable and get rid of Skinemax and HBO, because it’s too tempting!  Avoid those stores that display porno mags!  Make sure your internet access is filtered, with a password that only a trusted friend knows.  It shouldn’t be embarassing, it’s the way we are wired.  Remember, Jesus said, it is better to cut off your hand and go through life with one hand than to be headed to hell with our whole body.  How important are those things to you?  Cut them out of your life.  Here is a great resource if you are a fellow struggler with lust.

www.xxxchurch.com

I was flipping through the tv channels the other day and just like every other time I’ve been flipping through the channels, “Forrest Gump” was on.  I’ve seen this movie a thousand times (not as many times as Robby has) but if it’s on, it’s one of those movies that if it’s on, I’ll watch it.  It just so happened that the scene that was playing when I tuned in was the one where Lieutenant Dan, who is now in a wheelchair asks Forrest this question.  “Forrest, have you found Jesus?”  Forrest’s answer stirred something up in me.  He said, “I didn’t know I was suppossed to be looking for him.”    That statement just hit me like a ton of bricks.  So many people need Jesus.  They need His grace, His mercy and the forgiveness and wholeness that He offers, but they don’t know it.  Maybe, they’re not suppossed to be looking for Him.  I mean, if you know Jesus, did you find Him because you were looking for Him?  I didn’t.  Maybe He’s looking for them.  Maybe He wants to use us to bring himself to others.  But, my fear is, as the church we sit back and have our services and are just waiting and expecting for people to come to us looking for Jesus.  We give some of our money to missionaries that go for us, but we aren’t going.  Not even across the street…not even next door.  I think we have this warped view of lost people.  One where they are curled up in a fetal position in the corner, sucking their thumb, crying about how bad their life is, and how empty they are.  That may be the case sometimes, but I know lots of lost people that love life.  They have happy families, great jobs, great relationships, and they simply don’t feel they have a need for anything outside of themselves.  But, we need to bring Jesus to them, through our lives, through our friendships, through our prayers, through our actions that are so kind and selfless that they can’t help but want what we have.  Jesus came to give them life to the fullest.  How about you?  Are you developing relationships with your unsaved friends and neighbors in order to point them to Him?  Or do you even have any unsaved friends?  Just remember…they don’t even know they are suppossed to be looking for Him.

Mark

“Know that showing up is half the Battle!”   I have seen this quote on the walls of many a gym or weight room and it never fails to inspire me.  For me, showing up is the hardest part of the equation.  Whether it’s getting out of bed early, giving up time with my family, or time to rest…that’s what’s hard.  I don’t show up at the gym and then sit around…no, once I’m there I work out hard.  I know that 99% of you reading this can relate (the other 1 % are gym rats!)  I have been thinking about this quote and it has occurred to me that it’s true spiritually as well.  Showing up is truly half the battle.  Are there days that you just don’t feel like putting forth the effort spiritually?  Are there days that you don’t feel like it’s worth the effort to obey God and to apply the Word to your life?  Ever want to take a vacation from your faith?  Tempted sometimes to take a permanent one?  I know I do.  But, showing up is half the battle.  Refusing to quit, no matter how many times you’ve failed, committed that same sin, fallen into that same pattern of addictive behavior….that’s half the battle.  I want to be like Jesus, but sometimes I’m sooooo far away.  Just the realization that I’ll never fully get there in this life, so for now the journey is the destination.  But, I’ve got to let go of the shame and condemnation that I pile on myself, that I pile on others, and that others pile on me for not being perfect.  God may be leading me toward the peak, but maybe getting there is less important than getting up every morning and being willing to continue taking steps, to gut it out, even when I feel like turning back.  So, to those of you feeling discouraged, feeling like a failure, feeling like you’ll never be able to do this thing called following Christ…just get out of bed and make the choice to show up again today. After all, it is half the battle.

Mark

Tonight (May 12th) is our first softball game. Click here to get an updated (and much easier to read) schedule. Please note that the games will be held at 2 different fields (Severn Run & Severn Covenant Church). Tonight’s game is at 6 pm at Severn Covenant Church (20 Gambrills Rd., Severn, MD 21144). Please come out and support our team! This isn’t something just for those who are playing…it’s an opportunity to enjoy time together. Take advantage of it!

