Return on Investment, or ROI as it is often referred to, is a performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or compare the efficiency to a number of different investments. ROI tries to directly measure the amount of return on a particular investment, relative to the investment’s cost.

In January 2019, Aldersgate Church made an investment. We replaced the incandescent light fixtures and bulbs in the Worship Center with LED fixtures and bulbs. There are over 200 bulbs in the Worship Center and we were replacing on average a dozen bulbs a month at almost $14 per bulb. Not good management of resources, would you agree? So we paid the upfront cost of transitioning the from incandescent to LED.

The payoff? We have reduced our energy usage and are saving 25% on our electric costs each month! And we haven’t replaced one bulb. At this rate, the investment will pay for itself in about 2 years! That’s a pretty good return on investment, would you agree?

Where might you need to make an initial investment today? It might seem like a lot of time, money or energy. And it probably will be. But what might the payoff be?

What would the ROI be for:

• Starting an exercise routine
• Kicking off that new diet
• Putting down the old habit
• Investing in a new relationship or community group
• Opening the new book you bought
• Beginning a Bible study
• Starting to tithe for the very first time
• Finding a place to serve

 

Give generously and generous gifts will be given back to you, shaken down to make room for more. Abundant gifts will pour out upon you with such an overflowing measure that it will run over the top! Your measurement of generosity becomes the measurement of your return.

Luke 6:38 (The Passion Translation)

 

 

 

How do you fill in that blank? Where do you need hope? Is it for your marriage? Your kids? Are you trying to get pregnant? Are you trying to pass a test? Is it for your career? Do your finances need hope? Is it for your prodigal? Do you need healing? Your family in general? Do you need hope for the addiction you are fighting? There is hope for my _____________.

God has already given you the hope you need. Here’s what you need to do:

1. Find a Promise to Hang on To

I will never forget your promises…they are my only hope.

Psalm 119:45

Do you see the connection between hope and God’s promises? It’s God’s promises that bring us hope. For every place you are hoping, you need a promise from God. God never breaks His promises. So whatever He gives you he will come through on. Google it. By a Bible promise book. Get away and listen for God speak His promise to you. Do whatever you must, but find God’s promise to you! And hang on to it! Write it down. Memorize it. Journal about it. Share it with others.

2. Find a Story to Remember

Hope returns when I remember this: The Lord’s unfailing love and mercy has not stopped!

Lamentations 3:21-22

Now we see the connection between hope and memory. It’s stories of God’s goodness and faithfulness that bring us hope. So find that story of a place where God has been good to you. Recall to your mind a time when God came through for you. Reach back into the archives of your memory and retrieve a story of God’s faithfulness.

Claim that promise and remember that story and keep studying to ace that test. Keep trying to get pregnant. Keep working on your marriage. Keep parenting the best way you know how. Keep working as hard as you can for that promotion.  Keep waiting for your prodigal to come home. Keep fighting the addiction. Keep praying for healing. Keep claiming and remembering! There is hope for your _____________!

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing,

so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.

Romans 15:13

 

 

This is a statement I hear regularly from those who are wrestling with Christianity. And I often hear it from those who are trying to follow the Jesus lifestyle. I’m a preacher and I often have this feeling. If you have been afraid to start reading the Bible because you have trouble understanding it, or you are afraid you will not understand it, let me share some ideas that have been helpful to me.

Praise

It is impossible to understand the Word of God outside the presence of God. Praise escorts into the very presence of God.

Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise!

Gives thanks to him; bless his name!

Psalm 100:4

Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving…

Psalm 95:2

In the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13) we praise God with “hallowed be your name…” before we ask Him to “give us this day our daily bread.” Take time to give God thanks and praise before expecting Him to speak to you through His Word.

Pray

Ask God to meet you in Scripture. Pray that God would give you eyes to see and ears to hear what He is revealing to you.

…that God…may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation…

having the eyes of your heart enlightened…

Ephesians 1:17-19

Pray for wisdom (that comes fromyour mind) and revelation (that comes toyour mind). Sit and listen for God to enlighten the eyes of your heart.

Surrender

We must learn to read the Bible for what is there not what we want to be there. It is true that some parts of the Bible are difficult. But remember that the Bible was written for one main purpose: to help you know Jesus. And in knowing Jesus we can’t help but want to live like Jesus.

