Our Gifts Make Room For Our Goals

Proverbs 18:16 says a man's gift makes room for him. The Hebrew literally means to broaden. God will use gifts He provides to broaden our horizons in the new year! Many of us have New Year's resolutions and ambitions and it's important to recognize that our gifts make room for our goals! 

First we need to make sure ours is a God-given goal. There are lots of good goals, but only God-given goals are worthy of our devotion and greatest efforts. The spiritual gifts God provides will help us with that determination. In 1 Corinthians 12, the Apostle Paul lists nine gifts the Holy Spirit provides  believers. One of those gifts is the gift of discernment. God doesn't want us wandering through life wondering what His will is. Discernment will help us to determine God's will by recognizing when a goal is truly God-given! We spend way too much time asking God to bless what we're doing, when we simply should be doing what He is blessing! In the Bible, God often refers to Himself as a shepherd. Shepherds use their staff to keep the sheep moving in the right direction. God calls His staff favor (Zechariah 11:10). God uses divine favor to steer us in the right direction. What is God blessing in your life? What is His favor upon? Give your devotion to that and you will accomplish great things for God in the coming year!

The next thing we need to do is write our goals down and contemplate them regularly. God told His prophet Habakuk to write down the vision he had been given so that those who would declare the vision could easily read it and run with it. (Habakuk 2:2) We need to do the same. The gifts we have been given will energize us for the tasks at hand. Along with the gift of discernment, Paul also describes the gift of faith in 1 Corinthians 12. If a goal is truly God-given, we will have faith for what we have been called to achieve and we won't have to manufacture energy for it. Each day, as we pull out our written goals and contemplate them, faith will rise up in our hearts and put wind in our sails! There is nothing more exhausting than trying to manufacture energy for goals that God never gave us in the first place. Just ask Rehoboam! This backslidden son of Solomon tried to replace the decorative gold shields his father had placed in the temple with brass ones. Once the original shields were stolen by raiding parties from Egypt, Rehoboam had a chance to recognize that his heart was in the wrong place and repent before God. Instead, he put up a front and put up phony shields, pretending like everything was ok. Can you imagine how hard he had to work to make brass shields shine like gold? About as hard as we have to work to manufacture energy for things God has not called us to! It's time to get our focus on God's mandate for our lives!  

After we have determined what our God-given goals are and we have written them down, we need to become accountable to someone for those goals. Not everyone needs to know our goals, but someone needs to know what we are believing God to help us achieve. Once again, the gifts come into play when it comes to accountability. Those gifts are described in Ephesians 4 as our spiritual leaders. The leadership that God brings into our lives are His gifts to us and one of the things they provide is accountability. When I was young in the faith and in ministry, I knew I was called to do ministry full time, but had no opportunity. I tried to be faithful with any door God opened. I was leading worship at a youth event when I met the State Youth Director for the denomination we were a part of. He pursued a relationship with me and over time, learned of my goal to be in ministry full time. One day he called me to let me know about a pastor that was looking to hire a full time youth pastor at a church in Lafayette. That was 32 years ago. I served the church for 8 years as their youth pastor and now I serve as their Lead Pastor. The reason I  serve as the Lead Pastor of Crossroads Church is because God's gifts made room for me here! 

The last thing I want to point out about achieving our God-given goals this year is that we must break those goals down into manageable steps that can be carried out. Where the gift of discernment described in 1 Corinthians 12 will help us determine what our truly God-given goals are, the gift of wisdom will help us formulate a plan for carrying those goals out. This plan is important because we have to move beyond a wish and a whim and we have to take corresponding steps of action towards our goals. In the Bible there's a book called The Acts of the Apostles. Notice, there's no book called the Intentions of the Apostles. We must move beyond intention into action to see our goals realized in the coming year! 

Your gifting will provide you with purchasing power that will help you accomplish your God-given goals. Achievement isn't cheap! Jesus says we should count the cost when we are contemplating what we will do for His glory (Luke 14:28). God has provided a form of currency within our gifting. Proverbs 17:8 says a gift is as a precious stone in the eyes of him that has it; wherever it turns, it prospers. Lets cash in on the value our gifts provide this year and accomplish all the things God has put in our hearts to achieve! 

One Way I Know God Loves Me...

Someone said the best way to know how God feels about you is to look at who He has surrounded you with. If that's true, God must love me a lot! Because I have some really great friends. Way up at the top of the list is a guy named David Baudoin. David and I have been friends for over thirty years. Really close friends. 

Most people know that one of David's primary roles at our church the past 16 years has been Pastoral Counseling. What you may not know is that one of the people he's counseled most is me! He has been my constant confidant. I've run pretty much every major decision - personal and ministerial - by him. He has prayed with me, walked with me and been an amazing support to me. 

A couple of months ago David let me know God is leading him to step off our Lead Team at Crossroads Church to start a Christian Counseling agency here in town. Today was David's last Sunday as a member of our Pastoral team. It is truly bitter-sweet. I'm excited for him and I know he's going to excel in this new ministry assignment, but I'm going to miss having one of my very best friends right down the hall. 

I'm thankful for all the people David has helped while working along side us at Crossroads. I'm thankful for the sounding board he's been for me on so many levels, through so many decisions. Mostly, I'm thankful that God loves me enough to give me a friend like David Baudoin! 

New Additions to Our Lead Team!

This past Sunday I had the privilege of announcing that Curvine and Candace Brewington have accepted my invitation to come off the road and give their full devotion and attention to leading our Student Ministry here at Crossroads Church.