We will NOT be having our regular worship service on Saturday, May 23rd. Many of our families will be camping at Rocky Gap State Park. We invite you to join us for a day if you aren’t camping. Sunday seems to be the best day for that, but feel free to come anytime.

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If you’d like to visit and need more info as to where everyone will be, please email Robby.

We’ll be meeting at Robby & April’s house the next 2 weeks for Life Group. Let’s do our best to have a great turnout!! Next week (May 20th) we’ll have a BBQ!! Journey will provide the meat…you bring all the fixin’s (hopefully you know what that is).

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We’ll meet at our regular time of 6:30. BE THERE!!!!!!!!!

Quit living as if the purpose of life is to arrive safely at death. Grab life by the mane. Set God-sized goals. Pursue God-ordained passions. Go after a dream that is destined to fail without divine intervention. Keep asking questions. Keep making mistakes. Keep seeking God. Stop pointing out problems and become part of the solution. Stop repeating the past and start creating the future. Stop playing it safe and start taking risks. Accumulate experiences. Consider the lilies. Enjoy the journey. Find every excuse you can to celebrate everything you can. Live like today is the first day and last day of your life. Don’t let what’s wrong with you keep you from worshipping what’s right with God. Burn sinful bridges. Blaze new trails. Criticize by creating. Worry less about what people think and more about what God thinks. Don’t try to be who you’re not. Be yourself. Laugh at yourself. Quit holding out. Quit holding back. Quit running away.

Chase the lion.

I’m not making this up, I promise!  I read an article the other day about a 6 pound Chihuahua from Michigan who was literally blown away from her owner by a strong gust of wind.  The dog was eventually found nearly a mile from where “Tinker Bell” had last been seen.  Now, Chihuahuas are naturally small and light dogs and can’t help being blown away!  But how many of us are lightweights in our faith?  How many of us really have not progressed in our faith since the moment we called on Christ to save us?  Some of us are perpetually in the infancy stage of faith, not feasting on the deeper, meatier things of God’s Word, but still sucking on the bottle that we should have been weened off of long ago.  We don’t make time for silence, solitude, service, Sabbath, prayer and meditation on God’s Word in our lives and then don’t understand why we aren’t close to Him.  We rely solely on our pastor each week to spoon feed us and then complain if you want something deeper.  Here’s the newsflash…”the deeper comes in the silence, the solitude, the study, the serving, the prayer time…not from a pastors message.”  You are where you are spiritually  because you have taken the steps to get exactly where you are.  No one else is to blame…you are.  Sorry, hard to swallow, but the truth nonetheless.  So maybe it’s time to get out of the highchair, stop making excuses and start chasing after God…pursue Him, make Him a priority, get desperate for Him.  Ephesians chapter 4 tells us to “no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching…but to grow up into Him, Christ, who is the Head”.  So, are you a spiritual Chihuahua?  Maybe you need to put on some weight!

Mark

Please, please take 4 minutes and watch this clip.  It really sums up why we exist as a church, and what drives us to do what we do!

Mark

I spent a few hours today sorting through my baseball card collection.  I haven’t really actively collected in a few years, but I still have hundreds of thousands of cards.  As I sorted through these cards I started to realize how many of these players I had never heard of and had not really made it in the big leagues.  I’d say a good 40% of the players I was seeing, never realized their potential.  I then started to think about spiritual matters.  I wonder what the percentage of believers out there never really realize their God-given potential (myself included).  How many of us never truly step out of our comfort zones…you know, the place you have to go in order to realize that potential?  How many of us just are full of excuses, or are too lazy to really do the things that we know we should be doing for God.  Many of us are too comfortable with where we are currently and will never realize that potential because it takes obstacles, sacrifice and hard work to get there. So my question to you and to myself…”Am I living up to my God-given potential?”  If so great.  If not, why?  What is holding you back?  What is holding me back?  I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be just another career minor leaguer that never lived my dream.  Maybe our dreams are too small.

Mark