Monthly Archives: February 2012

33 Great Date Ideas

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With only a few days left before Valentine’s Day, I thought you might like a few of the date ideas from this article.

“33 Great Date Ideas” by LifeWay Staff:

Dinner and a movie again? Boring! This Valentine’s Day (or anytime), get out of your dating rut with your spouse or significant other. Be creative, playful, simple, or romantic. It doesn’t matter as long as you’re talking, laughing, and celebrating life – together. And you don’t have to spend a lot of cash.

If you’re stuck for great date ideas, here are thirty-three fun ideas to get you out of the rut:

  1. Take a hike. Enjoy the beauty of God’s creation together (you can conclude with back and foot rubs).
  2. Create your own progressive dinner. Go to four different restaurants for appetizer, salad, entrée, and dessert.
  3. Recreate your first date (or another special memory you share).
  4. Walk hand in hand along any kind of water – river, lake, ocean. Throw in a sunset for the perfect romantic moment.
  5. Visit a pet store and ask to hold the puppies and kittens. The experience will be warm and fuzzy, and the prices will probably discourage a purchase (unlike a trip to the pound).
  6. Eat dinner someplace new. Experiment with restaurants that serve ethnic food you’ve never tried.
  7. Go for a bike ride together.
  8. Put together a jigsaw puzzle or play a board game together.
  9. Take in a museum. Make your day of discovery relaxed and more about being together than prepping for an imaginary pop quiz.
  10. Use your imagination. Create a date for $10 or less. Try to spend that exact amount doing as many things as possible.
  11. Be a kid again – go to a playground and swing, hop on the merry-go-round, fly a kite together, feed the ducks at the lake, and go out for an ice cream cone.
  12. Rent or download your favorite romantic movie. Pop some popcorn and don’t forget to snuggle together.
  13. Go camping. If it’s too hot, create an indoor camp-out.
  14. Dream a little. Share your hopes and dreams for the future.
  15. Cook a meal together and eat it by candlelight.
  16. Go to a flea market or yard sale together, and buy each other a gift for under $5.
  17. Plan ahead. Go to a restaurant early, and ask the waiter to bring a rose to your spouse each time he visits the table when you dine there that evening.
  18. Visit a rock climbing gym. Belaying, or working the safety rope, for each other will build trust and partnership.
  19. Be spontaneous. Make no plans and just go with the flow.
  20. Road trip! Get in the car and see where the road leads you.
  21. Go canoeing or kayaking (or even paddle boating, if you prefer less speed).
  22. Get dressed up, eat at home, then go to a nice restaurant for dessert and coffee.
  23. Lie on a blanket and watch the clouds during the day or watch the stars and hold hands at night (or do both).
  24. Go on a picnic – inside, on the roof, in a park, or at a beach or lake.
  25. Grab a latte at a coffee shop and slow down and talk about life.
  26. Go to a play or a concert.
  27. Paint your own pottery. (Many towns have studios that provide the pre-formed pottery and paint, and they fire it for you.)
  28. Play in the rain together.
  29. Take some sort of lessons together. From painting lessons to horseback riding lessons, learn something together.
  30. Serve together at a local soup kitchen.
  31. Look through photo albums together (from yourselves as babies). Take turns telling stories and sharing favorite memories together.
  32. Rent a convertible and go to a drive-in movie.
  33. Be a tourist in your own town and visit those places you may never have visited.

Actions Speak Louder than Words!

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I am not sure where I found this illustration, but it goes a long way in proving that our actions do speak louder than words.

An honest man was being tailgated by a stressed out woman on a busy boulevard. Suddenly, the light turned yellow, just in front of him. He did the right thing, stopping at the crosswalk, even though he could have beaten the red light by accelerating through the intersections.

The tailgating woman hit the roof, and the horn, screaming in frustration as she missed her chance to get through the intersection.  As she was still in mid-rant, she heard a tap on her window and looked up into the face of a very serious police officer. The officer ordered her to exit her car with her hands up. He took her to the police station where she was searched, finger printed, photographed and placed in a holding cell.

After a couple of hours, a policeman approached the cell and opened the door. She was escorted back to the booking desk where the arresting officer was waiting with her personal effects. He said, “I’m very sorry for this mistake. You see, I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn, flipping off the guy in front of you, and cussing a blue streak at him. “I notice the ‘Choose Life’ license plate holder, the ‘What Would Jesus Do’ bumper sticker, the ‘Follow Me to Sunday School” bumper sticker, and the chrome-plated Christian fish emblem on the trunk. Naturally, I assumed you had stolen the car.”

How Does a Church Become a Family?

