Archive for the 'My Wife' Category

Purpose Driven has a Price

Published
by
Nathan Griffis
on 26 August 2008
in Random Ramblings, Church Planting, Parenting, My Wife, InDependence Church and My Life
. 1 Comment

At breakfast this morning with my buddy Carl we were discussing some of our challenges. This time could easily turn into a one up or simply a complain session. (you thought I was going to say something else but I am working out my salvation) To this point we have been successful in making it an opportunity to encourage one another and offer feedback. 

This morning I was telling him about my desire to establish some priorities and boundaries between ministry and life. I know some really “holy” people just said there is no difference; God has called you to be a pastor, so it is your life. No, it is only a piece… God has called me to be a man, a husband, a father, a friend, a witness, an employee, and a pastor so it is up to me to establish the priorities of these things and establish boundaries.

I have always been aware of the time vacuum that is ministry. I grew up with it and have vowed hundreds of times not to loose site of my priorities. Well, seemingly no matter how conscious I am or how hard I have tried I am missing the mark. God has a way of reminding us of where we are falling short. Sometimes they are subtle redirections and other times they hurt like a dull knife cutting out your heart.

So, I used the word Purpose Driven because that is one of the church planting models that includes the “launching large” concept. Obviously there are others, but I want to share today a price to “launching large” (especially if you don’t make it). The Bible talks about counting your costs and this was one that I didn’t consider and maybe you haven’t either so let me help you learn this so you might not have to pay the same price. Continue reading ‘Purpose Driven has a Price’

Downsizing

Published
by
Nathan Griffis
on 8 August 2008
in My Wife and My Life
. 1 Comment

A fairly common term used lately in business but this time I am not using it in relation to corporate America. My family is putting the wraps on a move tonight and tomorrow. This is the first time that my wife and I have downsized in our soon to be 9 years of marriage. It’s the pottery/willow anniversary and I already have the gift picked out… way ahead of schedule.

We started out in a 1200sf (2/2) apartment. First house was a 1700sf (3/2). Second house was an 1800sf (4/2). Then the last house we were renting was a 2400sf (4/2). This house was way too big for us but to get 4 bedrooms in Weston (to house the church office) this was one of the smallest models.   The 1800sf house was a great size for us. Not too big and not too small. The four bedrooms allow for an office and a school/playroom for Owen, which is really nice.

This week we moved into a 1350sf (3/2) apartment. Talk about scale shock. All of the furniture that swam in the big house is sinking the apartment. This process has forced me to face some important realizations.

10. We have way too much stuff.

9.     A majority of it is really not that important.

8.     Maybe I am a little bit of a pack rat.

7.     If you haven’t used it, much less seen it in a year…

6.     It really pained me to part with yard tools even though I haven’t used them once since we moved here. (they were the nice fiberglass handled ones)

5.     God has really blessed us during those 9 years.

4.     Paying $60/hr to have (2) guys from U-haul to move our heavy furniture… worth every penny.

3.     Size does matter, especially when selecting a U-haul truck.

2.     If you think paper cuts hurt… try cardboard

…and the number one realization I had in downsizing…

1.     My wife is an incredibly strong woman… not only physically but in every other area.

Ok so you may be thinking that was cheesy but you don’t know how much effort my wife put into this move and I just want her to know that I love her and appreciate her.

My wife is a PUSHOVER…

Published
by
Nathan Griffis
on 15 July 2008
in My Wife and My Life
. 0 Comments

That’s right… she is an absolute push over. This in turn makes me a complete push over. I give my family an inch… I agree that Owen, who has been begging for a dog for months, can have a puppy. This is a big step for me because being the “rational” level headed guy that I am, I know that we have a pretty hectic lifestyle right now and a dog does require a certain amount of care.  

As a kid I never had a dog. I had a rabbit and some other lower maintenance animals but my dad wasn’t into having a dog in the house. So… since marrying Harmony, who grew up with tons of animals around all the time she has continued to try to persuade me in the dog department.   I think I have given in 4 times and every single time it turned out to be a disaster. Whether it was the mutt with heart worms or the pure bread basset hound that needed a $1000 eye lift, dogs have just not worked out for us. 

