Junky Car Club

What a grea idea!  Drive your older car a little longer instead of getting a new one and feed and clothe some starving children.  A worthwhile tradeoff?  Usually not if you are an American!  

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20 Destructive Habits (Continued...)

Habit #11 — Claiming Credit that We Don’t Deserve
 
Best way to overcome this tendency is to share the
wealth. 
 
Habit #12 — Making Excuses
 
Excuses often fall into two categories: blaming someone else
or blaming yourself.  The former is
ugly, the latter acts as if there is nothing you can do about the way you are.
 
Habit #13 — Clinging to the Past
 
 
Habit #14 — Playing Favorites
 
 
Habit #15 — Refusing to Express Regret
 
 
Habit #16 — Not Listening
 
 
Habit #17 — Failing to Express Gratitude
 
 
Habit #18 — Punishing the Messenger
 
When people bring bad news, calmly ask “What went
wrong?”  Or just say “thank you.”
 
 
Habit #19 — Passing the Buck
 
 
Habit #20 — An Excessive Need to Be ‘Me”

Healing and Forgiveness

In his excellent book, Healing, Dr. Francis MacNutt explores the connection between healing and unforgiveness. From his extensive experience, he has noted that there are times when sin will block the experience of a supernatural healing, but no sin is as detrimental to receiving God's healing as bitterness and unforgiveness.

Mark 11:24-25 NIV
24 Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. 25 And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins."

See how Jesus connects receiving from God's hand with unforgiveness? Think about the greatest commandment that Jesus tells us to follow -- love God and love your neighbor. Somehow when we fail to love our neighbor (and even our enemy), we limit God's hand from answering our prayers.

Christians are excellent at ferreting out many sins (e.g., smoking, drinking, cursing, yadda, yadda, yadda) but often times unforgiveness is allowed to sit and fester.

What a challenge Jesus levies at us! The human heart is wounded so easily and finds it so difficult to forgive! Who do you need to forgive today? What unforgiveness and bitterness is keeping you from receiving from God's hand?

The Power of Saying "I'm Sorry"

In 2001, University of Michigan Hospital System (UMHS) settled $18 million in malpractice claims out of court in addition to litigating a number of other cases.  The hospital decided that they needed to do something different.

They decided that they would encourage their doctors to say "I'm sorry" and helped them understand how to take responsibility for their mistakes.  

According to the book How by Dov Seidman, 
in the three years following the hospital’s decision to apologize, medical malpractice claims and lawsuits against them dropped by nearly 50 percent and the per-case cost of defending against the remaining suits dropped 50 percent as well, saving UMHS millions of dollars.

Next time, try saying "I'm sorry."

A Piece of Advice from Peter Drucker

"Work
only on things that will make a great deal of difference if you succeed."

Wow, what a challenge.  How much time do we waste keeping ourselves busy doing things that don't really matter.  I am the kind of person that feels that if I am not busy, I am failing.  But busyness does not equal success, it just equals busyness.  

20 Destructive Habits (continued...)

Habit #6 — Telling the World How Smart We Are
 
 
Habit #7 — Speaking When Angry
 
If you keep your mouth shut people won’t know how you really
feel and you won’t get a reputation you don’t want!
 
 
Habit #8 — Negativity, or ‘Let Me Explain Why that Won’t
Work’
 
 
Habit #9 — Withholding Information
 
 
Habit #10 — Failing to Give the Proper Recognition

Online Giving Now Enabled

We finally enabled online giving through our website.  A number of people have asked us when we were going to do this, as it can make it very convenient to take care of tithes and offerings.  

In our increasingly electronic world, it is often far more expedient to pay the mortgage, the utilities, and even tithes and offerings electronically.

For those interested in checking this feature out, you can find "Online Giving" under the Resources tab on the main website.  Here's a shortcut for  you lazies.

20 Destructive Habits

Here are some nuggets from the book What God You Here Won't Get You There.  I'll post it in a number of parts.
 
At some point, successful people discover that they are held back from achieving their potential because of nagging interpersonal habits.  These are 20 that are crucial to eliminate if you want to go to that next level.
 
Habit #1 — Winning Too Much
 
Winning can become a liability if we cannot tell the difference between being competitive and overcompetitive.  If we are not careful we get in the habit of having to win and therefore treat people as less important than the win.  Sometimes we argue, ignore,
freeze out and avoid people just because we are chalking up a win on a scale that no one cares about but us.
 
Habit #2 — Adding Too Much Value
 
People that are successful or that are knowledgeable often can’t keep their mouths shut.  Instead of listening and celebrating or encouraging, we can listen and then feel that need to add our two cents.  Whether this is to demonstrate that “we already knew that” or to show that there are other possibly better ways of going about it, the damage is done.
 
Habit #3 — Passing Judgment
 
When you ask someone’s opinion, especially if it is about yourself, just say “thanks.”  We
often feel the need to pass judgments on the opinion, rather then just receiving it.
 
Habit #4 — Making Destructive Comments
 
Before speaking sarcastically or cutting a person down, ask whether what you are saying is constructive or helpful in any way.  If not, shut your mouth.
 
Habit #5 — Starting with ‘No,’ ‘But’ or ‘However’
 
When w e start a sentence with any of these words, we are merely indicating that we believe the other person is wrong about what they are saying.  Stop trying to defend your position just because you disagree.
 

The Golden Compass

I received a mass email from Pastor Tom Holladay from Saddleback Church with some insight into the movie The Golden Compass.  There is a lot of buzz going around about the movie because the author has made it know that he is anti-Christian and his books have anti-Christian agenda. 

Pastor Tom's comments are helpful and so I post them here:

We've been getting a lot of questions about a new movie coming out this week. People are wondering about things they've heard about "The Golden Compass." The concerns you may have heard about this movie are true. It's an anti-God movie posing as a children's movie. The ads compare it to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but the fact is that its view of the world is exactly the opposite.

The movie is based on the first of a series of three books by Philip Pullman that are anti-church in their core message. When Pullman was asked by the Washington Post what C.S. Lewis (author of the Narnia books) would think of his books, he answered, "I'm trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief. Mr. Lewis would think I was doing the Devil's work." And he told the Sydney Morning Herald in 2003, "My books are about killing God." I love the wisdom in this article from Christianity Today.  

It's a great encouragement to not be afraid of the message of the movie, because the message of Christ is so much greater. And an encouragement to voice our disagreement with the author's message with a Christ-like spirit. And a warning not to be tricked by the hype around the movie - the most hateful parts of the books have been removed in this first movie in order to attract commercial success, but in a recent MTV interview the director stated that if this movie is successful, the future episodes will not be "watered down".

Personally, I won't see the move, not because I'm afraid of its message, but because I don't want to support its message.