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Being a member of a church is more than just taking up a seat in the sanctuary one day a week to sing a few songs and then listen to someone talk about Jesus.  Being a member of a church is about family.  This morning our Youth Minister, Jacob Jones, showed me an article on Churchleaders.com entitled, “How Does a Church Become a Family?” In this article Brady Boyd gives us four simple ways to make sure our church becomes a family.

Boyd writes:

My family and I came from Texas to pastor New Life Church over four years ago, not knowing anyone in the congregation except the members of the search committee. Each Sunday, I would look into the faces of thousands of strangers, wanting desperately to be known and to know them and their stories. It was the loneliest time of my pastoral journey.

But then something happened this past summer. We became a family, after four years of intentional plowing. I realize it takes a long time to become old friends. It cannot be rushed, programmed, or forced. It simply takes time. I have wondered in the past few months how does a church become a family assembly instead of a gathering of strangers? What is the ground that must be plowed in order for family roots to take hold and ultimately blossom in the local church?

1. Families know how to disagree

This does not sound warm and fuzzy, does it? But it’s true. Healthy families have learned to honorably disagree and to defend the unity that is so critical for the long-term strength of the home. I see people every week that have disagreed with me but have decided to persevere and forge a friendship despite our differences. This is why I believe church families and marriages are so similar. No one can stay married if they always need to be right. Great marriages and great church families have learned to love while they are fussing and are quick to offer forgiveness and grace.

2. Families celebrate and mourn with one another

Healthy families embrace the rhythms of each other’s lives, rejoicing when the others are rejoicing and mourning when the others are sad. This past Sunday, I learned of a dear New Lifer who had just been placed in hospice because of cancer. Later, a despondent single mom asked me to pray with her for her prodigal son. Minutes later, a sweet grandmother told me her daughter, son-in-law, and all their children had just decided to follow Jesus. She had prayed for them for 13 years. I was sad, then I rejoiced. That is family.

3. Families make room for new arrivals

When babies are born, the family celebrates the new arrival. No one is sad because more room has to be made at the dinner table. The same is true with healthy church families. They are always ready to welcome the new arrivals at the table. I refuse to apologize that New Life is a large church. I know it can be overwhelming at times to walk into a big building full of strange faces. Believe me, I know. But I have also found that if I simply give it time, people will embrace me if I make room for the embrace.

4. Families serve one another

Healthy church families are keenly aware of the needs all around them. In the early church, it was said, “there were no needy persons among them.” (Acts 4:34) What a beautiful picture of family surrounding each other, embracing the broken, and giving generously so that everyone has an advocate and hope.

I am most grateful to belong to a family that can disagree and still love, celebrates and mourns with each other, makes room for the new arrivals, and is quick to serve and bless. We are a growing family. Amen.

A Renewed Resolution

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We are now thirty-nine days into 2012. It has been just over a month since we sat down and made our resolutions for the new year. On January 2nd I posted an article by John Piper entitled, “Not By Bread Alone: Let’s Live on God’s Word in 2012.” In the article we were challenged to find a reading plan that allows us to spend more time in God’s Word, and then commit ourselves to living in the Bible in 2012.

In his post, “Investing Time in Reading God’s Word,” Randy Alcorn reminds us of the importance of keeping the Word of God at the forefront of our lives. This is a wonderful lesson on studying God’s Word. If you enjoy Randy Alcorn’s article be sure to send a link to this post to your friends and family.

Mr. Alcorn writes:

The fact is, you and I will become the product of what we choose to delight in and meditate upon. Psalm 1 says: “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.”

We all meditate, and we’re all shaped by the object of our meditation. We take our attitudinal and behavioral cues from it. This week, will I be shaped by situation comedies, soap operas, and newspapers, or will I be shaped by Isaiah, Luke, A. W. Tozer, and Charles Haddon Spurgeon? It depends on how I choose to spend my time.

Psalm 1 says the one who continually meditates on God’s Word “is like a tree planted by streams of water, that yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither.” Trees don’t choose where to place themselves, but we do. We determine what our sources of nourishment will be, which in turn determine whether we bear fruit or wither.

The key to spirituality is the development of little habits, such as Bible reading and memorization and prayer. In putting one foot in front of the other day after day, we become the kind of person who grows and endures rather than withers and dies.

Consider again Psalm 1. “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.” In each case, there is a physical action— walk, stand, sit. To meditate on the Word involves opening it with our hands, looking at it with our eyes, or speaking it with our lips.

“Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time” (Eph. 5:15–16). Why not redeem two hours of your day that you would have spent on television, newspaper, video games, phone, working overtime, or hobbies? Change your habits. Spend one hour meditating on and/or memorizing Scripture. Spend the other hour reading a great book. Share what you’re learning with your spouse and children, or a friend.

