A God Who Dreams!

My anniversary happens to be right around this Christmas season. Don't know what we were thinking when we chose Christmas time to get married. It inevitably means more money going out all at the same time of year. This year I was trying to dream a big experience for my wife and I on a tight budget. To make a long story short, I had booked a night at Gaylord Palms with tickets to ICE, a huge ice display in the middle of Florida, utilizing thousands of blocks of ice to create elaborate scenes. After booking it and looking at the final price I canceled. It was way more than I could afford for a one night experience. God took the dream and delivered. Through a series of events out of my control God provided the anniversary we dreamed of and more. Gaylord Palms, ICE, and Universal Studios for less than half the cost.

What made this anniversary so sweet to my wife and I was not that we got exactly what we wanted. It was looking down from the 9th floor of Gaylord Palms, over the Atrium, and experiencing God's presence and his voice speaking this loving truth, "I am dreaming for your marriage." I fear I would have missed it had I paid for the experience he provided. Would have felt the pain of the bill or thought that it was my planning that made it happen. Knowing on our
10 year anniversary that God is intimately involved in the success of my wife's and my relationship made our weekend one of the best experiences of our lives.

Christmas on a Dime!

If your like most of us, it feels a little tighter this Christmas season.  How do we do Christmas on a dime when we really want to express our love this season?  Here is your choice.  Spend more than you have or stick to the dime God has given you.  Consider this question.  How do I want to leave Christmas this year?  Jesus said, "It is more blessed to give than to receive."  Doesn't feel that way when we walk away from Christmas in debt.  The heart to bless people is crushed by the gut wrenching feeling that we spent more than we had.  It feels more like a curse when the hype of Christmas Day is gone.  So the dilemma is, I want to show people my love this Christmas but all I have is this one thin dime.  Well what if you took that dime and got creative.  What if you chose to live gratefulness this Christmas and figured out a new way to say I love you at Christmas.  I think you might find that there is more heart in a sincere gesture than a purchased gift.  Why not trying to walk away from Christmas experiencing what God would want you to.  The feeling of "more blessed."  

Feeling Alive at Christmas!

You ever heard those psycho sayings like, "The pain helps you know your alive," or "bleeding means you ain't dead." Psycho right. But could they be on to something. You ever watched the guy who's shot in the movies. When do they get most scared? When they stop feeling, when they begin to go numb.

Jesus in the Sermon on the mount say's some crazy things too. Very similar things to the psycho sayings above actually. He say's "blessed are those who mourn," "blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness," and "blessed are you when people insult you because of me." Could it be that in these seasons are the season's when we really find life. Too many times these things cause me to instead of embrace life, numb out. Could it be that when we numb out we stop risking and when we stop risking we stop living? Could it be that real living is feeling deeply and in feeling deeply embracing risk and adventure.

Numbing out is going through life, living is embracing life. That means the ups and downs, the successes and failures, the risks and the rewards. It means faith that God turns "mourning to gladdens" and pain into blessing. It means opening up your heart instead of closing it off. The minute we shut our heart down is the minute we shut down, our dreams, our potential, and our hope. This Christmas what if we opened our hearts completely to God and allowed ourselves to feel deeply again, to risk a little in our relationships, and to embrace a season of hope marked by the birth of a king, the hope of the world, Jesus Christ.

To do this try reading scripture. When you engage scripture you are not allowed to numb out. It won't let you. It calls into your deep and musters up life from there. It pierces your heart with it's truth and excites real living. Also, try loving a little. Taking the risk in a relationship to say an "I'm sorry" instead of waiting for one. Extend a thoughtful gesture to someone you don't know to well yet. Try worshiping. Choosing thankfulness over despair, prayer over frustration. Try thanking God for the harder times that reminds you your alive and that your not alone there. Try thanking God for his presence, in faith, even when you don't sense it. Try living this
Christmas.

Phillip Woody
phil@ridetheriver.org

Held Together

In the first chapter of Colossians, Paul speaks of Jesus as the one who holds all things together. Ever felt anything but held together?  The heart seems to be going one way while the family another, and work even another. Wonder what Paul means by holding us together? Could he be speaking only about the world around us or are we included?

