There is a story of the father of a union soldier who was desperately trying to get to Abraham Lincoln to have his last child pulled from the war.  He had lost several sons and was desperate not to lose his last boy in the bloody civil war.

He went to the white house to see if he could arrange a meeting with the president.  As you might imagine, he could not get to Abraham Lincoln to talk to him.

Despondent, he found a park bench and sat down to reflect.  A young boy came and sat by him and questioned him about why he looked so sad.  The boy would not relent in finding out what was wrong, so the man told the boy his story just to appease him.  After sharing his story, the man had hoped the boy would leave him to his misery….but the boy knew something the man did not.  “Come with me”, the boy said, and lead the man into the back door of the White House and up to a hallway where he had him wait.  Minutes later, the man was talking to the boy’s father:  Abraham Lincoln.

Sometimes the best way to get to a father is through his son.

And that is where we begin today……in the second part of Who What Where When Why…

When we know Who we are….that we are God’s priceless image, his work of art, and that we were created for purpose, we are on our way to doing great things.

And when we realize what we are …. we can go even further.

What Are You?

Galatians 4  7 So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.

You are a son…a daughter…of the King.

We don’t have to sit outside the White House and wait for a miracle to access the King.  We don’t have to go through a priest.  We are more than welcome to call Him Daddy, yes Daddy, and talk to Him.  His Son not only “sat on the bench and gave us access to Him”, He made a spectacle of the enemy while doing it.

This is not fairy tale…it is our reality as followers of the King.  We do not have to live in what we don’t have.   We can begin to live in what we do have.  We can begin to ask the Lord to act on our behalf and to change the hearts of people.

When people kneel for during the Star Spangled Banner it burdens me.  It burdens me for the veterans who fought and gave us freedom.  It hurts my heart to see them have to stand and watch others not enjoying the freedom that they gave their lives to defend…….But it also burdens me for the people who are fighting their way just to find peace.  It burdens me for the single mom.  It burdens me for the broken families and broken people all over the world.

The answer to all of these issues is, in fact, to kneel.  It is to kneel down and cry out to the only One who can truly do something about it…..the Living God.

The God who has made us sons…..The God who has made us daughters…..the God who continually and without hesitation….restores hope.

When someone is without hope….they are a slave.  They can’t see the end from the beginning and they can’t see a future.

But God has a future.  He has a plan for us to walk into freedom.  And Paul wanted that freedom so badly to be free that he went to prison to do it.

When my son was born he became gravely ill….and before we knew it he was in ICU at Children’s Hospital in Denver.  Our family dropped everything and poured out all of our energy into seeing him back to health.  Not just my immediate family—-my wife’s parents, my parents, our best friends, our family friends, the people I worked with, …. Many people stopped and pitched in….

When a child is sick ….. his or her parents will do anything to make them well.

And that……is the story of the Gospel.

Go be a son.  Go be a daughter.

The King has given you all that you need to have hope and peace and love.

Our Daddy loves us so much that He gave His son that we might be free.

In The Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8TkUMJtK5k

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Coach J

Who Are You?

Many people can come with an answer right now…but others–they are searching.

And for some of us…that simple question is a painful one.

None of us want to “go through the motions”….to walk through our life each day without purpose or meaning…but if you are like me–you sometimes do just that.

Many years ago, my brother-in-law showed up at our house with a puppy….a Walker Hound.  My children took to him immediately and set out to take him on a walk around the neighborhood and to the park.

About a half an hour later, my kids returned and told me the dog would simply not get up.  All he would do was lay on the ground and sleep….

I had a hard time believing that a Hound Dog would be so lazy and not want to run and bark…so I was curious and went to see the dog.  Sure enough….he was the laziest dog I had ever seen.  We could pull him on the leash and he would go two steps and, literally, lay down and go to sleep.  He would not walk.  He would not pick his head up.  He would not even open his eyes…..and this was not a one day thing.  This was WHO HE WAS…..

As I talked to my brother in law he told me that this dog was the runt of the litter and that:

• He was lazy.
• He was sleepy.
• He had no energy.
• He was like this—ALL THE TIME.

