There are so many pressures that go into tonight. It’s been an epic season, with an epic team. Anthony Davis and MKG will forever go down as two of the best players to ever wear the Blue & White. Darius Miller is a home-state hero. Calipari resurrected this program from the Gillispie shambles. We SHOULD win tonight. I want us to win tonight so badly. But not just for the sake of my favorite team winning, it’s also an incredibly socially pressurized situation.

I’m so sick of hearing these statements (and statements like them):

- “Calipari is a cheat and can’t win the big one”

- “One and Done will never win it all”

- “UK won all those championships back in the day when most of its fans weren’t even alive yet”

So yes, for me, there is a social pressure that I can’t even describe to you. To lose tonight will just ADD to the pressure. But if we win tonight, every conversation I have about College Basketball from now on is instantly changed. And I want that. I want it bad.

HOWEVER, more than any alleviated social pressure, I have craved one thing for the past 6-8 years. There are 2 videos that I watch at least once a month for the past several years. In season or out of season, I watch these two videos. They are dear to my heart. They often bring a tear to my eye (not kidding at all). I sing this song randomly in the shower, on the basketball court when we’re about to win a game, and sometimes while grocery shopping (not sure why?). And every year when the tournament ends, it pains me to see the latest montage end without Kentucky hoisting the championship trophy above its head. Watch the videos yourself. Prepare. Get ready. Because let me tell you something: if we win tonight and get our next One Shining Moment video, you can guarantee that I’ll be wiping tears of joy from my eyes.

I want to see the One Shining Moment video end with the Cats as National Champions.

Bring Home #8.

One Shining Moment 1996

One Shining Moment 1998

Ever feel like you are in the “preparation” stages for something big in your life? I’ve had that feeling quite a bit lately.  In the last week of 2011, I woke up in the middle of the night and felt the Lord nudging me to go out to the living room…get on my knees…and pray. So, naturally I ignored the nudge.

Finally, after realizing that God wasn’t going to let me go back to sleep until I listened to the nudge, I got my lazy butt up and left my comfy bed. For the next hour, I heard the Lord telling me over and over to get ready. He was prompting me with different action steps, different thoughts, different dreams… all of which had one thing in common: Preparation.

I have some ideas of what He may be preparing me for, but it could be anything. All I know is that 2012 is a year of preparation for me. I’m doing everything I can to get spiritually, physically, emotionally, mentally, and relationally healthy… fit for a tall task from the Most High.

Got me thinking about King David. Surely he didn’t just wake up one morning as King and miraculously have all the leadership qualities that were necessary to be a good King. No way. He had learned lessons all throughout his life…. through being a Shepherd, through being a brother, through being a son…heck, he learned lessons simply being alive. He didn’t just wake up and start exhibiting the qualities that made him a good King. The groundwork was there.

Now, before David was King David, he didn’t have the authority/necessity/responsibility to be “kingly”. He didn’t have to order around a nation. He didn’t have to command an army. He didn’t have to make big, important, decisions. He was just a shepherd, leading a bunch of stinking sheep around. In order to be a good King though, his character had to be built beforehand. You don’t wake up one morning and become a King.

Whatever God is doing in your life right now, you can help lay the groundwork in advance to prepare for something BIG. You know what makes a good leader. You know what makes a world changer. You have to be steeped in the Word of God. You have to be so intensely in love with listening to and obeying your Heavenly Father through prayer. You have to deal with your current circumstances (however small/insignificant they may be) with the utmost holiness, boldness, and spiritual maturity. You have to be yourself. You have to be secure in your identity that is found in Christ Jesus. These are just a few of the normal characteristics we see in world-changing people that God uses. You can start doing these things right now!

Stop waiting for the responsibilities of a King before you start acting like someone who can even be a King! Most of us are stuck out in the fields, tending to our own seemingly insignificant chores. But the way you handle yourself your current circumstances will determine whether or not you ever make it out of the field of sheep! The groundwork that God is wanting to lay in your soul right now will be what carries you through the next BIG thing that God is going to ask of you. The question is whether or not you are willing to do the hard stuff. Are you willing to lay the groundwork that it takes to be a world-changer?

Wake up. Get ready.

Let me encourage you with two things that I believe are near and dear to the heart of your Creator. One is a verse from the Holy Scriptures, the other is a great quote.

Galatians 6:9

“And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.”

In context, this is talking about living by the Spirit and WALKING by the Spirit. Whatever it is in your life that you feel like God had put inside you that ignited your soul, remember that its there for a reason. This post is sort of piggy backing off of my last post on Dreams. Don’t grow weary of doing what the Spirit of the Lord has put inside you. Don’t let the choices of others, the lack of vision in others, the haters, the critics, the ones who can’t/won’t dream, take away what the Holy Spirit wants to do in your life and with your life.

