Here is what I want to encourage you to do each day as we get closer to our new series. Open up the Bible and read through Philippians 2:1-11. Read it every day and then pray these two specific things:

Jesus, let me see the areas I fall short in serving my spouse.

Jesus, let me see my spouse through your eyes.

See you Sunday for Man VS. Wife at 9:30am, 11:00am or 1:00pm!!!

Some things you need to know:

1. This Wednesday night we will have a Night of Worship and communion. Full kids ministry will be happening for your kiddos. See you there at 6:30pm. I’ll be sharing some BIG stuff that God has put on my heart.
2. Superbowl Sunday…that is this coming Sunday, Feb. 5th, come to church completely DECKED OUT in your favorite football fan gear. Put on a jersey and paint your face. Any kids team, high school team, college team or pro team is allowed…just no Texas Tech stuff (kidding…sort of!)
3. Starting February 12th, we will be changing to new service times. The new times will be 9:30am, 11:00am and 1:00pm.
4. I mean number two that you just read. Seriously. See the guys below? Come to church dressed like them (with a shirt on!) We will be giving a Revolution Church superbowl party pack away to the best dressed fan in each service.

I began this process in 6th grade. The picture shown is of the first goal list I ever wrote out in 6th grade. Its grown a lot and developed a lot, but essentially, its the same thing. Each new year brings a sense of a fresh start.

Here are my 2012 goals. These are the ones I feel comfortable sharing about. I seem to have a lot of more “private” goals this year than ever before:

1. Beat my best half marathon time ever
2. Bike 150 miles in a race
3. Spend less money on junk food (starbucks, lunches, etc) and bring healthy lunches to the office. This will also help me accomplish more in each work day because lunch won’t take so long.
4. Complete a 30 day Daniel Fast. Yikes.
5. Read 15 books. I have a partial list. Any suggestions?
6. Lead Revolution Church to love God and love people like never before. Make Revolution the place that LOVES GOD, LOVES PEOPLE and PROVES IT!
7. Keep God’s bigness in my heart and expand our reach. Check out this message.
8. Add a kiddo to our family and not die from the loss of sleep (baby white is due in July!)
9. Pay cash for said baby.
10. Date my wife and love her like Ephesians 5 commands husbands to do.
11. Speak LIFE into every relationship and every interaction.
12. Serve people like never before.
13. Work HARD and rest HARD.
14. Push. The. Envelope.
15. Look further than 2012. Set goals for 10 years, 20 years and beyond.

I think goals are important for everyone. I just refuse to drift through life. Most people spend more time planning a 3 day summer vacation than they do planning their life out.

I think that’s a tragedy.

These are not resolutions. Resolutions stink. These are GOALS. These are not all of my 2011 goals, I am not including all of the details, and they are not in any order. I did pretty good knocking out most of my 2010 goals. Here is my 2011 goal list scorecard, followed by my comments in red as to how I did. These are just the goals I felt comfortable sharing about:

Take Amber out every week! This is a goal EVERY week! Took her out almost every week. We love switching off every other week with our friends and sneaking in a mini lunch date every other week while Couper is in school!

Spend good, quality time with Couper every day. Some days it might be 10 minutes; others it could be 10 hours. I refuse to miss my son grow up. I spent a lot of time building stuff in the garage with my little Pard. Loved it!

Be more focused and work harder than I ever have in my life but also REST harder than I ever have! We worked HARD in 2011. I mean HARD. But we rested HARD too. I took 10 days off in the summer to celebrate our 10 year wedding anniversary. I took a week off to go to Montana. I had lots of guest speakers come in. It was a great year of hard work and hard rest!

Memorize an entire chapter of the Bible and mucho other Scripture. I memorized a lot of Scripture this year, but not an entire chapter of the Bible.

Read 20 books. I never reach my reading goals!

Continue to pray a LOT. My knees are sore.

Visit an orphanage in Haiti that I’d like to see Revolution adopt or a place in Belize that I am interested in. I want to begin the process of having a regular place for us to minister and pour in to. We are going global baby! I did not get to do this, but Amber did! And, we took our first step towards this by providing Christmas for over 300 orphans in 5 different orphanages in Haiti through C3 Global.

Take my wife on a crazy cool trip to celebrate our 10 year wedding anniversary! EPIC! Check! We hit Miami and the Keys for 10 days.

Send more personal, handwritten notes to people. Check. My handwriting has gotten better!

Lead our church to an average weekly attendance of 1,000 people…this goal has a HUGE sub-list of smaller goals. We did not average 1,000 people, but we saw TONS of people accept Christ and get baptized and the church doubled in size.