Since Harmony and I have not been successful in giving Owen a brother or sister and at this point adoption is just way out of our financial means, I was being pressured again. So I gave Harmony an inch and she took 37 miles. 

A non-successful trip to the pound on Sunday left me with a very sad little boy. One who is praying that Jesus would break into the pound and bring him his puppy. One that thought his behavior was the reason why they wouldn’t let us take a puppy home. (Which was not the case) the pound found out that we are planning to move in a month so they didn’t feel it would be good to put the dog through that. WELL, I’m sure the dog could probably handle a move better than being put to sleep if it doesn’t get adopted. Anyways… 

So Harmony was now on a mission to get Owen a dog. Well to make a long story short… for just a little more than we were going to pay for a pound puppy we got not “one” but “two” pure bred American Bulldogs. No… I didn’t see that coming either so now I have the option, do I play the mean husband/dad and send the other one back or do I, well there really is no other options, so let me introduce you to Thelma & Louise the two newest members of the Griffis family. So you have heard of a double portion blessing, well I guess I’ll thank God for responding to My Son’s Prayer x 2.

My Wife’s Son

Published
by
Nathan Griffis
on 12 March 2008
in My Wife
. 2 Comments

Check out what my wife’s son was up to today…I have no idea where he gets that from.

It wasn’t my fault (for once)

Published
by
Nathan Griffis
on 18 February 2008
in My Wife and InDependence Church
. 2 Comments

So I am going to go on the record and say that my wife was the first person to run somebody off from our church. I always anticipated that it would be my big mouth that would cause the first dissention. That it would be my good intentions wrapped in a package of stupidity that would offend someone. But no…

Since we have started we have had some people come one time and not return. Since we have no information we are unable to contact them and see what was the cause, so in theory it could have been me but there is no way to prove or disprove. In about 3 minutes my wife managed to chase a great perspective couple off.

Here is the story…So yesterday the band is finishing up sound check about 9:55 and an older couple walks to where we are finishing set-up. We don’t have our greeting volunteers in place until 10:00 but my wife happened to be standing at the door to the sanctuary. Seeing potential first time guests my wife begins to converse with them and they ask if this is the __________ church? (I have purposefully ommitted the more traditional church that previously met at the school we rent from)

My wife explained that they had stop meeting there about 6 months ago (maybe the reason they haven’t been in church for 6+ months is because they are snow birds) and told them a little bit about our church. I won’t bore you with the details of the story but something about us having a band…no choir…two 10’ screens…and a full color program must have triggered them into a very fast paced walk the other direction. One of our regulars tried to establish a conversation with them in the parking lot but they wouldn’t even make eye contact as they made a bee-line to their car.

I would love to tell you that they laid rubber on their way out but that wouldn’t be the truth. The rest of the story is and as my wife shared the story with me I couldn’t help but laugh. Laugh at the thought that stepping a little bit outside of the traditional church methods could strike fear into the hearts of grown men and women. I really don’t know what they thought would happen if they made eye contact with somebody who attended a church without a robed choir.

I just wish we could have at least blessed them with some coffee and a donut to go if they weren’t going to stay. Then again seeing that stuff in the sanctuary might have been too much.

New Years Resolutions

Published
by
Nathan Griffis
on 4 January 2008
in My Wife and My Life
. 3 Comments

With the New Year many people try new things and my wife is no different. Here is the link to her new blog. I am a little jealous because she already has a better looking blog site than I do but with a degree in marketing I would hope so. She says in her first post that she is a reluctant blogger but I am sure that she will do great at it. My wife is a gifted writer and this is just the first step in showing the world her God given talent. She’ll probably yell at me for setting expectations high but I promise that she will not disappoint the blog world by anything other than the fact that she is too busy to do more of it.

