Ryan Cook -Real Life

Successful Way to Share your Faith

Wanted to hit few of the notes from my message last night on sharing faith.

Paul was speaking @ Areopagus Acts 17:16-34

How did Paul Share His Faith

  ·      Didn’t matter where he was, seized opportunity- He was hanging around waiting for Silas and Timothy

·      His spirit was provoked or troubled by what he saw

·      He was just being himself

·      He met the people where they were, on their turf- spoke to ALL people, both Jews and Gentiles.

·      He didn’t judge them because they didn’t know any better- What if Paul went in and said, “you guys are stupid, your following false gods, you guys are ignorant” would that have worked? No, ran them off and shut down.

·      He believed in what He spoke about

·      He wasn’t afraid

·      He made known what was unknown_ He explained God to them

·      He got people thinking- they said “we want to hear more about this later”

·      Didn’t win everyone to Christ- Not a perfect conversion rate, but still some believed! And that’s what matters, they were not all ready, they weren’t all in the same place in their journey of life.

God orchestrates this. We might just be a step in the process. The first or opening step, maybe the closing step. Just because you don’t win someone to Christ the first time doesn’t mean it was all for nothing.

8 Easy ways you can share your faith

·      Talk to people: Just talk, be friendly, be relational

·      Ask & Answer and Listen: open your mouth and also be an active listener, people want to tell their story. Listening also earns credibility

·      Be Selfless- it’s not all about us

·      Open your mind and your eyes to others, spiritually & literally (I see lots of Christians walk around w/ there heads down, avoiding other people, Ohh there so and so, let's keep walking…..be friendly, what if one of those people are going through a hard time or just need a friendly hello?

·      Visit different places- we are a people of habit, eat at the same places, visit same places, try a new one, expand yourself

·      Don’t be afraid- Listen to what Acts 18:9-11 says-  ⁹One night the Lord spoke to Paul in a vision: "Do not be afraid; keep on speaking, do not be silent. ¹⁰For I am with you, and no one is going to attack and harm you, because I have many people in this city." ¹¹So Paul stayed for a year and a half, teaching them the word of God

·      If you have been a hypocrite, repent & ask for forgiveness- make it right w/ people- earns credibility. People wont care what you know until they know you care.

·      Ask and listen to the Holy Spirit- Act 19:21- says Paul was purposed or impelled to go to Macedonia

·      Be Yourself!! We have a lot in common w/ other humans. Don’t diminish that just because we attend church. We all feel pain the same way. 

·      Be yourself- Someone needs what you have. Some of you can't do what Pastor Mike does w/ the youth or reach students as some of our students can and so on and so on......

www.ryancook.net

Disturb Me Again!

I have blogged about God’s Holy Disturbance a few times, and feel I need to one more time.

The wave of momentum is moving at GJFA. Jump in and get involved. Let me share this verse w/ you from Matthew 6:34- Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes. -Message

It is easy to get sidelined from our busy lifestyles, but try to stay focused on the BIG PICTURE, the reason we are here.

Sometimes my fear is we are so caught up w/ our active, selfish lifestyles and comfortability, we do not want God to disturb us or bother us.  After all, if it’s working, why fix it right? 

The people that are willing to let God disturb, to bother them, to not only think about the vision, but that can feel the vision, are the people that are going to make the difference.

I am praying that God will raise up more and more leaders in our church.  Leaders that will want to lead out of calling & burden rather than for popularity or affirmation.

If a person isn’t disturbed, if nothing bothers them, if everything is gray and there is no black and white then your heart may need to be jump started again.  Maybe you have entered nto a state of numbness?  We live in culture and life where sex is glorified, affairs are on an all-time high, more & people are dying from smoking, alcohol, drugs and obesity than ever before. We are a serve me/ feed me culture and I see people being bothered less and less and less.

Hear my heart. I am not pointing fingers, because there would be twice as many pointed back. I am speaking to myself as well.  I am not judging people by any means. We are at all different cycles in life. I am simply stating, sometimes we need to sit back, find out which way is up, and allow God to disturb us, to realign our wheels, to bother us.

I want my heart to break for the things His heart breaks for. To see people the way He sees people. The only way to get there is to get close to Him and let him disturb us a little.

We are called to be disturbed every now and again!

I have prayed this prayer from Sir Francis Drake every now and again… CAUTION- do not pray it if you don’t mean it!  If you mean it- Hold on for a Holy Disturbance!...Disturb us, Lord, when we are too well pleased with ourselves. When our dreams have come true because we dreamed too little. When we arrive safely because we have sailed too close to the shore. Disturb us, Lord.” 

Disturb us God!!

www.ryancook.net

 

 

 

The Words We Say

I just got through reading something about the power of words and got me thinking about my childhood years.

I spent a lot of my childhood years trying to please other people and ‘fit in’ w/ the "cool crowd."

I had a few strikes against me.