And this dog was even worse when he was put on a leash.  You would have to PULL HIM and he would not follow…..

Then one day my brother in law was at the lake and he put the scent of raccoon in front of the dog’s nose….and he came to life.  He jumped up and began to bark, then ran OVER the other dogs to get on the trail of that raccoon…. the next I saw him, my brother in law had a raccoon in a live trap…..and this “lazy dog” had done it.

In one moment, that dog had discovered who he was.

Who Are You?

YOU….Are God’s WORKMANSHIP.

Ephesians 2:10  For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Read that verse until it sticks.  You are His workmanship.

You are His work of art…His prized product….His son, His daughter.  Look at the mountains, the blue sky, the rainbow, the sunset, the ocean as it crashes into the rocks.  These are His great creation….But YOU—YOU—are His workmanship, created IN Christ Jesus to do good works that He has prepared for you.

And until you begin to walk in that identity—you are no different than that hound dog….asleep.

The enemy will spend all of his days planting thoughts about who you are that will discourage and distract.  The enemy wants you to be just like that dog, and he will continually pound into your identity….using “runt”, “lazy”, “asleep”, and any other words that he can put over you…….and the enemy also loves words like:

Failure

Quitter

Loser

It is his hope that he can get you to lose your dreams, to not believe that God can use you, to get you to “go through the motions”…….

The enemy knows that when you walk without the knowledge of WHO YOU ARE….you are no different than that dog…..

Asleep.

Trying to grab an energy that isn’t there.

On a leash.

Lifeless.

But what if you began to believe that He means what He says?  What if you believed that you were, in fact, His WORKMANSHIP?

• It would give you permission to dream again….because He is the God of dreams.
• It would give you permission to cry out and find who you are…..because He is not a God of mediocrity.
• It would give you permission to realize that He is proud of the work He has done IN MAKING YOU…..because He is a God who has a plan for your life.

When you find your purpose….you become ALIVE.

Cry out that you would find out WHO you are …. And start by facing the truth….that you are His WORKMANSHIP……

God never intended for you to be bored.

He never intended for you to go through the motions.

He never intended for you to get through the day.

God’s plan for you is going to be harder than you thought it might be…..but it is also going to be exhilerating, and life-changing, and purpose-filled.

He wants you to walk in a freedom you have never known, doing things you never thought you could do, and living a life that you never thought you could….

You are His greatest prize……and He wants to show you off to the world.

In The Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

https://youtu.be/LfzpfqrPUDo

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Coach J

The Bible does not make sense…until it does.

A radical following of Jesus began some 2000 years ago, after He was gone, by people who had no credibility to do it…

• One of His first public acts was to CALL OUT everyone in the temple who had any power at all.  He swung a whip around and put a group of men on the run…
• He had no issue talking to people who the Jews thought were heathens—right in front of them.  He cared nothing of how He looked or what it looked like to others.
• He was deemed unclean because He touched sick people without hesitation or remorse.
• He was OF THE JEWS…and yet He had no issue whatsoever breaking customs that made Him look like a law-breaking radical.  But NO ONE has ever lived who has followed the law so perfectly.
• He had heart to heart connections with the most diverse group of friends you could draw up.  He met up with and connected with people who radically hated each other:
  • Simon the Zealot (who probably killed Roman Soldiers) AND a Roman Centurion.
  • A tax collector Matthew and the people who hated tax collectors.
  • The woman He met at the well was not even welcomed in her own town in broad daylight….yet after meeting Him she converted the entire town.
• He was discovered missing by two women (not legal testimony at that time).

None of this makes any sense….and yet it is the very proof of our gospel!!

Everything He said…He did.

Everything He preached…came to be.

Everyone He touched…became transformed.

I am in awe of this story, and this Man, who I call Lord…and though I know Him in the Spirit—I wonder what it would be like to have Him around today.

He would throw hay bales with a rancher and clean a toilet with a custodian.

He’d train with a Navy Seal and march at a peace rally.

He’d cry with an infant and fight with an army.

He’d cry out on the importance of marriage yet stand with a divorcee.

He would defend life and yet minister to a woman in pain over losing her child.

He’d influence a judge and stand on a jury.

