The Greatest Gift

Merry Christmas one and all!!! This will most likely be my last post of the year, and so Happy New Year to you to.

I have had a very eventful couple of weeks since I last posted. The most memorable part of it all for me was... Michael Spurlock!!! If you are not from Tampa or at least central Florida then you may not know what I am talking about, but I will enlighten you.

On Thanksgiving I had a relative (I think she is technically my Stepcousin??) offer me and my wife tickets to this past Sunday's Tampa Bay Buccaneer game against the Atlanta Falcons. This was a huge game because if we won then we clinched the division, which is huge considering the year of injuries and adversity that the team had.

My wife and I were to leave directly after church (after the last Amen) and make the hour drive to the game. On the way my stepcousin called and said she broke her toe could we find someone to take her spot. (no problem) My good friend Joseph met us at the place we were parking and my stepcousin gave us the tickets and dropped us off in front of the stadium.

The whole way to the stadium she kept on saying "I know today is going to be the day that the Bucs return their first kickof for a touchdown and I am going to miss it."

Let me fill you in if you don't know what that means. The Bucs are officially in there 32nd year of existence. They had NEVER returned a kickoff for a touchdown... NEVER. Ever since I was a little kid, every game I have ever watched the announcer would point this out. It was a huge thing for Tampa. I met the special teams coach Rich Basachia (not spelled right) at PF Changs last year and I know that everywhere he goes thats all anyone says to him "When we getting our kickoff touchdown?"

Well, the Falcons made a field goal and was kicking it off to us for the first time in the game. This was officially the 1,865th kickoff in Bucs history. 1,865!!!! And the second he kicked it I stood up and said "This is it." I just knew it. Michael Spurlock (former quartback at Ole Miss) took the kick, went to the center of the field and saw congestion and cut it out to his right... wide open. He was running straight toward us, and we were only four rows from the field, and the end zone he was running to... four rows! I have never screamed so loud in all my life, and I have never heard Tampa Bay fans get so crazy. He scored the touchdown!

Michael Spurlock was not on our team four weeks ago, and now he is being given the key to the city. It was the most amazing thing I have ever witnessed, and I almost have my wife convinced to name our first kid... Spurlock. Oh, and as for my stepcousin... she won't answer my phone calls. I hope to see her at Christmas and thank her, but I can imagine that after going to every game for ten years or so, that she is probably a little bit bitter.

That was great and amazing, but it is not the only thing in the world. I want you all to know that in this season when we all want and want and want; and we all buy and buy and buy; that Christmas is more than we are making it. It was an amazing gift to be able to witness Tampa Bay history but it pales in comparsion to the gift that this season represents.

I want all of my faithful blog readers to know that Christmas is not about presents and trees and parties. I want you to know that Christmas isn't even about the baby in the manger. That's right, it's NOT about the baby in the manger. You see, that baby grew up, and that man is my Savior and my God! For some there is a huge disconnect from Christmas to Easter, but I want you to know that Christmas is about the MAN who gave His life for you and for me on the cross at Calvary. There is no greater gift.

This Christmas in the midst of your gift exchanges and Christmas parties, take some time out and sing some worship songs to your savior; take some time out and lock yourself in a closet and pray a prayer of thanksgiving for the God who has saved your life.

Don't make Christmas about yourself, make it about your Savior!

Just catching up

Well I have noticed that it has been a while since I posted and I was going through withdrawals. Just a little update on my last post. Golden Compass did lead the box office in its first week out, but was still a huge disappointment. It grossed $25.8 million dollars on its first weekend, but had virtually no competition for its release date. The number is also less than half of what Chronicles of Narnia did on its first weekend, and considering it cost $180 million dollars to make, I would hope that New Line Cinema would not make a movie based on the next two books in Philip Pullman's blasphemous trilogy.

I don't really have a theme to my post today, but I have a lot of things to relay to you. It has been very, very busy since I last posted and a lot of great things have taken place that I need to share with my public.

First of all, I went to South Carolina a few weeks ago and ran into some old friends from when I lived there. One of those friends was Jeremy Lucas who worked with me at St. George Baptist Church in Orangeburg, SC. He was the music pastor and I was the youth pastor. We worked very well together and he became a very close friend.

Anyhow, we offered for him to come and stay with us for a visit, and he came down the very next week. While he was here, he loved it so much that he found a job and moved into an apartment across the street from me. So I am very excited to have my good friend Jeremy back in my life again. So if you see this man that I am sword fighting with...make him feel welcome.

