Synergy In Motion

Clive Smit, Hamilton's Eastside Apostolic's Youth Pastor has also written a post about this topic as well, To Grow Evaluate Constantly

Its well worth a read , Clive gives some compelling reasons to have a "Spiritual Gut Check",and lists the questions he asks.
Thanks Clive for your input ,talk about synergy in motion.

1st "Gut Check Question"

Number 1
#Am I listening to the voice of God?

In Mark 3:14 it says Jesus ordained 12 that they should be with him and that he might send them forth to preach.

Whatever you think your calling is, you are called to be with Jesus.This is your primary calling,your highest ministry. Before Jesus said go into the world he said “Be with me”

The Lord has so many things that he desires to show us, but his real desire is that we know him more .I don’t know about you but I need more of Jesus every day .I need him more today than I did yesterday.

We often assume busyness means godliness but Jesus says in John 15vs 15
“I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in Me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from Me you can do nothing”.

When you stay “connected,” you bear fruit spontaneously. There’s no striving and straining. It’s just an outgrowth of your intimacy with Him.

I love the story in Mark 1vs 10-11 ,it’s the story of Jesus getting Baptised and coming out of the water and hearing the voice from heaven ‘You are my son whom I love ,with you I am well pleased .
Well pleased with what? The people he had spoken to, the healings he had done, the demons he had cast out, the miracles that were performed?

Not at all, Jesus had not even started any of these things .His father was well pleased, because Jesus consistently placed his devotion over duty, his passion over performance, his friendship over function.

Number 1#Am I listening to the voice of God?

Comments please...

Six Questions I ask

Every now and then ,its easy for people to drift through life ,this is especially true in ministry .
As leaders the greatest danger is remembering the HOW and forgetting the WHY .To keep us balanced between these two from time to time…in any arena of life there is a time for a “gut check.”

I have a conviction that this needs to be done approx every 26 days .This comes from Nehemiah ,the shortest guy in the bible being only Knee high LOL,who rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem in 52 days .

When the wall reached half its hight (26 days) they experienced the greatest opposition ,and presented Nehemiah with potentially a greater challenge "passivity". In my opionion there is nothing more effective in moving people from being passive to being productive ,than by reminding them of the WHY

Here are six questions I often use to do a personal gut check for ministry..

#1 - Am I Listening To The Voice of God?
#2 - Am I Taking Risks?
#3 - Am I Understanding How Big God Is?
#4 - Am I Surrounding Myself With The Right People
#5 -Am I RoleModelling The Right Behaviours
#6 - Am I Giving It My Best?

I will detail the first 3 of these in futher posts
Interested in comments

Life Values

Iwill live with OPTIMISM to inspire hope
I will live with LOVE to build meaningful relationships
I will live with PASSION to lift myself and others to a higher level of excellence
I will live with INTEGRITY so that I may finish my God given assignment
I will live with DETERMINATION so that I may influence others
I will live with COURAGE so that I will embrace risk
I will live with AUTHENTICITY so that I can experience God's grace
I will live with HUMOR so that I may keep the right perspective

What does yours look like ?

Marraige is a gamble....

MARRIAGE IS A GAMBLE

Marriage is a gamble.
You start with a pair.
He shows a diamond.
She shows a heart.
Her father has a club.
His father has a spade.
There's usually a joker around somewhere
But after a while he becomes a king and she becomes a queen.
Then they end up with a full house.

What a gaall...

Dear Dad

Thank you for your lovely note
you are the best Dad in the world
I love you very much.Here is a poem about love

L is for Love
O is for oh I love you very,very,very,very,very much Dad.
V Dont know...
E is for ever and ever

I Love you
Ashleighxxx0x0

P.s
She wrote this,afterI had to make a desision to disipline her .
After waiting for 4 weeks to watch High School Musical 2,one day before it came out,which also happened to be the last day at school,she was pipped at the post by a slight misedemor on her behalf.

I remember taking her aside alone in our bedroom and explaining to her what I had decided as a consequence. Yep you guessed it . No movie. As she listened, I noticed her tears welling up in her eyes...., the quivering of the lip,........,the drop of the head ,.......all within that small moment of time when her dream ships of expectation had been smashed upon the harsh rocks of reality.

I wrote a note to say to her I love you and all is forgotten and forgiven,her poem was her response.

Good Preaching

I recently came across this quote that I feel is worthy of our attention:

Good preaching begins in the Bible, but it doesn’t stay there. It visits the hospital and the college dorm, the factory and the farm, the kitchen and the office, the bedroom and the classroom.

Good preaching invades the world in which people live, the real world of tragedy and triumph, loveliness and loneliness, broken hearts, broken homes, and amber waves of strain.

Good preaching invades the real world, and it talks to real people—the high-school senior who’s there because he’s dragged there; the housewife who wants a divorce; the grandfather who mourns the irreversibility of time and lives with a frantic sense that almost all the sand in the hourglass has dropped; the farmer who is about to lose his farm.

Tthe banker who must take it from him; the teacher who has kept her lesbianism a secret all these years; the businessman for whom money has become a god; the single girl who hates herself because she’s fat.

Good preaching helps them do business with God; it helps them interpret their own human experience, telling them what in their heart of hearts they already know, and are yearning to hear confirmed

If you are reading this and you preach.Please understand that our purpose is not just to offer information but to inspire transformation through ,not merely soothing our hearers ears
But moving our listeners lives towards a higher level of living in Christ.