I love my wife very much and I am confident in the fact that God has blessed me beyond measure by placing her in my life. As a note to other church planters, even though Paul talks about the benefits of being single in I Corinthians 7, I can’t imagine trying to do this without her and her support. So if your wife isn’t on board you better stay at the dock until God releases both of you. If not I promise that you will have a hole in your boat and you’ll be spending more time keeping from sinking than actually accomplishing your mission. Happy New Year…what’s your resolution or new challenge?

Test Drive Service #1 (10.21.07)

Published
by
Nathan Griffis
on 21 October 2007
in Random Ramblings, City of Weston Florida, My Wife, Health, Church of God, InDependence Church and My Life
. 4 Comments

Exhilaration, joy, pain, peace, anxiety, humbled, proud, fulfilled, desiring, exhausted, pumped… so many emotions…so little energy to process it. I know that it has been a while since I blogged and I would apologize but I was working diligently toward today and it paid off HUGE! I will get to that in a moment but some of those emotions I need to layout really quick for my own posterity.

I am exhilarated because it’s here! The day that we have been looking toward since early December of last year and planning for the past six months. I am als exhilarated because it is over. What an incredible amount of effort - mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually but it was SO worth it. (Don’t worry I’ll get to that!)

I have joy because we experienced victory today. Victory over the people that doubted, including myself at times. We had victory over the enemy that has been diligent in his efforts to keep us from this day. I have pain because I almost ripped my thumb nail off on a section of stage and sliced my fingers on a cart. That just means we had blood, sweat and tears. But it was worth every drop of each.

I have peace because I know that even though we couldn’t do everything, I know that we did all that we could do and brought glory to God’s name. I believe that we did Him proud today and really nothing else matters. I have anxiety because the day went amazingly smooth but I know we have to do it again. Not only do it again but I want to do it better.

I am humbled because God chose me to experience all of these emotions. I am humbled by the fact that God chose me to perform one of the most important roles in His earthly kingdom. I am proud of the effort that our volunteers put in and the spirit of excellence with which they did it. We turned Sagemont School into a great place to do church. The pictures taht are attached later don’t begin to do it justice.

I am fulfilled because we had a GREAT response with a lot of positive feedback our first time out of the trailer (box). I desire to accomplish so much more, to reach so many more, and to infect Weston with the love of Christ.

I am exhausted because there was an insane effort involved to pull it off. I am pumped because God met every need with volunteers to share the load at just the right time. We walked by faith, did all that we could do and as one of our core values states, we prayed like it depended on God and worked like it depended on us. In the end, as He always does, God came through BIG.

I know that everybody is expecting me to rattle off some statistics from our first service and tell you how many people were there, how we did in the offering, etc. Well to be honest God and I had a little conversation about that last night because I was pretty wrapped up in some of those things. I have some pretty good intentions because numbers have some value. Church is a business (one of the most important businesses in the world) that takes people and finances to operate. Without people, volunteers, staff to help carry out the vision, there really is no vision. Without the finances to do outreach, to market, to pay rent, etc. your ministry is dead in the water. God reminded me that there really is only one number that matters… that is the number that we increase heaven by.

I wish that I could say that we helped somebody become a Christ follower today, but I can’t. What I can tell you is that I think God is sending the right people so that I won’t have to give a 0 number every week. God is up to crazy stuff and I am just so in love with Him that I am sick. You know how you feel when you want to be with a person so bad that you just hurt. I know it could be the lack of sleep or the fact that we have been living on pizza, but that is not it. I just want to give you on example of God’s choreography from this past week…

I blogged a while back that I was going back to work to make some ends meet. So I found an Architectural Firm in Boca that hired me and I actually started this last Monday. Financially I needed to start last Monday even though I really would have liked to wait until next week. Here’s God’s plan: So because they are using a different CADD (Computer Aided Drafting & Design) program then I was using they wanted to send me to a refresher course. So Monday through Wednesday I was in this class and discovered that my instructor lived in Weston. So I intended to wait until Wednesday to give him an invitation to our Test Drive.

At lunch on Wednesday he brought up church and God allowed an open door to tell him while I was really here. He seemed interested but I wasn’t going to be too pushy. After lunch I gave him the invite and at the end of class the subject of our weekend schedule came up. I was telling about Church on Wheels coming Saturday and the training to set up and tear down. Out of the blue he says, what time are you starting and I can bring my son and we will help you. I did a little happy dance on the inside because I knew that five members of my team were not going to be able to make it.