On November 30th we took a group of students to Lake Aurora Christian Retreat Center for a Fall Retreat. The name of the retreat was One Heart. My prayer for the weekend was that our youth group would grow together in unity so much that they would develop one heart. I believe that is was a huge success. On our last night I had them do something called an "affirmation circle." Basically the idea is that in our world we spend so much time focusing on the negative of people that we rarely say anything nice to them. So everybody at the retreat at one point in time had to sit in the middle of a circle and everybody in the circle had say something positive about them. It was such a great time, that even though the students were exhausted, we did the circle for three and a half hour and there was not one complaint. It was a very emotional and uplifting time for all of us.

We got back from that last Sunday, and last Monday I got back in the car and went to our staff retreat. The six pastors of NorthRidge all spent three days together at a condo in Daytona Beach. We ate a lot (restaurant called Aunt Catfish's mmmmm!), watched some football (the Ravens should have won!) had some fun, but spent most of our time working. We each had to teach about a different part of 2 Peter 1:5-7 and that was an incredible time of personal growth for me. We also went over goals for the upcoming year. I am very pleased at the direction we are going as a church, and our main goal for next year is to "Grow." It is pretty simple but the basic idea is to take our congregation from surface level knowledge to a deep rooted love and understanding of God's word. We are all going to be challenged to go through the Bible in a year and that will be amazing. I am also getting trained to be an E.E. trainer and we will be starting Evangelism Explosion in early 2008, and that will grow the church in their evangelism. And of course we are moving to two service in January, with a slightly different style of worship which will be a part of growing us numerically as well. 2008 will be an incredible year!

Finally, I wanted to share with you what I did the day after I got back from our staff retreat. I had the privilege of leading chapel at a place called H.E.A.R.T. Missionary Training Institute. www.heartmissionarytraining.com It is down a long dirt road behind Warner Southern College. This is a training ground for students who want to learn to be a missionary in a third world country. It is a three month program that they are going through. For the first month they are cut off from the outside world except for mail they receive once a week. They are forbidden electricity, running water, stoves, microwaves, etc. The site is filled with amenities that are found in a third world country. Such as the shower is a water pump pumped into a shed with a solar panel of sorts attached to it. The water goes into a five gallon bucket that has holes stabbed into it. After their one month of adjustment, they sit in a classroom for one month and learn things such as "appropriate technology." Things like how to get water to a village that has no water, how to weave clothes, and how to grow your food. And then in the last month the students become the teachers, and they have to prove that they have learned enough to go overseas by showing projects and doing the daily duties that the instructor would normally do.

I met a lot of students who have a heart for going to places of the world that have not heard the Gospel. I felt very honored to have been a very small part of their lives, and I will be excited to get to Heaven and learn just how many people they reached with the message because of the H.E.A.R.T. Missionary Training Institute. Please keep them in prayer.

Do Not See Golden Compass!

I am writing this post out of my normal routine of blog because I have been made aware of something that I need to bring to the attention of all who read.

First I have a confession to make. I was making some changes to my layout (got bored of the old one... hope you like it) and in checking to see how my changes were coming out I accidently became the 1000th viewer. So congratulations to the 1000th viewer... ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now onto my main goal today. Those of you who usually read my blog know that I have a few themes, I like to have fun, I like to give you Biblical truths, I like to poke fun at Mr. Bartlett. But today I have to use my platform to speak out against something that is damaging to the gospel of Jesus and all of the truths that this very country was founded on.

There is a movie coming out on December 7th called The Golden Compass and it should not be viewed by any person with any moral fiber. I usually wouldn't speak out against anything like this, but usually movie makers aren't trying to trick people like they are in this one. For instance, if a movie is coming out with a lot of violence and/or sex and it is not good for children it is pretty obvious by the previews. The reason I am speaking out against this movie is because they make it seem like a fun, adventerous ride for the whole family. But the moral implications of this movie have been hidden from everyone

It looks on the preview like a movie that anyone who likes Chronicles of Narnia would enjoy, but it was made in direct opposition to Chronicles of Narnia. Listen to what the author of the book Philip Pullman says about C.S. Lewis' masterpiece "I hate the Narnia books, and I hate them with a deep and bitter passion," he told one interviewer, "with their view of childhood as a golden age from which sexuality and adulthood are a falling-away."

