This weekend we will be celebrating Central’s 50th Birthday the only way we know to to do things – ALL OUT!  I can’t tell you how fired up I am to celebrate it with the Central family.  We’ve got some amazing music planned, and some heart-felt stories of life change.  It will be everything an awesome birthday celebration should be…and more!

I hope you’ll join us at one of our Central campuses or on-line as we celebrate 50 years!  I know it will be a weekend to remember!

Some people are really great at another type of game, too. The game of religion. It’s easy to let God into your life, and then become really good at playing the religion game. You know how to shift gears when you’re talking to someone and find out they are a Christian. You can drop the right Christian phrases and appear the part. You act one way at church and a completely different way at work or on the basketball court or standing in the kitchen. You believe the stuff about Jesus, but you just don’t see it playing out in your real life. Rather than admit this and begin to deal with it you just get better at appearances.

Maybe life for you looks more like the game Angry Birds than anything resembling Christianity. You’ve become distracted by a growing resentment toward people or organizations that have hurt you, so you hurl words and accusations at others like angry birds launched from a slingshot. Or maybe your relationship with God feels like a never ending game of Words With Friends… a big confusing jumble of letters that you can’t make sense of.

I want you to know that Jesus offers you something radical and profound – a life of meaning and purpose! But to get there, you have to take a risk and be honest about where you are spiritually. Know when you are playing games – when you’ve become too comfortable and predictable and mediocre. Sometimes being honest can feel like a huge risk, but without the risk you miss the reward. In fact, playing it safe with Jesus is the riskiest thing of all.

I want to challenge you today to dig deep… Is there a risk in your life that you feel God is leading you to take? Will you step out in faith and re-transfer ownership of your life, money, relationships, career, and health?

Try something for me… forget about the familiarity in the passage and read it out loud, inserting your name in the blanks:

For God so loved _______ that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall no perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn ______, but to save ______ through him. (John 3:16-17)

Was that weird for you? Did you experience hesitation? Was in uncomfortable for you to get that personal with something God did for the world? After all, you’re just one person among the billions, right? The world includes YOU! Don’t miss the wonder of it! Resist that tendency to water this down or miss its impact.

I mean… do you get it?! Do you see it?! God doesn’t just LIKE you – he LOVES you! So much that he gave up the thing most dear to him – his son – so you could have a relationship with him.

Paul calls this sacrifice on the cross an “indescribable gift” (2 Corinthians 9:5). Has it become TOO describable for you? Or are you still blown away by what all this means?? Think about that… and allow yourself to enter that uncomfortable place of awe, when you fully realize that when the Bible says “For God so loved the world…” – it means YOU. For God so loved…YOU.

I found some interesting statistics, revealed by The Barna Group form a survey they did on born again believers…
• One-third of all adults (34%) believe that moral truth is absolute and unaffected by the circumstances. Slightly less than half of the born again adults (46%) believe in absolute moral truth.

Only one-quarter of adults (28%) believe that it is impossible for someone to earn their way into Heaven through good behavior. Not quite half of all born again Christians (47%) strongly reject the notion of earning salvation through their deeds.

A minority of American adults (40%) are persuaded that Jesus Christ lived a sinless life while He was on earth. Slightly less than two-thirds of the born again segment (62%) strongly believes that He was sinless.

I find it shocking to read that over half of those who describe themselves as “born again” don’t believe in moral absolutes or salvation through the free grace of God, and over one third don’t believe in the sinless life of Jesus.

George Barna went on to say that “although most Americans consider themselves to be Christian and say they know the content of the Bible, less than one out of ten Americans demonstrate such knowledge through their actions.”

Is it any wonder that we feel empty spiritually?

Being a Christ-Follower is about more than just saying we believe in Jesus… it’s about experiencing the change in our lives that should be occurring because of that belief. God is continuously trying to shape, mold, and renovate our lives as we follow him in faith. He doesn’t want to just give us a better life, but rather a supernatural new life based on a new birth. The point of that new birth is the new life we live between forgiveness and eternity. A new way of doing things… with Christ being present in every detail of our life.

Too often we associate this new birth with something we affirm intellectually. We have churches full of people who all believe the right things about Jesus, but aren’t passionate about any of them! I love this quote from Blaise Pascal: God desires to move the will rather than the mind.

It’s not about what you THINK. It’s about what you are willing to live and die for… what you are passionate about… what moves your will. Take some time and think about what that means for you. Reflect on the fact that God doesn’t simply want to change your mind… he wants to change your heart.

The phrase “born again” brings all kinds of pictures to people’s minds. It could recall everything from a co-worker to a Billy Graham crusade to Tim Tebow to the baffling behavior of Westboro Baptist Church holding “God Hates Fags” signs. The phrase gets lost in all the talk of political campaigning and the voting block of the “born again.” Everything from companies to sports franchises to restaurant chains are described as born again when they rebound. To recapture the real meaning we need to revisit Jesus’ use of the term.

“Born again” literally means “born from above.” The term “new birth” was used in different contexts… religiously it meant the change that came after one began to obey and as a result of one’s obedience. In the above verse, Jesus meant something entirely different and radical. Jesus was speaking about a spiritual resuscitation of our lives orchestrated by God. When we believe in Jesus, when we look to him, the miraculous occurs. New birth doesn’t come after life change, but before. This supernatural event begins the process of living a new life under God.

