This was the first week that we used video testimony as a part of our Stories Series. I am really excited about this series and wanted you to be able to experience as well. So enjoy.
You can here the audio from the message based on it here.
Archive for November, 2008
So last night I went and checked out our new house for the first time. That’s right the Griffis family is like a band of gypsies. We moved about 4 months ago into an apartment in Plantation to save on some money. Now thanks to the current housing market we are able to move back into a house in Weston for $25/month less than we are currently paying for our apartment and storage unit.
There are obviously some amenity benefits to living in a house over an apartment. For example, you don’t hear footsteps over your head or arguing neighbors. Or there is the pipes rattling every time somebody flushes. You don’t have to know your neighbors schedule by the closing of doors.
For me I am only awake at home for +/- 6 hrs per day and I sleep like a rock. But for my wife and son this was a very hard transition and I feel like a better husband and dad to be able to get them out. Now my son will have a safe place to ride his bike. We will be able to take family strolls at night without being next to busy streets. My wife will feel safe enough to resume her morning runs.
There is a small yard to play croquet or tag and a screened in patio to entertain our guests. My son’s toy area will no longer be what many would consider the dining area and he will once again have an area designated to home school. Depending on if we can get our current furniture to work my wife may get her own little reading nook. I almost forgot the garden tub to recreate a spa environment at a much reduced price.
There is a great community playground and we will be really close to our old neighborhood where Owen has some friends that he has been missing. My wife did all the leg work finding the house and found us a real bargain. Now all that is left to do is move over the next few weeks so that we can host our church Christmas Party.
So outsourcing my blog continues to bring me some good stuff. Check out this interview with Rick Warren, ‘ Purpose Driven Life ‘ author and pastor of Saddleback Church in California.
You will enjoy the new insights that Rick Warren has, with his wife now having cancer and him having ‘wealth’ from the book sales.
In the interview by Paul Bradshaw with Rick Warren, Rick said:
People ask me, What is the purpose of life? And I respond: In a nutshell, life is preparation for eternity. We were not made to last forever, and God wants us to be with Him in Heaven.
One day my heart is going to stop, and that will be the end of my body– but not the end of me. I may live 60 to 100 years on earth, but I am going to spend trillions of years in eternity. This is the warm-up act - the dress rehearsal. God wants us to practice on earth what we will do forever in eternity. We were made by God and for God, and until you figure that out, life isn’t going to make sense.
Life is a series of problems: Either you are in one now, you’re just coming out of one, or you’re getting ready to go into another one. The reason for this is that God is more interested in your character than your comfort. God is more interested in making your life holy than He is in making your life happy. We can be reasonably happy here on earth, but that’s not the goal of life. The goal is to grow in character, in Christ likeness.
This past year has been the greatest year of my life but also the toughest, with my wife, Kay, getting cancer. I used to think that life was hills and valleys - you go through a dark time, then you go to the mountaintop, back and forth. I don’t believe that anymore. Rather than life being hills and valleys, I believe that it’s kind of like two rails on a railroad track, and at all times you have something good and something bad in your life. No matter how good things are in your life, there is always something bad that needs to be worked on. And no matter how bad things are in your life, there is always something good you can thank God for.
You can focus on your purposes, or you can focus on your problems. If you focus on your problems, you’re going into self-centeredness,’ which is my problem, my issues, my pain.’ But one of the easiest ways to get rid of pain is to get your focus off yourself and onto God and others.
We discovered quickly that in spite of the prayers of hundreds of thousands of people, God was not going to heal Kay or make it easy for her. It has been very difficult for her, and yet God has strengthened her character, given her a ministry of helping other people, given her a testimony, drawn her closer to Him and to people. You have to learn to deal with both the good and the bad of life.
Actually, sometimes learning to deal with the good is harder For instance, this past year, all of a sudden, when the book sold 15 million copies, it made me instantly very wealthy. It also brought a lot of notoriety that I had never had to deal with before. I don’t think God gives you money or notoriety for your own ego or for you to live a life of ease.
So I began to ask God what He wanted me to do with this money, notoriety and influence. He gave me two different passages that helped me decide what to do, II Corinthians 9 and Psalm 72
First, in spite of all the money coming in, we would not change our lifestyle one bit. We made no major purchases. Second, about midway through last year, I stopped taking a salary from the church. Third, we set up foundations to fund an initiative we call The Peace Plan to plant churches, equip leaders, assist the poor, care for the sick, and educate the next generation. Fourth, I added up all that the church had paid me in the 24 years since I started the church, and I gave it all back. It was liberating to be able to serve God for free.