I can't tell you how often I feel anything but held together. I can tell you when I do though. It is when I sit with Jesus. When I take all the compartments of my life and put them in the gaze of Christ.  When nothing makes sense things make sense there. They feel pieced together by the hands of God to form a picture of grace, love, and acceptance. At times the picture formed is revealing of the heart.  Insecurities, hurts, and fears surface that make sense of behaviors in my life. As the pictures form, God can then take them apart to form a new story a picture in the form of a cross. A picture that allows me to leave realizing, "it is finished." No longer do I have to live there. No longer in the hurt. No longer in the fear. I can live in the grace. Hope you can too.

My kids, God's voice.

Monday night, my son Caden asked me how to have a quiet time. He was baptized a month ago and his spiritual interest has been explosive.  After sharing S.O.A.P. with him he told me, "God has spoken to me before." Curious, I probed to find out when it was and what God might have said to him. He told me that a kid had called him a name at school and that he was going to call him a name back but the voice in his head told him "that would not be loving God." So Caden chose to walk away.

Isn't that how God speaks. A voice that sounds a lot like ours echo's in our mind and heart revealing the heart of God in the moment. Well what echod in my mind was a reminder that even if it feels like a while since I have heard his voice he is speaking. Can't tell you how many times God's voice sounds a heck of a lot like Caden, Gabe, or Blake.

Phillip Woody
phil@ridetheriver.org

Looking silly for Jesus.

Just yesterday I was at a Starbucks with two other guys from the church to discuss men and GraceRiver and what it would look like for men to reflect Godliness inside and outside of the church. After ordering the drinks, I waited for the barista to make them. Next to me was a girl who looked very familiar. Now the deli-ma is "do I say anything?"  On one hand I could be flat wrong and she might interpret it as a pick up line. On the other hand, if I don't, she might recognize and know who I was and consider me a jerk for not saying Hi!

True to fashion for me, I chose the option to look stupid rather than a jerk. The conversation had it's embarrassing moments of trying to discover where I knew her from that led to "church?" Though that was not the connection, I discovered she was looking for a church and had not found one in the area yet. An invitation with a series card for an upcoming sermon series later,  I realized it was Jennifer Anniston she reminded me of (a good friend of mine).

I wonder how many divine appointments I have missed not willing to look silly. If silly is the worst thing I have to face to live contagious for Jesus then put a clown nose on me.

Phillip Woody
phil@ridetheriver.org

Rate your buy-in.

The vision of GraceRiver Church is to spread Jesus like a disease all over Southeast Orlando and beyond.  How do you do that.  At GraceRiver you do that by Loving God, Loving People, and Living Contagious.  Rate yourself from level 1 to level 3.

1.  You believe in the vision enough to benefit from it.  You receive something from the church and to you that is what is important.

2.  You believe in the vision enough to contribute comfortably.  Your happy to help if it doesn't interfere with your other priorities.

3.  You believe in the vision enough to give your life to it.  You belong to Jesus and are sold out to the greatest cause on earth.

-questions by craig groeschel

Don't feel bad about whatever level your at.  It's a journey to getting what Jesus got and was all about.  Rather, ask what is keeping me from engaging at the next level.  What do I fear?  What do I question?  What is in the way?  A church of 3's is a church that can change the world and that is the dream of GraceRiver.  

The face of Care.

What does care look like? Sometimes I think we inflate care beyond our own reach. What I mean is that we have made caring for someone an impossible task. What if care could be a simple text message? What if it could look like an intentional smile, a kind gesture, or a significant touch? What if care didn't have to be a commitment for life, to meet all the needs of a person, but a commitment to the moment; to notice.

That was how Jesus cared for many. It was the woman caught in adultery, the woman at the well, the crippled man lowered on a stretcher. Jesus did not say follow me to these men and women. He said "go and sin no more" to the woman caught in adultery, he said to the paralytic, "take up your mat and walk." Jesus did what he could
in the moment and that was caring.

At times caring is more, but, I imagine the world a pretty cool place to be if we each would just care in the moment. Look for ways to care as you do life and see if the journey isn't a little sweeter. I imagine it will be.

