I am still reflecting and rejoicing over this past weekend.
I am so excited about what God has done and even more excited about what He is going to do!!
We had a fantastic pastoral staff meeting this morning! The Lord has blessed us with a great team that enjoys expanding the kingdom and serving the Lord.
One area that we spent some focused time on this morning is our team’s area of weakness (when I say team I am including myself). My tendency as an eternal optimist is to see the proverbial glass half-full and not pay attention to some areas that might need attention. So after several weeks of thinking through what I believe to be an area of weakness, we talked about that area today. We all agreed and had a good discussion about how we can better serve the people of our church. In fact, tomorrow afternoon we are bringing in 3 of our support staff and putting a plan in place.
My purpose for sharing the above story is to challenge each of us to face the weaknesses of our lives. Maybe overall you think things are excellent at home, at work, with friends or whatever; but just think about how what is excellent could become even better with a little fine tuning. Perhaps, there is an area of your life that is not going well and you know it, but you just haven’t done anything about it. Let this post be an encouragement to you to face your area of weakness.
For me personally, I have been struggling with my diet and exercise. Hopefully it is not overly noticeable 
– but it is a current weakness and I am working on it, ran yesterday and plan on running tomorrow, although I did just have 3 glasses of soda for lunch – told you it was a weakness!
What is your weakness and what are you doing about it?
Excellent and Preparing to get Better
Weekend Thoughts
- It was a wonderful weekend for me personally
- It was a privilege to have my pastor, Tom Messer as our guest speaker!
- Tom did a great job speaking to our leaders on Sat. morning
- Celebrating our 12th anniversary was a tremendous blessing!
- I really appreciated Tom’s practical and applicable weekend message from Acts 4,5
- We need God’s great power as we speak with boldness for Him
- We need God’s great grace to flow through us to others
- We need to have the great fear that brings purity to the church
- I am reminded what a tremendous blessing Denise has been to me and our church family.
- I am very thankful for our staff and elders.
- I can’t wait for the next 12 years.
- Great attendance at our Sunday 11am service
- If you can attend Sat at 6pm it will free up parking and seating for our guests! Please help if you can!
- Looking forward to a great week!
Random Vacation Thoughts
- Away for a few days enjoying the BEAUTIFUL fall foliage with my family.
- Always enjoy a little time away. So refreshing!
- We rushed out of town on Sunday and will be back Friday
- Can’t wait for the weekend.
- Sitting in a country store in VT with very slow wi-fi
- Just had a delicious egg sandwhich
- The first two days we did alot of things – corn maze, yankee candle, natural history museum, simon piecre glass and pottery factory.
- When I go away I don’t worry about anything. Very thankful for our staff and leaders!!!
- Today is a slow day. Read, relax, and dinner with great friends.
- Can’t wait for this weekend!!!!
- This past weekend was very good.
- Good spirit in the services
- Enjoyed preaching Eph 2
- Love the series, UNITED
- This coming weekend – chior, life change video and special guest.
- There is going to be some awesome worship and some awesome preaching!
- Celebrating 12 years will be great! God has been so good to us!
- The best is yet to come.
- I have spent some good time thinking, praying and planning for the future while I am away.
- It is about 45 degrees here in VT
- There is a brown lab laying on the floor next to me in this country store – completes the scene!
- I am very blessed!!
Flooding Update
This past weekend we announced that we would like to partner with our missionary in the Philippines, Roger Akers, as he and his family serve in the severely flooded region of the Manila. Below is an email that I just received this week from Roger. The email will let you know how to pray and how you can invest. Our church is sending the Akers $500 out of our missions budget, anything that you give will be added to that amount. If you would like to contribute just write Flooding on your giving envelope and place it in the offering plate this weekend.
Hi Pastor Greg,
Hope all is well with you. We are still working hard for flood relief – working with Samaritan’s Purse and others to bring needed items in using our locations as distribution centers. A few pics attached – Rice I bought and other goods ( we are buying on faith but not on credit, HA) we are repackaging and distributing in needed areas hubbing out of CBC Pasig’s garage. Pic 4 is a shot of an ocean of standing water in the Floodway area where we have 2 churches and a feeding center.
Pray for us-
1. Disease does not set in
2. Samaritan’s Purse planes will clear thru customs
3. Life will be preserved and the Gospel goes forth
4. We get our financial needs met
5. I do not completely neglect my loving understanding wife and kids
6. We get the water purification systems set up properly and quickly
7. (personal) That I dont lose it here – I am ok now but the need is so overwhelming.
Love you and the church.
Roger
Trying to be one good man
Do you remember the scene from A Few Good Men, where Tom Cruise says, “I want the truth!” and Jack Nicholson yells back, “You can’t handle the truth!”?
Well, that is me. Often times I don’t want the truth and I can’t handle the truth. Seldom am I honest or objective about myself – this is sad. The reason this is sad is because healing (emotional, relational, spiritual, etc) can’t happen apart from honesty. Healing and honesty work in tandem.