We need to ask ourselves: Am I going to live for possessions? Popularity? Am I going to be driven by pressures? Guilt? Bitterness? Materialism? Or am I going to be driven by God’s purposes (for my life)?
When I get up in the morning, I sit on the side of my bed and say, God, if I don’t get anything else done today, I want to know You more and love You better. God didn’t put me on earth just to fulfill a to-do list. He’s more interested in what I am than what I do. That’s why we’re called human beings, not human doings.
I am sorry for the delay but I have been having some technical difficulties. Here is the continuation of the blog written by author Orrin Woodward. So here is part 5 of 5.
From dependency back again to bondage.
Eventually in our dependence, we see our status falling in the free world as slaves can never perform the functions of free men and women. Although the government still mouths the words of our founding fathers, the words have new meanings. The citizens cannot put a finger on the malady, but they know something is not right. In their desperation, they look for a messiah to save them. Because the Churches are not sharing the message of the true messiah and the true way to liberty, the citizens look for a worldly messiah. A perceptive leader, with words that tickle the ears promises to be the searched for messiah. With the republican form of government torn asunder and transformed into a nascent democracy – the powerful words and promises of deliverance speak directly to the masses. A savior is born unto the people and salvation is just around the corner.
A shocking truth is learned too late that man cannot save man and only Jesus Christ can liberate the soul in bondage. A people held in bondage to sin can never be responsible to run a free government. The people in bondage will look to the government the way Christians look to their Savior. Government cannot be the savior to the people and was never intended to be so when created by our Founding Families. America’s national debt is now over $10 trillion and to service the debt on the interest is over $450 billion per year. This makes interest on debt the 3rd biggest item on our governments budget! We are bankrupting our children’s inheritance on the altar of self indulgence! Ben Franklin said after the creation of our Constitution when asked what type of government was created, “A republic, if you can keep it.” A republic was formed to keep the masses from directly running the government and voting the government into bankruptcy. How far have we traveled from our founding principles and roots?
I did not write this to scare people into inactivity, but to awaken our consciences to the choices that face us. We do not have to complete this cycle and just as Ronald Reagan interrupted the cycle, we can too! Will it take convictions and guts? Yes, but a Godly people that have studied the truth of our founding principles will not be swayed by the promises of an almighty government. Examine yourself. Where do you stand at this historic time?
Let me close with one of my brothers favorite authors. The science fiction writer, Robert Heinlein called this issue “Bread and Circuses” - a reference to Roman Emperors providing food and entertainment to distract the masses. In “To Sail beyond the Sunset” the character Lazarus Long discusses this problem:
“A perfect democracy, a ‘warm body’ democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally has no internal feedback for self correction. It depends solely on the wisdom and self-restraint of citizens…which is opposed by the folly and lack of self-restraint of other citizens. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it…which for the majority translates as ‘Bread and Circuses’
“Bread and Circuses is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader–the barbarians enter Rome.”
Where do you think America is on the cycle and what do you think we must do to address and fix? I will close this article with the Biblical passage from Hosea 4:6-10, which I believe captures the crossroads where America stands. I will address proposed solutions in several future articles. God Bless, Orrin Woodward
6 My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from being priest for Me; Because you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children. 7 “ The more they increased, The more they sinned against Me; I will change their glory into shame. 8 They eat up the sin of My people; They set their heart on their iniquity. 9 And it shall be: like people, like priest. So I will punish them for their ways, And reward them for their deeds. 10 For they shall eat, but not have enough; They shall commit harlotry, but not increase; Because they have ceased obeying the LORD.
Here is the continuation of the blog written by author Orrin Woodward. So here is part 4 of 5.
From complacency to apathy;
1980’s were a brief respite in the cycle. Thanks to the leadership and convictions of Ronald Reagan, America stood its ground against Communism and found that Communism was a paper tiger. The respite was short lived because the President, even with his bully pulpit, cannot consistently educate Americans on Biblical truths. This must be a function of the church, which has abdicated their responsibility in an effort to be relative to a lost generation.
The 1990’s saw a near complete surrender to apathy and personal fulfillment. With a near complete rejection of absolute values, people defined their own values and pursued fulfillment in the myriad of choices available to them. People did not care who was running the government as long as they were left alone to pursue the own personal agenda. Government performed by doing focus groups to ascertain what the people wanted and giving it to them, surrendering all leadership responsibilities to the disparate wishes of the people. Government, instead of playing the role of umpire and defender of our freedoms began to play the role of a benevolent dictator. The dictator studied to learn what we wanted and offered that to us with only a presumed token price of submission to the almighty sovereignty of government in the affairs of the citizens.
