What would happen if you put God first in your love life?

Acts 26:8 Why should it be thought incredible by you that God raises the dead?

I believe that the mega, counter-cultural paradigm shift that is needed in our day, when it comes to time, is buffer. Margin. White space. Room to breathe. Selah. Sabbath.

Our world is frantic, in a constant hurry, always moving, always churning. And if we don’t choose to make a change and tune in God’s frequencies of peace, stillness and rest–we are not going to experience His best for our life. If we fail to give things room to breathe, whether in our budgets, our schedules or our relationships the only possible result is stress. And this is only going to become more and more important as technology, and progress continue to morph and speed up life, connectivity and the standard of “normal” in our culture.

I am indebted to the writings of Dr. Richard Swenson, whose work on this subject from a Christian perspective are the best I have read (by far!) His books: The Overload Syndrome, In Search of Balance, and Margin are all fantastic and helped me a ton in preparing this message. In the past, these books have opened my eyes to the lack of margin in my own life in different areas and has given Jennie and I many things to think through, repent from and shake up.

As we head into a new year I hope and pray this will inspire you to make the most of whatever time God gives you, for His glory and your fullest joy. After all, “Only one life and it will soon be past…Only what’s done for Christ will last! It won’t be easy, but you must pry some bandwidth from the mouth of some good things if you are going to have enough to give to the best things. There is only so much time to go around.

The discontent that we are seeking to foster is one that springs from a distaste over the progress we have made in our Christian lives compared to our vast and unlimited potential in Christ. It’s realizing how far we have to go, (the finish line is becoming just like Christ) how much we have been given (All things pertaining to life and godliness 2 Peter 1:3) and how little time we have. (Life is a vapor) And then letting that divine dissatisfaction fuel our forward motion.

Charles Spurgeon, the prince of preachers, put it this way, Self satisfaction rings the death-knell of progress. There must be a deep-seated discontent with present attainments, or there will never be a striving after the things which are yet beyond.

Contentment is the enemy of growth.

I hope and pray that you will join us on our journey this winter, even if you live in a warm climate, as together we seek to go further up and further in!

I also hope that as you watch this teaching in other places you will join with fresh life in this season of; praying for revival and in taking radical steps to order our lives in such a way as to make a a work of revival possible.

The Bible says that God’s eyes run to and fro on the earth looking to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose hearts are loyal to Him. (2 Chronicles 16:9) God is going to move in power through somebody, He will find those whose hearts are ready to be ignited into flame and He will use them to shake the very gates of hell–why not you, why not now?

Remember–only you can prevent yourself from being on fire!

Though we have heard from many wonderful guest speakers, and it is wonderful to hear from fresh voices and outside perspectives, there is something to be said for maintaining the energy and momentum by not putting a series on hold. In order to do that (until science nails the whole cloning thing) for the past few years we have been using video teachings that I record prior to leaving town.

The hardest part about this, surprisingly, isn’t teaching to an empty room, it’s having to prepare three messages in a week instead of two, with the additional pressure of preparing for the trip. For some reason preaching with no audience isn’t really that different from a normal Sunday, I just think and pray for those who will be listening just like I am also thinking of the web/radio audience that I can’t see every other week.

A definite benefit is that the media team has time to post-produce the video, dialing it in. I especially love the unique Nehemiah themed lower thirds that the team generated for this particular message.

Here is the most recent “virtual levi” (as my staff affectionately refers to this teaching style) rock this city teaching from this past weekend. In it, Sanballat and co. try to assassinate Nehemiah as the wall nears completion.

If you are on a mobile device you can watch the movie on vimeo with this link: http://vimeo.com/m/#/12498843