Book Review - What Jesus Demands From the World

I admit it, I am a junkie! I have read almost everything John Piper has written. I refer to Desiring God.org when I study often and even preached a series based on his book "Desiring God" when I was a leading a young adult worship service several years back.

In Piper's newest book he takes us into the words of Jesus, specifically the commands/demands of Jesus. This is not my favorite Piper book but it certainly was a good one. It is not a book you will fly through. Let me put it another way, it is not a book you should fly through. I usually can crank out your average candy coated Christian book in a week. Dr. Piper's newest book took me a little over a month. I read and chewed. It was great to read about a Jesus who is truly magnificent and has every right to demand things of people.

We don't hear a lot about Jesus being the King who has all authority these days. There is a lot of emphasis on Jesus the teacher/rabbi which is cool but in the end He is a king that demands our allegiance. This demand He makes is actually the most loving thing He could do. Jesus the King truly wants what is best for us, Himself.


Let me leave you with a quote that I hope will give you the flavor of the book.

"The gospel - the good news-is that the rule of God has arrived in Jesus to save
sinners before the kingdom arrives at His second coming in judgment. So the
demand to repent is based on the the gracious offer that is present to
forgive and on the gracious warning that someday those who refuse the
offer will perish in God's judgement."

Ten Questions for the New Year

My friend Bill Streger posted these questions. I am going to be reflecting on them this week as I rest.


What’s one thing you could do this year to increase your enjoyment of God?
What’s the most humanly impossible thing you will ask God to do this year?
What’s the single most important thing you could do to improve the quality of your family life this year?
In which spiritual discipline do you most want to make progress this year, and what will you do about it?
What is the single biggest time-waster in your life, and what will you do about it this year?
What is the most helpful new way you could strengthen your church?
For whose salvation will you pray most fervently this year?
What’s the most important way you will, by God’s grace, try to make this year different from last year?
What one thing could you do to improve your prayer life this year?
What single thing that you plan to do this year will matter most in ten years? In eternity?

Christmas Eve Reflections

Well Christmas is over. I write this in Galveston at a Beach House my in-laws (incredible people) rent for their whole family. Here’s the breakdown; 8 adults and 9 kids, 1 is on the way, not from us though!

Anywho, I am so thankful to the Lord for our Christmas Eve service. We had our highest attendance ever at this event. We had 600 people! I do not know yet if anyone indicated that they made any faith decisions but I personally had several good conversations with people.

I am so pleased to be with a church that does whatever it takes to bring the Gospel to people. I am especially proud of our Worship Team and Worship Pastor. They rehearsed hard on Thursday, got to the service to set-up at 2:30 and stayed after everyone left to tear down! Wow! They were off the chain too! Wow! I think musically it was one of the best services we have ever done.

I have to admit I had the last minute “is anybody coming” panic! I saw how big the room was we rented and how many chairs we had out and I thought, “oh my goodness, no one will come!” My amigo Brandon Baca calmed me down and assured me people were coming. I prayed, took a deep breath and the night went on!

It was ended by the third annual Christmas Eve meal at Chili’s!

Christmas is Here

Well it's here! This Sunday is Christmas Eve. We have signs up, we have done the promos, we have had over 600 hits on our website. This Sunday night will be our last service of 2006.

I will be off with family for a week and not preaching for two. I am excited about that because rest is good. I hope to do a lot of reflecting over the next couple of weeks. There is alot before us at Crossbridge. I believe our best days are ahead of us.

I finished planning the sermon calendar until Mother's Day of this year. I'm excited because it is a mix of topical and expository. There is also even a little vision casting thrown in here and there too! The new year will bring our annual Partners Dinner Meeting, where we review where God has brought us from and look at where He is taking us in the new year.

We announced the hiring of our Children's Director last Sunday! We are very excited about her coming on board. Children's Ministry is huge for us! We have needed this for a while. Our Director of Ministry development is transitioning his role a little bit. His new role is Connections Pastor. He will be overseeing connecting people into the life of Crossbridge. The biggest addition for him is the overseeing of our small group ministry. I am pumped about what God is putting on his heart and mind these days!

