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Gideon

A few points about Gideon and Faith from a message I preached the other day. Judges 6&7≈

Gideon had 4 personal convo’s w/ God, 3 signs, a prophet-

• ·      God never got impatient w/ Gideon.-
• ·      Sometimes we go through life, not listening to God, we ignore him a little and we start thinking God is ready to drop us.
• ·      He is just the opposite, he is waiting and will hold your hand and walk you through your situation.

Gideon and his army carried no weapons-

• ·      God will protect you if you trust and obey him.
• ·      Even in your most hopeless, dark situations, you feel you’re up against and army- God will protect you.

Each subsequent convo w/ God we see Gideon’s willingness to yield himself to God and obey-

• ·      When we yield ourselves to God it opens the flood gates of heaven and victory is present.

Growth pattern of Gideon, every major step Gideon made took place following a convo w/ God-

• ·      Listen to what God is telling you, He will tell you your next step.
• I am the weakest of my tribe and the runt of my family-

• ·      God understands our weakness and infirmities and still uses us in spite of those things AND many times uses us because of our weakness.
• ·      He doesn’t want someone hotty, arrogant, self-made person, because chances are, they’ll take the Glory-
• ·      He wants the glory- and using us in our weakness gives Him the glory.

Gideon was afraid or fearful through this entire venture, all the way down until he ‘took the Midian camp’.

• ·      We can admit that we are afraid and still move forward in God's grace.
• ·      Even in fear, courage is possible and victory is assured as long as we have truly tuned in to God's command and plan for us.
• ·      Our faith can grow stronger in spite of fear as we trust God over our circumstances.

What did Gideon continue to do no matter what-

• ·      He ‘acted’ on His faith- that faith turned small faith steps into giant faith steps-
• ·      What if God showed Gideon the big picture and the end- sometimes we don’t even understand- our minds can’t comprehend it- Knowing Gideon, he would have ran some more.
• ·      We must do what we know what to do, and that is take the next step of action- we must always continue to ‘act’ on our faith.

The Lord saw Gideon for who he could become, a "mighty warrior" who could save his people.

• ·      All our failures, all the times we didn’t come through, all our experiences shaped us who we are today, AND God wants to use all of that for His glory.
• ·      Choose to see yourself  & others as God sees you.
• ·      We are not just an ordinary people; We are children of the living God

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Sunday Night Reflections

Sunday was a great day at GJFA. Pastor Ted spoke on why some prayers are not answered, and about tuning our hearts. Here are some notes:

Get on the Praying Field

Notes from Pastor Teds Message 8/16/09

Key verses- 2 Chron 7:13-14 Phil 4:6

·      No team takes the playing field planning to lose

·      Answered prayers build faith

3 Major causes for unanswered prayers

•  .    Request may be inappropriate
•  .    Timing may be wrong
•      A problem in the life of the one praying

6 Things that block your prayer life

Praylessness- Sometimes we do all kinds of things, except pray (counsel, talk w/ friends, read)  God is saying ‘Just ask me for My help’

Unconfessed Sin- Is. 59:1-2

• ·      Relationships take mutual participation- come into agreement w/ God

Unresolved relational conflict- Matt 5:23-24; 1Pet. 3:7

• ·      Sometimes its not whats said, its whats not said.
• ·      Make it right w/ one another- Rm 12:18

Selfishness- James 4:1-2- Its all about me.

Uncaring Attitude- Pv. 21:13

• ·      Jesus was moved w/ compassion

Inadequate Faith- James 1:5-8

• ·      Do you doubt while praying?
• ·      Tune your heart to Faith.
• ·      It makes a difference when your life is in tune of the song you sing.

·      Many people go through all the right motions, looks like they are playing the correct key, but way out of tune.

·      Don’t tune your heart to other voices or circumstances, tune it to God.

·      Nothing hidden- Nothing held back.

·      Jesus has a great track record for answering prayers.

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The Hair Cut

Today during our IMPACT2K event, I found the bravest guy on our campus! With shears in hand, I went on a 'buzz cut' hunt, and this guy stepped up.
He said trim it up, so without any hesitancy, that's what I did. Here are the before and after pics!




What a happy customer!

It was fun, I got to do about 7-8 cuts on the bravest kids of the day.
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Big Day Thoughts

Ok, I was wide awake at 5AM this morning. Why you ask? Because a few things were running through my head about pack stuffing and IMPACT day. This always seems to happen before any big event. 

