I hope everyone is having a great week. I was reading yesterday in Luke 9 about the experience of Jesus and some of the disciples on the mount of transfiguration.(v. 28-36) As I was reading there were a few things that struck me about the story.
First of all, the fact that it was an amazing, unbelievable, supernatural event. Can you imagine being on that mountain with Peter, James, and John? Jesus was glowing and talking with Moses and Elijah. Peter, James, and John were the only disciples who were able to be a part of this miraculous event. What supernatural events have you encountered with Jesus? If we are walking with Him, there are times in our life when we will be overwhelmed in His presence and we will experience the supernatural working of His Spirit. Times where we will see Him work in ways we cannot explain. If we are not experiencing moments like this with Him, we are probably not walking with Him as we ought, which leads me to the next thing.
Another amazing thing in this story is verse 32 where it says Peter and his companions were overcome with sleep. Really! Jesus is glowing and talking to Moses and Elijah and the disciples are about to miss everything. How sad. Unfortunately, as Christians, many times we miss a great work of Jesus because we are out of touch and "sleepwalking" through our life. If we are not careful, we can miss a mighty move of God because we are not paying attention.
The last thing about the story that can help us is Peter's idea after they had seen a miracle. Peter said, "lets build three tabernacles." Peter wanted to stay on the mountain. He wanted to hold onto this experience. Jesus had other plans. He understood that there was still work to do at the bottom of the mountain. We have to come down from the mountain, so we can accomplish His work.
While we should be experiencing God moments in our life regularly, God does not want us to stop there. He empowers us in those times to keep going as we seek to fulfill His purpose in the life we have been given.
In Christ,
Brad

Let me begin today by saying I am excited about the future and what God has in store. I was reminded last night that sometimes when God is refining you, which can be a painful process, sometimes we forget that He is still working in power around us. We lose sight of the fact that He is doing His work in us so that He can be more glorified and do increasingly amazing things. There are seasons to God's working. It reminds me of the verse in Psalm 126:5 that says, "Those who sow in tears, will reap with songs of joy."
I was reading in Luke chapter 9 today about Jesus feeding the 5000. I was struck with Jesus' challenge to the disciples. "You give them something to eat." Here were over 5000 people in a remote place and Jesus tells them to feed the people. Its hard to hear the disciples response and not think of ourselves. "All we have is 5 loaves, 2 fishes, unless we go buy food for aaaaaallllllllll these people." Obviously the disciples mindset was planted firmly in the natural. Even though these same disciples had just been on mission for Christ and seen many healings and other miraculous works (Luke 8), they never considered in this moment that Jesus could do something amazing to get the crowd fed.
We know the result. Jesus took the loaves and fishes and fed the 5000 and had plenty left over. We are many times stuck in thinking with the natural mind. The kingdom of God can not be understood and lived in with the natural mind. We must think supernaturally. John Calvin said, "The wisdom of the flesh is always exclaiming against the mysteries of God." Our natural mind will always fight against the supernatural working of God. When Jesus leads us to a challenge or call, it will never be accomplished by trusting in our natural thinking. It will require us to think with the mind of Christ and trust Him for supernatural provision.
When we walk with Jesus' mind, we get to live the adventure. Would you join Him.
Brad

A new week is here, I hope you are ready to be used this week in a great way. God has something special He wants to do in you this week.
I have been thinking a lot about vision over the past week. I have been praying for God to give me a vision for our church Lawrence Drive. I preached yesterday and began to lay the foundation for the vision God would have us to embrace. My desire is to know God's vision. I shared five foundational precepts about what our church should look like, if we are going to go hard after God's plan.
I asked them to imagine a place:
- Where people are desperate for God, and His Spirit dwells powerfully among the members both personally and corporately.
- Where members seek out and accept God-sized challenges.
- Where members are willing to give their lives to the ministry of the Body.
- Where the members come together with a great expectation of life change happening every week.
- Where members love one another unconditionally and exhort one another to a deeper walk with Christ.
I can't wait to see how God fleshes this out so that these could be marks of our church. Wouldn't you want to be a part of a church where these things are happening?
Let me here from you.
Brad