Success at a price.

A lot of people have paid the price for success. "To whom much is 

given much is required." Many have come by success at no price. And
that success soon reveals it's own price to be paid.

All success requires a price to be paid. The question is which do you
want to pay?

Success at a fast pace often leaves no time for character to keep up.
The hard work of reflection is lost to the speed game of staying
ahead. If the success comes with no price, handed to you on a plate,
humility is lost and entitlement can become ones curse. Humility is
found at the feet of Jesus doing the hard work of reflection.

Success at the feet of Jesus is what opens the door to real leadership
authority. Humility and character are always the pillars of long
lasting success. They develop a person beyond a portfolio. They
paint the picture of personhood.

Which price do you want to pay for success? Short lived at the cost
of character or lasting at the expense of the hardest work of all,
sitting with Jesus?

Phillip Woody
phil@ridetheriver.org

Failure to try!

A Blog by LifeChurch.tv worth putting on my Blog!

The failure to try is one of the most common types of failure, and, in my opinion, one of the worst failures.  It is usually the result of a fear of failure or just plain laziness.

In December of 1999, I sold my last technology company.  Without going into great detail, selling the company at that time was a huge success for our investors and everyone involved.  However, as I drove home from our attorneys' office the night we finalized the sale,  I couldn't celebrate.  I began to be overcome with the fear of failure…I didn't know what I should do next and if it would be as successful.  It was so bad that it effectively kept me from trying anything new for the next several months.

I talk to so many pastors who are either living on yesterday's success or holding the pain of last week's failure.  What is unfortunate is that this fear of failure actually guarantees failure…the failure to try.  Over the long-term, it will almost certainly lead to a declining or dead ministry.

On our team, we ask people who are interviewing for a failure resume.  If someone cannot list several failures in their life, it is sometimes a sign that they fail to take risks or try anything new.

What are some things on your failure resume?  What tips do you have for overcoming the fear of failure?

The Gift of Grief

If you have ever mourned someone you would know that it is a journey
filled with emotion. Most of the time those emotions are dark and
deep matching the deep hurt your experiencing. Lost, anger, hopeless,
despair are some of these. How could anything like that be a gift
from God? When you can see what it produces.

Grief is a cry of the heart that lands heavy on all of those around us
who now share in our hurt. When the loss of someone dear becomes our
reality grief becomes God's gift to begin to fill the huge void that
plagues our soul. The beacon of Grief brings God's life through
people as they share in our pain. Grief has the God given potential
to restore families, build friendships, and produce joy when joy feels
lost. It is a gift.

Here is the kicker. Like every gift you have to be willing to receive
it.

God bless you Grandpa Meme, your life was meaningful and your death a
seed planted.

Conflict Resolution, A lost Art

Who taught you how to resolve conflict? The answer for most is both no one and everyone. We learn from watching and observing. Usually what we watch and observe from a young age is not healthy conflict resolution. Media plays a huge role as the #1 influencer of kids over parents and the church in society today. Now Rambo, and Judge Judy are our guides. Tell me that isn't scary. Here is a few thoughts when considering conflict that Rambo might not be teaching.

*It Requires emotional grit.
The ability to remain in the conversation when it feels your heart is being attacked.
*Emotional vulnerability. Risk.
Leaning that to hear someone else's heart you must be willing to lead with yours.
*Honoring your heart and honoring theirs. Both in mind.
Realizing it is not a battle to win but an agreement to find.
*A heart to hear as well as be heard/ to understand and be understood.
A willingness to listen first and lead with questions without making to many assumptions.

Here is a scripture that may help: "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves." Philippians 2:3

That verse lived out has the potential to see the lost art found again.

Hoping is Loving.

"When he mentioned the ark of God Eli fell backward off his chair by
the side of the gate. His neck was broken and he died." 1Samuel 4:18

Eli had just received news that his two son's were killed and the ark
captured by the Philistines. Eli did not mourn for his son's. This
scares the junk out of me. I have 3 boy's and the thought that my
boy's death would not tear me apart scares me. It scares me because
it happens all the time all around us. People lose hope in their
children, and when they do they lose love.