Not only does he hate C.S. Lewis, but he is not that fond of Christians in general. He told the U.K.'s Daily Telegraph about his religious viewpoints, "Atheism suggests a degree of certainty that I'm not quite willing to accede. I suppose technically, you'd have to put me down as an agnostic. But if there is a God, and he is as the Christians describe him, then he deserves to be put down and rebelled against. As you look back over the history of the Christian church, it's a record of terrible infamy and cruelty and persecution and tyranny. How they have the bloody nerve to go on Thought for the Day and tell us all to be good when, given the slightest chance, they'd be hanging the rest of us and flogging the homosexuals and persecuting the witches."

The Golden Compass begins with a precocious 12-year-old girl named Lyra (similar to Lucy) clambering into a wardrobe to avoid detection ... a choice that unwittingly launches her into a universe-altering adventure. (Sound familiar?) Lurking in the wardrobe, she hears her uncle, an iconoclastic explorer named Lord Asriel, describe a mysterious substance called Dust to a group of scholars.

Several events then occur almost simultaneously: Lyra is given a truth-telling device called an alethiometer (the golden compass) and told to keep it secret; she begins to hear rumors of children disappearing without a trace; and she's whisked into the care of a glamorous but ruthless agent of the church named Mrs. Coulter. Lyra soon discovers that the church is also desperate to learn about Dust—a substance they believe is somehow connected to original sin—and that Mrs. Coulter is spearheading chilling experiments on children in her pursuit of "truth." Specifically, she's separating children from their dæmons (pronounced demon), animal spirits that physically embody each person's soul and accompany them throughout life.

Listen to a quote from one of the witches in the movie "There are churches there, believe me, that cut their children too, as the people of Bolvangar did—not in the same way, but just as horribly. They cut their sexual organs, yes, both boys and girls; they cut them with knives so that they shan't feel. That is what the church does, and every church is the same: control, destroy, obliterate every good feeling." Without exception, Pullman characterizes churches and anyone connected to them as agents of wickedness, oppression, torture, murder and malevolence.

It's a fair question for those curious about this story to ask what it is teaching. At the most basic level, His Dark Materials (The trilogy of which Golden Compass is the first book) is an attempted refutation of the Christian faith: "The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake, that's all," says an influential character named Mary Malone, who then goes on to relate her own "testimony" of why she abandoned her calling as a nun.

As to what his books are about, the author himself said, "My books are about killing God." But despite a great deal of publicity on this subject, the series never addresses the issue of God's existence with any real certainty. There is a character who masquerades as God, known as the Authority. But we discover he was simply the first being to evolve—and there's definitely a heavy emphasis on evolution in this story—out of Dust into conscious existence.

As to whether or not a real Creator is responsible for everything, however, another character says simply, "There may have been a creator, or there may not: We don't know." Ultimately, then, the story remains agnostic about God's existence. And with regard to death and the afterlife, Pullman first imagines a dark underworld where all the dead go, regardless of their actions or beliefs. The dead are then released by Lyra, and their molecules are dispersed throughout the world.

To end this post Beliefnet's Rod Dreher writes that he intends to protect his children from Pullman's poisonous influence. "One expects that religious parents will keep their children away from the [Golden Compass] film. 'But why?' the question arises from liberals. 'What are you afraid of?' My children losing God, especially before they have a firm hold on Him, that's what. At some point they will question the existence of God. I did. It's normal to do so. I want more than anything else I want for my children, even their own happiness in this life, for them to believe in God, who is their salvation. If you believe in God, and that the loss of God is the worst thing that can happen to a person, then you would sooner give your child a rattlesnake to play with than expose him or her at an early age to the work of a man who openly says he wishes to destroy God in the minds of his audience."

Let's remember that and openly tell anyone who will listen not to see The Golden Compass.

Post written from article by Adam R. Holz on http://www.pluggedinonline.com/

Nothing is impossible with God!

Alright my friends well this is a great day in blogville. It is almost Thanksgiving, and everyone is in a good mood and there is a lot of leisure time coming for me and my wife. I hope you all are not getting bogged down with the stress of the holidays, but thanking God for each day that you have breath.

It is almost time for another milestone. It took us from August 3rd to September 28th to get to 500 and now it is time for our 1000th PAGE VIEW! So if you are the 1000th visitor to our site we want to know. Make sure you email me at jblewett@northridgehc.com if you the tracker at the top of the screen right now says 1000.