So long story short… they came, worked like dogs all day, go home and invite all of their neighbors who are some wonderful people that seem extremely interested in doing ministry with us in Weston and were excited that we were starting this church. One family was so excited they took probably 100 invitations and is going to door hang her entire neighborhood. Can I get a YEAH GOD!

Can I tell you that I was discouraged to have to go work a secular job? In one sense I felt like a church planting failure because we couldn’t get started fast enough to enable me to maintain a salary and financially I had placed my family in a challenging position. I have always found that providing well for my family has been very important to me so to have to tell my wife that the end of the rope is very close and need this job otherwise…was incredibly painful for my ego. Even though my humanity hurt my spirit was incredibly calm. To be honest my wife and I actually laughed. This was just one more near calamity to add to the list and we knew that God would get glory we just were unsure at what expense.

So we made up our minds that whatever the cost… and as always God gets the glory. I think there will be much more to this story later and I can’t wait for the next turn to see how God is going to use this chain of events to lead to even greater things.

I know this blog was a book but I would love to tell you more because God is just that awesome and today God blew me away! If I didn’t have to get up and go to work… I have put in some pictures of what InDependence sanctuary looks like.
InDependence1
InDependence2
InDependence3

By the way for any church planters out there who read this let me just tell you to do preview services a month apart because I can’t imagine trying to do this again next week…

2,920 days + 1,310 days = pizza?

Published
by
Nathan Griffis
on 17 September 2007
in My Wife
. 2 Comments

Tomorrow I celebrate my 2,920th day being married to my wife. For you non-mathematicians out there that is eight years. If you add the time that we dated and were engaged that brings the total up to 4,230 days since our first date. Yeh, we dated for a long time… I can’t remember too many days during that time that we have been apart.

Some might wonder isn’t it boring being with the same person night and day for that long. For me it is kind of like pizza. In high school I worked for Dominoes. Five days a week I had pizza for almost 3 years. I think it was the only reason my parents were able to afford me. You might think that after I quit I would not want to have pizza for the rest of my life. That wasn’t the case; in fact if given the choice I would probably eat pizza every day. I am thankful for my loving wife who looks out for my health and feeds me lots of healthier alternatives but I still slide in pizza at least once a week.

When you really love something you don’t ever get tired of it. With pizza you can use different toppings, sauces, cheeses and crust thicknesses to create almost limitless variations. You will also find that your tastes change after a while. I used to be a pan pizza lover with lots of meat, but now I am a thin crust veggie guy, at least when my wife is around. In the 4,230 days I have been with my wife there have been many different variations to our relationship. Some of which were like anchovies and didn’t go over too well but we got through it. While others were the perfect amount of Parmesan cheese sprinkled on top.

For instance, there was an early bought with cancer that she had. I experienced my then girlfriend with a life threatening illness and to God’s glory she was healed. I have experienced my wife as a girlfriend, a student (a couple of times), a fiancé, a business woman, a homemaker, a mother, a Pastor’s wife, and now we are getting ready to head into another variation, a public speaker. As our relationship has changed, our tastes have matured together as well. For instance, I like older women now and it just so happens that my wife is older now then when we met. I like women with short hair, and it just so happens that my wife has short hair. You get the point…my tastes have changed to what my wife has developed into. In a short while I am going to find public speaking incredibly sexy. HAHA

In every one of those and the hundreds of other toppings added during those different times my wife has never ceased to amaze me. She is my queen, my standard for what every woman should hope to be, the perfect example for our son to look for in a wife. In preparation for our anniversary I searched the memory banks for some of those times and it bothers me that I can’t remember more. Time after time, change after change, variation after variation, my wife rises to the challenge. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am the luckiest man in the world and that on my own accord I do not deserve such an awesome wife.

