The KING, the CASTLE, the SWORD, and the ROUNDTABLE.

I love a great story with valiant warriors riding to victory over their enemies. Acting out a strategy that has been planned with intentional care around a table of great minds! Great leaders of all times have surrounded themselves with significant thinkers as well as strategists and strong willed doers.
My father taught me the game of chess at a very early age, as I have my son. The game always challenged us to be thinking ahead, pushing beyond, and taking great risks for the king. Like real life, we must be vigilant to win through our faith in Christ the King.

Thursday night Oct 13 at 10pm est(every 2nd Thursday) I will set at a "virtual" round-table with great minds and continue to plan out a strategy that began many centuries ago with God Himself. Jesus, The King, has paid the ultimate price for this battle to be won. The Acts of the Apostles leaves a heroic storyline for us to relive and work out in real life what God will complete sooner than later! The good news is, the young minds that I have the privilege of sparring with on a regular basis are up for this task because God empowers them.

When the clock strikes 10:00pm Thursday, pray for the YOUTHMAX rountable and remember "our redemption draws near"!

Cool use to last longer!

I remember my first custom pair of jeans. I had seen some teens in my church wearing these really wide-cut legs on their jeans and I told my dad," I need a pair of those". He said, "you mean the 'bell-bottoms'?" Yeah, I want the kind that have red, white and blue stars in 'em! So, my awesome dad custom made the biggest,coolest bell-bottom jeans you could imagine. I wore them to children's church that night and I'm sure all the fashion police were wishin' they had my jeans.

I got a lot of playtime out of that pair of jeans but soon enough, they went by the way side and I was asking for "straight-legged, unwashed blue jeans. Fads really moved quickly while I was growing up. Blue swade boots, tan platform shoes, and the list goes on.... It seems like the fads today last even less time than before. Kids barely have a chance to custom order their cool shoes online and the style changes and they are "out"!

Just a thought, cool doesn't go very far even though its what everyone seems to want.

Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. Col. 3:2

Who is talkin' to your kid today?

I have the amazing privilege of leading youth pastors and leading many students each week. What we all have in common is everyone wants to belong to something powerful so we can make a mark in this world. Usually who we talk to is who we hang out with and who you hang with and talk to determines where you spend your time and where you spend your time is where you end up doing your thing! Who are our kids talkin' to? I would love for you to join me on a live podcast Thursday, April 14th @ 10pm. I want to find out what your kids are talkin' about and hopefully give you some good info that could help you help them! I will be taking a look at some universal principles that have been with me all the way through.

Singin' like a bird

I stepped out of my car early this morning and the tune caught my ear immediately! This little bird thought he had to carry the whole load in singing praise to God! He was completely engaged in his praise to The Creator! Later in the morning, I had the awesome privilege of leading several hundred humans in singing to God and we committed to sing with that little birds' abandonment. It was less about pitch and so much more about full expression to our God.

How about it? Why don't we try today to live our lives in complete "self-abandoned" worship to our KING! I want to live like that little bird was singin' !

"COOL" loses its flavor quickly!

I love to go to the gum isle and check out the new flavors that come out almost daily. The gum comercials are amazing too. The person on the screen gingerly takes the wrapper off of his piece of gum and slides it into his mouth and BOOM, it seems to be life changing!

I have had chewing gum that tasted so... GOOD the first 5 minutes I chewed it. Then, all at once, flat as a flitter! Almost no taste left at all and even the texture turns to a hard rubber. Old school gum like Wrigleys Sperimint or Juicy Fruit was all about the short term blast of smooth chewing flavor and it only had enough ingredients in it to hold you for a few chomps.

"FIVE" gum is the ultimate chewing explosion now for me and because they have upped the ingredients, it seems to last and last. I find a lot of people today are kind of like that with how they live their lives: a little in, a little out - a lot in, a lot out! Matt. 5:13 says "we are the salt (or tastiness) of the earth..." Wow, we really need to have a lot of the good stuff in us so we don't lose our effectiveness, don't we?

What do you say, we don't just try to be "cool" (packaged right, tasty for a minute) but put in the powerful ingredients of God's Spirit which will have a huge impact and last FOREVER!

Are you settling for just what comes along!

Good question for all of us to ask ourselves. It is real easy, especially with all that we have at our finger tips, to just accept what is coming without really trying to reach out or up to challenge our potential. I just attended a wild game dinner where the well known guest speaker had lost a tooth out of his partial plate and was feeling really bad and intimidated to go up front and speak to his next crowd. He had a choice, just leave the gaping hole alone and save up for a new set (which on his small salary in those days would have taken a while) or find a tooth on his own and not just "settle"!

He had shot a bear just days before this unfortunate tooth break and a genius idea routed through his brain. He went out and picked up the skull of the newly dressed out carcass and there it was! The most awesome looking white tooth ever, he knocked one out and did some smoothing and shaping and glued it right into his broken set. A long story shorter, he never told anyone for a long time of his creative maneuver and had saved "dental face" by taking action.

I want to face my adversity with that kind of focus and not just settle and let "stuff" happen. Hopefully, we won't have to use bear teeth to fix our situation. I would challenge you to go ahead and think creatively and not be victimized and swept away by what is coming into your day. You can make it!

Where there's a will there's a way!

I remember hearing so many cliques as a kid growing up in the church that like many, my ear went a bit numb even though my respect never dropped for the credible ones who were speaking what they knew. "Where there's a will there's a way" was usually ringing in my ears about the time I wasn't "all out" in the effort department on any given chore. I am glad someone was pushing me to greatness even with words that seemed a bit monotonous. Today, I find my own words still challenging students to greatness and maybe in their own way becoming a bit monotonous. This is a fact, when a kid understands Truth and chooses to do the right thing, everyone wins! I am going to go after the "will" of today's teens like never before and I might even throw in a couple old "blasts" from the past!

All out!

Dan

Missionary to Students