"When we lose hope, we lose love." When there is hope there is a
reason to love. Hope makes love worthwhile. The dream of what could be draws us to care, to hope, and to love. Without the dream loving becomes only hurt. If I believe any of my son's is doomed, then every thought of them is only pain, failure, hopelessness. Eli stopped
loving because he stopped hoping. I never want to stop hoping. Nor do I have to.

"Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him." Psalm
62:5

A little push, A little pull!

Ever noticed how everything in life that has any real value requires
sacrifice. Rest, Play, Financial Security, Health. They all require
sacrifice. There is a push and a pull in every area of our life. The
push is the holy discontent. "Something needs to change here." "This
just ain't working." There is also a pull. It usually looks like a
dream of how it could be different.

I have felt it recently with working out. First off, I don't yet
enjoy running and lifting. I do it so I can better compete at
whatever sport I am playing. My pull is my desire to play better, the
dream of being the best softball player the world has ever seen. The
push is how after I run from home to second on a double I know that
that from second to home will end in me throwing up. It's my nickname
at the YMCA, "puker." Now that is a push.

I see this in my relationship with God too. The push in areas of my
life that I am not satisfied with and the pull of the holy spirit
dreaming for me a new way of looking at it, dealing with it, living in
it.

Wonder in what areas of your life you feel the spirit of God pushing
and pulling you.

Words that Tickle

"See I am about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of
everyone who hears of it tickle." 1Samuel 3:11.

How would it feel to have the words of God tickle your ears? How
would it feel to be one who God used to tickle the ears of people?
Samuel was one of those. Scripture says that Samuel "let none of his
words fall to the ground." My problem is that so many of my words
do. Our words fall to the ground when there are no ears to hear
them. Sometimes no ears to hear is our fault and sometimes it's not.
I close ears when I talk too much. It's one of the areas I am working
on. I also am very passionate. Put those two things together and
people don't know what I am really passionate about and what to really
listen too if everything is so important.

5 rules I am trying to implement:
1. Don't answer until asked.
2. Don't talk first.
3. Write it and then speak it (process what your going to say,
instead of just throwing up)
4. Say it and then let it lye. Don't feel you have to defend it.
5. If it can be said in the form of a question, then do.

God help our words not "fall to the ground."

Marriage "Take Me There."

If you have not heard the Rascall Flatts song "Take Me There," you
need to download it from Itunes. It is a song written for everyone's
heart. Who doesn't want someone especially that special someone to
want to engage their own story and know them intimately. Who doesn't
want that person to want to go down the same backroads they have been
down, enter the experiences they have experienced, feel the joys and
pains they have experienced that helped to make them who they are today?

Strange is how few of us know how to do that. My wife are working
hard on this one. It amazes me how often we can just want to pick up
from today and just build the new memories without sharing the old
ones. It is amazing how hard work it is to sit in those past moments
with that someone you love especially when they are filled with hurt.
It's hard. It takes time. It takes a lot of emotional energy. It
takes a lot of listening. It takes a lot of love. When we don't know
where our spouse has come from do we really know who they are? What
if we all took the time to not just hear the stories of the past but
let our spouse take us there? I imagine understanding your spouses
heart may feel a little more attainable.

Marriage "Fallenness vss. Aloneness"

In Marriage listening is one of the best skills we can learn to
develop. Just listening isn't enough though. Two ways you can
listen; in order to speak or in order to understand. Too often I
listen in order to speak. When I do speak without really
understanding I read my story, experiences, insecurities into my
wife's heart and in doing so miss her heart. If I could learn to
listen to understand her heart I would speak to it differently.

Two ways to speak; to fallenness or to aloneness. It is amazing how
often we speak to a person's fallenness when what they are really
experiencing is aloneness. Fallenness means speaking to the problem.
Aloneness means speaking to the person's emotions. I can't tell you
how many times I have wanted to fix my wife's problem when she just
wanted me to enter into her hurt and live there with her for a while.

Here is how you can do it. 1. Listen to understand. 2. Don't
speak. 3. When she asks you to speak, enter her hurt by echoing her
hurt in your own words and telling her how sorry you are for the pain
she is experiencing. Take care of her, not the problem and she will
love you for it.