Lead our church to be financially strong. I feel like we are financially strong, but this goal is ALWAYS being worked!

Throw an OFF the HOOK one year Birthday party for Revolution! We had a blast at our one year birthday…balloons galore!

Knock out some more marathons and my first triathalon or bike race. Did lots of races, but no triathalons or biking.

Wakeboard more and / or save up to buy a dirtbike. I want to learn to JUMP like PASTRANA. I wakeboarded more, but did not save a penny for a dirtbike. I did get a cool X-games hat…

Get in the gym for weight training 3 days a week (only did 2 days a week in 2010). Check.

3 words: DAILY. DANCE. PARTY. Ashamed and happy to say, check!

Convince a total stranger to make a goal list of their own. Check. Fun. Happened at Starbucks.

Hang my hammock in the backyard and chill for once in my life. Well, I never hung up the hammock, so…

Start some new family traditions. Check.

Buy an old rusted pickup for Couper and I to work on and drive on man day. Fail. We gave more money than we ever thought we could to Revolution this year, especially for Illuminate, that the pickup went to the backburner. And we don’t regret it one bit.

Here is what I came up with: goals are nothing more than words. And a LOT of people set goals. I mean, anyone can SET a goal.

Accomplished goals, however, are a process…a set of steps. When I decide to accomplish something this is how I attack it. Maybe it will help you:

SET A GOAL: Establish a big hairy audacious goal.

LEARN: Be humble. Find people who have accomplished the same or similar goals and be willing to learn from them. Know-it-alls don’t accomplish anything. You need to learn all that you can about your goal to succeed.

PLAN: Plan out all incremental steps that it will take for you to accomplish your BHAG.

UNDERSTAND: Know what you are getting in to. Research it. Heed the warnings from the experts, but don’t dwell on negative info.

VISUALIZE: Hammer your plan into your brain repeatedly. You should know it like the back of your hand.

SACRIFICE: There aren’t any goals in life that don’t require you to make a sacrifice. Decide if you are willing to sacrifice to accomplish your goal. If you’re not, then don’t even start.

RALLY: Get some troops around you that will encourage you. Keep away from negative people.

PARTY: When you reach your goal, celebrate!

If you have not heard about The Gift yet, you can click here to read full details and even download a PDF with additional information. Many people have already given to this initiative. I LOVE how God is BLOWING IT UP at REVOLUTION CHURCH!

Here on the blog, I wanted to share my heart with you.

The Gift isn’t about warm fuzzy feelings. Its not about our church having nicer things or extra cash. Its not about more worship space or even planting new churches.

The Gift is all about JESUS. Its about our mission to Love God, Love People and Start a Spiritual Revolution in one life at a time all over the world!

At Revolution Church we are passionate about the Gospel, and while there are lots of great causes (especially at Christmas time), we make no bones about our belief that the local church is of the utmost importance. The local church is where spiritual revolutions start and eternities are changed. Its the only place you can make an investment that will last forever.

So why would we have a special offering and call it The Gift? Why would we set a goal of $30,000 and end 2011 with a bang of generosity?

Because it revolutionizes our lives and the lives of people around us when we jump out in faith and go for it!

Our hearts and money are connected. Jesus said that whatever we choose to treasure will also be where our heart is. Read Matthew 6:21. Give big to The Gift this Sunday, Revolution Church.

In preparation, I challenge you to read through 2 Corinthians 9 this week.
Pray and Ask God, “What would you have me give this Sunday?”

And then GO FOR IT. And remember: When God speaks, He always challenges you because He knows who you really are and that you are better than you think you are.

When you do this, God will grow your faith. Your vision gets stretched and you grow spiritually!

If you won’t be around this Sunday don’t worry. You can give online now by clicking here or you can give to The Gift anytime before December 31st at midnight.

Don’t forget to bring your envelope for The Gift this Sunday, December 18th (we will have plenty extra if you do) and I’ll see ya then!

Listen: We absolutely, unapologetically ARE in a serious, nasty competition.

…but not with other churches.

Sometimes people make the assumption that the reason why Revolution Church is so aggressive with advertising, music, creativity, etc is because we are trying to compete against other churches to get church people to come to ours.

Let me set the record straight.  We are not competing against any other church. In fact, I wish people that attend another church would just stay committed at their own church and never walk into the doors of Revolution. Why would I want to offer food to those who are already being fed?

Revolution Church exists to reach people who are far from God. Statistics show us that within a ten mile radius of our new location, over 65,000 people do not attend a church.