He would talk to a radical muslim, a hindu, an atheist.

He would connect with a man in prison while ministering to a prison guard.

He would cure a cancer patient yet die with someone who was terminally ill.

He would submit to the mayor of a small town yet call out a king.

He would sleep on the ground beside a homeless man yet minister to the richest man in the city.

There would be no cultural lines in His mind.

Politics would mean nothing to Him.

He would be as rich as He needed to be without money.

He would have no issue standing up to a bully.

And that’s just it.  Nothing He does or leads us to do makes sense…..

Even after He was gone He made no sense…..

He saves and delivers Paul—-the most educated Jewish man on the planet….and yet He sends Paul to minister to the non-Jews and sends Peter, who the Jews do not respect, to bring the gospel to them.  Why in the world would He do that?

Because while He will come meet us where we are at……we have things ingrained in our heads that are utterly false and ungodly.  Our cultures and traditions and thought processes and mindsets are, at their very core, WRONG……

He even tells us, in Jeremiah 17, that “our heart is, above all things, deceitful”.

Without Him coming in and changing us all the way….we aren’t changed at all.

And He warns us, through Paul, about how weak we can truly be:

Colossians 2:8  See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.

This is not a warning to people who do not know Him….it is a warning to people who DO KNOW Him.

In the word there are many verses that strike me as God punishing people who don’t seem to have done anything too wrong…..but my pastor said something last week that stuck with me from the moment he said it:

“Doing almost all of it is doing none of it.”

That resonated with me all week.  So many times I do “almost all of it”….

Where do we go with this word I give you today?

As I sit here writing this….I am wondering this very thing…but the answer is simple:

We go to Jesus.

Because without Him emptying us out from ourselves…we are utterly helpless.

He is

The food that sustains us

The air that we breathe

The legs that make us walk

The fingers that tie our shoes

The hope in our hearts

The hope we have for today…AND the hope we have for eternity

So as you walk through today….take every thought you have, every emotion you feel, every mindset you carry, and take it captive…..because Jesus came to save us, first, from the very thing that can put us in captivity—OURSELVES.

In The Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

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Coach J

Our response is EVERYTHING.

And so the question of the day is:  What are you going to do about this?

You see….our God is a God of response.  He is a God who does not just sit there and let things deteriorate….

He is a God of action.

We might not always think so….but think about it.

When God saw our sin and brokenness and our propensity to be drawn to evil…He responded.  And He responded BIG.

My dad always told me:  “Never send a boy to do a man’s job.”

I think that’s the gospel.

God saw us heading for destruction…He saw us “choosing the wrong tree”—-choosing the very thing that might ruin us…He saw us being held captive by our very enemy.

He saw us CRYING OUT FOR FREEDOM, and yet, seeking the very thing that takes our freedom away….

No one plans to totally fail or flop—-to totally ruin our very destiny—-but we do.  And we end up in a place where we simply can not escape.

So God sent Jesus…and Jesus responded like a lion….

• He tore up the temple and called out men in order to free His people.
• He took His disciples to the “gates of hell” and told them that the enemy would NEVER, and I mean NEVER, win.
• He put His hands on people who were contaminated…running TO the sickness—not away from it.
• He faced death and endured it….defeating it in the flesh and in the spirit.
• He saw YOU from on high and decided to make you an offer for a chance (should you take it) TO SET YOU FREE.

He did it all.

I used to say that if there were 1000 steps between us and God—He would take 999 of them in order to meet us.  He would walk the hill and do all the work….but we must RESPOND.  And our RESPONSE IS EVERYTHING.  Because our heart must somehow, someway, find a way to meet with Him and be redeemed.

What is your response to His call?

I think Titus understood this….and the more I have read this….the more I realize that this verse is a lot deeper than what I first gave it credit for:

Titus 2:11-12  11 For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. 12 It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age

Grace is almost impossible to understand or fathom.  It isn’t just forgiveness…It isn’t just a pardon…It isn’t just choosing not to collect what is due.

