Unconditional Love

What an amazing weekend. I felt so blessed to be able to share a message about Unconditional Love to the 11am and the 6pm services this past weekend. Thank you all for the encouraging words and support.

I have to tell you something that happened to me during each service. So, I get on stage at the 11am service and am introducing myself. First off, I get nervous when I hit the stage. So, I look into the front row and members of my Lifegroup are sitting there each hold up a giant letter in front of them reading : "Go George". I must say that really made me laugh and help take off the nerves a bit. Thanks, Will.

As for the 6 pm service, God really showed up big time. So I meet this great guy prior to service and he wants to propose to his girlfriend after the service. So I asked him if this girlfriend was a "sure yes" or not? He laughed and said of course. They had met with John Bishop and talked about a future date. Then he tells me that the official popping of the question had not taken place. So, with God's leading I told him I would cut out part of my message and change it as God leads me. So, during the middle of my sermon I ask for a couple to volunteer to come on stage while I talked about couples. Of course I picked them to come up. Once there. I spoke as they stood and then I asked Sean if he wanted to say anything. He took the microphone and his girlfriend's facial expression was priceless. He proceeded to get on his knee, pulled out a ring and proposed to her right there! Of course she said yes. I looked into the crowd and tons of people were crying and Brittany was crying so much. It's was great. That was such a moment God made for our service and a message on Love. Thank you Lord, for leading us on that one.

From my message:

A dog says, “You pet me, you feed me, you shelter me, you love me, you must be God.”
A cat says, “You pet me, you feed me, you shelter me, you love me, I must be God.”

1 Corinthians 14 1 Let love be your highest goal!

Puppy Love - Blushing, young kid often when first experienced; those eyes for each other
Conditional Love - Love is 'earned' on the basis of conditions being met
Unconditional Love - Unconditional Love is when you give it without reason, without cause and without concern for reciprocal favor; a love like no other the love Jesus gives us.

28 One of the teachers of religious law was standing there listening to the debate. He realized that Jesus had answered well, so he asked, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”29 Jesus replied, “The most important commandment is this: ‘Listen, O Israel! The Lord our God is the one and only Lord. 30 And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength. 31 The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. No other commandment is greater than these.”

1 Corinthians 13
4 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud 5 or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. 6 It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. 7 Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.13 Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.

We are his Masterpieces. We were perfectly designed by God. But, you see we are not perfect.
But God is. God is perfect and God is Love. So, Love is perfect. So if we all know fully that we are not perfect, why do we think the people we spend our lives with are suppose to be perfect? Why do we expect our spouses or children to be perfect?

John 13:34-35
34 So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. 35 Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.”

1 John 4 Loving One Another
9 God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. 10 This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.

We need to just love each other. We need to make it a priority. Making an effort to care about our spouses by not being so quick with our tongue, not being so prideful or trying to get our way...we can avoid family storms. We also can weather the tough times by always being willing to have the tough conversations throughout the relationship we are in. I promise our marriages will be stronger if we proactively have the tough talks and focus on loving each other always.

Love you all and thanks for the encouragement this weekend.
George

Sarcasm & cell phones

Hello all.

It has been a few weeks since my last blog. Sorry. After looking at John's new blog, Seth's video blogging and Johnny's Ecclesia sites I feel pretty neglectful. Tonight I really had something to talk about - cell phones, voicemail and sarcasm.

Do you ever have a problem with your cell phone constantly receiving calls. Your voice mailbox ever get so full it reaches the limit? Yes, I have done that many times. I am not sure why it bothers me so much, but I get irked when people tell me that I have not returned their message quick enough. Or, they say something about never getting me live on the phone. It seems the comments are always sarcastic. John has preached on sarcasm a couple times- in Greek sarcasm means 'cutting of the flesh'. Sometimes I wish God would just allow for all cell phone connectivity to be down for months. We could just get a break and take a breath in life. Then, God could take all sarcasm and make it go away---like forever. So people could actually talk about stuff instead of provoking something else.

Really, I am not needing counseling on this issue. It just became a hotspot because a couple of really close friends and I had this discussion. They were being sarcastic and so was I. In the end feelings get hurt, you know? They are like family to me so it hurt even more when the "sarcasm" hurt was vocalized.

Funny thing is when I was dating Katherine she thought I had funny sense of humor. Then somewhere during the marriage my humor turned to sarcasm. I don't know how that works. Anyway, my point tonight is three fold: 1) don't get on your friends if they don't always answer their phone calls; 2) if your voice mail is always full consider changing your phone number; 3) try to kill the sarcasm this week. If you are making humor at the expense of someone else (oh yeah, God made them perfect), that would be sarcasm.

Looking forward to seeing 15 pastors speak their own messages this weekend. See you at 11am and 6pm Sunday! Love always wins.

George

Summer Vacations

I love summer vacations. The trip we took was about a 13 hour drive down near Reno Nevada. We stay in a small town called Greagle, CA. It has been a tradition with Katherine and me for 16 years. Her family built this cabin 26 years ago and they have been doing 4th of July every year there with all the relatives. Some years we have 25 people, some years 10-12. It all depends on when the holiday falls in the week and who can get away from work, etc. Regardless it is always fun, totally beautiful and completely relaxing.

