This weekend, we are privileged to have Dr. Johnny Hunt be with us to speak to our men (and some men from all over Georgia, as well as several churches from Florida as well).  He is the senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Woodstock, Georgia

He’s spending all night tonight and tomorrow morning talking about the three main struggles men face: money, sex, and pride, and he spent tonight talking about sex and lust.

Anyway, I thought that some of you ladies might want a little insight into what Pastor Johnny shared with your husbands, so here are some of the takeaways I wrote down from this evening.

• “Lust is when I must have something at once.”
• “Have sex with your own wife!”
• “Be intoxicated with your wife.”
• “All of us have the potential to be seduced.”
• “We cannot allow anything to serve as a substitute for what God expects us to find in our wives.”
• “Can you honestly say that your best friend is your wife?”
• “God created sex for our enjoyment.”
• “Providing for you wife doesn’t mean you just give your wife a place to stay!”
• “You can be totally forgiven and still suffer from the consequences of your sin.”
• “What will you be robbed of if you give into sexual temptation?”

I played a lot of sports as a kid and one phrase that I constantly remember hearing my different coaches say was, “Take one for the team.”

I especially remember this phrase being thrown around during baseball season. My coaches constantly encouraged me and my fellow teammates to “take one for the the team!”

Sometimes it meant staying in front of a hard grounder on defense. Sometimes it meant bunting when you wanted to swing for the fence. Sometimes it meant getting hit by a pitch when you wanted to get out of the way. Regardless, when all my years of baseball were said and done, I understood the concept of taking one for the team. I understood that baseball is a team sport and when an individual puts his wants and desires ahead of the team’s, then that hurts the team.

But while I understood the concept then, and understand it even better now that I’m older, I’m surprised to see so many people in the world today who don’t seem able to grasp this concept.

Let me apply it as simply as I can and then I’ll be done. Those of us who are active in local churches have to make sure that we take one for the team. We have to make sure that our plans and our agendas and the programs we love and the Bible studies we want to do, don’t get in the way of what God wants to do in our churches. We may even have to do something we don’t want to do for the sake of the rest of the team. I never wanted to get hit by a pitch or take a grounder to the chin, but I did both on multiple occasions because I loved my team and I wanted to win.

Anyway, don’t talk about your coach. Don’t bad mouth your teammates. Just take one for the team.

I might get one of these sweaters.

Actually, there is no way I would ever wear something like this!  Would you? 

I’ve always wondered why they didn’t start daylight savings time on Friday night. It seems like it would mess up fewer people if everyone changed their clocks earlier in the weekend, but what do I know!

Anyway, don’t forget to set your clocks ahead one hour this Saturday night!

Sometimes, the things I see other Christians do makes me cringe.

I’m not against “Christian” apparel, but if you have a “Tommy Hellfighter” shirt, please throw it away. It doesn’t attract people to Jesus. If anything, it makes them think Christians are weird.

I’m not trying to attack other Christians, so please don’t misunderstand. I just think we ought to be a little less cheesy as we try to reach men and women who are far from God.

So, I’ve got an idea:

Act like a Christian. Do a simple act of service for someone today. Meet a need. Work hard at your place of employment. Love your wife and be faithful to her.

Don’t worry about putting the perfect Christian bumper sticker on your car or wearing the latest Christian accessory (cross necklace, WWJD bracelet, etc…). God doesn’t care if you have a Christian fish on your car or not (and for some of you, with the way you drive, it would be best if you take it off!)

So, instead, just live right.  And of course, as we always say around here: Love God, love people, and love the world on the journey to life change!

This past Thursday I was able to attend an event called Catalyst One Day. It was a one day conference built specifically around leadership. Andy Stanley, the lead pastor of North Point Community Church, and Craig Groeschel, the lead pastor of Life Church, led the main sessions, and they absolutely knocked it out of the park every single time they spoke.

Anyway, I left with a couple of thoughts I couldn’t get out of my head. And I just thought it would be selfish of me to keep these thoughts to myself, so here are some of the best takeaways I received:

Andy Stanley- Part 1:

• “If you want to create momentum, chances are it will require something new.”
• “Established churches will always be tempted to tweak the old rather than launch the new.”
• “If you are not evaluating the areas where you are experiencing momentum, the clock on your success is ticking down.”

Andy Stanley- Part 2:

• “As culture changes, many of the questions remain the same, but the answers don’t.”
• “If we institutionalize an answer, the day will come when it is no longer an answer.”
• “What have we fallen in love with that’s really not as effective as it used to be?”

Craig Groeschel- Part 1:

• “What got you here, won’t get you there.”
• “We can reach more by doing less”
• “We can’t allow someone to hold back the mission of the church because we’re afraid we might hurt their feelings.”
• “Your church can grow when people leave. In fact, some people need to leave.”

Craig Groeschel- Part 2:

• “I will do today what I can do, to enable me to do tomorrow what I can’t do today.:
• “Create artificial deadlines” (I wish I could explain this more now, but it’s worthy of its own blog post)
• “Delegating responsibilities creates followers. Delegating authority creates leaders.”