Good Afternoon everyone. I apologize for not posting the last few days. I hope to be back on the trail going forward. I want to especially say hello to my friend Alex Johnson, who is getting these through his mom. He is in basic training for the Marines. I want you to know we are praying for you as you begin a new phase of life.
As I write this post and reflect back over recent days, I see where the Lord is working in my life. As we seek to be wholly devoted to Him, many times He has to shape and mold and cut away things in our life that are not of Him. This is not always a pleasant process, and it can be hard and frustrating and burdensome. God has a way, as we seek Him, of bringing us to the end of our self. In fact, he knows, if we are not emptied of self, we will have a hard time producing fruit that remains. You see, my desire is to have an eternal impact on this world in the years God wants to give to me here, but to do that it has to be all of Him taking all of me. It is a difficult and trying process to walk through. So many people give up on being emptied and spend their days doing good things in their own strength that will have little eternal significance.
For me, I have always been a fairly confident person in my abilities. Feeling good about these abilities, many times it is easy to do things in your own strength and think you are being used by God. While in reality, there is little lasting impact. One of the hardest things to do is to allow God to take the things you think you are good at and sanctify them for His service. God is working on these areas of my life and forcing me to trust Him through it as He allows me to see that no matter what I do, unless He is doing it through me it will not produce lasting fruit.
Empty me Lord of all myself so I can become wholly yours, a vessel of honor for good works.
Brad

Thank you so much for the responses to yesterdays blog, and I hope you will keep them coming. I am very encouraged by them and look forward to reading more of them. As we move forward I want to discuss these qualities more and look at the biblical instruction.
I've been reading Paul's letter to the church at Colossae, and he speaks to issues that have been raised by your comments. In Colossians 2, toward the end of the chapter, Paul speaks to an issue that I believe plagues the modern church. Even though these Christians had received the new life only Christ could bring, they were now once again trusting in their rules and works to be changed. Today, church has become less about the real, genuine, eternal change only Christ can bring, and more about us setting up rules to legislate behavior. Even though we have changed kingdoms, we are still focused on earthly things.
In chapter 3 Paul says, "since you have been raised up with Christ, keeping seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on the things that are on the earth." Paul then goes on to expound on what this type of life should look like in the rest of the book.
He begins from the negative side, by telling us what must be put aside. Verse 5 - consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry. These were things you once walked in, but now put aside anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth - do not lie to one another. How different would our churches look if all those who were born again would put aside these evil practices. We are in such a deep need for holiness in our churches.
Paul begins here and so it must be where we begin the discussion. We need conviction from the Holy Spirit and a radical move of genuine repentance among the believers. Our works and rules have failed to bring life change. (v23) We must call out for the Spirit of God to fall among us. It begins with cleansing.
We will continue this discussion on Monday. Let me here from you, share with others.
Brad

Thursday is here, and the weekend is almost here. For most, this is a time of the week when people are winding down and getting ready to enjoy some free time. For me, as a pastor the work week is really just heating up. The pressure to have your sermon ready for Sunday is always in front of me and it occupies your mind. Sunday is an extremely hectic day with church and meetings and other activities. It is a different look at the weekend than most people experience.
I wanted to ask for your help in this blog. I wanted to ask you the question, If you could build your ideal church, exactly the way you wanted to, what would be some key aspects of that church? When I say build, I am speaking of starting, not necessarily physically building, although that could be part of your answer. I asked this question at our Wednesday night service last night and got some interesting answers. Help me out by posting your answers in the comment section. I want to here from everyone, even if you do not go to church now. I would love to have a wide perspective.
Thanks for your input, I look forward to hearing from you.
Brad

