Monday Reflections

This past weekend was a great reminder for us. We went to a wedding on Saturday, and it was almost 5 years ago that Jennifer and I were married. As we watched our friends savor every moment of their wonderful experience, it brought back great memories of the day when I married my best friend on July 22, 2005.

One of the activities in the Outflow book that our core group is reading asked us to make note of all the blessings in our life by writing them down and placing them in a jar. We took time to do that this week, and it was a great reminder of how good God has been to us. At the same time, I felt a little convicted for the times that I complain about certain situations. We have truly been blessed, and I honestly have nothing to complain about.

Last night was a great night with The Overflow. We had several first time people there with us, and we began our new study called Outflow. Our core group is reading the materials through the week, and then we are using discussion groups to further apply the information on Sunday nights. My prayer is that God would bring transformation to our group, not simply more information.

Also, Tyler Patterson led worship and did an amazing job. We are praying that God will give Tyler clarity as to his possible future involvement with us, so please keep Tyler and our church in your prayers for the next week or so as he continues to pray about taking the position of Worship and Creative Arts Pastor for The Overflow. He would be an amazing addition to our team, but we ultimately want him to be exactly where God wants even if that's not with us.

Over the past four weeks, I've been able to reach my goal of reading one book each week. Now, this week, I'm going to take some time and reflect back over these four books and make sure I'm applying some of the things I've read. What good is gaining knowledge if it isn't impacting our lives?

In order to be able to read these books, I've had to make an intentional choice to cut some things out of my life, specifically a lot of my time watching TV. It really hit me a few weeks ago how pointless it was to sit and watch TV, so this has been a fairly smooth transition. I'm not saying "TV is of the devil," but I do think we all need to guard how much time we spend watching TV because it can rob us of so much quality time with our family and opportunities to grow in our faith.