One of the greatest things people of God get to do is “ministry” or service unto God. But this very same thing  has a way of giving us spiritual A.D.D. and we can’t seem to sit still and just be silent before the Lord and LISTEN. Most of the time it is because silence is uncomfortable but as people of God we need it just as much as we need other disciplines in our Christian journey. For 2012, I’ve made it a point to schedule 1-2 day retreats 4 times next year. Richard Foster, the author of Celebration of Disciple mentioned in the summer 2011 issue of Leadership Journal that “if superficiality is the curse of the modern age, the curse of the postmodern age is distraction.”

With all the gadgets that are so cool to have and keep us connected to our peeps, they are also keeping us “logged in” way past the time we should have already been giving to God, family or friends. Churches are buying into this distraction as well by making sure that there are no times when there is too much silence in a service. But I think we need to rethink this just a little bit.

I think we need to make time for silence in our services or maybe even have a gathering that is just for that! I remember hanging out with some of the founders of the Emergent movement when it was in its hey day and that is one thing I learned from them that I loved. Prayer time with stations signifying different things, silence at the altar ministry time, reflection opportunities before altar time, etc. Why is it that most Pentecostals can’t seem to integrate that into their service times? I think most pastors think people will get bored. I am not saying have it for an entire service (that would be weird) but it would be nice for us to acknowledge that we need to be STILL sometimes. I think when a church acknowledges that it reminds its people that spiritual A.D.D. ain’t a good thang!

However, whether a church makes room for silence is or not does not mean you can’t. I find the best time for me to be silent and just listen is between 7:45 AM-9 AM. My son gets picked up for school at 7:30 AM then I go into my kitchen, get my cafe con leche and read His word and look outside my window, contemplating God’s beauty and waiting to see if His spirit will nudge me about something. It’s amazing how centered I feel after this time with God in SILENCE without my Iphone, Ipad, Ipod, etc. Spiritual A.D.D. doesn’t impress God, us being all over the place with no time for him actually saddens him. Yes, even if everything you are doing is FOR HIM.  Our service FOR Him shouldn’t keep us FROM Him. One of the ways we show thanksgiving to God is simply to remember Him. Here is a good article on How To Do Quiet Time. 

What do you think about this? Do you have spiritual A.D.D.? Are you spending some quiet time with him? How can you commit to spending that time in the next 62 days before 2012?

For most of my grown life I’ve been known (or gossiped about) for being a sort of rebel. Not because I have caused any problems but mostly because I have always used my mind to make my own decisions regardless of if I had to stand alone or my friends wanted the church to think they were perfect or whatever. I also was never really afraid to take a stand on something that I truly believed in. That was back then when I was still  bound by people’s opinions and my desire to please them. Imagine now that I don’t have such hang-ups!

So today I awoke with this thought in my mind, “tell them to stop sitting on the fence.” I have been praying about the students I have to mentor in my role as Academic Advisor/Mentor at Bakke Graduate University and what to say to them to motivate them to keep pursuing God’s plan for them. But God said, some haven’t even said yes to me and that is the first requirement. A fully surrendered life to God. Then the Holy Spirit reminded me of this verse: “Elijah went before the people and said, ‘How long will you waver between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him.’ But the people said nothing.” — 1 Kings 18: 21

So I ask you too…have you made a decision for God. I mean a real decision. I know you know about Him, you may have experienced his goodness in your life but have you said yes God I stand for you, I live for you? In  researching the verse above a bit, I had to know where it took place. Now I have never been to Mount Carmel but I am told and I have read that it is truly one of the most beautiful sites in Israel. Atop its peak you can see the Samaritan hills to the southwest, the broad expanse of the Jezreel Valley to the northeast, and to the west, the glistening waters of the Mediterranean. Because of abundant rainfall, the slopes and peak are green year-round. It’s no wonder that in Hebrew the name “Carmel” means “vineyard of God.”

But for Jews and Christians, Mount Carmel has an even greater significance beyond its breathtaking beauty. It was on this mountaintop that Elijah confronted the 850 pagan prophets of King Ahab and challenged the Israelites to stop sitting on the fence. Elijah went before the people and asked them, “How long are you going to waver between two opinions? Either God is God, and follow him, or Baal is God.” And the people said nothing.