For the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword,

piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow,

and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

Hebrews 4:12

Meditate

The goal is not to just get through the Word but to get the Word through us. Meditating on God’s Word is not that hard. If you can worry, you can meditate! Imagine lying awake in bed at night with thoughts that keep racing through your mind. That’s meditating. Now take and do that with the wisdom and revelation God is giving. It’s just like reading a love note over and over and over. Write it down in your journal or on some note cards and reference it often.

This Book…shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditateon it day

and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it.

For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.

Joshua 1:8

 

 

 

 

Things are a little crazy here in the LBK! It’s beginning to look a lot like we are a basketball town. Who would have thought it here in the middle of football fanatic West Texas?  We are celebrating the Lubbock Christian University Lady Chaps winning the NCAA Division II National Championship. And, of course, the Texas Tech Red Raiders made the Final Four for the first time in program history. And hopefully they will be bringing home the NCAA Division I Men’s Championship. That would certainly be one shining moment!

Think about how life has changed in this basketball fevered city over the past few days. People are leaving work for celebrations taking place in the middle of the day and staying awake for homecomings in the wee hours of the morning. Lines to buy the newest celebratory gear stretch for what seem like miles. And Lubbock (or Lub-boch as it is typically referred to) seems to be a topic of national media attention – in a positive light. Imagine that!

And do you know what I think about all of this? I think we should be soaking it all up! We should be living it up! We should be relishing the moment!

I wonder how often we miss that one shining moment? It seems as though we are always looking to “get through” to that next thing and we miss what God has for us in the present moment. I’m guilty of often thinking the “main thing” is the next thing. It hardly ever is. The main thing is the hand that has been dealt for us in this moment. How much do we miss in preparing for, thinking about, planning around and faithfully doing the next thing and not simply living in this moment. God, in his grace and freedom, wants us to do the thing that is presently before us…like spending time with a friend, enjoying a good movie with our family, drinking a milkshake, playing golf, or whatever the moment is.

 

Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up

about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with

whatever hard things come up when the time comes.

Matthew 6:34 (The Message)

 

So, for the moment….let’s just Wreck ‘em!

 

P.S. I want it noted that I got the opportunity to pray at an event that Coach Beard was speaking at this summer and I prayed for the National Championship! Just saying…

 

 

 

 

 

From the very beginning God’s people were people of the Word.

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

Genesis 1:1

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

John 1:1

The shifty serpent coaxed God’s creation to question His word. But even then, God’s people held on to His new words promising not to abandon them but to work through his now-fallen people to crush this serpent and restore God’s creational intent. Thus God’s Word gave birth to God’s story.

As God’s story unfolded and grew, so did the words. And God’s people passed the story from generation to generation. God gave his people two handwritten tablets of His covenant to keep in a special place. Records started being kept. Those who could write begin to write down the words. Songs turned into songbooks. Stories evolved into storybooks. The people heard it, knew it, and lived by it. The people of God were a people of the Word.

But over time, successive generations began to lay the Word aside. They commenced to living their own narrative instead of God’s until eventually a decisive turning point caused the people to question the entire story. God allowed them to be conquered, their temple was burned, and they were exiled to live in a foreign country.

But as it turns out, this very catastrophe is what caused the people to rediscover the Word of God. When they were eventually allowed to return to their homeland, they rebuilt the temple and the wall around their great city. But they did something else. The leaders stood on a platform and read out loud from the Word once again. The people began to weep and express their remorse and the Word of God was rediscovered.

…he read from [the Book of the Law]…from early morning until midday, in the presence of the men and the women and those who could understand. And the ears of all the people were attentive to the Book of the  Law. And they bowed their heads and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground…and there was great rejoicing.

Nehemiah 8:3-18

This is precisely why we feel led to “Read Through the Bible” at Aldersgate Church. Beginning this Sunday, we will stand in our worship space and read the Word out loud – from Genesis to Revelation – over five uninterrupted days. May God help us rediscover His Word just as his people did in Nehemiah!

In last week’s blog, I confessed that most of my life I didn’t know what Ash Wednesday was all about. I thought it was a day to make amends for all the partying that happened the day before on Fat Tuesday. This week I’ll come clean about not knowing much about Lent either. If we weren’t talking about the stuff that accumulates in your belly button, all I knew was that it was a time you had to give up something really good and could only eat fish on Friday’s. I had no clue Lent was an important part of the liturgical church calendar.

I did not grow up in a church that followed a liturgical calendar. We celebrated Easter and Christmas, but terms like Advent and Lent were lost on me. Recently, however, I’ve come to appreciate not only what these days and terms mean, but the value of participating in them.

