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Today is day 2 of our Sister Connection Ladies Retreat. We have a full room of ladies and how God is blessing our gathering. This morning, Kathy is making the case for our spiritual coronation–Hebrews 4.

Every little girl wants to be a princess.
We may not have access to the Queen of England, but we have access to the throne of God.
When the Queen is coroneted, under the throne there is a stone of destiny–symbolizing that her life has been arranged for this moment. We sit in the seat of destiny today…

We are not worthy of this moment!

Great idea to have the women come forward to a commitment and to receive a tiara from the Women’s Board who prayed with each lady.

Communion service was very moving…Rhonda Brown sang the old hymn–There is a Fountain!

Wonderful session…

Second session is getting underway!

Kathy is hosting Sister Connection ‘08 in Alexandria this weekend. The theme is PRIMPING FOR THE PALACE. 200+ women are here and the room is alive with excitement. Everyone is primped for a great weekend!

Rhonda Brown from Denver, CO is the speaker. She is talking right now about the questions women are asking…there are 4!

Considering the various uniqueness of each women, we all need to know that His eyes are always on us and He takes notice of our life. When you think that what you are doing is making no difference, you must connect to the awareness that God is looking.

In counseling, the term is “a thousand mile stare” occurs when you are attempting to communicate with someone and they are not listening. Husbands are challenged to listen to their wives. (Not sure I’m connected to this point!)

Times will come in your life when you will need a God who can rescue you in times of trouble. There is great reassurance in knowing a God who is ready to come to your need with great power!

The larger question is will He accept me in present situation? Will God applaud me in my challenges and understand my limitations? Is it okay that I don’t always have it together? Will you love me if I miss the mark? Will you love me if I doubt your love?

It was a powerful presentation…good altar response!

My son, Jeremy posted this on his blog today and it has been on my mind a good bit. The post is a clip from the blog of Mark Batterson in Washington, DC and the referenced church is his National Community Church. The thought is profound…read it through and look for my thoughts at the end…

Neuroimagining has shown that brain stimulation depends on task familiarization. Novelty stimulates the right-brain. Familiarity stimulates the left-brain. And longitudinal studies have shown that the center of cognitive gravity tends to shift from right-to-left as we age. In other words, memory overtakes imagination. One of the great dangers leaders face is learning how and forgetting why. At some point, most of us stop creating the future and start repeating the past. We stop doing ministry out of imagination and start doing ministry out of memory. We stop building momentum and start going through the motions. And when that happens, ministry become monotonous. One of the ways we’ve tried to counteract imagination atrophy at National Community Church (www.theaterchurch.com) is by creating a culture of experimentation. We have a core value: everything is an experiment. And that experimental approach to ministry gives us the freedom to fail. We’re not afraid of making mistakes. We’re afraid of not making mistakes because that means we aren’t taking enough risks. Every sermon series is a teaching experiment. Every outreach is an evangelism experiment. Every small group is a discipleship experiment. Even our long-term vision of meeting in movie theaters at metro stops throughout the metro DC area is an experiment in doing church in the middle of the marketplace. An experimental approach to ministry gives you leadership latitude by diffusing resistance. After all, it’s just an experiment! It focuses you on finding better ways and different ways of accomplishing the mission. And, finally, an experimental approach to ministry gives you permission to stop doing what isn’t working!

Jeremy wrote…
One of the reasons this speaks to me so much is because the older I get (I realize I’m not old…yet) the more I tend to fall back into the comfortable, the known, and the safe. The fear of flopping on an idea, will sometimes cause me to hold our team back from trying something too risky. I don’t want to be the deterrent to fresh ideas and experiments just because my memory has overtaken my imagination.

Reading Jeremy’s post, I recognize…It is true that we must always be alert to the fact that as we grow older, we are much less likely to take chances…to risk it. Maybe it is because we feel we have more to lose. When I was young and it was just me, the risk was not as much. Now that I have Kathy and the boys and their wives and the grandchildren, the tendency is to play it safer in life, to realize I’m not alone in this world and others are counting on my wisdom, my strength and my living. But how do I balance the fact that God has redeemed me for a life of “full abandonment” in Him and that He requires me to approach life with a “no fear, no intimidation” mentality?

In some ways, I feel life allows you to learn how and then you must always fight for the why of ministry in your life. I know for me, there is a constant tension between what I am and why I am. A wise pastor once confided to me–sometimes I’m submitted and sometimes I’m not! He speaks for most of us in understanding that there is always a need to re-evaluate what we are doing and why we are doing it. The great tragedy of life would be if we were spend our lives as sellers of Ford cars, but driving a Chevy!

Take a few moments today and recover your handle on WHY!

Will it matter to anyone that you have lived? At the end of your life will anyone come and remember the impact you had on them? I’ve been thinking some about this and then I read this quote from Dino Rizzo blog today…I believe it is originally quoted from Mayo Angelou.

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

How do people remember their encounters with you?
Read Matthew 5:16 and ask “is anyone thanking God for me today?”
What difference will it make that you lived on this earth in this time in history?