They were content to stay where they were atop the fence. Silent. Not taking a stand. Refusing to make a choice.  Now some may argue that sitting on the fence is not necessarily a bad thing — that it’s good to look at both sides of an argument, and that choosing sides can lead to division, confrontation, and general messiness. But sitting on the fence has never been an option for the people of God. I’m sorry to bust that bubble or shatter that frame of mind.

Our God demands that we make a choice. Yeap, you have to decide to decide. Are you with him or not? In Moses’ closing words to the Israelites before they entered the Promised Land, he challenged the people: “See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction.” (Deuteronomy 30: 15) Choose! And Joshua in his farewell address to the leaders of Israel issued a similar exhortation, “But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve . . . But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.” (Joshua 24:15)

Every day we have opportunities to make a choice to represent God where we live, where we work, and where we go to school. It could be standing up for someone who is being mistreated or refusing to participate in a business practice you consider unethical. It may mean taking an unpopular stand or speaking out against injustice in your community.But for the people of God, silence — remaining atop the fence — is not a choice. As the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

Where might you take a stand today? What do you need to speak out against? Remember, sometimes taking a stand, exercising your voice does not have to be with your mouth but with your action. So what will you decide today? Is He God in your life or isn’t He? Whatever you do,  don’t sit on the fence any longer. As the graphic above states, the only thing that will cause is splinters!

Yeah I’m on my soapbox again. Been thinking alot lately about words.  About a year ago I read a book by Robert Morris, the pastor who wrote the Blessed Life, a book my church was studying last month. The book I read was The Power of Your Words: How God Can Bless Your Life Through the Words You Speak. I remember reading this quote “remember, every time you open your mouth, your mind walks out and parades up and down those words.” With this in mind, maybe that is why some people are viewed as evil, superficial, insecure or un-Christlike!  Here is a simple truth folks, your mouth is a loaded gun but many of us have never been trained on how to use it!

Matthew 12:34  says “…It’s your heart, not the dictionary, that gives meaning to your words.” (The Message)

You can tell a lot about a person by the words they speak.   Wrong hearts bring discouragement, deceit and death.  A right heart speaks words of life, liberty and love. I mentioned in my post yesterday that words matter. YES… words matter. While many of us speak ineffectively and shallowly, there are no throw-away words. Every word communicates something, be it our biases, our ideas, or our ignorance. Words talk. Someone’s listening.

A friend shared in her blog today about being balcony people, who are encouragers. Sometimes I wonder why it is so hard for people to step outside themselves and their ’stuff’ to send good words, uplifting words into the atmosphere. It doesn’t cost anything. Thankfully words are free, however, how we use them can cost us something. It can cost us friends, it can cost us the loss of respect, it can cost us our credibility and it definitely costs us a good reputation. Funny thing about these words is that once tossed, they can’t be taken back. I believe that is why many marriages and friendships are in a cold state because there has been either no words, which at times can be just as bad as wrong words!

Words matter and they cut like a knife! So please tame your tongue! People the Word of God tells us in James 1:26 “If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless” YIKES!  Hello, that means that this Christ you proclaim, this life-transforming message you speak of is deemed useless because if it hasn’t changed the way you talk and how you treat others with your tongue, what hope can a person have this Christ turning their life around?

If the people you hang with (yes I went there!) or you yourself can’t ever seem to be positive for yourself or others, it could be an indication that you are lacking some serious face time with God. There is no way you can spend time with God and not have a more compassionate, caring, uplifting heart. And since everything flows from the heart, your words will be kinder, gentler words. Don’t get me wrong, this doesn’t mean that you can’t speak truth to someone but the word tells us to speak the truth in LOVE (Eph 4:15). Love will compel us to watch how we say what we need to say.

So today, think before you speak! Your words have the power to connect! Connect people with and to you but more importantly, connect people to the God YOU serve! Today your words can change a frown to a smile, tears into laughter and discouragement to encouragement. I can’t think of a better way to use words…now that matters!