Take these practical steps to battle:

-Surround yourself with people who ENCOURAGE you

-Keep a journal, keep thinking actively and daily about what the Lord wants from you

-Don’t stop pushing the envelope. Challenge the process.

-Actively pursue opportunities that will help keep your passionate pursuits alive

The last thing I wanted to share with you is a quote that just came through my twitter feed. I think it perfectly sums up what I want to leave you with:

“When you talk about HOPE, you have to be a long distance runner”

Don’t give up. Your hope is being attacked. Battle back my friend. Battle back.

I am a big dreamer. Both in the philosophical and practical sense. Practically, I have a lot of dreams. I remember almost all of them. I could rattle off MANY weird dreams that I’ve had in my life. My most recent one involved Tom Cruise taking me to a mansion to hang out with all these snobby rich friends of his…which doesn’t sound too crazy, until I give you the detail that he brought me there to play a high stakes game of Monopoly. Imagine the snobby lady in a black party dress sitting down with a handful of Monopoly money and going with the Thimble as her game piece of choice.

But in the philosophical sense, I am a dreamer. Always have been. I think that there is an “ideal” state of being that can be achieved in most senses of your life. I believe that Marriage can be just as good as you ever envisioned. I believe that your career can be just as good as you thought it could be. Specifically, I believe that from a leadership perspective, that the Church can be just as good as you at one point thought it would be.

After all, I truly believe that the kind of dreams that we long for in our idealogical heads are from the Lord. Most of our dreams are rooted in the word HOPE.

The problem is that too many people let too many things get in the way of their dreams. Too many people let too many things squash their HOPE.

-Money (salary)

-Job Security

-Worldly Wisdom

-Listening to people who have “experience” but have consistently settled for LESS than their dreams.

-Sin

-Trials and Difficulties

-Pride

-Unwilling Hearts

-Criticism

I could go on and on with all the various reasons that I’ve seen people settle for less than their God-given dreams.

To all of you who are in circumstances that are less than ideal, let me tell you this: your dreams are there for a reason. They are planted in your heart intentionally, not by chance. Whether its a business idea you’ve always dreamed of, an idea of what your marriage could/should be, a potential career path, a desired future family, a dream for friends/family members to accept Christ and be baptized, a reality that doesn’t currently exist for you and yours, whatever it is….I want to tell you to that your dream is not in your heart by accident. It’s there for a reason.

We are told as kids to dream big. We are fed this one line over and over: “DON’T LET YOUR DREAMS DIE!!” It’s really heroic the way kids are told to chase their dreams. But the minute we exit college and enter adulthood, dreams are placed into their graves. When we cross the barrier into adulthood, all of a sudden dreams are lumped in with Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny as “bull-crap we feed our kids because its tradition”. Why is that? Why is it that dreams have been lumped in with the rest of the mythological junk drawer of adulthood?

I feel like God put it on my heart to tell you this: DO NOT LET YOUR DREAMS DIE! Adults need to hear this. Do not settle for mediocrity. Do not settle for less than your God given dreams. Fight. Fight for what God has put in our hearts. Fight for what He has made us passionate about. Don’t give in. Don’t give up. Don’t get deterred by the traps of adulthood! Don’t be dragged down by those around you who have complacently settled for less. FIGHT my fellow adult suburbanites! FIGHT my fellow post-college wanderers! FIGHT for your dreams! They are from God!

Lastly, I say this: even if you are in a situation that isn’t currently conducive to your dreams. Don’t quit FIGHTING. Sure, it may result in some difficult situations, and difficult conversations, but the minute you say “well, that’s it, guess I’ve gotta settle for less”, you’ve officially stopped fighting. Ask anyone in the medical field who works with sick people near death…when you stop fighting, you are close to dying. When you stop fighting, you get used to how things are. Things that used to disgust you because they were the antithesis of your dreams, begin to feel normal and acceptable. I could go on and on describing this terrible state of existence….suffice it to say, DO NOT STOP FIGHTING!!

Fighting for your dreams is the process that God uses to build character, competency, and endurance.

Your dreams will never become reality without character, competency, and endurance.

Go see the movie Moneyball. I command you. It’s really really really good!

But for anyone who works in leadership of any organization, this movie is great on a totally different level. If you are wanting to watch the movie and have absolutely nothing ruined for you, then don’t read the rest of this. Get in your car, go to your closest Redbox. If you read this though, it doesn’t ruin the ending or anything like that.

