Deadly Viper Review

Now and then you come across a book that is just real and very refreshing. AND at the same time it kicks you where it counts. Deadly Viper is one of the MOST refreshing books on character that I have read in literally decades. Character is so vital to our lives, especially as ministers, yet sometimes that same topic becomes very sterile. Well no rubber gloves here, this book is full of incredible stuff. if you buy any book this month, it's gotta be this one. Granted it is targeted towards men, so if you are a lady - well, find something else.

One Full Year

One Year In Review Video

Empty Pinatas

For some random holiday one year my aunt bought a piñata. Now that might not seem like a big deal to you, but I grew up in an incredibly Anglo home in Michigan. Of course I knew what a piñata was, mainly because I had traveled extensively to Central and South America, and piñatas there are like fire hydrants here. They’re on every corner.
When my aunt pulled out the piñata at the family holiday festiganza, all the kids ooohed and ahhhhd. They obviously had never seen the likes of a paper machete beast, and my aunt was incredibly proud of her find. She held it high in the air and carried it into the room with the aura of one who is transporting the Ark of the Covenant. You could almost hear the Angles singing and I believe I could almost taste manna.
She told all of us with great vigor of the random treasure that she had found that day at the flee market. She announced that we would beat open her beautiful treasure right after dinner, and once her icon of joy was split wide it would offer up succulent treats of tantalizingly tasty tidbits. They were ecstatic.
I asked my aunt if she had already put the candy in the piñata, and she told me that the lady at the flee market told her that it already had candy in it. I picked up the piñata and gave it a healthy shake and heard the distinct sound of air. I told her that with all due respect this piñata does not have any candy in it. That she has to cut a hole and fill it. She is responsibly to put the tasty treats inside it does not come with them already in there.
She dismissed me as a mere pup on the porch of life and informed me that I was wrong and that indeed there were mountains of treats just waiting beyond the thing walls of paper machete.
Dinner came and dinner went. The kids were beyond excited, they were chomping at the proverbial bit to not only smash a perfectly good toy with a bat, but then actually get rewarded for it. So my family strung up the incredibly light piñata and the kids took turns wacking at it with the hickory equalizer.
The final blow came when my nephew hauled off, and in one fail swoop, gashed the piñata’s abdomen, and broke it from the string sending it crashing to the floor. It was great! All the kids dove on the poor unsuspecting piñata with hopes of sweet rewards. It was empty.
Once the feeding frenzy subsided, all the kids turned and glared at my aunt with a look that was reminiscent of Cujo. Each one with empty hands, and unmet expectations. My aunt is still trying to live that one down.
In the church world we have done the same thing. We have become a part of the Body of Christ and declared to our community that there are sweet morsels of grace and love on the inside. You have to get on the inside that’s for sure, but once you’re in, it’s loaded.
The problem is nobody took the time to tell us that we are the ones that are supposed to fill the piñata. We are the ones that are supposed to show the love, and give the grace. We are the ones that are supposed to be accepting and caring. We are the body of Christ, and we are responsible to make sure that inside, not only ourselves, but our churches, is life-giving. It’s relational and fun!
I just don’t believe that our piñatas should be full of bitter, self-centered, discontent. If that’s all our piñatas are full of it’s no wonder no one is beating on our walls to get inside, instead they are merely passing us by. The things of Christ are fun, and engaging, and life-altering. They are meaningful and full of spiritual transformational power, but again, we are the Body of Christ, and what’s in us is what others are looking for. That is if we took time to fill our piñatas with the tantalizing sweet treats of Jesus.

ONE YEAR OLD!!!!

The above picture is our volunteer team. They are AMAZING!

SouthPoint is officially one year old now. We are no longer wearing diapers, but we have officially wearing pull-ups. We had an awesome time together Sunday morning. Jan made a phenom-cake that was amazing. We had an over the top video testimony, and of course some laughing while we reminisced together.

I go to thinking about all that God had allowed us to be a part of in this first year. My mind began getting flooded with images and numbers so I jotted them down. Wow, I was amazed.

In the first year:
Given away 50 baby bassinets bassinets to pregnant moms.
hundreds of free pumpkins for pumpkin painting int he community.
Gave away over $30,000 in product to Desoto County.
fed 800 people for Thanksgiving
helped plant 10 churches
Had exactly 100 people accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior.
baptized 18 people in water [we have found water to be more biblical and easier than molten lava]

I am so amazed at God's goodness to us. What an incredible year here in the Memphis area. I am looking forward to 2008 being even more stupedous and exciting!