It is PROMOTION into the very thing that we have failed at…

Titus is telling us something…

• Looking at GRACE as a permission slip to continue in sin is not seeing what it truly is….
• Looking at GRACE and continuing to walk in our shame is not seeing what it truly is….
• Looking at GRACE and being unchanged by the message that Jesus delivers to us EVERY DAY is not seeing what it truly is….

His offer to you demands a RESPONSE.

A heart of gratitude.

A desire to worship.

A filling of hope.

An overwhelming stream of joy.

A life that will never be the same.

Do not allow the enemy to dictate what life is supposed to look like…..

Allow Jesus to stir up a response in you the likes of which the world has never seen…..

In The Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

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Coach J

In 2013, a flood swept through Lyons and into Longmont that left an unforgettable impression on all who live in this region.  We are still cleaning up from the power of the water rushing through at such a high rate of speed.

I can remember being in Lyons two years ago and digging a hot tub out of the ground that had been carried there from who knows where……Railroad ties were bent like wires.  Cars were washed away.  Cabins were in the river.

But one story left a mark in my mind that I will never forget.  As our football team helped a man clean up his property, he told me what had happened to him.  He had heard that the flood was coming and so he went outside to tell his kids to come in…..as he walked out his front door, he heard a loud snap as the dike about one mile from his house snapped……before he could even think, he could hear the water coming at him—-and it was so loud that he could not even hear himself shouting.

Imagine hearing water come at you and it being so loud that you can’t hear yourself scream…….

An intense picture of the power of nature.

And one we should never forget about when thinking about the LORD:

Ezekiel 43:1-2  1 Then the man brought me to the gate facing east, 2 and I saw the glory of the God of Israel coming from the east. His voice was like the roar of rushing waters, and the land was radiant with his glory.

We have lost our respect and honor in today’s society……  

And this has grown because we have lost our honor and respect for the Lord.

I believe that Ezekiel had a healthy respect for the Lord.  His visions gave him a small picture of the glory of the Lord.  

Moses understood it.

Paul attained it.

David delighted in Him and faced a giant because he knew who God was.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego held the Lord in such high esteem that they chose a blazing furnace over letting Him down.

Daniel chose a lion’s den over upsetting the Living God.

What about us?

I think we should purpose to bring this back.

Imagine His voice being like rushing waters and the land radiating with His glory….?

The reality is that we have NO IDEA the pure power and perfection and radiance and love that will be on Him…….

Let’s remember who He is……and let’s remember who we are.

Father~

Move on us.  Fill us with Honor and Respect and Love.  Move on us in a way that we might convey that to all we encounter.  Help us to know who we are….to know that we belong to You…..  To know that You own the cattle on a thousand hills, To know that You hold the keys to eternal life, To know that You are our righteousness and our holiness, To know that without You—we have nothing.

In The Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

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Coach J

God continues to convict me on the Foundation Of Truth….just the idea that we would build our faith, our daily walk, and our mindsets…on principles that are TRUE.

Today….I want to touch on one very important principal:

God Is FOR You

My lovely wife Angie constantly reminds our family of this very principle…..And if you are like me you easily fall into the mindset that you are in trouble, that you have somehow not measured up, that you are in the “doghouse”, that your circumstances are somehow the result of you not being in the favor of God…..

And if you are like me you begin to build a mindset of religion—the idea that you must DO SOMETHING to make Him love you.

This is not what the Bible says.

The Bible says that “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us”, it says that Jesus saw Nathanael under the fig tree and admired him from afar, it says that He told Peter that he was “a rock”—-knowing full well that he would abandon him as He went to the cross.

This is not the picture of a disappointed God who looks from on high and sees us screw it up…..

It is just the opposite.

It is the picture of who God truly IS…..the One who loves you.

The burdens of life can weigh us down and there are pains that we deal with that are incredible…unfathomable…

I see the lives of kids I coach, their parents, their families, and even men that I coach with…..and it would be easy to crumble at some of the things people face……

But as we face these things, let us never forget:

Satan is not going to win.  The Lord will deal with Him in the due time.  And since He was an amazing lamb, I shudder at how He will look when He comes as a LION.