The church calendar is a yearly cycle that corresponds to the life of Jesus from His birth to His resurrection, and then to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. It involves major holy days (Christmas, Easter, Pentecost) and seasons (Advent, Lent, Holy Week), and includes a few other significant days (Epiphany, Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, and Trinity Sunday) within these seasons.

The liturgical year begins with Advent,which starts four weeks prior to Christmas. Advent is a season of expectation. As the saints of old awaited the coming of a Redeemer, we, like them, await Jesus’s return. Following Advent is the season of Christmas. According to tradition, Christmas is a 12 day celebration that begins December 25th and ends January 5th (hence the song, “Twelve Days of Christmas”). Punctuating the Christmas season is Epiphany. On this day, the church traditionally remembers the coming of the Wise Men to worship Jesus. Ash Wednesdayis a day on the church calendar that marks the beginning of the season of Lent. Lent, which begins 46 days (40 weekdays plus 6 Sundays) before Easter is a season of fasting and preparation. It is intended to mimic the 40 days that Jesus spent in the wilderness being tested. The last seven days of Lent are called Holy Week, which recall the last days of Jesus on Earth before His crucifixion. During these six days we remember Jesus’s death for us and its significance on Good Friday. Holy Week culminates with Easterwhen we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Fifty days after Easter is Pentecost, a day in which the church recounts the outpouring of the Holy Spirit recorded in Acts 2.

So, we are currently in the season of Lent. It’s a time we focus on our relationship with God often choosing to deny ourselves of something that interferes with that relationship and/or to get beyond ourselves and give to others. However you are observing Lent I pray it is a meaningful season for you

For the first half of my life, I literally had no clue about Ash Wednesday. I had no exposure to it. All I knew about the day is that I would randomly see people with a cross of ashes marked on their forehead. Honestly, I thought Ash Wednesday was something Catholics did to repent of all the partying they did the day before on Fat Tuesday. It was a means of cheap grace, a way to make amends and be absolved for the previous day’s deliberate debauchery.

I gradually discerned that those caricatures weren’t all that accurate. It has only been in the past few years, however, that I’ve gained a clearer understanding and appreciation for Ash Wednesday. In fact, it has become a day that I’ve embraced and invite you to participate in.

Ash Wednesday is a day on the church calendar that marks the beginning of the season of Lent (in part two of this blog, which I will post next week, I will explain Lent for those of you, like me, who grew up with no understanding of it either.) Ash Wednesday is a day set aside by Christians to remind us of our sinfulness –how we fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). Sounds exciting, huh?

The truth is we need Ash Wednesday. We need to set aside time to look our inadequacy square in the eyes.  The bad news of our sinfulness prepares us to receive the good news of forgiveness found in Jesus Christ. The despair of death drives us to look toward Easter, when our Lord conquered the grave.

So today is Ash Wednesday, and Aldersgate, like many others, is hosting an Ash Wednesday service. We will gather from 7:00-8:00 p.m. to spend time reflecting on those places we fall short and ask God to have mercy. For those who wish to participate, we will impose ashes, smearing a small cross on foreheads as a physical, felt, and visible mark of repentance. And we will receive communion – symbols of bread and juice representing Jesus’ body and blood – that remind us of our forgiveness.

I realize that for some of you, this will be a new practice. It might seem strange or cause you to feel uncomfortable. You’ll be glad to know participating in Ash Wednesday is not a biblical requirement. You are no more or less Christian or holy if you take part or not. But I urge you to prayerfully consider coming or finding a place of worship that practices Ash Wednesday. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

 

 

 

As promised after this last week’s message, here is a guaranteed plan for getting out of debt.

1. List all your debts.

List all of your debts and arrange them in order of how quickly you can pay each one off from fastest to slowest. For example, if you have a medical bill in the amount of $1000 with no interest and a minimum monthly payment of $100 and a credit card with a balance of $3000 with interest rate of 20% and a minimum monthly payment of $100, you can eliminate the medical bill more quickly than you can the credit card. Yes, this goes against the wisdom of those like Dave Ramsey who advise to take the debt with the highest interest and pay it off first. Their advice is that the interest rate is rapidly increasing your debt and you should pay those off first. However, I believe it is more of a cash flow problem. You need to free up cash flow as soon as possible to eliminate debt so pay off the debt that you can eliminate the quickest.

2. Eliminate the debt you can pay off the quickest.

Pay the minimum monthly payment on all your debt except for the one you can eliminate the quickest. Divert any extra cash flow you can to pay that debt off as quickly as possible. Look into ways to make extra money. List things for sell online. You don’t really need your kitchen table! Sell it. You can replace it when you are debt free and can pay cash for it! Think of any way you can earn some extra cash to accelerate your first debt payoff. And make sure you are putting the extra cash onto your debt payment not going out to eat on it.

