And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

Hebrews 4:13

One of the most difficult aspects of the Christian faith is to clean out the areas of your life that no one else can see.
Recently, my wife and I had some friends that stayed at our house while we were visiting family in Michigan. And if you’ve ever had anyone stay at your house, you know that the cleaning process is completely different. I began looking at my entire home differently – like I was seeing my home from someone else’s perspective.

This went well, that is, until I walked into our personal bathroom – the one that’s connected to our bedroom. Our personal bathroom, because it’s for personal use only, usually gets the shaft on deep cleaning (don’t judge me until you go look at your personal bathroom!).

I quickly came to realize that I allow more dirt and grime in our personal bathroom, because I know no one will see it. And it wasn’t until it became possible for someone to see it that I realized how bad I allowed it to get.

What area of your life do you allow to get dirty and grimy because you know no one will see it?
What is your personal bathroom?

Understand that God sees all – even our personal bathrooms.
What in your life would you not want God to see?
I would start cleaning there.

Our team recently began discussing the characteristics of the people Motion Church will attempt to attract.

We took a close look at the demographics of Tampa and Riverview and began listing ‘Motion Mo’ and ‘Motion Molly’ (yeah, that’s from Saddleback Church).

Here are a few that we came up with:

• 18 -45 year olds
• Families: younger children
• Men: restoring masculinity
• Financially Middle Class
• Spiritually intrigued but don’t like church

What does a typical member of your church look like?

In order to have the greatest impact on your community, begin to market to your ‘Motion Mo’ or ‘Motion Molly.’

When the Devil attacks –> Great movie title by the way …

Fighting the Devil is easy (I’m calling you out Devil!).  Ok, not easy, but it doesn’t scare me.  I don’t get scared when I am going head to head with Satan.  Not because I’ve been working out, but because Jesus has got my back.

I’ll tell you what scares the H. E. Double Hockey Sticks out of me.

Is when Satan is at work … (whisper this next part) and I don’t even know it.

AHH!!!!  That is scary.  So many people fall for the wolf in sheep’s clothing trick.  The worst part is that they don’t even know it.  They don’t know they are speaking death into people’s lives.  They don’t know they are against God himself.  They don’t know they are being used as an instrument of evil.

Now that scares me.

Here are questions to ask yourself in order to identify if Satan is secretly at work:

1. Are your motives healthy?
2. Are you jealous of others?
3. Do you tear people down?
4. Are those around drained from your presence?

This is not an exhaustive list, but evaluate yourself honestly.

Our vision verse is 1 John 4:9-10

This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.  This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

The purpose of God’s actions (Jesus’ payment on the cross) is for those who believe in him to experience life through Christ.  Christians get the God sent Jesus to die for our sins part (they should anyways).

People have an innate sense deep within-to the very core of who they are-that there is more to life than what they have come to expect.

The good news is that people are looking for what’s not there.

Our job is to provide people the answer.  Not drugs, not porn, not sports, not success.

But a real answer that is found in the person of Jesus.

I don’t mean to brag, but a certain big time pastor must have read one of my blog posts.

This unnamed big shot wrote about the same topic I did this past Friday.

Ok, actually, I lied.  This pastor is Steven Furtick and he wrote his post on February 2 (I swear I did not read it until after I wrote mine).  His post will help expand on my previous post, No Way, Directions are for Women!

I wanted to talk about the difference between good and great.  We’ve all heard that bad is not the enemy of great, good is the enemy of great.  But as I read Pastor Furtick’s post, I thought to myself, “there really is no possible way I could better communicate this idea.” 

So here it is:

One of the most important choices you make every day is not the choice between right and wrong. That’s important, but it’s base level.

The real choice is between good and great.

Are you going to have a good marriage or are you going to have a great marriage?
Are you going to settle for dating a good person or wait for a great person?
Are you going to raise good little boys and girls or great men and women of God?
Are you going to meet the minimum requirements at your job or are you going to set the standard with your greatness?

Unfortunately, it seems like most Christians never make the leap to that level. They stick to right and wrong, never realizing that it’s entirely possible to live a right life in a wrong way. And in turn they sacrifice the great on the altar of the good, not understanding the truth:

You could not have an affair but still have a mediocre marriage.
You could not have sex before marriage but still settle for less than God’s best when choosing the person you marry.
You could not hit your kids but fail to truly raise them.

You could be a good person, but still live a shadow of the life God intended for you.

This is not his post in its entirety, read it here.

The manly thing to do, as always, is to figure it out on your own.

Right?

You know exactly what I’m talking about … “Directions! I don’t need no flipping directions!”

Catch the irony there? (don’t need no … actually means I do need … never mind, stupid grammar joke!)

The reality is that God speaks in many different ways.  Humans are stupid creatures (Jesus likens us to sheep, not cool! but the truth).  Sometimes, we need God to write the correct choice or decision in the air because we are just “not seeing” what God is telling us.  I get that part, I recently made the biggest decision of my life up to this point.  I kept missing God’s signals (kinda how I never catch my wife’s “between the lines” communication signs).

I think we all want the experience Paul had with Jesus — when Jesus met Paul on the dirt path and revealed himself to Paul.  Wouldn’t that make life so much easier?  If Jesus would just meet with me, I could shoot him a couple questions and hear, in plain English, what his answers are (I know that is not what happened with Paul, but still I would rather this happen for me).

But much too often, we are left wondering and trying figure out the correct answer.  Almost as if we are waiting for the cosmic “go ahead” that Jesus is supposed to give to us, right?  Well, maybe not.  God can work in that way, but according to William MacDonald and George Muller (both are stud scholars), God speaks to his followers in 5 ways.

• Through Scripture
• Through Visions
• Through Circumstances
• Through Others
• Through Direct Communication (possibly in an inward manner)

I read today Acts 16 (I’m planting a church, so, of course I’m reading Acts, duh!).  I was astonished that Paul was “trying to go into Bithynia, and the Spirit of Jesus did not permit them” (verse 7).

What?  The Spirit of Jesus wouldn’t allow them to do something good?

That’s when it hit me,

the Spirit keeps those who are destined for great things from settling into that which is good.  Hmmm …

The Spirit guides as much by the closing of doors as he does by the opening of doors; remember,

Good is the enemy of great, so ask yourself the question, “is God protecting me from something good, in order to do something great?”

What circumstances in your life are pointing toward greatness?

Because, you should probably listen.

I am still going to address the blog post from TechCrunch titled Should You Really Be a Startup Entrepreneur? (previous posting said I would and I keep my word!!!)

But there lies ahead of me a quest . . . and I’m on it!!!! (a little Dane Cook humor if you didn’t get that)

I am calling all Christians to a new fight, a fight that I think has been in the making for several years. 

We must stop stupid t-shirts and corny “Christian” plays-on-words!

What is this? 

“God wants You To Be saved”?  Do you really think this type of “evangelism” — if you can call it that — works?