Is Worship Over?

In some reading last week I was reminded again that worship starts to really take place after we leave church on Sunday.  It may be the end of our corporate worship for the week but our true worship takes place every day as we go about life with our family, friends, and work.  

Worship is a lifestyle.....an offering.....not an event.  

Here's what the Message version says in Romans 12:1-2:

"So, here's what I want you to do.  God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life--your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking around life--and place it before God as an offering.  Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him.  Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking.  Instead, fix your attention on God.  You'll be changed from the inside out.  Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it.  Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you".

Two things I really like in the previous passage and the Message translation: 

1) "Readily recognize what he wants from you and respond to it".  

      --How many times do we know what we should do and don't respond?  How many opportunities do we 

         miss to reach out to someone or stand up for the cause of Christ?  

2)  We need to let God bring out the best in us.  Our culture wants to drag us down but God will bring out 

      the best in us.  First step?  We have to give him our everyday, ordinary life.  He'll then make something    

      great out of it for His glory. 

Did worship end when we left the church? I hope not. Our world needs it not to be.  

  

Redeemed

This song has just been on my mind for the last week and I've listened to it a lot.  I'm anxious to sit down and learn this and sing it because of the message for myself.  It's part of why I love to be involved in worship and why I think we do it.  We get to share personal worship, speak what's on our heart, and invite others to join us. I Hope "Redeemed" by Big Daddy Weave speaks to you.  I'll get out of the way let it speak for itself.

Be Blessed!

Valentine's Day

With this being the week of Valentine's Day I guess I'll write a bit (300+ words or so) about it....or at least the love my life part of it.

 As many know, or as you may have read in previous posts I've moved around a bit.  You don’t dare do something like this without a woman who believes in you and will go with you.  Actually, Deb said a couple of moves ago that if I moved again I was going by myself but I’m sure glad she changed her mind on that one.  J

I believe that God brought Deb into my life as my wife because for some reason He decided I should have someone to share life with me who would go with me from Walnut, to Lisbon, to Manning, to Norfolk, to Harlan, to Treynor, and to Carlisle.  OK, wait, maybe that says a lot more about the kind of Godly woman she is and nothing about me.  It just confirms that I am the recipient of that blessing. 

She usually previews everything I write.  She has edited Player Handbooks, Parent Handbooks, Coaching Handbooks, Letters, Resume’s, and now Blogs, but she won’t preview this one so that’s why there will probably be a lack of commas or an over abundance. 

She has listened to me during the good times, the bad times, the times I’ve wanted to quit but didn’t, the times I needed a voice of reason before making a rushed decision, and the times I needed the confirmation that a decision was the right one. 

She did all this while getting our children carted to 20 years of basketball games and only missing 2-3 during my head basketball coaching career, and those were due to someone being sick. 

I’m thankful that last year, in my last coaching gig, when we were fortunate to finish as State Runner-Up at the Boy's State Golf Tournament, she was there and shared it with me the final day. She was there three years before too when we did  it the first time, but this was extra special  because of it being my last event as a coach.  

We’re enjoying this phase of life now and enjoy our time alone eating out, going to college games, theatre and music events, or even a drive to do some shopping.  Point is, after coming up on 30 years (in December) of being together I thank God for the blessing of marriage and the love of this one woman. 

I hope if you're reading this you are, or will be, blessed with love and happiness not only on Valentine's Day, but every day.  If not, please remember that God has His plan and His timing.  Seek it, Trust it, and Live in it. 

“For I know the plans I have for you”, declares the Lord.  “Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future”. (Jeremiah 29:11)  I thank God for His plan and I’m thankful He blessed me with the woman who is a wonderful mother, grandmother, and wife.  

7 Things I've Learned

7 Things I’ve Learned in 7 Months

(In no particular order)

7.   Change can be hard, but change can be good.  One of the biggest adjustments to this new job has been not having day to day, hour by hour contact with students.  This is the first time in 26 years of public school education that I haven’t been in a classroom at all.  When the students first got to school this year it was very difficult, but I've started to develop some relationships with students and those will only continue to develop.  This change made me go about forming those relationships a little differently, but it’s been good for me to step out of the comfort zone of having those opportunities handed to me just by having them in a class.  I’m excited to see how God continues to develop some of the ideas in my head to help me create more meaningful relationships as a full time administrator.  To me, it's still about relationships. 

6.  4 Months is a long time.  For the first 4 months we lived apart during the week and just saw each other on weekends.  It wasn’t ideal but the work situations made it that way.  Made me appreciate the day to day conversations we have and how much I enjoy sharing my job with Deb. 

5.  The next 3 months was better, make that much better.  We got back together as a family in our new house in late October.  We've enjoyed getting things for the house and making it our home.  p.s. Deb is fantastic at this. 