There has been so much discussion over the course of the last few days and coverage on Michael Jackson's life. As I caught just a little of the memorial service and read many comments on Facebook, I felt compelled to blog about the whole situation.
First of all, I would say that this service is representative of the fact that we live in an extremely confused spiritual state as a society. Our world is speeding toward universalism (the belief that everyone makes it to heaven eventually) at a rapid rate. The world today encourages everyone to be tolerant of everyone else's religion and beliefs and as long as someone is sincere, that person will get to God. Even many evangelical Christians are being swept up by this belief. Everyone thinks Jesus is a good man, great teacher, prophet, or whatever. No matter the religion, most everyone thinks highly of Jesus. So there are two strong currents in our world today, people believing everyone will make it to heaven, and a relatively high regard for Jesus the man.
The problem is that these two beliefs cannot co-exist. If I have a high view of Jesus I must understand what Jesus taught and proclaimed while He walked this earth. He said, I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and no man gets to the Father but by me. (John 14:6) He also claimed that He and the Father were one. He claimed that He would die for sin, rise again, and ascend to the right hand of the Father. He made all of these declarations while He walked this earth. He came to establish a new Kingdom . He said in John 10:10 that He came to that we might have life, and have it more abundantly. The way to life is only through Him. He is the one with the power to forgive sin and to give eternal life. He and He alone made that way for us. Jesus came to seek and to save those who are lost. We are a lost humanity. The only one with the power to give life is Jesus. God made a way through His Son Jesus Christ that we could be saved, it wasn't through Buddha or Mohammed or Confucious, Joseph Smith or any other religious proponent. Jesus is alive today and and He is offering life to all who will place their trust fully in Him. As a believer I am called to love all people whether they be muslim, buddhist, or any other religion. Whether they are gay, straight, bi or any other sexual preference. Whether they are a prostitute or a pop star but in every situation I am to model the love of Jesus Christ and to speak the Gospel lovingly and boldly in hopes that the same grace that saved me from my sin, would reach into their heart, by the power of the Holy Spirit and save them into eternal life and freedom from sin. I am called to never compromise the Truth of God's word but to stand in the world and lovingly call out to whosoever will to respond to His message. The problem is that many who claim to be Christians are not living out their faith and being a reflection of Jesus as we ought.
But please do not call Jesus a good teacher or a good man or a good prophet, He has not left us that option. He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords and returning King. He is our all in all, and the reason for hope, he is our Savior and one day every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
We as human beings have two options. We can bow our knee to Jesus now and place our faith and trust in Him and live for Him now. If I do that, I will enjoy abundant life with Him now and eternal, unbroken fellowship in Heaven with Him for all eternity. The other option we have is to live like we want to, believe what we want to, and do what we want to while we live on this earth and still one day we will bow our knee in submission to Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, if I wait to bow my knee on that day, I will be subject to God's everlasting judgement of eternal punishment in hell. We all deserve this. Thankfully, God loved us so much that He did what we could never do ourselves, and offers to all of us salvation through Jesus Christ our Lord.
As I watched the memorial today I was heartbroken to see the video that showed all of the religious symbols of our world flashing on the screen basically proclaiming that all roads lead to God. I did here a true statement in the service, one speaker said he will live forever and ever and ever. That is true for all of us. The only question is where. If I place my trust in Jesus it will be eternal joy in Heaven, if I fail to do that, only eternal torment and judgement awaits.

