10 Things that have Changed My Life: #9- Basketball

“Basketball was my first love” - a sentence it seems I utter often when trying to describe myself.  For whatever reason, the sport of basketball has captured my heart from a very early age.  I can remember watching the Rockets (my favorite team!) and the Bulls battle it out constantly in the ‘90s.  I can also remember my first basketball team (the New Territory Suns) and my first basketball game (I air-balled the first shot I ever took).  I have always loved talking about, thinking about, watching, and playing basketball.

Basketball has changed my life in many ways.  One way is that it most assuredly kept me out of (even more) trouble by giving me something to be busied with.  Who knows what kind of mess I could have made without such a time consuming hobby?  Another way that it changed my life is that it taught me the art of discipline and self control.  I would schedule out training sessions, dates, times, work-outs, and rigorously follow them in order to be the best that I could.  As a kid, I kept a few journals that I would constantly jot down new plays or ideas on.  At one point, I had well over 300 different plays.

Perhaps the largest way that basketball has changed my life has been the therapeutic effect it has had on me.  During the hardest times in my life, basketball has constantly been there for me.  During my junior year and my struggle with panic disorder, one of the few places where I could forget it all was in my driveway shooting baskets.  During panic attacks, my greatest and most effective strategy to calm down was to think about the Rockets and my favorite player, Steve Francis.

While there are other sports I appreciate and enjoy, basketball will forever be my favorite.  It has, without a doubt, changed my life.

Have any sports changed your life?  How?  Please comment and share! 

10 Things that have Changed My Life: #8- Reading

Hey friends.  The '10 Things that have Changed My Life' series is coming to a close!  Be looking forward to my last two entries- I have some pretty awesome (old school) pictures to go along with them! =)

 

Number 8 on my list of life-changing things is the art, the craft, the skill... of reading.  Yes, I am a book nerd and a big believer in the power of the written word and the ability to read.  Reading has changed my life in so many ways that it is not even possible to list them.  Reading has : been part of the process of Christ finding me, created in me a love and ability to learn, been therapeutic in difficult times, developed my vocabulary and mind, developed my writing and speaking skills, etc and etc.  The list could go on.  A few of my favorite authors: N.T. Wright, Eugene Peterson, Donald Miller, Matthew Paul Turner, Peter Clement, David Scheff, and more.  Has reading been as meaningful for you?  Comment and share!  Who are your favorite authors?  Favorite Genres?

Also, do you have any ideas about a new series of posts?  Things y'all would like me to write about?  I like to do (and read) posts that are interesting and give you insight into the author's life..  Gimme some ideas!

Mike

My Summer Plans

I want to take a break from my '10 Things that have Changed My Life' series and ask you all a question.

This summer I will be trying my hardest to be as productive as I can for the kingdom.  I will be doing alot of preaching, some writing, some traveling (3 trips!), and hopefully a lot of exercising!  I also have set a goal to read 12 books (roughly one per week I am in town).  I have a short list, but wanted your opinions/advice/suggestions on a good book to read.  It does not have to be christian and/or theological.

Here is the list I have so far (in no order):

Confessions of a Ref. Rev- Mark Driscoll

To Own a Dragon- Donald Miller

Justification: God's plan and Paul's vision- NT Wright

Comeback Churches- Ed Stetzer

Provocative Faith- Matthew Paul Turner

The Life of Pi- Yann Martel

A Random Memoir at the bookstore

A Random Medical thriller at the bookstore

That means I need 4 more books!  What should I read?  Please comment and make suggestions- with the reason why I should read it.  Again, it does not have to be Christian.  The only rule is it canNOT be Twilight! haha

Also- I am looking to preach/speak all over the place this summer.  If your group or church needs a speaker- talk to me about booking.  I cannot miss Sundays because of church obligations but I am willing to travel anywhere during the week to serve you.  

Looking forward to your suggestions,

Mike

A Holy Struggle - 5/3/09

Hey friends.  This is a summary of the notes of a sermon I gave on 5/3/09.  Due to technical difficulties, we were unable to record it.  

This sermon, titled "A Holy Struggle," was the third part of our 'Missional Living' series.  This series is our attempt to search the scriptures and find out how we can live and breathe for God's glory and the advancement of the Gospel.  This week we were answering the question of how we can be faithful missionaries even though we still struggle with sin.

We started in 1 John 1:8- and set the scene with John's declaration that even Christians still have sin in their life.  Once we agreed with that fact, we decided there must be a righteous or, even, holy, way to struggle with sin.  Now, there is NOT a right way to sin, but there is a right way to STRUGGLE with sin.  If we struggle with our sin wrongly, it has the ability to derail all of our attempts to evangelize.  So how can we struggle with our sin in a holy way?

4 Points:

1) It is NOT o.k. to struggle with sin unrepentantly - Hebrews 10:26-27

- we looked at the story of Hosea, and the call to feel the weight of our sin and have godly grief over it

2) It is NOT o.k. to struggle with sin passively- Romans 8:12-13

- true repentance leads to action.  Paul commands us to actively put our sin to death.  Not to sit back and hope it goes away.  This could be getting accountability, counseling, waking up early, etc.