Sin is not going to be the defining factor over our lives.  Nailed on a cross 2000 years ago was the Almighty Jesus….redefining what we would look like and how we would live.  Live free—live like you have been forgiven.  After all, that blood He shed, that trial He endured, and those accusations He received—-those were not meant to be wasted.

Death is not the end of life.  Just the opposite.  He has something greater for us….and for those who have gone before us.  Ask Him to show you what He has in store for those who love Him…..NO ONE—and I mean NO ONE—wants to be here when they can be THERE.

It is in these three principles that we must grab onto Jesus….knowing that He is FOR US.  That He is crying every tear we cry and helping us up every hill.  That He is like a parent watching over us and rooting for us….  That in our struggles He is struggling too.

Never forget…in all you do…in all you encounter…and in all you deal with…

God is FOR YOU.

In The Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

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Coach J

As I walked through my house thinking of all that society is dealing with in 2017, it was crystal clear to me that the blog I write today was why God put this on my heart in the first place…..as a society, we simply have lost our Foundation Of Truth.  In truth, this is proof of the “evolution of thought”……and that is the idea that one logical thought followed by many others does NOT lead us to the truth….it leads us to a mess.  And that is what we have.

Before I continue on from this point, I am going to ask for prayer.  Please….cry out to the Lord that I would write this in the Spirit and that it would be received by all who read it in the Spirit.  Because the flesh is what drives all the political agendas, all the cultural mindsets, and all the evil that we currently see in society today.

But all of that….and I mean ALL of that….can be gone in an instant when we, and I mean WE, submit to the will of God and become a people who follows after the risen King.

As I mentioned in 71….God is ALL we have.  Jesus….is ALL we have.

So let’s build a Foundation Of Truth and lay waste to any thought or mindset that is not true so that we can actually walk in Truth and not build a house on a structure that will not stand up.

Here it is:

1. We were created by God in His image…and in 2017 that means:  You Are Not An Accident.  You are here because God has a plan for your life.  His plan is to light a fire inside of you different than the world has ever seen.  And that fire is to inspire you to love so greatly that the people around you ACTUALLY see God in you and through you.  That you have something so different in you that others are drawn to you because you are distinct and set apart and different.
2. We, due to the choice of one man, fell into sin…and in 2017 that means:  You Were Born Into Sin.  This might not seem fair but it is reality…it is truth.  And it is fair because all men, given choice, choose just like the ONE guy.  We are all God’s enemies….and we are born with it in us.  It is kind of like pork…..in the Bible, God calls pork unclean and it is….If you set it on the counter, it will rot INSIDE before it will be ruined by what is on the outside.  In fact, you have to cook the rotten out of it in order to eat it.  It is simply UNCLEAN on the inside—just like you and I.
3. All of us, and I mean ALL of us, are filled with sin…and in 2017 that means:  You ARE NOT What You Are Tempted To Be.  And it is in this foundational lie that our society is headed in the wrong direction.  God HAS GIVEN US AN IDENTITY.  Read about it and find out who He says you are.  Instead of making our temptations our identity, we need to say no to them and allow the Lord to tell us who we are.  This is as true for me as it is for any person on our planet.  After all, if I were what I was tempted by…..I would have lost my way a long time ago…….
4. He laid down His life to save us…and in 2017 that means:  He Gave His Life That You Might Be Free.    2000 years ago a guy named Jesus changed the world.  He was crucified on a cross between two thieves, for a crime He did not commit, in a court of law that broke its own rules, by a group of men who were supposed to know Him, and at a time when all His friends ran and forgot Him.  The story is incredible but the bottom line is this:  He gave it all for you.  And, no, you are not free to go do whatever you want.  You are free to have hope, and love, and identity put over who you are and all you do.
5. We get to choose to follow Him or not to follow Him…and in 2017 that means:  You Can Not Follow Someone Unless You Go In The SAME Direction.  Following Him involves change.  It involves saying no to some things and yes to others.  It means that we are going to go where He leads.  Freedom is not jumping out of the sheep pen and running out to “mix in” with the wolves….it is staying under the direction, and protection, of the Shepherd.   

That’s it.  That’s the offer from God that we are free to accept or reject…..and it is….OUR INDIVIDUAL CHOICE.