Also our contest winner from last week was none other than Debbie Schumacher. She figured out that the mistake on our website was that my picture was Matt Damon's and my colleagues was Ben Affleck. That is a mistake because obviously we are better looking than them. So congratulations to Debbie and in honor of her, our poll question is who is your favorite Debbie and make sure that you all vote for the incomparable Debbie Schumacher.

On to some more fun stuff. Last Friday night was our 6th to 10th Grade dance at NorthRidge Christian Academy. It was a sock hop and all of the students dressed up in their 50's outfits. The star of the show though was none other than our fearless leader and good friend of James' Blog Mr. Michael Bartlett.

He showed an enormous amount of dedication to his school and to his students when he dressed up as a nerd. He walked around in a hilarious impersonation of someone like Mr. McFly in the first Back to the Future. I could not let that go without sharing it with all of my faithful readers. So here it is...

This is priceless! After that he changed into an old man looking for his son. (His son was the nerd who was his previous personality) but then to top off the night The Bartman topped himself, and came out to an enormous ovation as... The King! He sang a couple of songs and looked incredible, here is the proof...

It was definitely one of the best events I have been to in a long, long time. A lot of people put a lot of hard work in and it paid off in an incredible way. And great job Elvis!

Onto the serious part of my post. We have recently watched Facing the Giants in youth group and if you haven't seen it then you must. But one of the main messages in the movie was that there is nothing impossible with God... NOTHING!

This past week I got the chance to go to Dundee Ridge Middle School (This is a public school) and I spoke at the Great American Teach In (Career Day) and I got to talk to 5 classes that totaled 300 7th graders and we had an amazing time. They learned about life as a youth pastor. They learned about why I am a youth pastor as God transformed the life of me and my family when I was at my lowest point. And they all left class knowing that God has a plan for their life, a purpose for their life and a promise on their life that He will never leave them or forsake them.

Public school!!! Public School!!! I ask you what is impossible with God... nothing!

I am so very grateful for the time that I got to spend at the school and I am eager to see what else God plans on doing through the teenagers of Haines City. Follow Him, dream big, and remember that nothing is impossible with God.

I am going to end with a video that I played to the kids as an ice breaker, and have since put it on youtube and godtube to advertise my website. Hope you enjoy it.

AAA

Well everyone it has been a long time since I have posted on my blog. I am very sorry for that, but I know that you are all in utter anticipation of this post.

I am currently sitting in 10th grade Bible class at NorthRidge Christian Academy and all the students are taking a quiz. It is mainly on the Beatitudes and it is so quiet that every stroke of my keyboard sounds incredibly loud. One kid keeps looking at me whenever I look up and it makes me think he is cheating... I hope he's not, but I will let you know at the end of this post if I caught him or not.

I have started another contest for all of my faithful bloggers. On our website, http://www.northridgehc.com/ I have made an obvious blunder. There is something that is obviously inaccurate on the site. You do not have to be an attender of NorthRidge to figure it out. Whoever is first to email me with the "mistake" I made will be enshrined into the James' Blog Hall of Fame in my next post... good luck and God speed.

I will let you know that the kid was not cheating. Judging by the answers on his quiz though, he probably should have :) Well I have looked at some of my old postings and they are really lacking if they do not have a picture on them, so here is a pic...

This picture has absolutely nothing to do with anything that I am writing about, I just think it's really funny.

So onto the serious portion. (By the way I got constructive criticism from one of my coworkers that my posts are too long so I am attempting to make it shorter.

I attended the annual Youth for Christ banquet last night (with Sharon and Seaton Hodges) and I learned a few things that I want to share with you. The Polk County branch of Youth for Christ is really big on reaching the less privileged.

They brought up a few students that were either from a detention center, a halfway house or just a neighborhood meeting for underprivileged. These students gave testimonies as to what God is doing in their lives. It is very amazing to hear stories of transformation and I am looking forward to partnering with Youth for Christ to see what amazing things God will do.

To keep this shorter than usual I must skip to my main point. One of the speakers got up to give a report of the past year. He gave us friendly reminder that when you see a sticker on someone's car that says AAA to remember to pray for them. To pray specifically for the Abused, the Abandoned and the Arrested. These are the people that Youth for Christ tries to reach and these are people that Jesus would have reached if He were here right now too.

So remember when you see the AAA stickers on the back of the car to pray for the Abused, the Abandoned, and the Arrested.