Everything we do is to be more interesting than hollywood, more loving than the bar, more exciting than the strip club and more appealing than getting high on Saturday night.

Our competition is hell itself.  When people in our area find more value in the junk that the world has to offer than they do in Christ –HELL WINS.

If we can get people to attend the worship experience and show them the love, the weight, the value of Jesus and how his supernatural power can change their life –GOD WINS!

At Revolution, its not about our church vs. any other church. Its Revolution Church vs. HELL. That’s why we do anything we can to win the fight one weekend at a time.

Revolution, this Sunday we are kicking off a new series called Scarecrow. Bring a friend and I’ll see you at 8:30, 10:00 or 11:30am. BE A BRINGER!!!

Each day this week on the blog, you will find great financial tools, videos, etc to help you kick start the changes that you want to make when it comes to your money.

Today: BABY STEPS.

An emergency fund is for those unexpected events in life that you can’t plan for: the loss of a job, an unexpected pregnancy, a faulty car transmission, and the list goes on and on. It’s not a matter of if these events will happen; it’s simply a matter of when they will happen.

STEP TWO: Pay off all debt using the Debt Snowball System

This is how my family paid off ALL of our debt. List your debts, excluding the house, in order. The smallest balance should be your number one priority. Don’t worry about interest rates. For a great online debt snowball tool click here. You need some quick wins in order to stay pumped up about getting out of debt! This system provides those wins along the way.

STEP THREE: Save 3 to 6 months of expenses in savings

Once you complete the first two baby steps, you will have built some serious momentum. But don’t start throwing all your “extra” money into investments quite yet. It’s time to build your full emergency fund. Ask yourself, “What would it take for me to live for three to six months if I lost my income?” Your answer to that question is how much you should save.

Use this money for emergencies only: incidents that would have a major impact on you and your family. Keep these savings in a money market account. Remember, this stash of money is not an investment; it is insurance you’re paying to yourself, a buffer between you and life.

This is a good start! Check back the rest of the week for more info on how to FLIP your FINANCES!

This week at Revolution, we talked about condemnation and what Romans 8:1 has to say about it. We talked about how if you are in Christ there is no condemnation RIGHT NOW. But the fact is many Christ followers still allow this powerful tool in the devil’s belt to creep into their life. You can listen to the sermon here or watch the video here.

We have to look for the BUMP, SET…SPIKE when it comes to condemnation. But how can you ever spike this twist on God’s healthy correction if you don’t even recognize it? God may CONFRONT you…because healthy confrontation builds you up and calls you to something higher and greater. But He DOES NOT condemn you or beat you down, if you are IN CHRIST.

That’s why I spent a large part of the sermon describing what condemnation looks like and sounds like…so that we can identify it when it creeps in and SPIKE IT. Here are those quick hits about condemnation:

• Condemnation is God’s correction without God’s kindness. Read Romans 2:4
• Condemnation is over-identification with what you’ve done and disassociation from who you really are in Christ.
• Condemnation loves comparison and competition. It loves to show you that you don’t measure up to super dad over there across the room. It loves to say, man you are a bad wife compared to that lady.
• Condemnation leads to arrested development.
• Condemnation can be a copout or a holding pattern because it keeps you locked-in to lowered expectations. A lot of Christians say “but I’m just a sinner saved by grace…” and that’s true, but it should never be a cop out from what God is calling you to!
• Condemnation likes to pull out footage from the home video archives. It loves to bring up your past and convince you that your past has also ruined your future.
• Condemnation is not something that you can just reduce in life. You have to ruthlessly eliminate it!
• Condemnation will say: “You’re not worthy of God’s love.” When it does, we have to agree, but then finish the idea like this:  “you’re dang right i’m not worthy! thanks for reminding me…that even though I’m not worthy, Jesus died on the cross for me anyway!”

I get fired up every time I walk OUT of our new worship center. It says “Love God. Love People. Start a Revolution.” right above the doors.

God and people are what we are all about. Read Matthew 22:37-40. Everything we do at Revolution Church is in service to people and helping them for God’s glory. We just believe in loving God and loving people.

And the net result of us doing those two things is ALWAYS lives changed. That is why we say “Start a Revolution!” because when we love God and love people, it seems like we just keep seeing spiritual revolutions happen in one life at a time.

Revolution, YOU ARE THE MOST AMAZING CHURCH I have ever been a part of! Trust me…I visit and talk with many churches and pastors all over the world…and very few are as REVOLUTIONARY as you are!!!