Maintenance Danger

I hate maintenance. Genuinely, I hate it. I love fixing broken things, or even making something from scratch, but maintenance; hate it. True maintenance is a necessary evil. If you properly maintain your car then the odds of you needing to repair something are greatly reduced. But spending money on an oil change sometimes bugs me. I know it needs to be done, because everybody says that it does, but my car runs fine even if I’m late with my maintenance. I know it needs it, but there are no red flags telling me that I genuinely need to do it. Of course, if there were red flags then it wouldn’t need maintenance; it would be in need of repair.
Our lives need maintenance too, but I hate that as well. I think most of our lives our spent purely on maintaining what we have. We get to a certain point in life, or we accomplish a certain status or level of living and then we shut down the afterburners and begin to maintain what we have.
We here constantly about maintaining a healthy diet, or maintaining a healthy exercise regime. What about maintaining a healthy spiritual discipline like bible-reading or prayer? We hear those preached too. These are all true and extremely important to not only maintain a healthy body, but a healthy spiritual life as well. I hate the routine. I do it, but nobody said I had to like it.
I don’t want to be a maintainer. A maintainer is someone who has accepted the status quo, or has simply accepted average. What would happen if we decided that average is not good enough? Not good enough for us, not good enough for our children, not good enough for our county or not even good enough for our presidential candidates?
Have you ever wondered what your life would be like today if you had taken advantage of that business opportunity several years ago? Or where would you be living now if you had opted for the riskier career?
Back in the late sixties one of my family members had the opportunity to buy a McDonald’s franchise for next-to-nothing. He turned the deal down because it was too risky. That McDonald’s is still doing business on the same corner 40 years later, and my family member is still bemoaning his ‘safe’ decision.
In our spiritual lives maintenance becomes par for the course. It has become far too accepted to merely exist. Even as a pastor, if I am not careful, I can slip into a maintenance mode instead of advancing the Kingdom of God. Pastor Craig Groshel said, “At one point, I had become a full time pastor and a part time Christian.”
There has to be more to our spiritual lives. There is more to the relationship that we hold with God, but first we must decide that maintaining is no longer acceptable. To push forward, past the line of mediocrity, we must have a willingness to get out of our self-imposed comfort zones, and into a new realm with new problems, new challenges, and new rewards. It’s not always the easiest way, but it is always the most rewarding. Not just rewarding for us, but also for all of those that follow the trails we blaze into uncharted territory.

Pick a Tree

My son hit my daughter with a shoe. It was a heavy shoe, and it was propelled with the force of a three year old. His aim was nearly perfect, and I had a moment of joy as I watched a perfectly thrown shoe land with “Peyton Manning” accuracy right on the side of Phoebe’s head. Of course, my visit to utopia was halted when Phoebe’s scream pierced the silence and I realized his aim might have been nearly perfect, but his behavior was flat out wrong.
Parenting would be so easy if it wasn’t for the kids. With the kids it seems like we spend the 80% of our lives dealing with their behavior - trying to modify their behavior. We all have a million different modification techniques; books have been written, articles have been penned, and seminars have been taught. Most of these, if not all of them, deal with the behavior of the child and how to modify behvior to make the child socially acceptable.
If all we continually focus on behavior, then we miss opportunities to help them become well-rounded young people. We have to realize it’s not really a behavior problem - it’s a heart problem. The behaviors are outward symptoms of an inward heart issue. So, as parents we have a choice. We can look at behaviors only, or we can modify the heart by looking deeper.
In Genesis, God gave Adam and Eve a choice as well. He told them they could eat from any tree except the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They were told it was good to eat from the Tree of Life, but wrong to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (TKGE). The TKGE was not right or wrong in itself, it was the knowledge of right from wrong.
We always want to blame our current sin situation on Eve’s temptation. But when you look at the words that the Devil used to tempt her, it becomes painfully clear that he was not tempting Eve with pride, or malice, but with her own desire to become more like God. It was a good desire that was in her, but the Devil manipulated those innate feelings and tempted her with the TKGE. By eating of that tree she was stepping onto the path of knowing right from wrong and doing good deeds to get to God. Of course, that is not the tree God wants us eating out of. God prefers that we eat out of the Tree of Life.
Now you might be thinking, “Big deal, Craig!” but it is a big deal. In fact it’s a huge life-changing deal when we realize that God is not looking for behavior modification as much as he is looking for a heart that is transformed. When our hearts are truly transformed, our behavior follows suit. Our behavior is a product of our heart, but the heart is never affected by changing the behavior. That is, however, the world’s view.
How often do we view the Bible as a book of behavioral commands and “don’ts”, as opposed to a book about heart transformation? How often do we focus only on society’s behaviors, and never really connect with their hearts?
Living out of the Tree of Life is a lifestyle. It’s a way to process things, view things, and connect with things. It’s too easy to live out of the very tree that Eve chose. It’s easy to focus on right and wrong behaviors and things that are based in knowledge. It’s a harder path (yet more rewarding) to live and eat out of the Tree of Life. I would challenge you with a New Year’s resolution. This year, live your life from the Tree of Life. I dare say almost every situation can be handled with a life-giving attitude if we try hard enough. That means putting others first, making the most of every teachable situation with our families and children, and treating others as we would like to be treated.