Listen to Scripture and audio books and praise music while you fold clothes, pull weeds, or drive. Say no to talk radio or sports radio, not because they’re bad but because you have something better to do. Fast from television, radio, and the Internet for a week. Discover how much more time you have. Redeem that time by establishing new habits of cultivating your inner life and learning to abide in Christ. “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit; for apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

As John Piper shared in this post challenging readers to dive into God’s word: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes out of the mouth of God. Those are the words of Jesus (Matthew 4:4). Let’s take them seriously and live on the word every day in 2012.”

Lord, take us deep into your Word. Let us not be content with empty entertainment and diversions to numb our pain. Your Word doesn’t numb us; instead it makes us alive, energizes us, strengthens and sustains us, and comforts us with truth. It confronts sin in our lives, encourages our obedience, and gives us delight in you. Who but the devil and sin itself would distract us from such treasure? Change our habits of leisure, Lord. Prompt us to abandon entertainment that scorns and violates your Word, to listen to music that celebrates your Word, and to embrace great Scripture-saturated books that lead us to you and your Word. Remind us that your Word is the source of correction, training, eternal perspective, and joyful rest from weariness and sorrow.

To read more by Randy Alcorn go to his site: Eternal Perspective Ministries

TAG! God’s It!

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As a boy growing up, I loved to run. I was not only quick, but could run all day long. If we were playing tag and someone was chasing me, there was a good chance they wouldn’t catch me. However, there was one problem with being so fast, no one wanted to chase me. Since they couldn’t catch me, they chased after those they could. Even though I was playing “tag” with them, I wasn’t really in the game.

Often times, we run through life unaware anyone is pursuing us. We go to work, take care of our family, do our daily chores, watch some television, exercise, as well as a host of other responsibilities all the while thinking this is life—one big race. However, in reality, God is pursuing us. He desires to save us, to know us, and to love us, and each day He follows closely behind always ready to catch us and begin the most important relationship we could ever know.

In her blog post “Leaving the Ninety-Nine,” Margaret Manning beautifully illustrates this idea of God in pursuit of His most cherished creation.

Ms. Manning writes:

“You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape?”(1)

C.S. Lewis, the self-named most reluctant and dejected convert in all England, penned this now famous and oft-quoted account of his conversion. Unlike some who decided to follow Jesus with urgency and willingness of heart, Lewis came kicking and screaming! While some may resonate with Lewis’s dogged reluctance, others gladly pursue the path home.

Lewis’s reluctant conversion fascinates me, but I am even more moved by the glimpse into God’s character his story affords. For Lewis reminds us of the love of God that relentlessly pursues even the reluctant prodigal who would turn and run in the opposite direction in order to try and escape God’s gracious embrace. The God revealed in Lewis’s account is a God in pursuit. Perhaps this God is even particularly enamored with the reluctant prodigal, leaving the ninety-nine sheep, as Jesus insists in Luke’s gospel, to pursue the one lost sheep.

The apostle Paul, who described himself as “the chief of sinners,” often talked about this God in pursuit. In what is perhaps the apex of his letter to the Romans, Paul writes: “For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous person; though perhaps for the good someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates God’s own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of the Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life” (Romans 5:1-11).

Paul’s progressive description of our condition before God reveals the depths of God’s love. First, Paul notes that God’s love pursues humanity “while we were still helpless.” Then, Paul states that God loves “while we were yet sinners,” and finally, God loves and reconciles humanity even “while we were enemies.” Indeed, Paul insists on God’s great love towards even the vilest offender through the life and death of Jesus. He doesn’t make this claim as one who stands removed from the vilest offender. He makes it as a part of his own testimony. “It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all.”(2)

But Paul’s recognition of God’s grace didn’t end with himself. As Paul grasped the depths of God’s reconciling love in his own life, it led him to proclaim that same reconciliation for others. To the Corinthian church he wrote, “Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us through Christ, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and he has committed to us the word of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:18-19).

In reflecting on the reconciling work of God in Christ, scholar Miroslav Volf draws a pointed application: “God does not abandon the godless to their evil but gives the divine self for them in order to receive them into divine communion through atonement, so also should we-whoever our enemies and whoever we may be.”(3) For the Christian who recognizes her own inclusion into God’s gracious love, she cannot help but include others in the good news of God’s reconciling love in Jesus—even with those she might deem her enemies.

We may struggle as reluctant converts, or we may not fully grasp the depths of God’s great reconciliation. But perhaps as we are moved to see a common inheritance as those in need of saving, we might be drawn deeper into the embrace of this God in pursuit.

What we need to remember, God is able to catch us at any time; however, He continues His pursuit, constantly calling for us to stop running away, and enjoy His loving embrace. Are you tired of running from God? If so, just stop running, call out to Him, and enjoy the perfect love of heaven!