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My prayer today is Lord give me the spirit of Joshua to serve you.

There are those who have gone forth to make serving the Lord more desirable to the eyes. This is OK but somewhere in life you are not going to win every battle. Somewhere in life you will fail.

And those times of failure you will want to question God just as Job did. But God reminded Job when He created the universe Job was not present.

God my prayer is that my eyes will be on you Lord in the good times as well as the bad times.

Joshua 24:15 (NIV)
15 But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.”

Success or failure does not change who the Lord of host is. In my life I have witness God in more than one way. In the Old Testament God has been recognized as:

• YHWH-Yireh — “The Lord will provide” (Genesis 22:13-14)
• YHWH-Rapha — “The Lord that healeth” (Exodus 15:26)
• YHWH-Niss”i — “The Lord our Banner” (Exodus 17:8-15)
• YHWH-Shalom — “The Lord our Peace” (Judges 6:24)
• YHWH-Ra-ah — “The Lord my Shepherd” (Psalm 23:1)
• YHWH-Tsidkenu — “The Lord our Righteousness” (Jeremiah 23:6)
• YHWH-Shammah — “The Lord is present” (Ezekiel 48:35)

In the New Testament Luke said he came to set the captives free. I know him as a deliver. I choose to serve him today because he is God and no other reason.

By Brandon Cox • July 12, 2018

The story is told of Truett Cathy, founder of Chick-fil-A, that he once sat quietly through a board meeting listening to his executives brainstorm about how to get bigger. He suddenly interrupted the chatter with a declaration: “If we get better, we won’t have to worry about getting bigger.” Talk about an aha moment!

We can make the church grow, or we can watch the church grow, and the difference boils down to bettering instead of biggering.

In their story is a big answer to what should be next for our church, and probably for yours too. We must focus on bettering and we won’t have to worry about biggering. So how do we get better? These are the principles forming in my own heart and mind about how I want to see the church at large improve:

• We need to depend upon the Spirit’s influence and empowering, and to unashamedly confess that dependence in our prayer and worship.
• We need to learn to tell God’s redemptive story, the good news, in a way that relates to our surrounding culture. We need to make the gospel central to our message and mission.
• We need to focus on people—connecting with people, connecting people to other people, and meeting the needs people experience on a daily basis.
• We need to make disciples and develop leaders rather than simply attracting more fans. Attracting isn’t bad, but failing to challenge those we attract to take the next step is a severe flaw.
• We need to get bold about our vision for a world touched and changed by a God-sized movement. It’s time to stop apologizing for an intense desire to influence and impact the culture with truth and grace.
• We need to sacrifice our comfort, our preferences, and our personal agendas and embrace change—radical, catalytic, movement-shaking change.
• We need to be strategic, pragmatic, and effective. These are curse words in some pockets of evangelicalism, but they are absolutely NOT at odds with biblical Christianity. We can be both faithful and fruitful.
• We need to work together, in unity, as a team. Structural and institutional unity isn’t necessary, but working hand-in-hand for Kingdom-sized causes is.

The world doesn’t necessarily need bigger churches. But it definitely needs better churches, and better churches usually wind up bigger, and bigger isn’t bad.

1 Samuel 22:2 (NLT2)
Then others began coming—men who were in trouble or in debt or who were just discontented—until David was the captain of about 400 men.

So often churches fail just because their church has become a social club for certain individuals who feel they belong and shut the door on others.

Having a sense of belonging is a common experience. Belonging means acceptance as a member or part. Such a simple word for huge concept. A sense of belonging is a human need, just like the need for food and shelter. Feeling that you belong  is most important in seeing value in life and in coping with intensely painful emotions.

Some seek belonging through excluding others. That reflects the idea that there must be those who don’t belong in order for there to be those who do. Yet a single instance of being excluded can undermine self-control and well being and often creates pain and conflict.

A sense of belonging to a greater community improves your motivation, health, and happiness.  When you see your connection to others, you know that all people struggle and have difficult times. You are not alone. There is comfort in that knowledge.

There is a simple approach to make visitors feel they belong. In my 47 years of ministry I have yet to meet a stranger……..

Our faith will grow when we learn to take advantage of growth opportunities. The soil of growth is planted in the pains of the past and presence.