If you are married and don’t think those same thoughts today then I challenge you to remember the toppings. Remember those moments in life when you experienced your wife in a different way. Where life brought you a challenge and as a team you got through while alone you may have failed. You men have God’s greatest gift this side of salvation, the first gift that was ever presented to man, a woman. So take care of it, cherish it, respect it, love it, and don’t get board of it!

I love you today Harmony Griffis and I will for the next 27,375 days. At 106 years old somebody else will have to do the math for a contract extension.

Happy Birthday Dad

Published
by
Nathan Griffis
on 29 July 2007
in My Wife
. 0 Comments

I just wanted the world to know, or at least the people that read this, that today is my dad’s 69th birthday. As a tribute to my dad I wanted to post a portion of a letter that he wrote me during a trying time of transition in my life. I thought that there may be somebody out there that may need some encouragement.

“Son, you are in one of the Lord’s most difficult training programs. It is therefore imperative for you at this time to stay at the altars of the Lord. For it is here you will begin to hear His instructions to you. The most frustrating part about this time is to not know what the Lord wants from you. That is compounded by the fact that we can not hear Him talk to us with our ears. How do we get to know His purposes if we can’t understand? Right now you need confirmations, plain leadings and directions. In addition you need comfort from the Holy Spirit for emotional stress and pain.

Son I know this sounds simple but take my word for it. There is a purpose for this season and it is to draw you near to Him. His word says, “Draw nigh to me and I will draw nigh to you”. You are now at the crossroads of the most important part of the course, learning the voice of the Lord. Your heart is broken and your spirit is low and now you are contrite before the Lord. He knows your condition and will lead you if you will follow. The Bible says, “A broken and contrite spirit, I will not turn away.”

Now is the time for you to turn to the altars of prayer and tell Him just how you feel. Tell Him of the hurt and pain that is going on in your heart. Then it is important that you listen, not with your ears but with your heart. He is trying to talk to you but your attention is on the hurt and pain. Thoughts will begin to enter your mind as you pray. In the beginning you will perceive them to be yours, but will later to discover they come from the Spirit within you. These thought will bring you to a place of understanding, from understanding will come peace.

Son, I am speaking from and through experience. His voice is in your heart because He is in your heart. Just be still and meditate on the visions you will see in your mind’s eye. It will soon dawn on you how the Lord’s voice comes to you personally. Hide His words in your heart and treasure these moments of surrender as they are very precious. The more you listen the more you hear His voice. Listen only with your heart when you are in communion with Him. His word will also speak into your life.

Be careful also as Satan knows how you feel and will try to get you to feel sorry for yourself. But the Lord is your Shepherd. Don’t allow frustrations to overcome you, but “…pray lest ye enter into temptation.”

Looking back I know those words (in the King James translation HAHA) of wisdom helped me get long past that moment in time. Thanks Dad for pouring into my life in many ways other than just this letter. I am a better man, husband, father, child of God and pastor because of you. I love you Dad, Happy Birthday!

She Speaks Conference (Part 2)

Published
by
Nathan Griffis
on 24 June 2007
in My Wife
. 0 Comments

This is the last day of the conference and I will get my wife back and Owen his mommy. She called last night about 11:15 to give me an update on how things went with her second presentation. She told me that it went far better than the first. When she was complete she was grabbing her notes and she realized that she hadn’t even used them. She doesn’t get her critique comments till this morning but the reviewer talked with her some after the presentation. Other than a reprimand for not starting a career as a public speaker previously the remaining comments were VERY complimentary.

For the first time Harmony is starting to get a picture of the impact she can have and the calling God has placed on her life. I have been approached by women that have been in some of her classes and they tell me of the affect that her instruction has on their lives. That message being transmitted through me does not have the same impact as coming from well known authors and speakers.

I said in my opening statement that I was getting my wife back. I think this was just a preparation weekend because Owen and I are going to have to share Harmony with a lot more people. To be honest, I have known since the day that I met her that she was special. I have done a pretty good job of keeping her to myself for 10 years. I guess I can let the world see the wonderful women of God that He has blessed me with. I may have to learn how to use that thing in the kitchen with the “eyes”. Just kidding there is always Papa Johns.