Psalm 51:6 says, “You desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place”.
The Lord desires for me to be honest with Him, others and myself. Yet I get defensive, I get deceived, I get distracted, etc. and I miss truth – sometimes intentionally and sometimes unintentionally.
While some of the things I have mentioned can get very discouraging, there are a couple things that encourage me this morning. First, according to Scripture, God desires to give us increased understanding. It is up to you and me to sincerely ask and sincerely seek for truth. Secondly, and I don’t know why I haven’t tapped into this one more, the Spirit of Truth resides in me (John14:16-17). According to our message this passed weekend, He is my possession. Have you ever possessed something and not used it – Hello! Part of the Holy Spirit’s ministry is to produce honesty and truth within us – when we are yeilded to Him guess what he will do? He will produce honesty and truth!!! This causes me to be hopeful, amazed, thrilled, thankful and grateful! Now I must yeild to this work.
I have also discovered that where I am pushing back on truth is normally the area where I need it most. Is there an area of your life where you are super sensitive, very defensive or unwilling to listen? Then the problem is, “You can’t handle the truth!”.
If you have no idea what I am talking about – well, Hello Mr. or Mrs. Ostrich, this is sand.
New Tweets
As a part of our new series, UNITED, we have leveraged technology to a whole new level for our congregation. We are using twitter to connect our church family. Many have begun to “follow” me on twitter – everyday more are jumping on board! One of the guys in our church, Jay Caruso, has given me a few links to pass along to help you as you begin your twitter journey, The links are very basic and very helpful – enjoy:
http://churchtweets.com/2009/05/twitter-101-what-is-twitter/
http://churchtweets.com/2009/06/twitter-101-following-followers/
http://churchtweets.com/2009/06/twitter-101-dm/
http://churchtweets.com/2009/06/twitter-101-rt-twitter-apps/
Cancer
Breast Cancer and Prostate Cancer are two things you don’t want to mess with. Both are also successfully treated when found early. Below is some information that the men of our church should take advantage of – it was passed to me by a member of our church.
They will then have their blood drawn and the results to the test will be mailed to them. From there they can see if their results are within normal range or if they need to see their doctor. The free screening is until October 17th and I would like all the men that come to church to know about this opportunity to get themselves screened. Any of the men from 40 years old on, should get this test. Is there any way that you can get this information out?
There are two labs to choose from:
Flagler Hospital Out-patient Laborary, (260 S.R. 312 in the Riverside Center – Next to Hobby Lobby) OR Flagler Hospital (3rd Floor Laboratory Department)
Hours are: Monday – Friday, 9:00 am to 4:30 pm.
Sunday Night Mind Dump
- 5pm on Sunday afternoon – getting to my mind dump early
- watching the Cowboys play
- I am out of energy
- Loved opening our new series, UNITED!
- Great spirit in the services.
- Attendance stunk!
- I talk about attendance when it is great, guess I should also be honest about it when I think it stinks.
- With that in mind, our guest numbers continue to be strong!
- We are definitely adding people to the church – our discovery pointe and connecting pointe functions have been well attended.
- I know we have had a number of people move and Palm Coast certainly isn’t experiencing what it was during the years of boom.
- It seems to me though that our attendance has more to do with the attendance patterns of those who call Parkview home, as well as, the loss of some who have moved, stopped attending, gotten ticked at me or whatever.
- I ask our leaders to help people connect and make Parkview home, as well as, let people know that they are missed when they are not present.
- On a very personal note, I have to admit that attendance being down is very hard on me emotionally after I study like I did for the sermon I preached this weekend.
- Over the last 3 weeks I studied no less than 40 hours for this weekends sermon. That is almost 3 times as much as I study for a sermon.
- Thankfully after processing my emotions, I can always go back to how God defines my success and it is VERY different from how my human nature tries to define it!!
- Loved addressing election, predestination, God’s sovereignty and man’s free will and resposibility!
- I just know that living and experiencing Ephesians 1:3-14 is life changing and I want everyone to hear and then live the Word.
- The message will be on our website Monday afternoon, if you were not able to be present this weekend.
- The Stauffacher family adoption video was very touching to me!
- I am asking the Lord to do His part – “except the Lord build the house we labor in vain that build it”.
- I am asking us to do our part – “go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in”.
- I thank the Lord for what He did in our hearts this weekend!!
- Live in light of your inheiritance this week!
Links for Breakfast
Here are a couple really good blog posts that I thought you would enjoy:
click here and read the last 4 or 5 posts – great stuff!
Reach Out
If you didn’t read my post yesterday it would be best for you to scroll down and read it first.
I stated yesterday that today I would give you a way to connect with some of our missionaries. One way you can do that is through Facebook. Many of you use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, now you can do so to stay connected with some of our missions family. I am FB friends with Bill Daab, Jeremy Rose, JJ Alderman, Steve Aenis and Dan Pride. If you are a FB person, than go add them to your friend list now!
What I Am Reading