So there it is…..

I want to end with a thought:  All of us are tempted.   We will all be asked to turn away from something that we want to do.  It is important to remember that turning away and saying no is the beginning of finding out who we truly are.  We….are children of God.  This is a simple concept….but we have turned something very simple into something more complicated than it needs to be.  When we are tempted to do something or enter into a mindset we need to ask:  Is this where He is going?  And we have to remember:  You ARE NOT What You Are Tempted By…..Just because you have an angry thought, a greedy thought, a jealous thought, a lustful thought……that does not mean that you are defined by that thought.  It just means that we need to “take every thought captive” and ask if it was planted there by the enemy of the living God.  If it was….we can simply get rid of it.

The bottom line is that we must ask the Lord to lead us….and then we get to follow.

And so there it is.  We must choose to follow Him or NOT TO follow Him.

So if Followers of Jesus seem intolerant, or different, or mean-spirited as believers in getting this message across….we could not be further from that notion.  That being said…..we should care a lot more about what He thinks of us than what others think….and if I am worried about offending anyone—it is Him.  Because without Him…..I have nothing.  After all…..He died on the cross that I might live.  So I want to go in His direction no matter where He goes……after all—–He died for me…..and that…..is the VERY LEAST I CAN DO.

Lord, change our hearts.  Let us be convicted of our creation, accountable for our sin, unwilling to connect our temptations to our identity, grateful for His sacrifice, and ready to follow……..

Choosing to FOLLOW Jesus is the most important decision you could ever make…….but that does not mean, under ANY circumstances, we can start making our own decisions and then say we are following Him…..To FOLLOW, you must be going in the same direction…

Our King did not die on the cross to watch us be ordinary.

He WIRED us to the best.

In The Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

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Coach J

There are days when we simply have to look in the mirror and ask ourselves to give an account of what we did or how we acted….or how we dealt with a situation.  And if we are honest….we have to repent and change our direction and our thought process.  I had one of those days today.  The battlefield that must be won, FIRST AND FOREMOST—IS IN OUR MINDS.  

I can assure you that this is a hard word….because we all must understand something that we almost never think about:

He KNOWS EVERYTHING WE THINK ABOUT.

Not some things….EVERYTHING.  And we will have to face those thoughts IN FRONT OF HIM and give account…….

My mindset, to be real, is OFF….and it is OFF—A LOT.

If this does not apply to you—do not read any further….but if it does—read on and cover this word in the grace of Jesus Christ….because His blood not only covers our sin–it tramples it.

We have life and freedom in Him……but if we want to walk into it—we must walk in the truth.

So let me say these things to myself as I reflect on my day….and if they apply to you—receive them….and if they don’t—don’t.

• You are NOT A VICTIM.  You are blessed and covered by Jesus to fight the good fight.
• You are NOT in a harder spot than those around you.
• Your troubles are no worse than everyone else’s….in fact:  there are a lot of people truly hurting out there while you wallow in your little issues.
• Your God is FOR YOU.  He is FOR YOU in every way.  He saw you from on high and chose YOU—YOU!  This is not some cheap selection or afterthought—it is a first round draft pick to have you walk out the call He has put on your life.
• You are free to rebel…….but you will sleep in the bed you make and there will be consequences……the world, and the devil, have no mercy on anyone…..and Satan’s plan is to steal, kill, and destroy…..to ACCUSE to SHAME to DISCOURAGE to STEAL HOPE and to RUIN.
• Your calling is not about you….it is to live out a life of faith.
• Every day….Every day you will have to choose who you will follow…..it is no different than Adam and Eve in the garden……we can choose God….or we can choose the other thing that is born out of the mindset that God has somehow not given us all that He has to offer.

All of these things are of the enemy.  And all of them, along with many others, are simple little ways that Satan can chip at the foundation of who we are to get us to think in the wrong way……

2 Corinthians 10  3For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. 4The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

God is FOR us.

We are free to live free from Satan, sin, and death.

We shouldn’t need to watch CNN to know that there are people out there hurting….people who need us to be in the RIGHT MINDSET.