A friend of mine is having a party soon and she asked me if I was going. I asked her, who did you invite? Yeap, I’m that careful about who I spend my time with. As a pastor, I have to go to events and I’m around people who I will never allow into my personal life. Why? Simply because what they do, how they talk, how they “live” is contrary to what I want around me. Some people have a mask that is very obvious, others are more careful yet their actions betray them. I look at all of that. But I write this post because I want to make you think about this as well. God actually wants us to choose wisely. I know, I know so people are so lonely that they will hang out with anyone. That stems from another issue I don’t have time to address here. But for those who literally try to be a follower vs. fan of Jesus, it is crucial that you watch who you hang out with.

As I write this, the song by Whodini “Friends” plays in my head. It’s an old school song, here it is :

This friend in the song isn’t so much of a friend right? Well, there are many of those around us as well. Let me introduce you to a verse that guides my life whether people like it or not…“The righteous should CHOOSE HIS FRIENDS CAREFULLY, for the way of the wicked leads them astray.” (Proverbs 12:26). I think believers think they have to be “friends” with everyone because that is the “christian” thing to do. Actually the “christian” thing to do is not be friends with everyone because the word tells us to CHOOSE carefully, even those who go to “church” can be bad influences in our life.

Sometimes God nudges us about a particular person but again because we have a mixed up theology, we stay in a unhealthy friendship. But you see, the main reason that God will start to nudge you and try to take out the friends in your life that He does not want you to have is because some of these people may be negative influences in your life. They may not be open to growing and maturing in the Lord like you will be, and all they will do is try and hold you back when you start your own spiritual journey and growth in the Lord. They will start criticizing and making fun of you and all they will end up doing is stunting your growth in the Lord. They have nothing good to say about the people you believe in, your leadership, your church, your dreams, etc. They are moody…today they love you, tomorrow it’s like “who are you again?” Why do you put up with all this drama folks? God is coming back soon, we really have no time for this!

For those of you who are married and have children – it is the same thing when you do not want your children hanging out with other children who you know would be a bad and negative influence on your child. You know that if your children start hanging out with the wrong type of crowd, they can become very easily corrupted in a very short period of time. As a result, you will become very protective with your children, and you will watch them very closely when they are old enough to start choosing who their friends are going to be.

It is the exact same way with God the Father! If you will allow God to prune out the people that He does not want you to have in your life – then what He will start to do is to bring in the people that He will want to have in your life. I call these types of friends “God-friends.” These people will be other good, godly, Spirit-filled Christians who are truly walking in good stead with the Lord and they will now be the people that He will want you to share your walk with!

How many of these types of God-friends can you expect God to bring into your life? Only God will be able to answer that for each and every one of you. Some may only get one or two to start off with, others may get 5 or 10. Let God make the decision as to how many and when they will be brought into your life. What I have learned is that it is not the quantity or amount that comes in – it is the quality. You are much better off having just one or two good, solid, quality friends as versus 10 or 15 that are not as good quality friends as the one or two may be.

Every Christian is operating at different levels of spiritual development with the Lord. God knows best as to who would be best suited for you at the level of spiritual development that you are currently operating at with Him. When God does bring in these types of special God-friends to share your journey with – they will be real treasures! These God-friendships will be anointed by God Himself due to the quality feedings and interaction that will occur in them.

A quote I once read in Essence Magazine by the then Editor, Susan Taylor stated “not everyone is healthy enough for a front row seat in my life!” I think that states it very clearly. So please choose wisely!

This morning as I sat down to my computer and opened my email I saw this picture sent to me by a friend. When I saw it aside from feeling compassion for any child that has to listen to negative words from the people he/she values most, the holy spirit prompted me with the very direct scripture Proverbs 18:21, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit.” At that point, my mind wandered to think about how words have impacted me in my life. Thankfully, although I came from a single parent home, my mother never belittled nor spoke negative words over me. She wasn’t overly giving in positive words either but at least I always felt she believed I could do more and do better.

But I want to focus this post on the responsibility we each have with the words we use and how we choose to deliver them to a person. As a Christian leader (or those who see themselves as one or ever aspire to be one), we should always and I mean 24/7 be mindful of this. I rather someone walk away and tell me I can’t talk right now because I  am upset then to let their emotions have their way and rip into someone, whether it is justified or not! You see, you can’t ever take back words. Even if there is an apology, your words reveal what you really think as Matthew 12:34 states “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks…” Some people (unfortunately rampant in Christian circles) believe that it is easy to forgive and forget. It’s not like you get a lobotomy for goodness sake! You may never forget but the sting will eventually wear off. The thing is for us Christians forgiveness is a requirement!  This book is particularly good at spelling that out for us but also delineates why unforgiveness causes sickness in our bodies. But why should we continually take ourselves to a place where we have to be asking for forgiveness especially as it’s related to our word usage and delivery?