Marriage that works.

1st of a 3 part blog.

On our way to park our car in the garage at the hotel this weekend
for a marriage retreat Janann and I were on we encountered a young
lady working the parking booth to let us into the garage. She was
blown away that a couple had to work on their marriage. It literally
confused her. Perhaps she got her view of marriage from hollywood
where if it is real love it is perfect. Maybe she just didn't
believe in marriage at all and assumed that if we were at a marriage
conference it was because our marriage was in trouble like every
other marriage she had ever seen. Who knows?

What I do believe is that if your not "working on your marriage" then
it's probably "working you" (over). I've been there, have you? How
do you work on your marriage? How do you seek to understand your
spouses heart?

If you "work on your marriage" it will "work on you". I am a better
person because of this weekend. Though she will never make full
sense to my head she makes complete sense to my heart.

Getting God Right

At a conference this week I heard a powerful statement that made me think, if you have an incorrect fundamental view of God "you would be better off an Athiest." Why? Because any other view of God but the deep lover of your soul that was so moved by you upon creation that he wrote himself into the story of life to have an intimate relationship with us, would not draw us to him but leave us crippled by him.

Imagine if you believed God to be a game master who on his finger spun the world in motion and stepped back to watch it play out amused by our life and choices both good and bad.  A sarcastic view of God lends to a life of resentment. Or what if there was many God's each responsible for different aspects of life each for us to pay homage to? Such a view would produce a life compartmentalized as well as our soul.

If these or any other view of God is your view than I would think you better off to not believe at all.   And then you are left to the view of Darwin "eat or be eaten." Me, I think I will stick to the radical love of Jesus that started a revolution of care and meaning who I can experience each and every day in a deep relationship of significance. After all, that's the God of the Bible.

21 Flavors

 Thank God for Baskin Robins who carved new horizons and took us on an adventure in flavor.  Now each trip a new, deep, and meaningful experience of moosetracks, birthday cake, cookie dough, funfetti, mint chocolate chip and so much more.   Now plain vanilla experiences though good are no longer the limit of our soul fulfilling relationship with creamy goodness.  

 

I wonder if Baskin Robins was not a Jesus creation to giving us a window to the real kingdom of God is like?  I have had too many conversations of late with good hearted people of God who seemed to want to force me to see God's kingdom as one flavor.  Ask yourself why so many different way's to express the deep love of Jesus Christ for people evident in the thousands upon thousands of churches in the world each with their own personality and unique vision yet each an expression of God's heart for people?  Is it that one of those churches and only one of them is the right way of helping people to experience the love of God through Jesus, or is it that Jesus himself is an eclectic ice cream lover?  

While Grace River church has a unique vision our mission is the same as so many other churches you may have attended or heard of.  Why?  Because it was the mission given to us all from Jesus himself when he said, "Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you."  I guess God realized that to reach all of his people with his unrelenting love he knew that just Vanilla would not do.  So what flavor are you?  Because your flavor is not an accident but a unique expression of God for the world?

Playship

 It feels like at times we believe that closer proximity to God means the removal of play, fun, and laughter from our lives. But what if play was a way of worship. The Prodigal Son returns home and the Father throws a party, Sarah has a baby at the ripe age of 90 and responds, "God has brought me laughter." I have found in my life that when play isn't happening I feel most distant from him. So maybe play is a gift from God to be returned to him. That makes it worship. So in the words of America's favorite past time, "Play Ball!"

Learning to Listen

 What would happen if a person decided to stop talking for a week and really listen?  What would they learn, experience, understand in a new way?  My one week adventure in listening starts today.  Don't have any expectations just a question, "How will learning to listen change me?"  Here is how I am doing it.  Consciously making as few statements as possible turning statements I would have said into questions to ask.  I want to listen to my own heart, "what am I feeling and why?".  I want to listen to God's heart, "What is He saying and why?".  I want to listen to my family, "what are they experiencing and why?"  I want to listen to nature, "what is it teaching me about God and life and what does that mean?"  I want to listen to people, "what are you really wanting someone to hear?"  I'll keep you posted on an ADD pastor's journey for understanding.