Monday, January 7, 2013

Happy New Year - A "do over"

Happy New Year! I love new beginnings, don't you? I love fresh starts, clean slates and empty canvases to start anew, start fresh or just start over.  I remember being a kid and playing tag or hide and seek with my neighbor friends and when somebody would do something wrong or something you didn't like we would just yell "do over" at the top of your lungs and everyone would stop and start over.  It was like you just yelled out reset and got to redo that part of your life.  Don't you wish sometimes life had a reset button?  I'm kinda a kid at heart still and probably a bit of a dreamer so I tend to love the idea of a new year as an equivalent to yelling out "do over" and having the ability to reset our lives and start fresh in a new year.  Kind of a fun way of looking at it!  

A few years now have gone by from my own personal tragedy to realize that life doesn't always work that way by yelling out "do over".  I wish it did because I would be screaming do over just to have another lunch across the table from my dad but alas there is no reset button for our lives.  But we do all have something else.  Something that can start on any day of any month or year not just on the 1st day of a new year.  What we have is a choice.  We have a choice on how we respond to the events thrown our way every day.  We can choose from which perspective we want to view our situations.  It really can be a life saver (really a soul saver).  I seriously cannot sit here and tell you how many crazy events have happened in my life over the past few years.  And each and every time another event would happen, I would say (often times out loud) 'this is not going to take me out!' As I feel like I am finally on the other side of intense brokenness, pain and disappointment, I look back and realize that each time I said that statement, I was actually asking God 'this isn't going to take me out, right God?' and it didn't.  I'm here and I've made it. But if there is one single thing I have learned from the pain of loss and from life's disappointments is that God is truly always there.  We have a choice to trust Him and look at them from His perspective.  I know it is a simple concept but really quite profound.  He is always for us.  We can trust Him.  He is the author of new beginnings.  He truly can bring life from death.  He can turn events around.  He can use our horrible situations and bring Glory to Himself through our life as we walk through them and trust Him.  It's like He yells out 'do over' and it really is that simple.  Now, unlike when we are kids and the whole game stops and you get to really do the whole thing over again, with life, sometimes our situations don't or won't ever change but our ability to reset our thinking, our perspective, our choices in the event can. We can have a reset button and we can choose to view our situations from His vantage point.  His Word.

On March 1st, 2013 I am launching an event to reach out to woman all over the metro Detroit area.  We have the opportunity to come together and make a difference.  We, as a group of ladies, can take our pain, our disappointments, our passions, our joy, our heart and come before God and ask Him to use us by allowing us to be His hands to help others in their pain and share our stories and more importantly share our God with woman and children all over Macomb county and greater Detroit area.  After I wrote my last blog sharing my heart to come together as a group of woman, worship God and then take our lives and pour them out into hurting and broken lives, the response was overwhelming with people who want to be involved and come together! I am so happy that God is going to use all of us to be the voice that is able to yell out or maybe just whisper that God has a do over, He has a plan for life and loves people where they are at.  To these woman and children in horrible situations all around us, we have an opportunity to go where God leads us and help.

More details will follow soon.  Pretty much the jist of it is this.  We come together (anybody, from any denomination) Friday night March 1st at 6:30, we worship (my girlfriend and her husband lead worship and they are awesome….I cannot even wait), I will share what this ministry's vision is going to look like and how we are going to do it.  I will ask all of you that night to share on a form if your want to, your heart and different local outreaches/ministries that serve woman and children that you would like to see us help one month, and then we close with prayer (I have people whose heart is to just pray for woman to be whole so that will absolutely be a part of our events).   God has brought together a group of awesome woman that are helping me with this event and are praying for God's leading and will for this whole thing!

My heart, as I've shared in the last blog, is to seek God more (hmmm that sounds like a song I've done…The More I Seek You…if you don't know it look it up, it's simple but pretty much the heart of this group), anyways we come seek God and worship….really worship Him (would you expect anything less from an event I would put together?;), hear what God has to say to us and then go out and help others with their 'do over' and share that all in life is not lost, that there is a God that came and died on the cross, rose again to offer a do over for their life and will offer an abundant life in the midst of their storms.

The invites for this event will be coming soon, anyone and everyone is invited so invite friends.  We are meeting at Macomb Community University Center (Center campus) and the place seats 250 people so invite friends!  It is Inspire 2013 where we hear (God), heal (our hearts) and help (others).  It's about God making a difference in our lives, it's about God making a difference in those lives around us…..it's about a new start, a do over.  Happy new year! See you soon! 


Follow this blog for updates on Inspire 2013.

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