3) It is NOT o.k. to struggle with sin alone- James 5:16

- commonly overlooked- the christian call to confess to each other; sin is like mildew- it festers in the darkness.  The new testament community was one of honesty and openness

4) It is NOT o.k. to struggle with sin without hope- 1 John 1:9; Romans 6:14

- we have the promise of forgiveness for all of our sins, and the promise of victory over time.

I concluded by saying that when we struggle with sin in these biblical ways- it can enable us to evangelize more effectively.  We are no longer paralyzed when someone who we are sharing with brings up our sins- because we can explain to them our sorrow over that sin and all the things that we are doing to put it to death.

Temptation and sin are HUGE parts of all of our lives.  We must struggle with it in a godly way that would further the kingdom.

Love much,

Mike

10 Things that have Changed My Life: #7- Calvinism

I am reformed in theology.  Most who know me know this.  For that reason, I almost did not include this in my list of 10 things that have changed my life.  It has also become kind of a fad among Christians in college, which makes me less incline to be public about it.  But alas, I must.

I am a 7-pointer (yes..  I am that hardcore) and a firm believer in Calvinism.  I will even admit this, it is hard for me to understand the Gospel outside of the lens of Calvinism.  It is one of those ideas that when you finally accept it, you start seeing it everywhere and wonder how you could have ever missed it.  My conversion story (blasphemy?) is simple: shortly after I became a Christian, as a senior in high school, I was exposed to the doctrinal system of Calvinism and quickly understood it as truth.

Just like most recent converts to Calvinism, I became a super enthusiastic hyper-Calvinist for a while- but eventually settled down.  I try my best not to make it into or use it as a system or paradigm for doctrine, but instead in a doxological way- which I think is closer to Paul and Augustine.  

Nevertheless, Calvinism thoroughly influences my preaching, prayer, ministry, and joy.  No other doctrine has opened up the glory of the Cross or been such a warm blanket to my soul at dark times.  Hello, my name is Mike.  I am a Calvinist.

10 Things that have Changed My Life: #6- Matt Chandler

My absolute favorite preacher, Chandler is the lead/teaching pastor at The Village Church near Dallas, TX.  I first heard him speak three years ago at a college conference called Focus.  He absolutely tore it up.  I started downloading his sermons and began listening to them religiously (no pun intended..).

Chandler has impacted my life in three different ways.  First, his ability to teach and communicate ignited a similar desire in my own heart.  Through his ministry, I was awakened to the reality of what can happen because of dynamic preaching.

Second, the actual content of his teaching has impacted my walk with Christ in what is probably an immeasurable degree.  He preaches the scriptures in an engaging and clear way- always showing Jesus in the text.

Lastly, much of my own leadership style and philosophy of ministry comes directly from how Chandler does things and how the Village is operated.  I never want to copy- but I am definitely taking the good things that he does and trying my best to reproduce them in Sugar Land in my particular context with my particular skills.

If you haven’t heard him speak, stop what you are doing and go download one of his sermons.  Seriously.  http://hv.thevillagechurch.net/

Who is your favorite preacher/speaker?  How have they impacted you?

10 Things that have Changed My Life: #5- Jesus and the Victory of God

I am an avid reader.  It is one of the ways that I worship best.  Having said that, there are a handful of books that have completely rocked my world and one of them is this hefty tome penned by N.T. Wright.  Jesus and the Victory of God is the second book in Wright’s seminal undertaking- his Christian Origins and the Question of God series.  This book is not for the faint of heart and has undoubtedly changed my life for multiple reasons.

One reason is that it was practically the first theological book I ever read.  As a senior in high school my theology teacher gave me this book to read when I began to show an interest in theology.  I would come to him daily with questions about scripture and doctrine, and one day I came to him asking about Mark 13.  He handed me this book and said that the answer was inside.  =)  Wanting to prove myself, I quickly began reading and was soon absolutely consumed.  I can remember working through that book with every free second of my life for about three weeks.  During lunch, between classes (and I confess, sometimes during), after school, at night.  The world that I found inside Wright’s work- a world of honesty and real scholarship- was the world that I wanted to spend the rest of my life in.  I had found a calling.

Not only was my love for theology solidified by reading JVOG, but the things I learned about Jesus shook the foundation of my faith and my understanding of the Gospels.  I finally began to understand eschatology, the kingdom, and some of the more difficult and troubling passages of the gospels.  Two things I got from the book continue to shape my thinking, prayers, and ministry.  1- That Jesus was fully man.  We tend to overemphasize his ‘God-ness’, to the point that he becomes a super hero and some pieces of the gospels make no sense.  2- That Jesus was a theologian.  Although not trained, he studied the scriptures and found a vocation and plan for the kingdom.  More specifically, Jesus’ use of Isaiah and Daniel and his uniting of them into his own purpose.

Have you ever read anything that will have an eternal impact on your life and those around you?  Please comment and share!