The basic concept is this: Oakland A’s General Manager realizes that he can’t compete with the Yankee’s because of their massive payroll. He’s frustrated with losing in the playoffs and unwilling to stop fighting until he wins the world series. So, he decides to do something different. Instead of doing the same thing that every other organization is doing, he decides to go outside the box. He adopts a new method of achieving success through means that no other organization was willing to or even smart of enough to think of.

Guess what happens? All the old guys in the organization who have “Experience” said that what the GM was doing was basically blasphemy. They said it would never work. They said it was heresy. They said that he was going to ruin the team and drive the ship into the ground.

But instead of listening to them, he realized something: All those guys with experience had failed to do the one thing that he was hoping to do: Win. These guys were successful at producing a team that stayed competitive, but never good enough to truly win. So he said screw it. These guys who have experience haven’t figured out a way to solve “the problem”, so why would their experience truly matter when it comes to big picture problem solving?

I’ll let you watch the movie to find out what happens, but bottom line: his new method becomes the standard operating practice for every other team in the league. It was not just a huge success, but it changed the game forever.

There is a beautiful conversation at the end, I won’t tell you who it’s with or anything like that, but they’re talking about why so many people ADAMANTLY opposed this guy’s new way of thinking early on. And it came down to this: When you bring change to old structures and organizations, people start to get very afraid. Afraid of change. Afraid of the unknown. But moreso afraid for their jobs. Afraid for their livelihood. Afraid that they may not have the right answers and have to admit that they’re wrong. Afraid that they won’t be the experts anymore.

I’m not calling for all older leaders to start laying down and giving younger leaders the reigns. Age has little to do with it. It’s about solving the problem. It’s about winning. If you’ve been doing something the same way for several years, and nothing is changing, something is wrong. If you’ve been doing something the same way for several years, and the results just aren’t there….something is wrong.

2 Things you have to do if you are in leadership. The first is this: Clearly and narrowly define what Success is for your organization. Clearly and Narrowly normally means ONE THING. Anymore than one and things become unclear. For the GM in the movie, all he cared about was the Championship. Define Success. Clearly & Narrowly.

Once you’ve done that, the 2nd thing you absolutely have to do is Stop Making Excuses. Stop trying to find other things to blame your lack of success on. Find the root problem. And if you can’t solve it, find someone who can. Fight harder than you’ve ever fought in your life to win. Try anything. Do anything. Don’t let existing structures or systems or job titles or anything keep you from winning.

If you’re a leader in the church, let me remind you that God wants the Kingdom to win way more than you do. If you aren’t growing, aren’t reaching lost people, aren’t winning as a church then please don’t use the line of “God withholding his blessing from us”. You mean to tell me that God would rather your church not reach lost people and save them from hell? Get real. You’ve got a problem to solve. Get to work.

One of the biggest things God is changing in me is my view of preaching in church. I had been at a point where I felt like the most effective teaching & preaching was intellectual and highly expository (which means that the bulk of the teaching is simply dissecting the Bible verse by verse and explaining its meaning). I respected and held in high regard the teachings of preachers who avoided emotional pleas, avoided passionate exclamations of excitement, and in general just stuck with reading and explaining the Bible.

I want to focus on one aspect of the way God has changed my view of preaching, I’ll expound on more of that in future posts. But this one thing is something that I feel like God has radically changed in my mind. Prior to the past 2 years, I felt like a good sermon shouldn’t necessarily INSPIRE someone emotionally. I was deathly terrified of emotion and inspiration. I felt like it would to quickly become a “hype factory” where people get excited for excitements sake, and not for Christ’s sake. The only problem with that line of thinking is The Bible.

One word continues to come up in my studies and conversations. That word is Exhort. Read the Bible and you’ll see Exhort all over the place (see John the Baptist for example…oh and don’t forget Jesus). Exhort means to “strongly encourage or urge”. Now, if preaching is supposed to be an Exhortation, how can you STRONGLY ENCOURAGE OR URGE someone to do something without allowing emotion into the equation? How can you strongly encourage someone without raising your voice? How can you strongly urge someone by simply explaining the truth of scripture? That’s just not normal. Think about some of the greatest public speakers of all time who brought about change. In light of our recent celebration of Martin Luther King day, look at him! The man KNEW how to exhort!