As a pastor, we get our share of hurtful words, gossip, etc.  I think I was in a period of bliss for 3 1/2 years because while there may have been a little of this and a little of that, there was nothing majorly hurtful from one person to me…that is until last week. I could go into a tizzy of facts on how that person was off in every biblical way possible, I can state how that person was seeing things purely from their own selfish standpoint but really does it matter. I had my moment of crying. I had my time of sharing with God “why do I do this again?” But at the end of the day, the lesson there was “see how my children hurt each other with words” amongst of course many others including forgiveness. 

God deals with us in our thought life, our word life and our action life and obviously we fail epically in every area almost daily. But the one I think we give very little thought to is our words. Your “word life” with others will make or break you in your own personal relationships with other people in this life. If you do not learn how to speak to other people in a positive and godly manner, then sooner or later no one will want to have anything to do with you, and you will eventually find yourself being totally isolated and alone. 

Another point I want to address with this is our parenting. Parents you bring your kids to life with the words you speak over them. If all a child ever hears from his parents as they are growing up are stern and abusive words of condemnation, criticism, and negativity – then that child’s self-esteem and self-worth can be severely affected if it is not properly counter-balanced by other people in his life who will speak out the right kinds of words of love and encouragement to him.

If a child does not get properly watered with words of love and encouragement from his own flesh-and-blood parents during his early growing years in the family, then sooner or later he will end up believing in all of the lies of his parents as a result of their constant bombardments – and he will then end up growing up thinking that he will never be good enough to amount to anything worthwhile.

There are many grown adults who never end up accomplishing everything that God would’ve had in store for them in this life as result of not being able to pull out of all the negativity and pessimism that their parents had heaped on them during their earlier growing years in the family. And all of their possible growth in the Lord in this lifetime ends up getting stunted as a result of the “death” that was brought upon them by the negative and abusive words spoken to them by their own natural parents.

This is why the Lord is telling us in this verse that some kind of death can literally be brought about as a result of speaking out the wrong kinds of words to someone – especially words spoken between parents and their own children. Here are some verses to keep in mind and learn from:

· “There is one who speaks like the piercings of a sword, but the tongue of the wise promotes health. The truthful lip shall be established forever, but a lying tongue is but for a moment.” (Proverbs 12:18)

·  “Keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking guile. Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it.” (Psalm 34:13)

·  “A man’s stomach shall be satisfied from the fruit of his mouth, and from the produce of his lips he shall be filled.” (Proverbs 18:20)

·  “The Lord God has given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him who is weary.” (Isaiah 50:4)

·  “Walk in wisdom toward those who are outside, redeeming the time. Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each one.” (Colossians 4:5)

·  “The mouth of the righteous is a well of life, but violence covers the mouth of the wicked.” (Proverbs 10:11)

·  “The words of a man’s mouth are deep waters; the wellspring of wisdom is a flowing brook.” (Proverbs 18:4)

·  “A wholesome tongue is a tree of life, but perverseness in it breaks the spirit.” (Proverbs 15:4)

·  “Pleasant words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the bones.” (Proverbs 16:24)

·  “Anxiety in the heart of man causes depression, but a good word makes it glad.” (Proverbs 12:25)

·  “A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. The tongue of the wise uses knowledge rightly, but the mouth of fools pours forth foolishness.” (Proverbs 15:1)

·  “He who guards his mouth preserves his life, but he who opens wide his lips shall have destruction.” (Proverbs 13:3)

·  “Whoever guards his mouth and tongue keeps his soul from troubles.” (Proverbs 21:23)

·  “The heart of the righteous studies how to answer, but the mouth of the wicked pours forth evil.” (Proverbs 15:28)

·  “Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips.” (Psalm 141:3)

 I want to use my words and actions for good, to lift people up, to encourage and empower and I do my best to stay away from people who do the opposite.  Use your words wisely people and like the old adage states, “If you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything.” Or as we learned at a recent women’s retreat, “shut up”!