We are free to choose to eat from either tree in that garden….the one from God—or the one that the enemy tempts us to take……that second tree will bind, it will discourage, it will bring hopelessness and despair and diversion.

I don’t think Paul was using a play on words when he said to us:  Take Captive Every Thought.

Paul knew what it was like to be in prison……and yet he understood that it would be better for the body to be in prison than the mind.  We can literally create our own prison by refusing to fight the battle we need to fight to bring us freedom.

As I was writing the blog I was reminded of a student who couldn’t get out of his own way to succeed at school….when I asked him about he said that he could never do enough to please his dad—-that his efforts simply were not good enough.  I get that—dad’s words can hover over a person for long periods of time—so when I pressed in to see when this happened—I found out that it was when he was in the 4th grade and he now no longer lived with his dad.  What his dad could not do in the flesh—-Satan did in his mind.  He locked on and followed him across 3 states to continue to discourage and dismantle.  Take Those Thoughts Captive!  Build a foundation for success—not failure!

I will end with this.  A woman collapsed tonight at a volleyball game….I had coached her boys and enjoyed her support for years….and I was compelled to pray for her and so I did.  When a woman thanked me for praying over her my heart became convicted…..I simply said:  “He is all i have.  He is all any of us have.”  Indeed.  We have NOTHING without Him.

So press on and set a foundation rooted in the love that He has given us from the moment we came to be……because if we do—-He will bring us to a place of freedom that we have never seen.

In The Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

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Coach J

Walking through an equation in class, I had come to realize that my class had gotten it wrong.  As I turned to ask them if that was the answer they had all gotten, I noticed a few uncomfortable faces…..

These students had gotten the right answer but were afraid to say it because “everyone else” had the other answer….and, in their mind, that answer HAD TO BE RIGHT.

The class decided, by popular vote, what the answer was.

In that moment, the Lord convicted me.

How often have we, because of the crowd, been swayed by the crowd to believe something to be true that was not.

In that moment it dawned on me…..movements have been built on that very thing.

I think the reason that I was so convicted is that I HAD DONE IT.

Think about it:

How often have we “bought into the myth” and built our day, our week, our decisions, on a myth?

Perhaps it is a personal myth:  My mom doesn’t love me.

Or a professional myth:  My boss is going to fire me.

Or a scriptural myth:  Money is the root of all evil.  (The love of money is the root of all evil)

Our reality is that we sometimes “build a house” on a foundation that is something we believe to be true….but it is not true.

In a conversation with Jesus leading up to the greatest moment in human history, Pontius Pilate doesn’t even care what the truth is…..and I can’t help but hear sarcasm as I read what he said to Jesus:

John 18  38 “What is truth?”

I am shocked that sometimes we don’t even care about it in the court of law.  It is not what is true, it is only what we can prove.

That is not a recipe for spiritual success.

The truth is the only thing that matters.  It is not some inconvenient roadblock that we can somehow move out of the way.  It is the foundation on which we must build our house.

Jesus said I am the way and the truth and the life and He said it because when we aren’t going that way or following that truth we don’t have life…..for here or for later.

As I walk into today I am convicted to make sure:

• That I am not walking in something that is a myth.
• That I am not building my life on a foundation of lies.
• That I am not believing in something in my heart that is simply a lie from the pits of hell.

The enemy is a schemer and a destroyer.  He loves to come into our thoughts and plant a mindset in our brains that is not true….If he can do that, he can have us walk down a path that is certain to destroy us.  Our thoughts are everything in our walk with God.  We must, as God tells us, take them captive and run them through the filter of Him who holds our very lives in His hands.

We can be proactive to walk out our lives and not allow this to happen.

Psalm 25  4 Show me your ways, O LORD ,

teach me your paths;

5 guide me in your truth and teach me,

for you are God my Savior,

and my hope is in you all day long.

Such a simple verse and yet such a vitally important word….

Father–

Show me who You are and where You are going.

Show me what the Truth is everywhere I go.

Guide me and be my salvation even in the little things.

You, and You alone, hold the keys to eternal life.

In The Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Know anyone who might like these?  Encourage them to jump on to 2minutewarning.blog and hit the FOLLOW button!!!

Coach J