Truth

Hello my friends out there in blogville. I know that most of you are going through withdrawals because I have not posted in two weeks. I think that now everyone will understand how much really appreciate this blog. The old saying is that absence makes the heart grow fonder so now I am sure that you all are extra fond of this blog.

Actually I just wasn't inspired with anything last week to bring to you and I know that my blog readers expect nothing less than excellence and so I took a week off to prepare again for excellence.

I have a couple of updates for you. First of all, most of you will remember that about 4 0r 5 weeks ago I submitted a post that had my fellow staff member and my good friend (and my wife's boss :)) Mr. Bartlett's picture and I put it on there just to poke some fun at my pal. In case you don't remember here is what the picture looked like:

For some reason Bartlett didn't take to well to this picture, and he must not have liked it posted on the World Wide Web for all of my faithful fans out there to read. So Bartlett did something that deserves my respect... he sent me another picture. Here it is:

I made it a little bit smaller, because well I need to guard my friend against getting an ego. In other words I made his head smaller to keep him from getting big headed. :) But I will be honest with you... I like the first pic better. It makes me giggle. So that is this weeks survey question... which Bartlett do you like better: Big Headed or Small Headed.

Which brings me to my next point. I got some of you to fall for the oldest trick in the Christian joke book. Last week's survey asked how many of each kind of animal did Moses take on the ark. 4 people said 2, 1 person said 4, and 3 people said zero... and the answer is ZERO! Because Moses didn't take any animals on the ark, it was Noah so congratulations you three and for the other five... better luck next time... and for the other 199 people that viewed my blog since the survey was posted... answer the stinking questions!

Okay, one more order of business, and I know it is what you have all been waiting for... my Derrick Brooks picture. Without any further ado here it is:

Can you tell how incredibly nervous I was? I cannot believe that I was that close to the greatest football player in Buccaneer history! It was quite a night! In the picture with me is (from left to right, top to bottom) Doc Murphy, foot doctor and chaplain for the Haines City High football team; his wife, chaplain for the cheerleaders; my wife, the most beautiful woman God ever created; me; Coach Sam Wyche; and Mr. Derrick Brooks.

Now onto the meat of this post. I have been teaching the students at NRC the past few weeks something that I think I want to share with all of you, my faithful blog readers. I have been teaching a series called Lessons From the Master. The premise of the message is to sum up all of Jesus' teachings into four easy to remember lessons. I have been coming from the angle of if Jesus were physically standing in front of you and could only tell you four things what would they be? Of course, this is only speculation, but after much prayer and preparation I was ready to teach this series and would feel ready to give an account for my teachings.

So the first week was pretty simple it was to Love God. And we talked about loving God as your Abba Father. In other words to love Him as your daddy who can protect you from life's hurts. The second week we learned to Love Others and we looked a little more deeply at what love really is. We talked about the three different Greek words for love; Eros- physical love, Phileo- brotherly love and Agape- unconditional love. And when the Bible says to love your neighbor as yourself it means to love EVERYONE UNCONDITIONALLY! Wow! That is tough.

But last night's message was the most difficult for me because it is So Hard. Last night's message was to Love Truth. We looked very closely at the world's truth and at God's truth. The world believes that right and wrong is based on how you feel and the circumstances you are in and God's truth is absolute.

Let me give you an example that will rock your world. Imagine a woman is living on the streets with her daughter and neither one of them has eaten in three days. The mother decides to steal an apple to feed her daughter... is it still wrong to steal?

The answer is yes and will always be yes. Just because the truth is difficult doesn't make it any less true. Stealing is wrong always. That woman's circumstances are difficult and the world would say that in that situation it is perfectly okay to steal, but the Bible says that it is wrong to steal. Period.

I was trying to get these students to understand that all of their outside influences are telling them that truth can change and to do whatever is good for you, but the Bible says that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life and that is never changing.

My goal in posting this, the same as teaching it last night, is not to condemn anyone. I told you up front that this was very hard. My goal is to get you to think about where you get your concept of truth. Do you get it from the outside world or do you get it from the Word of God?

Christ Follower

Hello everybody, hope you have had a good week.

It has been a bit of a disappointing week in blogville. We have had good numbers, and for some reason we had excellent weekend numbers last weekend, but we also have had some disappointments. First of all, I have not yet heard from Jimmy Blewett's people, but I am holding out hope that someone in New Jersey will read my blog and the word of mouth will spread, and I can meet my long lost race car driver relative. Second disappointment in blogville this week is that our 500th reader did not email me. I imagine it took place on Saturday and I am guessing it was as a result of someone catching on through http://www.youthpastor.com/ or some other site that links me over and so the person probably has no idea who I am, but I still want to know if you were the 500th reader PLEEEEEASE let me know, I want to congratulate you.

