Reading Time: 3 minutes

This week, the boys went back to college.

After 4 weeks or so of living the old normal – all 5 of us in the same house, watching movies together, eating supper together, reading devotions and playing games together, sometimes fussing together – this week life returned to the new normal.

Quite honestly, the new normal isn’t all that bad, either. It’s me, the B99, and our daughter, Sydney. We still enjoy movies, we still eat together. There are still devotions and games and we still find ways to fuss about stuff. Now there are regular FaceTime calls with the boys, and seeing their faces on a screen – while not nearly as good as seeing their actual faces – does help me push the lump back down that still forms every time I walk past their room and see the made (translation: empty and unused) beds.

Now, you probably didn’t open this blog to read about my parental transition to the college years (although, if you’re a parent of a freshman this year, I bet you can relate!), so let’s talk about seasons.

It’s funny how seasons work, isn’t it? In the brutal heat of the summer, everyone wishes for the cold of winter until they get it, and then they wish for the heat of summer. Every season holds some good and some bad. Most seasons are bittersweet, and if we’re not careful, we can get stuck wishing for seasons that are gone instead of maximizing the season that we’re in or anticipating the seasons to come.

There’s an interesting story in a rarely read book of the Bible by the name of Ezra about transitions and seasons. The temple of God (which was a BIG deal in that time) had been destroyed, and when it was time to rebuild it, a lot of 20-somethings were put in charge of the project. When they got the foundation laid, they took a praise break and “gave a great shout” because the foundation had been laid.

But check out what was happening at the same time that the 20-somethings were shouting: “But many of the older priests, Levites, and other leaders who had seen the first Temple wept aloud when they saw the new Temple’s foundation.” (Ezra 3:12)

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Transitions are tricky things. Saying goodbye to what was so you can say hello to what’s now can be hard to navigate. Most of us don’t like change, and so let me leave you with 3 insights that have helped and continue to help me when I find myself in the transition from one season to the next.

Learn from the past. Don’t live in it.

There’s so much wisdom in looking back to learn, but that wisdom fades if we look back too long. If it’s true that seasons come and seasons go (and it is), then a season going means that a season is coming, and what we just went through was intended to prepare us for what’s next. So learn as much as you can from what you’ve experienced, and carry that wisdom forward into the new season that’s coming. After all, the purpose of the past was to prepare you for the present and future.

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Remember why you started.

I’m a pretty big football fan and the team I pull for has never won a Super Bowl. That means that not only do they enter every off-season without a trophy and with a lot of lessons to learn from previous seasons, but they also face the next season needing something to make the pain worth it. They need to remember why they started playing in the first place, and usually, the answer is simply for the love of the game. I’m a pastor, and when my church experiences a new season, one of the ways I transition is reminding myself that one thing never changes: people need Jesus, and there’s a fire in me to introduce them to Him. Remembering our purpose is critical when we find ourselves stepping into a new plan, place, or season.

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Let God’s faithfulness in the past build your faith for the future.

Stepping into a new season is one of the hardest things to do, because every step into the new season is a step away from the old season, and there was a lot of good that happened in that old season. Even if there was more bad than good, more hard than pleasant, at least the old season was something known and familiar.

But familiar doesn’t require faith. The future does. So as you look back and learn, as you remember the passion that burned in you at the beginning, don’t forget to chronicle how faithful God has been in seasons of old. I can guarantee you that as you remember His faithfulness in past seasons, you’ll find yourself full of faith for future ones.

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Reading Time: 3 minutes

Something is happening right about now: the person you were in 2017 is meeting the person you want to be in 2018, and there’s a bit of a standoff. Actually, your brand new resolutions are beginning to wave the white flag of surrender, and it’s all because you didn’t leave the 2017 version of you in 2017.

If you truly desire to live differently in 2018, then there are a number of habits that you need to lay down as the foundation of what you’re building in the new year. I’m sure that there are many more than 4, but here are the first 4 that came to my mind as I was writing. Small improvements in these areas will lead to big success in leaving last year’s you in last year.

Generosity

Have you ever played the lottery game? I don’t mean the lottery. I mean the lottery game where you sit around and talk about all the things you’ll do if you ever win the lottery! Whenever I hear people play that game, I’m always struck by 2 things: they always want to do good and they don’t want the good to feel bad. So they practice “imaginary” generosity with “play” money instead of practicing real generosity with real money. Last year’s you may have thought, “I’ll give more to God when I have more” but that was the old you. This year, start practicing generosity with what you have now. Even if it’s just a little, intentionally start to give more of your time to people, more of your resources to charity, more of your talents to a cause.

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Devotions

You need to get intentional about your personal, “just me and Jesus” time. Be devoted to the development of your devotional life! So many arrive at the end of the year on fumes because, at some point during the year, they stopped putting fuel in the tank. Devotional time is the fuel. Set aside a time every day – for me, it’s in the morning – when you’ll connect with God and be reminded of what matters most. I love the simplicity of 3 John 1:2 – “Dear friend, I pray that you may enjoy good health and that all may go well with you, even as your soul is getting along well.” Devotion is soul time, and when you devote yourself to it, it pays off big time throughout the day!