James 1:2-4 (NLT2)
²  Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy.
³  For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow.
⁴  So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.

You must not be too quick to rise up when you are hurt remembering that those in the bible rose up when the enemy attacked the name of the Lord their God. The hurts and pains are an opportunity for you to grow in faith.

1 Peter 4:19 (NLT2)
¹⁹  So if you are suffering in a manner that pleases God, keep on doing what is right, and trust your lives to the God who created you, for he will never fail you.

Are you passing the test that God is sending your way?

I had an opportunity to watch the NBA Championship and although my team lost I obtained a valuable lesson. I would like to pass this on to the church.

You cannot turn the ball over and win a championship. A church cannot make too many little mistakes and win souls for Christ.

1 Corinthians 9:22 (NLT2)
When I am with those who are weak, I share their weakness, for I want to bring the weak to Christ. Yes, I try to find common ground with everyone, doing everything I can to save some.

If you feel the need for help with your reaching those souls around your church give us a call and we will gladly come an assist you with developing a strategic to win.

1 Samuel 22:2 (NLT2)
Then others began coming—men who were in trouble or in debt or who were just discontented—until David was the captain of about 400 men.

Three things I wish someone would have told me about leadership

1. When build a team start with build a community.
2. Always check your vision against your reality to see if we are moving forward.
3. Understand that there is a difference between skills and talents on a team.

We witness the NBA Championship where both teams had talent but one team had skills to go with the talent. Then the question becomes do you have the right team to win?

After nearly 47 years of leading a church one area has always escaped me. Believe it or not it was guiding people away from the familiar to the unfamiliar which is defined as change.

Churches hoping to survive over the long term will have to remake themselves into better churches at least once along the way. After fifty years all around them have changed. Mostly the people who attend church has changed.

These change efforts have gone under many banners: denominational change, name change, vision/mission statement change, restructuring leader’s titles, cultural change, and new signs on the property, to name a few.

In almost every case, the goal has been to cope with a new, more challenging generation of seekers by changing the way the church worship services. A few of these endeavors have been very successful. A few have utterly crashed. Most fall somewhere in between, with a distinct tilt toward the lower end of the scale.

Leading a church to change will need outside help.  Unless you get buying in from the groups failure is unavoidable.

Unsuccessful transitions almost always break down during at least one of the following phases: generating a sense of importance, establishing a powerful guiding partnership, developing a vision, communicating the vision clearly and often, removing obstacles, planning for and creating short-term wins, avoiding premature declarations of victory, and embedding changes in the corporate culture.

What did I learn most was that just because I see the need for change doesn’t mean the organization see or want to change? Get help sell the need for change should be a priority to change.

2 Kings 6:17 (NLT2)
¹⁷  Then Elisha prayed, “O LORD, open his eyes and let him see!” The LORD opened the young man’s eyes, and when he looked up, he saw that the hillside around Elisha was filled with horses and chariots of fire.

Today’s Thought

I am so glad today that the Lord and I have a past history. When you have a past experience with a person in a time of trouble you know what to expect. If you have a friend that you had to borrow from in a particular time and they came through you know if the going got rough you could call them but on the other hand there is that friend that have failed you in the past so you know I cannot count on them.

What do you get from this text?

 Deuteronomy 20:1 (KJV)
When thou goest out to battle against thine enemies, and seest horses, and chariots, and a people more than thou, be not afraid of them: for the LORD thy God is with thee, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.

As a young man I learned a quick lesson from my grandmother. When things didn’t go well for me my facial expression and voice tone would change. I can hear her saying “don’t you catch an attitude with me boy”. Those words meant make an attitude adjustment or suffer the consequences.

Attitude is something you can see and hear. To be successful in life make an attitude adjustment by thinking good thought as well as allowing those good thought to reflect in your daily actions.

Friday is a good day to check your attitude in the mirror of life. Successful people understand the value of attitude.

Genesis 31:2 (KJV)
And Jacob beheld the countenance of Laban, and, behold, it was not toward him as before.

Genesis 31:2 (NLT2)
And Jacob began to notice a change in Laban’s attitude toward him.

Genesis 31:2 (GW)
He also noticed that Laban did not appear as friendly to him as before.