From apathy to dependency;
The 2000’s will be remembered as the decade of complete submission to the government’s largesse. The American citizen’s depend upon government for their welfare, health care, social security, etc. It would be unthinkable for most Americans to live without the direct involvement of our beneficent Big Brother. The price of dependency is submission of our freedoms to the dictates of Big Brother. The old saying that you boil a frog one degree at a time aptly fits here. If you take a frog and throw him into boiling water, the frog will have enough sense to jump out. But if you turn up the temperature slowly, the frog will open up its pores and will literally be boiled without an attempted escape. Americans are now boiling in our dependency on our government.
For the wrap up stop in tomorrow you might find it interesting where we are headed if we don’t make some deliberate changes…
Here is the continuation of the blog written by author Orrin Woodward. So here is part 3 of 5.
From abundance to selfishness;
The 1960’s were a decade of self masquerading as a care for those less fortunate. Free love, destruction of society’s norms, and a drug culture prevailed in the youth. The 1960’s were a rebellion against the plastic society of abundance without the belief in the principles that created that abundance. The Church, having lost conviction of the truths of the Bible, ossified into ghetto culture within America. With little truth in the Church, the youth were left on their own to search for answers to the hypocrisy that engulfed them. Instead of returning to the Biblical principles and the God that created the blessings, society entered into the worship of self and self-actualization. The youth of the 60’s saw the hypocrisy, but in their endless faith in their own holiness marched America even further from its Biblical roots.
From selfishness to complacency;
Without a Biblical foundation, the rebellion was bound to produce worse fruits than the plastic culture it attempted to replace. With no firm convictions to stand upon, the rebellion dissolved into peace and personal affluence. The loss of Biblical absolutes is bound to lead from convictions to surrender to complacency as no one is sure what the truth is. What is the use of standing for anything, if we are not sure that what we are standing for is truth? The 1970’s saw this complacency as the youth joined the “system” and pursued peace and affluence with little understanding of original principles that America was founded upon.
For more stop in tomorrow…
Here is the continuation of the blog written by author Orrin Woodward. So here is part 2 of 5.
From courage to liberty;
The Colonist defeat of the British Empire was not a defeat of British military forces as much as a victory over British will. The Colonists were fighting for their deeply held principles that they were willing to give their life, wealth and sacred honor for. The British were fighting for some extra taxation in one of their many colonies. The American will defeated the British will because of an imbalance in the convictions involved. With the defeat of Cornwallis and the subsequent genius of our American Constitution, liberty reigned in the United States under rule of law.
From liberty to abundance;
The abundance generated by free enterprise and limited government was one of America’s biggest blessings, but also one of our biggest challenges. One of the few standing economies after WWII was America’s. Our products flowed to nearly all foreign markets creating the wealthiest society in the world’s history. It takes incredible discipline to remember where our blessings come from with abundance heaped upon further abundance. Over time, people forget the principles that created the liberty and the fruit of that liberty. Seeing the inequalities in the blessing of individual citizens, an envy of our fellow Americans germinates. The fruit of this unholy thinking is a desire to take our brothers and sisters abundance and give to those less abounding. Government would have to intervene and right this wrong according to the envious.
Come back for more tomorrow…
Well the outsourcing of my blog has finally paid some dividends. I got this blog entry from my friend and member of InDependence, Jay. He didn’t write it but to credit the author it was written by author Orrin Woodward. Because of its length I am going to break it down into about 5 pieces but it is worth the read regardless of how you voted last week. So here is part 1 of 5.
The following quote whose origin is believed to be traced back to Alexander Fraser Tyler (Tytler in original Scottish). Regardless of who said it, I believe it is worthy of repeating and expounding in relation to present day America. I have been thinking about this quote and the state of our union for many months. I do not write this article in an attacking spirit, but in a spirit of searching for the right path in a world wandering down blind alleys.
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising them the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over a louse fiscal responsibility, always followed by a dictatorship. The average of the world’s great civilizations before they decline has been 200 years. These nations have progressed in this sequence:”
Here is Tyler’s “Cycle of Democracy” with my thoughts of America in the cycle.
From bondage to spiritual faith;
The Great Awakening of the 1730’s in the American Colonies was a time of revival and spiritual longing. Jonathon Edwards, considered by many to be America’s greatest mind, led the revival with Biblical sermons and a fire for truth. Edwards taught the unvarnished truth about sinful man and our accountability to an Almighty God. Not surprisingly, he is mocked and laughed at today, but that is more of an indictment of our society than Edwards preaching. Pastor Edward’s magnum opus, Freedom of the Will has never been refuted by any scholar. This was a critical step in developing the conviction to fear God and not man. Even if man happened to be the largest empire in the world in which the sun never set – the British Empire.