I was raised in the Jehovah’s Witness religion.  Kids always made fun of me because I didn’t get/get Christmas or birthday presents and didn’t really celebrate any holidays. 

My parents were separated, that was odd for school events because my parents hated each other. Also, I remember my dad trying to pick up on my female teachers, (Mrs. Candy, Mrs. Peterson and Mrs. Gonzales) during parent teacher conferences. Couldn’t blame him I guess, he needed a wife. LOL

I was born w/ asthma and allergies. This made it very hard to run and play some of the P.E. sports, so many times I was sidelined and didn’t get to play. The allergies allowed me to get shots 3x a week. Yuck!

Also, I think I had the biggest set of tic-tac teeth that I had ever seen on a kid, until my mom graciously put braces on them things and tamed them down.

I did get made of my last name a little as well.

BUT, most of all I remember a name that I was called like it was yesterday, hated it.  The name was “fat back”. Yep I hated it. Made me want to go crawl under a rock.  Yes I was a chunky kid, but didn’t think I deserved the name “fat back”.

I actually looked the word ‘fat back’ up in the Webster and this is what it said- the strip of fat from the back of a hog carcass usually cured by drying and salting.  Man, that boy was mean!

I was called fat back through 8^th grade until I grew into my body.

All of the above really bothered me. I was sensitive and cried often.  I do not remember having the support of my mom and or acceptance of my mom. Like I have said in the past, I love her, don’t blame her for anything or the outcome of my life, she did the best she ‘knew’ how to do.

I think as I went through high school I looked for love and acceptance in other things. I came across ‘hard nosed’ like nothing bothered me. I turned to alcohol and girls for the acceptance and kind words.  

I let the words bounce of me and didn’t really care what I said to people. I thought, if it hurt their feelings, o’well, they needed to hear it.  No big deal right? I had turned into someone that I didn’t like, like the guy that called me ‘fat back.’

We can use our tongues in 2 ways.

1. Uplifting, helping, encouraging, challenging others.
2. Evil and meanness.

For a long time after high school I had total disregard of my words. Hurting people left and right. Was I right? No. Did I know any better? No.

Do I know better now? Yes.

The words we speak, once released from our tongue travel this world forever.  

We can’t take them back, even though we try so hard.  

The words we speak pierce hearts and memories for a long time.

We never know how another person’s day is or has been.  I try to always take that into consideration. Am I perfect at it? No, but I do work on speaking encouraging words everyday.

I want to be soft hearted and tough skinned all at once- to be tender enough to reply in love, grace and mercy and to let things run off my shoulders when needed.

Have I learned it all? No, I am no where close, but trying everyday :-)

Working on my words daily!

www.ryancook.net

Reave Reports on Everything!

Ok, here is part 2 on Reave Reports. It is hilarious! It starts out w/ Londyn filming, but about 50 seconds into it, Reave grabs the recorder from Londyn and does her own reporting around the house.  

Imagine the surprise when I downloaded the pics and video off the camera and found this little jewel!

Warning, this is 4 year old filming, watch the motion sickness!

www.ryancook.net

In the Zone

Ok, so Pastor Ted was 'In the Zone' last week and thought he could take on the pastoral staff of GJFA.

We actually caught it on tape. Here is the proof!

www.ryancook.net

Reave Reports

Ok, this is what happens when the kids get ahold of the recorder. 

Reave was pretending she is a 'weather reporter'. 

This clip is only 30 seconds, but she did grab the recorder and has a 6 minute clip that I'll bust out tomorrow, so check back to ryancook.net to check it out.

Raising the Standard

Here are some notes and points on Pastor Ted's message on 1/3/10- Don't forget to click on the links for the scriptures before reading the notes.

1 Peter 1:13-25 NKJ & Message

God loves us the way we are, but He loves us too much to keep us that way.

• He wants and desires a progressive work in our hearts.
• God’s work starts at home.
• God doesn’t want you preaching on the corner if His word hasn’t had an affect in the corners of our own heart.
• God is calling us to a life, a move, of Holiness, not to be misinformed as legalism.
• Making a line in the sand and saying there are some standards we must live our life by.
• The world has adopted the saying that there are many ways, BUT, there are not many ways, but One way, which is Jesus.
• Many times we are trying to receive the message that God is sending and it is fuzzy. The problem isn’t w/ God it’s w/ us, we must adjust our lives to see and hear properly.
• He is referred to as Holy, Holy, Holy. We need to get to the place in our lives and hearts and settle the our God is a Hoy God.
• Challenge: Take your Christian life seriously.
• You do not build a house for chickens of the same foundation as a sky scraper.
• There are many times we build junky lives on the foundation of the cross- we allow so much junk into our lives, we can barley see the firm foundation of the cross.

Ex- Susan B. Anthony dollar vs. the quarter. Very similar to each other. The government took the Susan B. Anthony out of circulation because people mistaked the 2 so many times.  Many of us try to build a dollar foundation on an quarter foundation.