Now moving from disappointment to utter bliss, outside of blogville in a place I like to call The Real World I had one of the greatest nights of my life this week. On Monday I was invited to sit at the VIP table at the annual fall banquet for FCA. This was initially a huge thrill for me! Not only have I never been a VIP before and not only did I know that FCA has a reputation of serving great steaks at their banquets, but I was excited because the key note speaker was Sam Wyche.

This is a picture of him back in the day coaching the Bucs and talking to our quarterback Craig Erickson. I am so glad we don't have those uniforms anymore and I am so glad we have a better QB. In school they used to say of the Bucs: Be Understanding Craig Stinks B.U.C.S.

Anyhow, I was excited to meet him, I knew that he used to go to the church that I got saved at, FBC Tampa and I also knew that he drafted Derrick Brooks so I was very excited.

Well, Monday afternoon rolled around and I realized that I didn't know what time it started and how to get to where it was at, so I opened back up the email that I originally got from my good friend Carlos. I didn't originally realize that the email had an attachment, and when I opened it up I saw the flyer for the banquet, and yes Sam Wyche was to be there... BUT SO WAS DERRICK BROOKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For those of you that don't understand what this means to me, Derrick Brooks has been my favorite player since he was drafted in 95. I could not have met anyone in the NFL that would have got me more excited than him. Not only is he a great player (10 pro bowls, 2006 pro bowl mvp, 2002 Defensive player of the Year) but he is also a great Christian man. And when I got saved in 96 the whole Christian thing was knew to me, so reading articles and listening to interviews from Derrick and Tony Dungy and Danny Wuerfful did a great deal in showing me that being a Christian doesn't mean you have to be stuffed into a "No Fun Box" and that you can do what you love and be a Christian influence.

So we got to the banquet and we immediately went into the VIP room and I was standing 5 feet away from Derrick and was awestruck. Coach Wyche was next to him and was getting no attention so he walked up to us and started talking to Heather and me. Ordinarily that would have been the highlight of my night but DB was standing next to me.

Charlie Warren (great man!) announced that we were to get with our table and take pictures with the coach and 55. So we did! They were sitting down and we stood behind them and I could have talked to Derrick Brooks right then, and... I froze! I couldn't get a word out. Luckily I have the best wife in the world and she leaned over and started talking to him on my behalf. She told him that she had to memorize all of his vital stats before we got married (which was true) and I chimed in with "It was part of the wedding vows." Then we took the picture and I managed to get out, "It was great meeting you."

I was so excited, but it wasn't over. Something great happened. Half of our table showed up late. So we had to take the picture again. This time I wasn't going to freeze up, I got a sharpie and asked him to sign my jersey... and he did. I have never been so excited in my life (except for on my wedding day), and the steak was great and Derrick gave a great speech and the coach was awesome as well. I hope to have that picture of us with the greatest player ever to post on my blog next week.

So that was my exciting night and I want to transition into something else. If you haven't noticed I have a added a few features on the page. There is a section at the bottom that will give you news on Christianity, Bucs, and Youth so you can utilize that and there are also a couple of videos attached to my page.

I urge you to watch these videos this week after you get done reading my blog because they post great points. The main point they are trying to convey is that there is no special way that a Christian is supposed to look. In other words, just because you have on your church suit with your offering envelope sticking out it doesn't make you any more or less of a Christian than the guy in ratty jeans and a t-shirt.

This is something that I learned from the likes of Derrick Brooks. When I got saved I had this thought of what a Christian should look like and he definitely didn't fit that mold. Coach Dungy says that he is a Christian that happens to coach football but he is a Christian first and foremost.

That word unfortunately has taken a huge hit in recent years and it almost has a negative connotation to it now. I love the phrase Christ follower because it really simplifies things. Jesus never wore suits. Jesus never stayed away from lost people because they weren't like him. Jesus never was unaccepting of anyone. Jesus was a man of love and compassion. I would love to think that one day when I have breathed my final breathe that it would be said of me very simply, "He was a Christ follower." It doesn't matter that I am a Pastor, that doesn't make me any more or less of Christian. All that matters is that I, like so many others in this world, am doing my best to live like Jesus lived, not like people have told me to live.

To live is Christ, to die is gain!