I spent the evening the other night with an old friend of mine. He & I used to meet each week, early in the morning, for prayer & accountability. It was one of those friendships that you really want to have with others, but most of the time fall far short of actually seeing happen. Through that mutual respect, encouragement & 'spurring' I can absolutely say that it had a deep impact on my life, my ministry, my marriage & family life, & my spiritual journey.

There really is no secret formula involved. I know I used to think so, and I'm sure that is what a lot of other people believe as well. But when it comes down to it, I'm afraid there's no special list of "things you must have in an accountability relationship in order to succeed." What I found was much more simple.

Continue reading "Old Friends, New Thoughts" »

From Not I, But Christ by Watchman Nee:

"I have said this for many years, and I will say it again: the basic aim of temptation is not so much to get us to sin as to get our old man to act. Temptation lies in tempting our old man to resist. If the old man can rise up to resist temptation, he can also rise up to commit sin. So whenever temptation comes, we must refuse to move. "Lord, this is Your business, not mine. Lord, I look to You, for You live for me." It is thus you learn to trust the Lord to live in you."

Well, we've officially closed the "Community 101" conversation that we began about 5 weeks ago. I'd have to say that this has definitely been a God-move as I really hadn't planned on traveling down the road of talking about Community at all. God planted the Acts 2 passage in my head, one thing led to another & here we are after having experienced rich discussion on what community is & some of how we can experience it.

While the conversation has closed, I know that we are going to continue to reap the benefits of what we have learned - especially as we launch out into our first Young Adults Community Group here in a couple of weeks (April 10th).

Not sure where we are headed next. We have a couple of weeks to go before Easter, then we'll be doing a four week study on "LifeWorship." I'm thinking about going a little deeper into a conversation about the Holy Spirit - kind of a FAQ study to address many of the misconceptions and questions about the third member of the Godhead.

Remember that you can catch up on past pieces of the conversation through our Gladeville Groups site at groups.gladevillechurch.org. Shoot me an email if you don't know/can't remember the login information.

It's finally here - March Madness & all its glory! I'm so excited I can hardly type! (Okay, maybe not quite that excited). We'll once again be hosting an online pool for those who want to take their stab at picking teams for the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament which begins this Thursday. Travel over to http://www.marchmaniac.com and click on "Family & Friends Pool" to find out more info or to enter your picks today!

This will be the 10th year that we have made picks, which is kind of exciting in itself. We hope you all will join in on the fun - even if you don't know anything about basketball or sports in general. Pick teams by which school name you like better, or by team colors or mascots. Year after year we see the same thing - people who don't know a thing about basketball edging out others who live & breathe for this time of year (and completely pummeling some of them :-) ).

Hey - you can't do any worse than I did last year... completely last! I even lost to "George Washington" (the coin flip), the "High Roller" (picking all upsets) and the "Safe Bet" (picking all higher seeds to win). KU is bound to go further than last year (the word "Bucknell" still makes me sick to my stomach) and I'm bound to finish better than I did last year (right?).

Happy picking! Remember to make your picks before game time on Thursday morning (11:00am on March 16th). Then check back to the site to see how you're doing throughout the tournament!

Well, we find ourselves in the bliss the 'between sports' time - all of 10-14 days between when Upward Basketball ends & YMCA Soccer begins. It has been a nice reprieve from having to be out two nights for basketball practices (one for Micah & one for Si) and then most of the afternoon on Saturdays, depending on whether we had two or three games.

Both of the boys really enjoyed Upward Basketball. Andrea & I were also impressed with the program. We were a little concerned for Micah, as this is really the first organized sport he has participated in. He did great, though, as this video shows. He really moved a long way during the season. In the first game he pretty much just stood and guarded his guy no matter if his team was on defense or offense! The last game (ie this clip) he was running around, trailing his man, grabbing rebounces, making passes, etc.

The coach had promised the kids that if everyone scored in the last game that he would take them out for McD's after the game. Of course he personally guaranteed the feat and took matters into his own hands as the video shows :-) There was about 10 seconds left & Micah was the only one who hadn't scored. The coach grabbed the rebound, handed it to Micah & then picked him up & ran down the court to score a basket right before the buzzer sounded. It was hilarious!