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Community

I’m a pastor and so community is a really big deal for me and is something that we talk about a lot at The Gathering where I lead. But community isn’t a “church” thing. It’s a human thing! All of us were made to be in relationships with other people who were made for relationships, and nothing will drain the new you out of the new year faster than being alone. Do you know why? Because you’ll start to talk to yourself and convince yourself all of the reasons why you can’t change. “That was a stupid thing to try. I’ve tried it every year since 2000 and I still haven’t stuck with it.” You need others around you to help you stick with it when you feel like life is sticking you! There’s a story in the Bible about God’s army winning as long as Moses had his hands raised. Kind of a weird story, yes? But of course his arms got tired (think Survivor immunity challenge tired) and they would start to drop. When they did, the army started to lose. So 2 men – Aaron and Hur – sat Moses on a rock and held his arms up. That’s community, and that’s something you need as we move further into this new year.

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Sleep

If you’re like me, the more tired I get, the quicker I start to live like it’s all about me. You may not have expected something as practical as sleep to be in this list, but think of sleep as the intentional act of putting the oxygen mask on yourself first so that you are then able to help others around you. A rested you leads to a successful you.

One of the shortest chapters in the Bible – Psalm 127 – talks about striving to accomplish things in our own strength, and the second verse packs a punch and a promise:

“In vain you rise early
and stay up late,
toiling for food to eat—
for he grants sleep to those he loves.”

God’s got big plans for you in 2018 and He wants you refreshed and ready for the adventure. So sleep, and then get up and get to it!

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Reading Time: 4 minutes

Allow me, if I may, to vent (or, as my sister said, to “Venti” since this is about Starbucks).

There are times when the sheer stupidity of things can almost drive me over the edge, and this past Sunday as my family visited a Starbucks in Salisbury, North Carolina, was one of those times.  It started out innocently enough – standing in line, ordering, enjoying the awesome (even if they are overpriced) beverages that our family has come to love.

And then, with one seemingly simple picture, it changed.  After taking the picture above of my children with my dad, one of the baristas came over and told me and my sister (she was taking pictures, too) that we couldn’t take pictures in the store.

Caught a little off guard (you should see the blurry picture my sister took when she jumped as she got in trouble!), we put the phones away and went back to the beverages.  I lasted about 30 seconds before the absurdity of what I’d been told sunk in, so I went back to the counter for a follow-up.

“So….”

(I drew that first word out just long enough to really get their attention.)

“…just to clarify, you’re telling me that I can’t take pictures of my kids…with my dad…on Father’s Day?”

“Yes. It’s a corporate policy.  You can’t take pictures in the store because you might get artwork and stuff in the background.”

“Oh.  Well, then is it cool if I just take the pictures facing the front of the store?  That way I’ll just get the parking lot and trees in the background.”

“No.”

Since that day, I’ve had the chance to look up the corporate policy and have found – mostly through this post – that the barista could not have been more wrong.  For now, just know that as we stood there sipping our beverages and trying to think of any reason why that made sense, we couldn’t come up with one.

In a culture where selfies rule and food and beverage pics run a close second, Starbucks DOESN’T want the free marketing that comes from social media posts?

In a world where imitation is the best form of flattery, Starbucks DOESN’T want people to be so impressed with their environment that they want to post pictures of it?

In a marketplace where families can choose to spend their entertainment dollars anywhere they choose, Starbucks DOESN’T want to make it easy for those families to choose them?

Listen, my world didn’t come to an end over this, and venting about stuff like this is sure to get me a “firstworldproblems” hashtag somewhere in the comments section, but our family left that Starbucks feeling like they made something hard that didn’t have to be.  And without trying to spiritualize the whole experience too much, it sort of reminded me of a dilemma that the early church once faced.

As the gospel started spreading across the world, lots of people who were very different from each other started responding to it, and the folks in the mother land of Jerusalem were feeling a little protective of “their” religion.  You know, sort of how the barista felt about that artwork that’s partially seen in the picture that almost got us the boot at Starbucks.

In order to keep some kind of order and control, these guys got together to discuss it, and as they were on the verge of setting up all kinds of harsh policies that would be especially painful to the men (you can read about it for yourself in Acts 15), one extremely wise man named James stood up and said this:

It is my judgement, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God.” (Acts 15:19, emphasis added)

I love the way Andy Stanley says it about his church: “We don’t have policies as much as we have conversations.”

Whether it’s corporate like Starbucks or religious like churches, we have a tendency to make sweeping policies that, more times than not, sweep away the very people we’re targeting.  We make the people serve the policy instead of allowing conversations to open the door for us to serve the people, and the end result is frustration instead of freedom.

I wish I could say that our church at The Gathering is leading the way in not making it difficult for people who are turning to God, but I’m sure there are plenty of times that we have failed and will fail.  We are, however, committed to failing forward, because we value people more than policies, procedures and programs.

And when we don’t make it difficult for people to turn to God, we make it a lot easier for people to find the grace we all need in order to live for God.

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How about you?  What are some ways that churches and/or businesses make things more difficult than they should be?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below.