This year I had the blessing of Isabella joining me for the first time on a round of golf. She sat in the cart and we had nobody playing with us. It was the greatest round of golf I have had in years. We talked about stuff all the way. She held my clubs, helped me putt the ball and just was so sweet the entire time. I will never forget the first hole we played. I hit my tee shot down the fairway. So, we go out to hit the ball and I get ready to swing. Now, I taught Isabella that there were only 2 rules she had to follow during our golf date: 1) always stand very still when daddy goes to hit the ball; 2) always be very quiet when daddy goes to hit the ball. she did great on the first shot. But when I went to hit that second shot she said "dadda?" Of course I said "Isabella, remember what we said about being quiet?" She says " I know dad". She reaches down into her pocket and pulls out a golf ball and says "dad, I got this extra ball in case you lose that one". I absolutely lost it. I could not help but laugh and with a tears in my eyes I squatted down to her level and said "I love you so much, honey. This is the best day ever". It was so cool.

Such a blessing, kids are. So many times we look at our schedule as being too busy to spend time with our kids. Really, we are investing in their lives and future when we spend quality time with them. We also are modeling a behavior to them that says family matters. It doesn't matter if a vacation is 2 weeks or 2 days. It doesn't matter if the mini-vacation is 2 hours. I love the movie What About Bob. There's a classic line in there from Bill Murray when he is told to "take a vacation from his problems". Even in our regular routines it is good to take a few moments for these mini-vacations during the summer.

Attached are some photos from the annual summer trip to the cabin.

George

Lost Blogger...

Hello everyone.

Sorry for such along break from the blogging. That 10-day camping vacation threw my schedule for a loop and it seems I have never caught up.

Luke is doing great. Thank you all for the prayers. He is still trying to get used to his hearing aids. He often pulls them out and starts chewing on them! (this is not good) He has been teething lately so it makes the hearing aids so tempting! Luke also started crawling last week. He does this army thing using only arms and moving like an inch-worm. He has not figured out the legs yet.

My daughter Isabella has been such a great sister. She always wants to feed Luke and often asks if she can hold him for a while. Of course this lasts until he pulls her hair or grabs her face. Since her baptism at Easter her spiritual fire is so cool to watch. She comes home from Kidsworld and recites the memory verses for me. I loved one recent one: "Be strong and brave because God is with you" Joshua 1:9 ...she proclaims! I love it. Sometimes I wish we could all see the world through the eyes of a child.

Katherine and I are so blessed to have these two children. They are gifts from God.

I will try to post some of the summer photos on the next blog.
~George

Check out my ears...

Luke got his hearing aids today. We are having fun with his facial expressions as it appears the world of sound just opened up to him. He's making so many new sounds of his own. I think he is testing them out.

God has been so good to us through this process. We have met many encouraging people and received so much prayer. Thank you.

Hope you enjoy Luke's photos showing off his new head gear!

God bless,
George

"George, no scooters in the house!"

Okay, so the word is out: George is not an actor, just merely a man trying his hardest to make a fool of himself for Jesus.

Those of you attending Saturday services got to see that intro video with Isabella and me. We had so much fun making it. Savannah, Nathan, Bryan, Terry and Dustin all helped put that together. I hope you all could find some humor in it and at the same time see yourselves in some of the strange moments Isabella found herself when I was interrupting all the time.

If you have children, you so know what that was about. Funny thing was they were still trying to write the script after arriving at our house. As the discussion continued on ideas of what to say we asked Isabella to help. I said "what kinds of things would you do if you were trying to get mommy or daddy's attention while we were focusing on something else"? Thus, all the props and the infamous scooter scenes. Isabella is really an awesome kid and there was some dramatic liberty added to the video by both of us... ha ha. God is so good. Just hanging out with her during that shoot was a memory we will talk about forever.

I've alyways loved "Carpe Diem". You 've seen that one, right? It's Latin for seize the day, some might say seize the moment. Some say it ties to Isaiah 22:13 But instead, joy and gladness, slaying oxen and killing sheep, eating meat and drinking wine: “ Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die!” Take 30 minutes with one of your kids this week. Do something you rarely do. Sometime we (Isabella and I) just drive to Starbucks together and call it a coffee date. I don't mean "to-go". I mean sit at a table and talk for a little while. Take every moment in together. God wants us to enjoy those little miracles he gives us.

Thanks again for all the encouragement and support for Luke's health. We have received many phone calls, emails and people walking up at church. Katherine and I are blessed to know that you are our family and it means everything to us to have the prayer support. As of today Luke is doing great. Next Monday he gets his hearing aids. They arrived last Wednesday like the original plan. However, they sent the wrong units to the audiologist office. The correct ones will be there Monday. Blue with white swirls. Isabella helped pick the colors for her brother.

Seize the moments...

George

How's your Attitude?

What a blessing for me to spend the weekend with Ron Heagy. He is an amazing man of God that really inspired many of us to check the status of our attitudes. Ron's story is one of those that God's allows and uses to reach millions. Whether he was on the stage or back in the office prior to service, his demeanor is exactly to same. He has a terrific sense of humor but also very willing to speak truth to anyone who needs it.

We will be again blessed as he agreed to come speak at our monthly Unleashed this Wednesday night. Almost three months ago John asked me to take over the student ministries. While overseeing Life Development (infants to college) I try to consider what message and topic the students really need to hear. When Ron said he would speak this week, I knew that God decided what the students needed to hear.

If you have students that don't normally attend our Underground, House Church or Ecclesia ministries - this is one service I would not miss. Unleashed starts at 7:00 pm at the Brush Prairie campus. If you are dropping kids off, it's over by 9:00 pm.

Please invite someone that you think would benefit hearing Ron. We want to really fill every seat!

Love you guys,
George