Is everything ordered? Set-up? Toilets- check, trophies- check, food- check, band- check, tables- check, and the list goes on- yada, yada, yada.

After a few minutes of this going through my mind, I prayed. I thanked God for giving me the talents He had, to help ease my mind of the ‘what-ifs’, for using me the best way He sees fit and most of all, putting leaders around me that see things I do not see.

I believe having key leaders around you is one of the most important things any leader in any organization should do. Empowering and enabling people to make decisions, and actually believing in them and supporting them to do so is a must!

A leader doesnt have all the answers, nor do we know how to do everything the best way. Even if we made the big list, wrote every single thing down, we could not follow it all through on our own. (well some could, but they would get burned out very, very fast)

Many hands make light work. When we all pull together as a team, we can conquer a city, an organization, take the world by storm. Do you believe that? I do!

God has blessed each of us with talents. It doesnt matter who you are, there is probably something that only ‘you’ can do or at least do it better than anyone you know. Even over the last couple of months, people are still approaching me wanting to serve in ministry and use their God given talents. They are tired of sitting on the sidelines. They would rather play, serve and bless others than watching life pass them by.

I am so thankful for each person and friend that God has surrounded me with at GJFA and for the many more that will join the teams here.

I guess I want to throw out the challenge today: Are you using your God given talents for Him, if not, then why not?

Dont just sit on the sidelines with your arms folded, mad at everyone else because you arent playing, get in the game!

To leave a comment, go to www.ryancook.net and click the comment link on bottom of page.

Peace out †

 

   

Things We Take For Granted

In our staff devotion time the other day, I spoke about things we sometimes take for granted. Here are some of the points we took and angles we went at. Also included are some of our pastoral comments- enjoy.

Some of the things we take for granted could be:

• Orbit and gravity- Do you ever thank God we are just the right distance from the sun that we dont burn up?
• Waking up in the morning. Do you thank God every morning for waking up with a new day to live?
• Family and friends.  We think they’ll always be there.  Sometimes we put off calling them, or saying good things to them because we think they’ll always be there the next day or week for us to tell them how much we care about them- that we love them.

In the book ‘The Wild Goose Chase’ (which is a great book, highly recommend it) Mark Batterson talks about how we should not take the constants for granted:

God is constant: Constantly loving, constantly faithful, constantly merciful, constantly full of grace. How often do we tell Him ‘thank you’ for those constants?

• Marriage: sometimes you lose a lot of joy from when you first got married.  We begin to take our wives/husbands for granted.
• Childbirth: When a babys born, its one of the most joyful times in your life. But as the newness wears off, and you have to change diapers at 2:00 in the morning, or they grow into teen-agers, you lose some of that joy you had at the beginning.
• Job: The first few days on a job everything’s great, but a while down the road you begin to lose your enthusiasm.  You begin to look forward to the week-end instead of enjoying your work or ministry during the week and take our jobs for granted.

We need to remember to pull back and put some things back in perspective.  We need to think about:  Are we getting too comfortable in our ministry/job/organization/home? How about getting too comfortable in our Christianity? Sometimes we get too comfortable in our ‘couch’ or ‘lazy chair’ and just lay back and let life happen, all because we are ‘comfortable’- We let situations happen and take others for granted.

Ideas to get a fresh perspective – to stay on your game: 

Change of scenery (Geographic location),

Change of Place + Change of Pace = Change of Perspective.

If we are only involved in things we can handle in our own strength, we get comfortable.  We need to take on things ‘bigger than us’- dream the impossible and involve God in the equation.- Pastor Mike

Flesh gears itself towards comfort. Newness always wears off.  Always pursue the next level. Remember what we were before. Life changes are creating enthusiasm, it’s very energizing. God has given each of us a vision and we need to look at it in the telescopic view.- Pastor Brian

When something is growing its changing. There are newness about each thing to challenge us. Just like our children, as they grow they present new challenges with each phase they go through. We can be excited about the newness in the growth. Its hard to see growth when you are in the daily grind, but we need to pray for God to help us see the newness.- Pastor Tami

There you have it, a short devo: from things we take for granted- to perspective- to newness.

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The Freezer

This is what happens when you leave soda's in your friends freezer over night. LOL


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