From spiritual faith to great courage;
Spiritual faith leads to great courage based upon convictions worth sacrificing for. A person who will does not stand for something, will fall for anything. Think of the true heroes throughout history. One of the uniting principles that all heroes have is a willingness to stand for truth and convictions in a world of untruth and apathy. The Founding Families had great courage to stand for the truth of against tyranny and oppression. They did this because they knew the Bible said, “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is Liberty.” The British were moving in the direction of excessive taxation (1 %) and the Colonist would not sit back and allow an offsite government to tax local colonist.
Stop in tomorrow for 2 of 5…
In an effort to revitalize what my wife considers a “boring blog” I am requesting your help. I am not sure if I have ever seen this done before on a personal blog, well because it is personal, but frankly I have been tied up trying to do this whole church planting thing and haven’t been able to dedicate my limited creativity to this blog.
So… instead of going the same path my wife did, which was to just give up and quit blogging, I am going to try and find a creative way to subsidize my blog with some outside resources. I will continue to post some but I am looking for some guest bloggers and some great forwards from the world’s best source of blog fill, YouTube. Maybe it’s a good joke or interesting article. Or maybe random rages
So if you have something you would like to share with my readers (which are basically my mom and dad) then e-mail it to pastor@TheInChurch.org. From there I will filter it and see if I am willing to attach my name and reputation to your info. Help a church planter out and forward this request to your friends and post it on your blogs.
Otherwise I will be forced to share pictures of my new haircut…
My wife quit blogging and for those of you who were privelaged enough to read it, you know how great she is at it. I hijacked this from our daily e-votional as a part of the New Testament Challenge and thought I would share:
“For they mouth empty, boastful words and, by appealing to the lustful desires of sinful human nature,they entice people who are just escaping from those who live in error” 2 Peter 2:18.
“I Kissed a Girl” is the title of a song that was recently number one on popular radio stations for many weeks. It’s been performed live on the Fox Network TV show, “Dancing with the Stars.” It was also the number one iTunes download this past summer. “I Kissed a Girl - and I Liked It,” as the lyrics go, has become a trendy saying, even printed on t-shirts for teen girls and women. However, it is not just a trendy saying - it’s a deceptive enticement.
As a parent, I want to be aware of the things my child is being told by the world. As much as I wish I could guard his eyes and ears so they are not exposed to the deceptive influences that can creep in, I know I can’t be with him all the time. Therefore, I want to be informed so I can help him deal with what comes his way. I need to know what he is exposed to when he leaves the walls of our home.
The cries for acceptance and love are loud today. Can you hear them? Just look at what some people, mostly young girls, will do to feel noticed, loved and accepted. Maybe you know someone like this. Maybe you are someone like this.
The truth is - we are loved, completed, noticed, and accepted. Maybe not by everyone in this world, but by Someone much greater and much more important than anyone we know - our Creator.
We were created in the image of God, but we are not God. We are human and have human feelings. Too often, we use this as an excuse to sin. If God created me to feel this way, then how could it be wrong? Ever since the fall of man we have struggled with sin. That is our human nature, but we have the ability to make choices.
The Bible says, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is - his good, pleasing and perfect will” (Romans 12:2, NIV). I know what it is like to live the world’s way. I’ve been there. The pleasures of this world are enticing but only temporary.
We need to guard our hearts and the hearts of those we love by not being persuaded by or giving into the “in thing.” (not referring to The In Church) We are worth far more than that. As sons and daughters of the King, we are deserving of royal treatment. We do not need to “conform to the pattern of this world,” or do inappropriate things for recognition.
The song, “I Kissed a Girl” is written and sung by singer/songwriter Katy Perry, who is a wealthy woman today because of it. She’s gaining a lot of attention, popularity, and fame. It may interest you to know that in 2001, she released a Christian album titled “Faith Won’t Fail” under the name Katy Hudson.
Not one of us is immune to the influences of the world, and neither are our children. We need to remain intentional, and strongly aware that each of us can be deceived. We can give in to enticing temptations if we are not careful. So let’s prayerfully guard ourselves and our children from going along with worthless boasts and appeals to fleshly desires, often found in popular songs of today. Instead, let’s look to God to fill our mouths with edifying words, and fill our hearts with a strong sense of acceptance that is grounded in Him.
Recent Comments