Curvine has served as our Staff Evangelist for the past couple of years, basing out of Lafayette but traveling around the country promoting Crossroads Leadership College as he traveled. When Beau and Lauren Dore left late last year to take a new assignment in Oklahoma, we asked Curvine to serve as our Interim Student Pastor. He did a great job, but his consistent traveling really prevented him from giving the kind of attention to our students that he would have liked to have given. 

I felt from day one like the Brewingtons would end up being our Student Pastors but there were a lot of things that could have easily made it impossible. However, God opens and closes doors according to His plan and it has been an amazing thing to see how He set up this opportunity we now have to bring Curvine and Candace onto the team! We are so thankful and so excited! 

For eighteen years, we have had very little transition on our staff since I became the Lead Pastor here at Crossroads. However, over the past two years we have seen God move some of our dearest friends into new assignments and we have seen Him bring equally beloved friends on board to take up where they left off. Someone told me years ago, God doesn't create void - He fills it! That has certainly been our experience here at Crossroads Church! Here is a picture of Bud and Yo Plake, who have taken over our Pastoral Care department, Marshall and Apple Hunter who have taken over our Media Department and Paul and Michelle Jaqua who have taken over as directors of Crossroads Leadership College! 

We truly have an amazing Lead Team and I believe we are entering the greatest season of ministry we have ever known! We have a wonderful history, but our best days are just ahead! Welcome aboard to the Brewingtons, Plakes, Hunters and Jaquas! 

Thank You Memphis!

Donna and I just enjoyed a little road trip. Several years ago I preached in Memphis, TN for my friends Matt and Shannon Anzivino and enjoyed the sights and the sounds of the city so much,  I've wanted to bring Donna back there ever since. After months of hard work preparing for our Joi de Vivre Women's Conference and our huge Easter weekend, we felt like it was time for a break to go recharge our batteries and get some R&R! 

The week began after a six hour drive up I-55 with some good old Memphis barbecue! Barbecue is one of Donna's favorite cuisines and Memphis has some of the best! Our first taste of the smokey goodness was at Central Barbecue just around the corner from Beale Street. It was delicious! Ribs, pulled pork and brisket with potato salad and baked beans - Yum! We also enjoyed Corky's later in the trip. Corky's is now a national chain but it all started in Memphis and they didn't disappoint! Lafayette doesn't really have a great barbecue place. Our people pride themselves so much in their own barbecue mastery that restaurant fare just doesn't measure up. I guess what we need is for one of those barbecue specialists to open their own place! (I'm talking to you Beau Roy!)

Another reason to go to Memphis is to get a musical history lesson. It is known as the birth place of the blues, but it's also really the birth place of what we think of as rock-n-roll today. In the early 1950's country, blues and gospel met up in a little studio called Sun Records owned and operated by the legendary Sam Phillips. He recorded unknown artists who would go on to be musical giants. People like Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Charlie Rich, Ike Turner and B.B. King! It was the country music of artists like Elvis, influenced by the blues of the African American community in Memphis that forged the sound of Rock-n-roll. The amazing story is included in a tour of Sun Records and was one of my favorite parts of the trip. I really wish someone would make a movie about it - I find it facinating! Here's a picture of me standing at the mic that all those legends sang into back in the glory days.

When we started planning our trip, I contacted Matt and Shannon. One of the things they told me I had to see was the Memphis Bass Pro Shop. I thought, "Really?" Now I know why they insisted! AMAZING! It's HUGE! The former arena for the Memphis Grizzly's has been converted into 535,000 square feet of outdoor consumerism. It comes complete with a hotel that overlooks the entire floor of the complex including the lazy river that runs throughout with live alligators on the bank. Yes, really. Walking through the place I thought, "I have friends in Lafayette that would think they have died and gone to heaven. I actually held a Browning shotgun valued at $80,000.00. What? 

Of course a trip to Memphis isn't complete without a visit to Graceland. I'd heard all kinds of reports on what to expect - Most of which included disappointment, so I guess I was prepared. I understand where those people are coming from - Compared to today's mansions, Graceland isn't much to write home about. But when you consider the times in which it was acquired by Elvis - At age 22 mind you - It is much easier to feel impressed by the estate he put together. There is a certain sadness you feel looking at the joy and elation of the pictures and film of his earlier days knowing where it would all eventually lead. The music business works so different today. Recalling the story of his overnight success makes you realize this young man was simply in the right place at the right time and tapped into a cultural eruption of social change that made his rock-n-roll dynasty possible. Here's a picture of me with one of his famous jumpsuits considering a different approach toward my Sunday morning fashion! lol. 

The Loraine Motel is where they tried to element the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It has now been transformed into the National Civil Rights Museum - A powerful reminder of this nation's ugly past and the struggle African Americans have endured to secure civil and equal rights. Growing up in the 1960's, so much of what is included in this tribute felt like deja vu. We also visited the Rock and Soul Museum and it may seem odd to compare these two homages but the Rock and Soul Museum tells the story of the struggle that blues music was birthed out of. Being the grandson of an Arkansas share cropper and the son of parents who grew up during the years of the great depression in the deep south, I felt a familiarity with that story that seemed haunting in some way. After winding through the Civil Rights Museum's tour of suffering and brutality, documenting the small wins and major set backs the movement soldiered through, you finally end up staring into the carefully preserved room Dr. King stayed in at the Loraine Motel the night before his murder. The faint melody of "Take My Hand Precious Lord" is playing through the Museum speaker system and time just seems to stand still. It's hard to explain how I felt, but the best word to describe it is grateful. We have so far to go as a culture to truly see the dream realized, but we have come so far thanks to the determination of people like Dr. King.

What was intended simply be a few days off turned out to be a pilgrimage of sorts that touched me deeply and inspired me to do more with my life. Thank you Memphis!