It is time to start another great week. I have had a wonderful weekend, mostly relaxing with the family at home. I hope each of you had a super Fourth of July weekend.
As I was reading the Word today I came across a very familiar verse in Philippians 4:8. It goes like this: "Finally brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things." What a wonderfully simple verse of instruction for us. Think good and Godly thoughts throughout your days and weeks. It is simple to understand, but it is difficult to live out. Why?
Why are we constantly giving in to negative, ungodly thoughts. Have you ever started a week with lots of excitement and joy about all of the possibilities that were coming, only to feel depressed and discouraged and demotivated by Monday night? What happened? Many times we allow our thoughts to go from the positive and Godly to the negative and ungodly very quickly. Things happen at work, the kids drive you crazy, you have a setback in your schedule, and all of the sudden negative thoughts begin to seep into our mind and we begin to slide downhill. If we allow the negative thoughts to have their way, we go from one negative to the next and we begin to spiral downward until we feel totally overwhelmed and defeated. For some people, they have been stuck in negative thought patterns for so long, every part of their life has been affected and you see it in their countenance and you hear it in their speech.
The good news is we can choose what to dwell on. We can dwell in the negative - what's wrong with us, why am I like this, why is my spouse so sorry, why are my kids troublemakers, why is my job terrible, why do bad things happen to me? Or we can choose another path in the power of the Spirit. We can choose to follow the command of Phillipians 4:8 and see our world turned around. As we dwell on the good and the Godly, it also can become a pattern in our lives. It will affect our countenance, our words, and our relationships for the good.
There is a warning. You cannot change your thinking if you are not spending time in the Word of God and in prayer. These two elements do transformational work to our "stinking thinking". Tap into the joy of living out Philippians 4:8 today and see your world changed for the glory of God.
I look forward to hearing from you!
Brad

Scripture Reading for today: Phillipians 4; Luke 6; Psalms 121,122

Galatians 5:16 says, "live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh." As I read that verse I can't help but think about what a great verse that is to live by. Its a command and a promise. Live by the Spirit, that is the command. You will not gratify the desires of the flesh, that is the promise. If this is so, why do we find it so hard to experience the power of walking in the Spirit, why are we constantly struggling with fleshly desires?
I had some insight today as I was pressure washing my house and my deck. While I was pressure washing, I noticed the places that were really dirty and took care of those immediately. What I almost missed, however, were the stains that almost matched the color of my house. Until I pressure washed over those parts, I didn't notice how truly dirty they were. It was especially true on my deck. It looked fine until I washed one section. Once I did that, I had to do the rest because of the huge difference. When I got through the deck looked much better.
What does this have to do with Galatians 5:16? Many times as we look at our lives we think we are fine because we do not have any glaring stains in our life. But most of the time we don't see the less apparent ones. Until we allow the pressure washing of the Holy Spirit into our life we live with the less obvious stains and it keeps us from walking in the Spirit.
Today, ask the Holy Spirit to shine His light into your heart so you can see it all. Then call out to Him in repentance and experience His cleansing. Then you will be able to walk in the Spirit, so you will not give in to the desires of the flesh.
Let me here from you!
In Christ,
Brad

Here we are on a new adventure. As our church gets ready to launch a new website, one of the things I wanted to do, at the suggestion of my youth pastor, is write an almost daily blog. Hopefully, this blog will allow you to see into my heart at how the Lord is working in me and it could be an encouragement to those of you who will read it. I look forward to dialoguing with you because I believe it could be a great encouragement to me to here your responses. I want you to be able to comment and share as you are touched, encouraged, intrigued, or upset by the blog posts.
My chief goal in all of this is that God would be glorified. Reaching for what lies ahead comes from one of my favorite passages in all the Bible, Philippians 3:7-21. The apostle Paul is challenging the church at Phillipi by giving a brief testimony of his life. Paul had everything going for him as a religious man.(v 4-6) After meeting Jesus though, all of his accomplishments were for nought, anything he had was rubbish compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Chirst Jesus as Lord. Paul wanted to know Christ more in every way. He was willing to give up all he had for the glory of fully knowing Christ, and attaining the prize which was laid out before him. In verse 13, Paul says he is forgetting what lies behind, and he was reaching for what lies ahead. What was it that was lying ahead? "The goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus."
What this world has to offer us today is nothing in comparison to what Christ offers to us here and in the hereafter. As for me, I will reach for what lies ahead. Although I am frustrated many times by my want for the world, my deep desire and hope is that I will steadily lose my taste for this world and continually be consumed by a passion for the things above.
I hope this blog can be a blessing to you and others in the days ahead.
In Christ,
Brad