Exhortation doesn’t HAVE to include the Gospel. Public speakers exhort all the time. But when you combine Exhortation with the Power of the Holy Spirit in preaching the Gospel of our Lord Jesus, it should take us to another word entirely…..and that word is INSPIRE. The definition of inspire: to exert an animating, enlivening, or exalting influence on someone. I can think of no greater description of what we desire in our preaching every single week! I want to ANIMATE the Gospel for people who are used to the Christian message being lame and boring! I want to ENLIVEN the Gospel for someone so that they understand that these words are the Life that is Truly Life! And what more could we ask for than to exalt influence over someone and help them find salvation?!

I’m not abandoning 1 Timothy 4:16. I am committed to preserving Biblical Truth no matter what, but that’s not the only job of the preacher. The preacher must communicate truth in a way that INSPIRES people. We must EXHORT people to put their trust and hope in the Gospel! And I’m changing in my preaching to reflect this. I am going to bring more energy, more enthusiasm, more excitement, and more passion to my sermons than ever before. I’m not going to worry about over-emotionalizing anything, because I’m not going to sacrifice Biblical Truth! I’m just going to get freakin hyped about these Words of Life, and then communicate those Words in a way that is true to not only their intellectual reality but also their emotional reality.

Bottom line: I feel like God is bringing me to a place where my preaching isn’t just going to be true to Scripture and relevant to those who hear it, I’m going to do everything in my power, which comes from the Holy Spirit, to INSPIRE people. Jesus is teaching me that Inspiration is an absolutely crucial part of every believer, and lucky for us…God’s got the market on inspiration.

That was me. Cynic. And still is sometimes, but I’m allowing the Lord to put that part of me to death everyday. Here is a list of some of the things I used to be extremely cynical towards:

-Modern Worship Music

-Emotional/Charismatic Preachers

-Any form of artistic expression that was liked or appreciated by the masses

-Church lingo, “Christianese” as many call it

-Anything in the church that didn’t have a strong sense of intellectualism behind it

-Simple preachers who lacked a good vocabulary

-Showing outward displays of worship during music at church

-Showing excitement about anything publicly (besides UK Basketball)

And the list could go on and on. Simply put, I was a Cynic in every sense of the word. Why? I could point to several things like my bible college background (from a denomination that was essentially founded in a opposing response to Pentecostalism), my friend circle, my generation, my negative experiences in ministry with many people who were closely tied with movements like the Assembly of God and Hillsong, or countless other reasons. But let’s cut through the crap. There is one reason and one reason alone for my cynicism: my own sin.

I’m a sinner who’s thankfully been renamed Saint by the grace of God. And it’s because of my nasty soul that I became a cynic. I hated on modern worship music for all the typical reasons (rock stars, all about the show, costs too much money, etc.) but in reality I was just looking for something to be negative about. I hated on emotional/charismatic preachers because I thought they were abusing people’s emotions and neglecting the harshness of repentance….when in reality I wasn’t even listening to their message nor looking at the results their preaching was producing. I doubted that any mass group of people could genuinely be excited about something pure and good. I could go on down the list and explain why I had such deep rooted cynicism but it boils down to this:

I thought I was the center of the universe. My preferences were the most important thing in the world. My worldview wasn’t about Jesus and His Kingdom, it was about me and me alone. I wanted everyone to be smarter, everyone to be less cheesy, everyone to act and think more like me. And if they didn’t, I’d find a reason to be a hater. I’ve yet to meet a Christian Cynic who is actually doing anything to advance the Kingdom. All the Cynic’s I’ve known are spectators on the sidelines, trying to call fouls and constantly complaining about the game plan. When I’m Cynical, I’m not advancing the Kingdom.

Could the Church be better? Sure. Do people sometimes get over emotional and miss the point of the Gospel? Absolutely. But do people get too caught up in intellectualism and miss the heart of the Gospel? Absolutely. But I’m telling you all, if any of you are cynics out there, you need to open your ears, open your eyes, because God has some really good things in store for your life if you would just remove yourself from the center of your universe.

I seriously could go on and on. I’ve got several ideas cooking for a creative project that I’m thinking of doing, one of them would be devoted solely to destroying the sin of Cynicism. They may never come to fruition, but they will certainly find their way into sermons. It’s something God has really been doing in my heart over the past 2 years, and unfortunately I think my generation & the generations coming after mine are all terribly plagued with Cynicism.

Bottom line is this: I was a sinner, and still sin every day. But thankfully, Jesus died on my behalf. That alone should smash any cynicism and create a spirit in me that is hungry for the Word and hungry for every opportunity I can to lift His name in praise. Cynicism is miserable. And I, my friend, have absolutely no reason to be miserable.

This is a rebirth of sorts from a blog I used to run in my Seattle days, and I think its a good time to bring it back. Hope you enjoy!