You do have impact.

Embrace the moments.

I once asked Kathy…“remember when we used to know people who traveled a lot, stayed in hotels, spoke in conferences and we imagined how glamorous it was?” We are sitting in the C concourse of Atlanta Hartsfield airport waiting on a connecting flight to Baltimore where Kathy is speaking in the Maryland ladies retreat this weekend. I get to carry her luggage. Travel is never been glamorous although I enjoy traveling more than Kathy. I like movement…action and travel is all of that. Hundreds, maybe thousands of people are moving past me in this food court and down the concourses, on their way to places unknown. Airports are transition places and are a microcosm of the world where I minister. People don’t have much time for conversation, little time for delay, they want service NOW and are pushing to keep their schedule. How are we supposed to show God’s love in this environment? I just tried. Upon arrival at this concourse food court, I waited as patiently as possible for a family of four (two small daughters) to pick up their stuff and move away from the table I would soon occupy. As they left and I began to move in, an attendant came to wipe down the table. What a thankless job to most people but I tried to express my gratitude to her and she seem genuinely thankful and somewhat surprised. Who thanks people like that? What is the payoff for laborers in this environment? I don’t see anyone leaving tips…probably because they are too busy or so self-consumed they don’t think of it. Just like most of the world where I minister.

So, what happens if I consciously and intentionally decide to be a variant to this maddening environment? My friend Josh writes about this in his blog today here. What if I show kindness, take time to engage in conversation, act like others matter as much as I do? What then?

Our second edition of FORWARDLEADERSHIP podcast was posted today. You can hear it here. It is positioned on the front page or can be accessed in the BLOG.

Check it out and let me hear from you on what you think!

I love to read and I read all kinds of books. My son Jeremy and I share a love of reading Grisham, Patterson, thrillers. Came across this book recently in Family Christian Bookstores and it is amazing reading…suspenseful with a moral theme. If you like political thrillers, you will love this book. It is part of a five book series and four of the books are now in paperback. You can find these books cheaply at half.com.

One sidenote on the author and the book. It was written before 9/11 and has an eerie feeling about events he describes which actually did come true in some sense later in the year. Take a look.

As a boy, I recall that Easter meant a new suit of clothes, the egg hunt for kids and a lot of new excitement at our church. My parents went all out for Easter—making church fresh and working to engage our community in attending church. Easter was a significant day in our lives although at such an early age, I did not realize why. It was only as I grew older that I came to understand the power and spiritual authority that Easter brings to remembrance. Just think…a dead man was brought back to life in order to signal to all of humanity that there is no power in all the world that compares with the power of God and that power is alive in us today! Sadly, many Christians have never been able to assimilate the message of Easter into their everyday life. They consider the life of faith to be “hanging in the balance” every day. Yet, Christ has conquered our enemy and our faith in Him assures our daily passage through life. As Paul writes, “it is not I who lives but Christ who lives through me.”

Today, as I thought about this blessed weekend, I wondered “what is dead in me that God wants to resurrect?” Easter means more than an historical passage of faith but is a fluid and constant movement of faith and power in my life today. So, as I approach this weekend, I look within myself to understand what has been killed in my soul but is available for God to raise it anew and reposition it in my life for His glory?

I once wrote “in every heart is a tombstone where unmet expectations have been buried.” (Invited to the Deep End)

The longer I live, the more I believe that. Unmet expectations breed disappointment and future frustrations. When things don’t go as we expect, we are prone to think that nothing will be as it once seemed. Mary and Martha (Lazarus’ sisters) thought that. The disciples thought that as they gathered in the room after Jesus was buried. They were afraid and unsure of what would become of all the dreams they had when they heard Jesus preach and teach of the kingdom.

Then word came that Jesus’ tomb was empty and that He was alive—he had, in fact, spoken to Mary and was going to see them in Galilee. Was it possible?

It is my prayer for all of you that this same anticipation would come to life again inside of you. That you would consider again that which you thought was dead and finished. Is is possible?

All of these and so many more…may God grant you new hope this weekend as you embrace the EMPTY TOMB.

He is alive and so are all the promises God has ever made to you.

Anticipate!

I first met Kathy Lanier in 1977 when I preached for her father who was sick and I was the “featured” evangelist in the State Paper. None of us knew one another…but everything changed that day and now 30 years later we could not imagine how wonderfully God has blessed us. Today, she has spent the entire day with our daughter-in-law Andrea shopping for our new granddaughter–Sadie! Those of you who know Kathy can appreciate how excited she is about a girl in our family. For the thirty years of our marriage, it has been a male dominated life, with our two sons heavily involved in sports, she learned to like baseball, football, basketball, she learned how to fill out a NCAA basketball bracket and what a “cup” means to a baseball player.

Now, she gets to buy dresses, talk about girl things and anticipate the day when there will be at least one female participant in all the family events. I’m glad for her…she never got a daughter of her own and with Corrie and Andrea she has been able to find some female companionship. Perhaps Sadie will bring some balance to it all.