Haiti (The Day Before)

My talented friend Josiah Morgan was in Haiti just 24 hours before the tragic earthquake. Read his amazing story and see some of his incredible photos like these on his blog.







And let us all continue to pray for the people of Haiti.

KARM Jubilee

Sometimes work is just work.

But sometimes it is something much, much more.

Such was the case for me recently. My agency was blessed (and I do mean blessed) with the opportunity to help Knox Area Rescue Ministries develop a campaign to celebrate their 50th Anniversary.

Day after day, heroes at KARM do incredible work for the hurting and lost in the Knox Area. Consider these facts:

• KARM serves up to 1,400 meals a day to the poor and homeless.

• Over 400 men, women and children call KARM home each night.

• 139,479 spent the night at KARM last year.

So it was an incredible opportunity for me - both creatively and spiritually - to come up with a campaign for such a vital organization.

The concept came straight from the Good Book.

“Sound the trumpet throughout your land. Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty to everyone. For it is a jubilee and is to be holy for you.”
Leviticus 25: 9 -12

The Old Testament teaches of Jubilee—a special time of celebration that occurs every fifty years. It was a time where sins and debts are forgiven, slaves and prisoners are freed, and the gift of new life from God rejoiced.

Perfect!

2010 is a Jubilee year for Knoxville Area Rescue Mission. A time to celebrate 50 years of helping the poor and needy of the Knox Area. It’s a celebration of thousands of nourishing meals provided to the hungry. A time to rejoice how those addicted to drugs and alcohol have been given shelter and help for their addiction. And a time to honor how KARM has helped those in search of their own personal jubilee a way to find new life through Jesus Christ.

This served as the cornerstone message through all the materials we created - - including the KARM Jubilee Logo, microsite (that you can check out at www.karmjubilee.org,)various print materials and campaign videos.

Check out the site to see some of these elements and to learn more about the Jubilee year-long celebration. The videos we filmed should be added to the site soon. (I'll be sure to share them right here when they make it to the YouTubes, as well.)

I was also thrilled to be a part of the KARM Jubilee kick off event last week. An incredibly inspiring event to see and hear first hand how KARM has changed lives - like the one of former KARM resident, gifted musician and rock n roll evangelist, Davis Mitchell.

Davis' story is incredibly inspiring and a beautiful portrait of God's grace. Meeting him and getting to learn his story - and what he's doing with his second chance - is one of the greatest blessings I experienced through this entire project.

But that's another post for another day.

In the meantime, visit www.karmjubilee.org to see how you can support this incredible organization. Whether it's your time, your talents, your money or your prayers, KARM needs your support more than ever this year.

Together, we can all help KARM accomplish so much during this special year - and for 50 more to come!

Dead Sea Thinking

I am becoming such a fan of the thoughts on faith that Dr. Chris Stephens churns out daily. Dr. Chris has a pretty amazing story. He's the lead pastor of Faith Promise Church. And while I've never heard him preach in person, that's something I definitley want to work into my to-do list.

I've come to appreciate his thoughts and his heart through a daily email he sends out. It comes like clock work (around 10ish) and always seems to give me some good spiritual manna to chew on. Check out his blog or sign up to receive his email, if you're interested.

Below is his post from today, which was just too good not to share. Love his thoughts about that God can’t bless selfishness and that we are all blessed to be a blessing. Good stuff!

Dead Sea Thinking

Posted: 15 Feb 2010 09:01 PM PST

Hey Friends,

The Dead Sea is beautiful. I have driven around it and have gone for a swim in it. It is below sea level and NOTHING can live in it because everything flows in and nothing flows out. It is dead! It is dead because this is not how the Lord designed the world to operate.

We are all supposed to take things in and we are all supposed to give things out. This is true in the physical realm as well as the spiritual realm. Far too many people, and even some in the church today, are dead seas in their lives and in their thinking.

Life is all about them! Everything flows to them, but never away. They are like the Dead Sea and nothing can really live in them or around them. The Dead Sea is selfish and God can’t bless selfishness. I hope you caught that last sentence because it is so true.

I wonder if some of the churches today are “Dead Sea” in their thinking. If the life of God is flowing in, then the life of God should be flowing out and giving others life.

Does life flow out of you? Are you a giver of yourself? Of your money? Of your time?

Look around you – do you see life? Are the people around you flourishing, thriving, growing, and giving life to others? That is the plan of God. We are blessed to be a blessing. People are like plants; they need water to grow and we are called to water them.

Who are you blessing?

Just some thoughts…

Love you,

Pastor Chris

This is the day...

Psalm 118:24

This is the day the LORD has made;
let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Today is a very special day.

A gift.

But then again, each one is.

I thank the Lord for all He has done and continues to do in my life.

Blessed with health, a beautiful family, and friends that help pick me up, make me laugh and make the journey worthwhile.