If we are named and called Christians, people should see a difference in our lives. Take the quarter and SBA dollar, there isn’t much difference in appearance.  People should be able to tell if we are Christians and not have to second guess what our foundation is.

• God doesn’t care about the outside, but rather the inside.  He wants to touch your heart w/ grace. Then after He touches your heart w/ grace, it shows in and through out your life.
• It’s ok to be different.  The church doesn’t need to look like the world or conform to it to attract the world.
• Be Holy for I am Holy- I am going to be like heavenly dad.
• I am going to be whole, I am going to be complete, I am not going to segregate certain parts of my life.
• God, I don’t want to be dealing w/ the same issues next year I am dealing w/ today.
• I want to move, I want to grow by embracing His holiness.

If we don’t embrace Gods holiness, 3 things can happen-

1. When we don’t embrace who are heavenly father is we become posers. (acting as if everything is ok, but it really isn’t)
2. We become uncorrected, and lack of correction produces a brat.
3. We become unfruitful, we lose the fruit in our lives. 

 www.ryancook.net

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hooters!

Ok, so we got a Hooters built in our city,  Grand Junction.  It has been the topic of many conversations in the recent past.

We all know what Hooters is about. It is a bar/restraunt that serves basket food by women in tight fitting provocative clothing.  Chili’s & Apple-Bee’s has the same thing, just not the name & provocative attire.

I actually just tried to put their hyperlink in this blog for Hooters, but was blocked by our web filter,  “This web page was blocked because it is considered inappropriate.”

I know where my wife and I stand on the subject, we would never enter the building, but wonder where others stand on this subject.

The reason I am bringing this up is because I have heard people say things like 'I don't have a problem w/ lust, so it's no big deal' and 'I go there for the chicken wings'.

So knowing what Hooters is about, what they stand for, the way the women ‘gazed’ upon & lusted after (lust is how they advertise) and taking into consideration the 'stumbling aspects' and fleeing from all looks of evil……

Should Christ following people visit and eat at Hooters?

Please leave a comment under the comment tab at ryancook.net or on my fb page.

 

 

 

Just Come Home!

Christmas Opener- Just Come Home!
This is one of the most powerful openers I have ever seen. A must see through the end!

Christmas Opener: Just Come Home from NewSpring Production on Vimeo.

For more information on Jesse Fisher, the lyrical talent from the opener, or to get a copy of this video visit kadence.tv and NewSpring church.
Be Blessed! ryancook.net

Church-Wide Fast

What if you could do something that would bring amazing blessings to your life, would cost nothing, and wouldn’t hurt anyone?  Blessings like;

·       Deliverance from bad habits

·       Revelations from God

·       Divine Healing & Protection

·       Broken Addictions

·       Answered Prayers

·       Constant Supply of your Needs

You can receive blessings and benefits like these through fasting.

So you may be thinking to yourself; what is fasting? Let me take a few minutes to help explain a little bit of this.

Fasting is weaved through out every part of the scriptures. Fasting always involves abstaining from something specific. Food is an easy illustration. Many fasts involve abstaining from 1 meal a day, a certain food for a specific period of time or a total food fast.

There are many types of fast’s to cure different diseases and to break people free from addictions.

David fasted often and was called a man after God’s own heart. David fasted while interceding for a friend. Nehemiah fasted while seeking guidance from God. Daniel fasted often and received many revelations and visions from God. John the Baptist fasted regularly. Jesus began His public ministry w/ forty days of fasting.

If God took fasting so seriously, I believe we should do the same. Matt 6:16 says, “Moreover, when you fast, be not as the hypocrites of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast.” Notice that Jesus didn’t say, “if you fast”, He said, “When you fast”, there was no option left for guessing.

Eph. 6:12 says we wrestle against flesh and blood- and this war must be fought w/ prayer.

Let God know what you are praying for, be specific and expect the reward.

There is much power in multiplication and many people praying.

So in preparation for our church wide fast, here are some scriptures you can read. Is. 58, Mark 2:29, Daniel 9:3, 2 Chron 20, Matt. 6:17-18 and Ps. 35:17.

On Sunday, January 10^{th @} 6PM we will be kicking of our 3 week fast w/ a special Plugged in Prayer time. This prayer time is for all ages, young and old alike. Our fasting will run for 3 weeks w/ Saturday & Sundays off. The first week will be from 1/11-1/15 and we will be fasting Television. The next week, 1/18-1/22, we will be fasting 1 meal a day and replacing it w/ prayer. Then the final week of fasting, 1/25-1/29, we will be fasting 1 meal item. For instance this week you may want to fast all sweets, all caffeine, all meats, something like that, but it must be a sacrifice to you.

I hope you can join in our 3-week church-wide fast w/ us. We are expecting miracles and breakthroughs during this time, don’t miss out!

Be Blessed & Happy Fasting,

Pastor Ryan

www.ryancook.net