3. Snowball your debt payment.

Once you eliminate the first debt, celebrate! And then take the payment you were making on the debt you just eliminated and add it to the next debt. Continue to make the minimum monthly payment on all of your other debts. For example, let’s say you just eliminated a $1000 medical bill and were paying $150/month on the medical bill. Your next debt is a credit card with a minimum monthly payment of $100. You are now paying $250 a month on the credit card payment. You have snowballed your debt payoff. And you do that until you eliminate all of the debt you are hoping to eliminate.

4. Do not accumulate any new debt.

Most importantly…do not continue to accumulate debt while you are eliminating debt. That’s like digging a hole and someone throwing the dirt you are shoveling out back into the hole. Make a commitment to live below your means and not take on any new debt.

 

This plan is 100% guaranteed. I know, because I did it. And you can too!

Do you enjoy playing board games? Or how about card games? Our family has always enjoyed clearing the table and putting a good game in front of us. It’s been a go to of ours from the beginning. I remember the first board game we ever played with the boys when they were little but old enough to begin playing – Chutes and Ladders. That’s a terrible game! I used to get so upset when my five year old would win the game. I’m a competitive person and there is no rhyme or reason with Chutes and Ladders. It’s all about the luck of the spin. What kind of game is that?

So, we gradually made it to games where there is more skill and strategy involved. Games like Sorry, Battleship, and Monopoly. And card games like Skip-Bo, Phase 10, and Uno. I mean, even Go Fish is more competitive than Chutes and Ladders! I used to love winning at Monopoly by buying up all the properties, placing hotels on them, and smirking when the boys landed on them. And who doesn’t love being able to yell out, “Uno!” and lay down that last remaining card.

When you think about it, there are really two types of games. There are those, like Monopoly, where the one who finishes with the most is the winner. And then there are those, like Uno, where the one who finishes with an empty hand, is the winner. Life is a lot like that too. Not the game of Life, but real life.

We tend to live life more like a game of Monopoly. It’s all about accumulating as much as we can. But the truth is, real life is more like a game of Uno. It’s not the one who finishes with the most toys wins but rather the one who finishes with an empty hand is the true victor. The one who dies with the most toys is, well, still dead. And you can’t take all of those toys with you!

The One I want to follow said it this way, “Life is not defined by what you have, even when you have a lot” (Luke 12:15 – The Message).

How about you? Monopoly or Uno?

 

 

 

Amy and I were at a conference a few weeks back and there was a point in the afternoon where we had a break and decided to do some shopping. The mall was a drive away from the hotel so we caught an Uber. Our driver’s profile told us he was originally from Haiti. Amy and I have had the opportunity to go to Haiti and we love the country and the people there. So, we struck up a conversation with him about our visit and our fancy for his homeland.

His opening response to our queries was, “Please don’t judge my people by our government.” I didn’t say it out loud but in my head I retorted, “Deal! You’re preaching to the choir on that one!” But then he said something very interesting. “Haiti is a beautiful country, but we have not done a good job taking care of our resources.” Now, that will preach to every one of us.

You see, God owns everything (Psalm 24:1, 1 Chronicles 29:11-13, 1 Corinthians 6:19-20). He gives to us out of his riches and according to our ability (Deuteronomy 8:18, Ecclesiastes 6:2, Matthew 25:15). And we simply manage what he has blessed us with (Matthew 25:14-30, 1 Corinthians 4:2,1 Peter 4:10) . The question is: Are we doing a good job taking care of the resources that have been entrusted to us? (Luke 16:10).

To facilitate answering this question, I encourage you to do three things:

1. Take an inventory of everything God has blessed you with. A mental inventory is good but a written one even better. It will take days, but write down everything God has blessed you with. From your house and cars to your forks and spoons. From your spouse and children to your beloved dog and cat. From your job and office to your pencils and erasers. It’s all God’s!
2. Give thanks over your inventory. It’s easy to get caught focusing on what’s missing from the list rather than what is included in the inventory. It’s easy to begin to desire someone else’s inventory rather than our own. Giving thanks over what is on the list helps re-orient our perspective.
3. Ask yourself with each item on your inventory: “Am I doing a good job taking care of this resource that God has entrusted to me?” If yes, place a checkmark by the item. If no, ask God how you can better manage that blessing and grow into a better steward of it.

“Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much” (Matthew 25:21).