Blessed with the chance to work with amazing, inspiring people, like this guy.

Blessed to play the game I love with a group of guys who are like brothers.

Blessed for you, dear blog reader, in forgiving all my numerous grammatical errors and half-baked blog posts.

Seriously.

I am so thankful for you. And for this day.

Let us rejoice!!!

Inskip

Thoughts and prayers to the two principals shot today at Inskip Elementary. My agency is literally right next door to Inskip. So we've spent most of the afternoon on "lock-down." No one allowed to come in or out. Cops everywhere around our building. Helicopters in the sky. A very surreal, scary moment.

Today has made me think of a couple things. One, it has renewed my hatred of guns. I personally see nothing but pain and heartbreak when a gun is involved. I get that it is a person's "right" to have one. I just don't understand it. But given my history with them, I guess that makes sense.

Second, today was a good reminder that sometimes God may have more going on than we realize. Today Knox County schools closed early for the snow. Now, I hear DC has 28 inches on the ground. We have a light dusting of snow that was already off the roads as I went to pick my daughter up early from school. Throughout the day I, and others, cracked jokes about the fact that Knox County was letting out because of the "blizzard" we are experiencing.

But, if I understand the timeline correctly, all students were out of the building at Inskip when the gunman came to the school. Because of the snow.

A tragic day, but a good reminder of how God works miracles in the midst of this world's chaos.

Be Blown Away

Loved this post by Jud Wilhite over at People of The Second Chance. Tremendous thoughts on how to imagine God, and how to live a life blown away by His power.

BE BLOWN AWAY
Posted by Jud Wilhite:

On any given night, it is estimated you can see about 30 stars from downtown New York City, about 3,000 from most rural areas, and up to 30 billion with a large telescope. We do not know how many stars exist, but we know there are over 200 billion stars in our galaxy alone. One of the largest known stars has a diameter of almost a billion miles!

An explosion of energy on the surface of the sun, known as a solar flare, recently sent a magnetic cloud toward the earth at a million miles per hour. The cloud was over 30 million miles in diameter. Think of the size and speed of this cloud and remember that God is bigger and faster.

Richard Swenson writes: “If we witness a magnetic cloud thirty million miles in diameter moving a million miles per hour—is God bigger than that? Can He move faster than that? If the center of the sun has temperature of fifteen million degrees centigrade and pressures of seven trillion pounds per square inch—could God walk into the core of the sun, take a nap, and walk back out? Every impressive structure or event in the universe should remind us of a God who is greater than all his works.”

Maybe if I regularly spent more time beholding the vast expanse of the starry heavens—and meditated on the sovereign God who established them and upholds them—I would spend less time questioning his ability to control things in my life.

Maybe we all need to look up tonight at the stars and be blown away again?

Father/Daughter Dance

This weekend looks to be legendary. Possible snow. Peyton gets Super Bowl Ring #2. And one of my absolute favorite nights of the year: The Annual Father/Daughter Dance in Fountain City.

To prepare for this year's dance inferno, Grace and I have been watching all the classics for inspiration. Travolta's intro on Stayin'Alive.

Elaine's dance on Seinfeld.

The ever-smooth Lionel Richie "Dancin' On The Ceiling."

But our main inspiration shall come from the epic masterpiece Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo. Grace has proven to be a natural with the art of the Pop N' Lock. Take a look at the YouTube clip below to see some of the moves that we will be unleashing. We will also be dressed like Turbo and his lady friend. Oh yes we will.

Counterfeit Gods

Timothy Keller has already written two of my all-time favorite books on faith. The Prodigal God and Reason for God were both game changers for me. Full of insight and provocative answers for those who are both skeptics and believers. Some days, I'm a bit of both.

Well, I just finished his epic third book in the trilogy, Counterfeit Gods. And this one in many ways is my favorite of the bunch.

The book deals with our idols and the empty promises of money, sex and power - and how none of these ever truly quench our thirsts.

I must admit, I never really thought much about the Commandment to "have no other God, or idol, before me." But God put that Commandment first, so he must find it important.

Even so, I have always held a very uninformed view on idols. That they were lifeless creations worshiped by a more primitive people. And while that's true, it is also true that idols are still very much worshiped in our modern, "sophisticated" generation.

In some ways more than ever.

The idol of success. The idol of "having it all". The idol of sex without any commitment. The idol of all pleasure with no pain. The idol of staying forever young. The idol of total convenience. The idol of getting now but paying later.

Just this week I began to worship of the new idol from Mac - and the iPad isn't even in production yet!

The list is endless. But Keller's book helps open your eyes to modern day idol worship. Better yet, he gives you information and inspiration on how to replace these idols with the worship of a God who surpasses them all.

Read an excerpt of the book here. Or better yet, read the whole thing as soon as you can get to it.