Today for the first time, we really felt like a church family.  In our public service, I simply listened to our people as they sang.  It was moving.  God showed up.

I have never in my life done anything that I enjoy more than pastoring FOTP Grapevine.

After we completed our set up on Saturday a bunch of us went out to eat.  It was a blast!

We will be starting a ladies Life Group in a couple of weeks and a couples group around that time as well.  We have a group of passionate young people in their twenties who want to start a group that we wil call Generation Now.  They are commited to living out their faith in practical ways.

It is such a blessing to be a part of the birth of this new work that God is doing.

I am absolutely amazed at the incredible people God is bringing to Fellowship of the Parks Grapevine.  He is truly laying the foundation for something incredible.

The Changing From the Inside Out series has really been a great one to get us started.  I will conclude the series Sunday.  I am so looking forward to sharing the message with those who attend.  I never dreamed that this would be so much fun.  Pat, Caroline and I are blessed to get to be a part of it all.

Mark Batterson the author of this book and the pastor of National Community Church in Washington D.C. has become one of my favorite authors.  This is the third book I have read by him and each one has really stimulated my thinking and inspired me to take my spiritual life to the next level.

The Celtic Christians had a name foe the Holy Spirit which meant the wild  goose.  Mark points out that like a wild goose the Holy Spirit cannot be tamed or tracked.  An air of unpredicatability and an element of danger surround Him.  He warns us not to clip the wings of the wild goose and settle for something less- much less-than what God originally intended for us.

I have used the insight he shares with others to help them focus in on their real passion.  Mark suggests that to find your passion you must answer three questions: Whant makes you sad?  What makes you mad? and What makes you glad? I shared this with our new church at FOTP Grapevine and told them that what makes me sad is broken people living in a broken world.  What makes me sad, is people who claim to be Christians but do not care enough about broken people to give of their time, their talent or thier money to help hurting people.  What makes me glad is to see broken lives transformed.

This a great book! One of the best I have read in a while.

My two oldest children, John and Jenilee both read this book by Shane Claiborne.  The book is very popular with Christians who are in their 20's.

 Claiborne raises some good questions regarding the church and its respnse to those who are less fortunate.  He is someone who walks the walk.  He tells the story of the movement called The Simple Way.  He and his friends in The Simple Way chose to live a very simple lifestyle whild making thier home among the poor.

There is much in the book that resinates with me.  I share his view that most of us who call ourselves Christians live materialisitc lives with no great concern for the poor.  At best we want to donate some money to help but we certainly don't want to share our lives with these people.

It reminded me of how much more concerned I was for the poor when I was a young Christian.  I did open up my apartment to several men who were struggling to make ends meet.  Today, I have little contact with people like those that I befriended during that time.

I like this book.  I am so grateful that this younger generation has in many ways rejected the materialistic lifestyle of my generation.  My son took a class at Baylor called Poverty In Waco.  He lived as a homeless person for a weekend.  He serves food to homeless people on Friday mornings at a shelter.  My oldest daughter works with ex-inmates.   She helps teach an art class to these men.  My youngest daughter spent a week this summer with our church ministering to the people in a small town in New Mexico.  I am blessed to get to share my life with these three young people. 

I meant to post this earlier but better late than never.  I will be teaching Christianity 101 starting tonight 7-8:15.  This class is designed for those who have ever wondered about where the Bible came from, who wrote it, is it true, did man live to be 900 years old, and did we evolve from a lower form of life.  Hundreds of people have taken this class and in many cases it has been life-changing.

The class will last 4 weeks and will meet at Brown Chiropractic Center located at 800 Ira E. Woods Ave. in Grapevine 76051.  All you have to do is show up and listen to me for a while.

We had another great day at FOTP Grapevine.  We are so very blessed as God continues to bring people our way who are looking for a church home.  I am so grateful that God keeps bringing us families who are so very commited to helping us lay the foundation for a church where people can be discover God's incredible love.

Today's message was  How Much You Matter To God.  How we live our life is more greatly influenced by that one factor than any other as far as I am concerned.

I shared this passage from the book The Gift of Being Yourself -

"Neither knowing God or knowing self can progress very far unless it begins with a knowledge of how deeply we are loved by God.  Until we believe nothing can separate us from God’s love – nothing we can do or fail to do, nor anything that could be done by anyone else to us – we remain in the elementary grades of the school of Christian spiritual transformation."

I want the people who attend FOTP Grapevine regularly to be in graduate school when it comes to know how much God loves them.

Recently my oldest daughter, Jenilee was home between semesters of college.  She attends Belmont University.  She would tell you that I spent a lot of time as she and her siblings were growing up helping them understand how much your attitude affects your life.  I always wanted them to know that you can change your perspective and thus change the way you respond to life.

I reminded her that when she and John, her older brother who is two years older were little we went to eat at a cafeteria once.  When we walked in they both complained about how long the line was.  In fact, there was a sign posted where we stood that said it would be a 20 minute wait from where we were in line.

I decided to change there perspective.  I told them that if it took longer than 20 minutes I would pay them each $5.  Instead, of complaining about how long the line was they wanted the people to take there time.  They wanted the line to go slow.  In fact, as we were approaching the end of the line and the countdown was close to 20 minutes, someone in the line spilt a glass of water.  It brought the whole line to a standstill.  John and Jenilee started cheering and clapping.

Our wait lasted more than 20 minutes.  They got their $5.  More importantly, they began to see that we always can change how we view life and as a result change how we respond.

We had our first weekly service today.  I am not sure what the official count was due to the fact that I am not sure anybody officially counted.  All I know is that Pat and I both agreed that we have never had so much fun.  This is such an exciting adventure.  It is just out and out thrilling to put in all the the time and energy and to see people showing up.   We had our fist person indicate that they had been saved and 3 others indicated they had rededicated their lives to Christ.

God continues to bring us some great families who share our vision.  We are just in awe of the team that God has given us and thier desire to do whatever it takes to reach others.

This is really the first time in my life, that I will be standing before a group of people every Sunday in order to share with them how much God loves them.

I am reading a book by Mark Batterson titled Wild Goose Chase.  It seems the Celtic Christians refered to the Holy Spirit as the Wild Goose simply implying that following God was an unpredictable adventure.  Here is an exert from the book:

"I'm not convinced that your date of death is the date carved on your tombstone.  Most people die long before that.  We start dying when we have nothing to live for.  And we don't really start living until we find something worth dying for.  Ironically, discovering something worth dying for is what makes life worth living."

We are not trained to be patient in our Western culture.  We expereince this lack of patience virtually everyday.  I witnessed a scene in the gorcery store recntly that was a reminder of our lack of patience.  Two men got into a shouting match that almost erupted into a fist fight over the time it was taking one of them to check out. In July 2007 the California Department of Transportation temporarily shut down Highway 138 because drivers were getting so annoyed with construciton along the way.  Drivers abused construction workers with death threats, BB guns, and even in one instance a flying burrito.

 Here is a good definition of patience - allowing someone to be imperfect.

Here are a couple of patience principles:

Being patient in one area of our lives helps us be patient in all areas.

Patience is not agreeing with the other person in order to avoid an argument.  It is entering into a dialogue to understand the other person's feeling and thoughts.

When we are patient we acknowledge that relationships are more improtant than schedules.