MADE Week 2

This is week 2 of RMCC's series based off the MTV show Made where Pastor Jeff will be discussing what is our purpose in life. We will be hitting several areas, lifegroups, where real life happens, worship encounters, where we get to experience God, and volunteer teams, where we get to serve the body and people of our community. Join us as I get to coach Cougar McSangston on life and how to get made into what God has him to be.

This was a great week discussing worship and how worship is more than just singing... even blogging can be a form of worship, smile!

...read more on "MADE Week 2"!

God and Our Lack of Worship

Today was a good day. I began to look into some deep philosophies of worship for our youth X/perience:worship: series coming up in March. In one essence I was freaked out, in another I am very excited. God is amazing and as I studied what worship is I learned that worship is initiated with God. Yeah, crazy. He created us in His image to worship him. Him creating us in his image began that worship experience, the initiation process. I think about the students in our youth ministry and see the shallowness, my very own reflection on the shallow pond. Chris Stapley said that it used to be a narrow and a mile deep and now it's a mile wid and an inch deep. I thought about it and thought about it. It came to my mind that our students aren't getting it. They are not getting that God has created them in His image and initiated the worship experience. How/Why/Won't we go after God? What stops us from chasing, pursuing, not stopping until we have caught God and wrap our arms around him and not let go, we say, "God, I'm not letting go until I have X/perienced everything from you."

I imagine it and see it in my mind already. I am not even a father yet. Chez being 3+ months pregnant and already seing me as being a father. I can also picture a father and his young child. The child begins to chase after daddy and he steps back each time as the child is going to grab him. Of course this is an impossible reach for the young child. One step of the father is equal to ten or so steps for the child. The dad also knows that he can run away and hide and the child after a minute will most likely give up, sit down, and quickly be distracted by something and forget all about dad. WOW, is that where our teens are? Could it be that they have lost sight of God, may God have gone too far away and now they have gotten distracted? Well the father knows this and knows not to get out of sight and make the game impossible. Every once in a while the father will stop and allow the child to catch him and the child is exuberant and excited to finally catch his dad. Now I have experienced God in such a real way where he, for what ever reason has allowed me to catch him and I had such an amazing experience with Him. So has God hidden form the teens and they have missed him and found something else? I don't believe so, I believe that the difference between us and toddlers is that as Jesus said, "Suffer not the little children to come to me", then he blessed the child. As adults or even teens we are much more carnal and more self-centered. I truly believe that our reasons for not X/periencing God is because of our self-centered mindset. The psyche of our mind says my needs first before what God wants. Maybe some of us, the teens, have began to focus on themselves and forgot the need and obligation of our being is to worship the One who created us. So maybe I can begin to focus on the reason of my being.

My prayer: How do I convey to a group of teens that God is so worthy of our sacrifices?

...read more on "God and Our Lack of Worship"!

Not Forgetting God

I have been moving out of one house into a new house and it is amazing how many things I have found that I didn't realize I even had. Every time I cleaned out an area I found more and more stuff. Some junk and some forgotten things that brought back memories. I realized that I had to throw out a lot of junk and clean a lot of things up. I realized how many things I forgot about. How dumb am I to forget about so much.

Then I realized that memories never "leave" our brain. Everything that we have ever heard or seen or known is in our memory. In psychology you learn that your memory is literally infinite. So you never "forget" you just have "memory recall failure". It's like going to a door and trying to get in and you have tons of keys on your ring and you can't figure out which key it is. Our problem is linking the memories. you just have to get the right link. I realize sometimes vital information or good memories get put on a shelf or behind that door and what was only suppose to be for a moment becomes "lost".

My question to myself is what does it take for people to really want to experience God. What holds us back? Why are we so calloused to the spiritual things of God? Some guys asked Jesus once, “Which of the commandments (or laws) is the most important?” In other words they were saying that they knew there was no way they could uphold all of the laws with perfection. So which one should they definitely try to nail? Jesus replied, “You should love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hinge all of the laws of the prophets.” Maybe our calloused hearts began one day when we put God on that one shelf. You know that shelf that is right by your door. Maybe you said to yourself I will pick it up later. Later never came, and now we are comfortable without him. God became irrelevant because we lost focus on him. He just began to collect dust and was meaningless to us. Not because we don't need him but because he isn't the first and primary focus in our life. See after we put God on the shelf only intended for a moment it turns into a day, then a day turns into a week, then he gets covered up and forgotten. That's Jesus' challenge to us, to never put him on a shelf. Jesus knows that if we love our God with ALL of our body, soul, and mind we would never forget him. Furthermore if we love him first then love others all other things fall right into place.

...read more on "Not Forgetting God"!