So enough rambling. I felt like I needed to write something because it's been a while.

Sunday Recap

This past Sunday we kicked off our Christmas series "Blue Christmas". We opened with a video that I hope to post later today that was hilarious!

We started the series with "The Blues of Anxiety"

We spent some time in Philippians 4:6-7

"Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. "

This passage has really hit me. Do not be anxious about my weight, my family, my finances, basically NOTHING!

John Piper in his awesome book "Future Grace" (Okay so I think all Piper's books are awesome!) says the following about anxiety....

"Anxiety is a condition of the heart that gives rise to many other sinful states
of mind. Anxiety about finances can give rise to coveting and greed and
hoarding and stealing. Anxiety about succeeding at some task can make you
irritable and abort. Anxiety about relationships can make you withdrawn and
indifferent and uncaring about other people. Anxiety about how someone
will respond to you can make you cover over the truth and lie about
things. If anxiety could be conquered, a mortal blow would be
struck to many other sins."

Paul gives us some God-focused responses to anxiety...

1. Prayer

Many of us have tried to pray about our troubles but we still worry. I would challenge us to take a hard look at the way we pray. Are we praying "prescription prayers". You know if you could go to the doctor and tell them you were sick they would write a prescription of what to take that would make the illness go away. Many times we pray like that. "God, I have this problem will you make go away by doing such and such." This kind of prayer can border more on wishing than releasing our concerns into the hands of our Father trusting that He knows best.

Prayer is not prescribing it is releasing.

2. Thanksgiving

Now thanksgiving is not something you find in most self-help books on how to deal with anxiety. Thanksgiving helps us remember that life is not a series of random events but God is in control and is concerned about our lives.

So do we thank Him for loosing our job and our debt? Don't start with the problem. Thank Him for the Gospel. Thank Him for taking the nails and the suffering for you. Thank Him for being willing to endure this pain for you. Thank Him for paving the way to Himself with His own blood. Thank Him for your blessings in your life.

The Result is not that all our problems go away. The result is that we get His peace. His peace that human thinking can't quite get. A calmness that is beyond human reasoning.

I'm the Reason for the Season

We are moving pretty fast toward our Christmas Eve Services. I have been pleased with the response from Crossbridge in reaching out to our community and inviting people to this. One of our main things we are doing to promote the services is t-shirts that we have asked our Partners and attenders to wear as they shop and do life in our community.

Our Worship Pastor and his wife we wearing their shirts out while they were shopping. Two people asked them about it and they got the opportunity to invite them to the services. One guy brought his wife that very next Sunday!

We are praying that God will use this time of year to reach people with the message of Jesus!

It's the Busiest time of the year

December is one my favorite months and one of the most stressful. I just finished a meeting with out Pastoral Advisory Team (our elders) and it was awesome! We finalized next years budget, talk about adding a member in the new year, confirmed a new staff hire and talked about our plans for a facility! It was high leverage and awesome!

I don't think I ever been this excited in the history of our church. I will be announcing a whole slew of things over the next couple of months. Next Friday we have our Annual Leadership Christmas Party and I will be announcing a new staff hire! Then in Jan or Feb (we're still trying to finalize location) we will be having our annual Partnership Vision Dinner (not the coolest name but it is what it is). I am already working on now what we will be talking about there and it should be awesome!

Crossbridge is a great church! God is doing amazing things here!

New Series - Blue Christmas

This Sunday Crossbridge will be diving into our Christmas series entitled "Blue Christmas: Breaking the Seasonal Blues". Christmas is suppose to be a time of joy and celebration at the coming of Christ and what He has done for us. Unfortunately many people don't experience that joy that angels came announcing. 45% of a recent poll said they dread the holiday season. I googled "Christmas Depression" today and got 2,330,000 responses! We will be exploring what the Bible teaches about handling the blues we face not just at Christmas time but all year as well.

This is a great series to invite someone too who you would like to expose them to the message of Christ!

See-ya Sunday!

Series Breakdown:

December 3rd - "The Blues of Anxiety"

December 10th - "The Blues of Depression"

December 17th - "The Blues of Anger"