Being “born again” implies that we are spiritually dead before coming to faith. We need more than mild-mannered improvement or pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps common sense. We need more than a quick pep talk by the latest version of Dr. Phil. We’re dead. Defibrillators won’t help. No amount of chest compressions or mouth-to-mouth resuscitations will help. We’re way past CPR.

In fact, in Ephesians 2:5, the Bible gives us that exact images when it says we were dead in our transgressions. We’re lying on a stretcher with the white sheet pulled over us. We are unresponsive to all that God is and to all that he wants to do in our life.

Jesus literally came to bring us back from the dead. When we place our faith and trust in him we are going through our own resurrection… we are born again. Like a newborn infant, we now are called to grow and mature as people of faith. It may begin for us when we pray a prayer for salvation or walk down the aisle at church, but there is so much more to being born again than that moment.

What does this new life mean to you? How does it affect your every day?

Something that got me thinking was how often we participate in our own “Hunger Games”… not physical hunger or survival but rather spiritual hunger games. We desire to feel fulfilled – to feel significance and experience joy. We even believe God can provide this for us, but we act like everything BUT God would fill us. We opt for temporary distractions, work, relationships…. But spiritually we feel completely empty.

Maybe you’ve been playing your own hunger games. You’re still trying to look the part, but inside you’re dying. You hide your pain or questions behind a convincing smile, but you’ve got nagging doubts about God that you’ve never openly admitted. Deep down there is a growing frustration.

Take some time to think back to when you first came to faith. Remember when you confessed your sin and asked for God’s grace to cover you and carry you. Or recall a season in your life when you were the most fired up about God… when it seemed he touched everything around you and your passion for him was tangible. That same love is still available to fill you today, no matter how empty you may feel. All you have to do is go back to that place… find it again. He’s waiting for you. Stop playing games and start living a life of significance, joy, and fulfillment through Christ.

This weekend, he and his wife will join Lori and myself for a discussion on faith – in the motorcycle business and in their relationships (marriage and family)! We’ll get an inside look on how Paul Jr. really feels about the feud with his father, and how life has changed since his last visit to Central. I think it’s going to be an engaging, insightful weekend and I am fired up to see all God’s going to do through Paul Jr.’s story. 

I’d love if you could join us – either at a physical Central location, or at one of our online services! To find out service times for our various Central locations, visit centralonline.tv for service times and directions for each location!

Something I’ve been noticing lately is how more and more people are taking a sort of “buffet approach” to their faith. We’ve become one huge buffet line of religion. On one plate, we pack a little bit of what Jesus taught, some views from Buddah, a sprinkling of Oprah and Dr. Phil, and top it all off with whatever self-help book is popular at the time. And all of a sudden, we’re living by our own self-made, all-you-can eat religion… All of what we do want, and none of what we don’t want.

The problem with this is that, in the end, we’re left unsatisfied, confused, and frustrated. When we reduce our faith to a personalized, individualized thing that has little to do with true Christianity, all sorts of problems arise. We see it everywhere – from lukewarm faith that falls apart when the things WE want don’t pan out to harsh legalism that doesn’t know the first thing about grace. We settle for half-truths and cheap imitations, making God in OUR image… and the outcome is far from what we thought it would become.

Can you relate? Have you developed certain views about God and life that leave you feeling lost and confused? You know you love him but you are having a hard time connecting the dots. Maybe you’ve been hurt, and you feel let down by God. Maybe you’ve built up walls that aren’t allowing you to let him work in your heart.

In my own life I’m going back to the Bible and teaching of Jesus. I want to ground myself in historic Christianity and take it as it is, not as I may want it.

When we revisit Jesus teachings we see how much he loves us. We see how much significance comes from him… he wants to show us how much we need his love. How we don’t have to hurt, carry burdens, heal, or live alone.

He’s our healer. He’s our strength. He’s our deliverer. He’s more than enough. Ultimately, he is all of what we really need and none of what we don’t!

Next weekend will be a blast as our friends Paul and Rachel Teutul from American Chopper will be joining Lori and I at Central to talk life, marriage, work and faith and how it all fits together. Make sure to invite some friends along or join us online.  Our team is planning some great stuff!

This week I’m off to share with church planters and pastors at Exponential. I love church planters and am so honored to be able to learn and grow with many of them.  I’ll be doing a main session on Calling, and Lori and I will be teaching a lab on Avoiding Burning Out and Blowing Up. If you are around, please say hi. And they have a live simulcast option, so check it out!

If AMEN and YES mean the same thing, here’s what the verse means–in Jesus Christ God says his YES, his AMEN, to us through fulfilling his promises; and in Christ we say our YES, our AMEN, back to God, through prayer.

AMEN means YES, Lord, you can do it; YES, Lord, you are powerful; YES, Lord, you are wise; YES, Lord, you are merciful. AMEN is like an exclamation point of faith in a prayer for help or an exclamation point of strong affirmation after a statement of God’s greatness.

If you think about it there are really two AMEN’s, two YES’s, at the end of most of our prayers. When I say, “In Jesus’ name,” that is God’s AMEN. All his promises are YES and AMEN in Jesus. Then when I say, “AMEN,” this is my YES and AMEN back to God for his. AMEN is my YES to God for his YES to me in Jesus Christ.

And all of God’s promises are already YES!

God, will you help me?

Will you forgive me?

Will you be with me?

YES! He’s done it all and more already in the person of Jesus. More to come this weekend!!