See ya Sunday! Get ready for our Grand Flippin’ Opening and bring a friend!

Here are a few pics…more coming tomorrow.

The church LAUNCHES this Sunday. We support these guys financially and with coaching, but more than anything I want us to support them and stand with them in prayer. Check out the info directly from Pastor Nic below.

Thanks!

Prayer Team Update
Thank you for being a part of the Timber Ridge Church Prayer Team! We believe GOD unleashes his power through our prayers! You are making a difference by partnering with us and praying for Timber Ridge Church & our leadership team. Below you will find a list of things you can pray for specifically, as well as things we’re giving God praise for. If you have a prayer request, we would love to pray for you. You can email your prayer requests to Pastor Nic at nic@timberridgechurch.com.

PRAISE GOD FOR:
LIFE-CHANGE: We had people commit their lives to Christ at both our August preview services this past month! We also held our first baptism celebration and 3 people were baptized. Your partnership & support is leading to changed lives here in Stephenville & Erath County!
SOLID PREVIEW SERVICES: We had two more solid preview services in August, on the 14th & 28th. Overall, these were great days that helped us continue to build on the momentum God has given us leading up to our Launch Sunday this weekend.
PARTNERS: As a brand new church, we are very dependent on outside support and partnerships. We have been blessed in August to have a group of 22 people from one of our partner churches, Common Ground Community Church in Bridge City, to come and serve one weekend here in Stephenville. They handed out hundreds of invites, canvassed neighborhoods with our team, and helped with one of our preview services! We are so grateful for the parntership and support of Common Ground & each one of our partner churches and families!
FAVOR: God has continued to show favor on us here in our community and we are so grateful to God and thankful for your continued prayers that Timber Ridge & our team might have God’s favor with the people of Stephenville & the surrounding area.

PRAY FOR:
OUR GRAND OPENING/LAUNCH SUNDAY: We have our official Launch Sunday/Grand Opening THIS SUNDAY, Sept. 11th! We are excited to see what God has in store & are looking forward to a great start this weekend. Please pray for us and for our Grand Opening. I want to ask you to specifically pray for the following things: 1)That lost people would commit their lives to Christ on Sunday, 2)Pray that people from the community who have been invited will show up, 3)Pray that the people who attend might connect with God and with our Timber Ridge people, 4)Pray that God would move in a MIGHTY way, 5)Pray that people from earlier preview services would attend again & strengthen their interest and connection to Timber Ridge Church.
COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS & FAVOR: Continue to ask God to give us favor and to open relational doors for The Burleson’s and the rest of our team here in this area. In Luke 2:52 the Bible says that Jesus grew in stature and favor with God and men. I want to encourage you to set the alarm on your phone or watch for 2:52 each day and at that time pray that our Timber Ridge pastors and team might have favor with God and man in this community.
VOLUNTEER GROWTH: We have had several people express interest in serving through Timber Ridge in the last month. Please pray that these people would take the step to commit to serving God with their gifts, talents, and abilities and that our volunteer base would grow.
SUPPORT: Continue to pray that God brings individuals and churches alongside Timber Ridge to help support the vision and mission He has called us to here in Stephenville & Erath County. If you and/or your church currently partner with us through prayer or financial support I want you to know that you are making a huge difference and that God is using YOU to change lives!
LOCATION: While we are very grateful for the space God has provided for us in The Conference Center at the Deluxe Inn, we are continuing to look for other future space for Timber Ridge to meet. Pray God gives us guidance and wisdom in this search and provides the perfect place for Timber Ridge.

LINKS OF INTEREST:
You can check out our website by clicking here.
You can give online to support the work of Timber Ridge Church by clicking here.
You can follow Timber Ridge Church on Facebook by clicking here.

Most people are paid to ensure that everything is in its place. Sure, there are random events called problems that pop up that we deal with; but most people try to extinguish these things as soon as possible.

I see my job as the opposite. My job is to create a ruckus, to insert the random, to yell ‘fire’ and to shake things up spiritually.

Its actually a little more “tame” than I am making it out to be when it comes to leading the entire church. I think the greatest pastors are good at dancing with chaos, not creating it necessarily (though sometimes they do).

When the random ruckus of life hits, pastors and leaders have to take it, sort through it, leverage it and then improvise to make something great out of it.

My life goal has nothing to do with everything being “alright.” I want to cause a ruckus and shake things up just enough that you experience a spiritual revolution and come out on the other side looking more like Jesus.

And as a leader, I want to dance with the chaos that life will bring. I want to mix up the Rubik’s Cubes of life!