4.  I’m proud of my family.   I miss our older kids Brett and Nicole, and of course grandson Jonathan, but am really proud of what they’re doing in Salt Lake City.  I learned that SLC is a beautiful place when we got to visit them in early November.  I could also feel the need for why they are doing what they are doing with their campus ministry at the University of Utah.  Son A.J. is in his senior year and made a transition to coaching gracefully and with class after the disappointment of not being able to play his senior season.  He’s got a great future ahead of him.  Daughter Abby continues to be a great mother to our 16 month old grandson Parker and has started classes at Mercy College in Des Moines.  We’re blessed and grateful for them all. 

3.  Deb works for a great company.   TS Bank in Treynor has allowed Deb to continue to work for them remotely from our home.  There’s a reason they were voted the #1 small business to work for in Iowa.  They are fantastic people with a fantastic philosophy.  We really appreciate TS Bank, and I appreciate Deb and the work that she does for them and for our family.  As they say…..”I out kicked my coverage on that one”.

2.  I enjoy doing this full time.   I feel blessed to be able to be a full time Activities Director.  My days always go by quickly.  The nights are busy, but it makes me appreciate the time I do have off and am able to spend relaxing with family and friends.

1.   God has a plan.  “For I know the plans I have for you”, declares the Lord.  “Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future”. (Jeremiah 29:11)  I still have to be about discovering HIS plan for my life every day and make that a focus.  I look forward to what He’s going to reveal to me next as He reveals His plan.  I pray I will be still enough to recognize and brave enough to follow. 

Commit

 

I’m committing to getting better.  January 28^th completed my 7^thmonth on the job in Carlisle.  At timesit can be overwhelming and make you feel like you’re spinning your wheelsgetting anywhere but we need to step back at times,  look at what we’ve done and be encouraged byprogress.  

We’ve started some projects, are doing some thingsdifferently than in the past, have other projects on the radar and have avision for what the future might look like. Part of building a vision is hoping to see progress toward it which canbe frustrating at times but I’ve always believed that success is a journey,  not a destination and believe that we have tobe about trying to get better every day even if it’s in small steps. 

One of the ways I’m going to try and get better is to communicatesome thoughts and share a blog more frequently. My goal is to have this be a larger version of Twitter to help me be moreconsistent which will keep it more manageable at around 2+ tweets length at 300or so characters, but it will probably more like 300 words since Twitter countsevery character and space to reach 140. 

I got a book a couple of weeks ago by Jon Gordon (norelation) “One Word that Will Change Your Life”.  Highly recommended.  Reads in about 30-40 minutes.  My word for the year is COMMIT.  I’m going to commit to being better in everyarea of my life.  Husband, Father,Grandfather, Job, healthy choices…you get the picture.  Every area.  Even as a blogger.  So, I’ll try to share a few thoughts once aweek on Monday morning.  I’ll COMMIT to gettingbetter.  How about you? Let’s get on thejourney together. 

A Week Down

I've been at my new job in Carlisle now for a week.  It's going well and I'm getting settled in.  Deb has been over twice (July 4th and then for the weekend) which was nice.  We celebrated her birthday on Sunday with her twin sister Denise.  


But the biggest news of the last week is our house situation.  Our house in Treynor is sold with the contingencies removed.  Great feeling.  Here's a funny story with a little history first.  We had been over to Carlisle and looked at 10-12 houses a couple of different times in the last month.  Without revealing the location yet we had decided the house we wanted to make an offer on when the time was right.  


On Tuesday I had gone out to eat and decided to go by the house that we liked just take another look with the principal here.  As we pulled up to the house and I stepped out of the car my phone rang and it was our realtor from Treynor telling me that our house was sold and all contingencies were removed.  Wow, what incredible timing to get that call at that time.  (A sign?)

SOLD!!!

One of the best, OK the best, call I made all week was to Deb telling her.  I did however have to tell her a couple of times because she didn't quite understand how I put it the first time I told her.  It was great to be able to celebrate that together when Deb came over later that night and then the 4th of July.  


We have made an offer on the home that we like in the Carlisle district and are now waiting to settle on that with the seller.  More on that as things progress.  


We're now just having to work out the closing date on our Treynor house and we'll work something out on the Carlisle home as well which leads to a little different situation for us.  Even with all of the excitement we now have the reality that we need to find housing for Deb, Abby, and Parker for the next 3 months because we don't plan on having them move to Carlisle until sometime around November 1.  Deb needs to continue at the bank for awhile yet before coming over.  


So where am I living now?  Very fortunate to be living with the Beeman's in Ankeny (Brad and Denise...Deb's sister).  It's just a 25 minute drive down to Carlisle.  We're very grateful for their hospitality and the room that they have for me.  (They also have allowed us to store some boxes and things here as we begin to move stuff over.  Some is kind of a bad descriptor too...but I can still get to my bed.)


That's our week in a nutshell which brings us to several things that we're praying about and trusting God to provide.  
1)  3 month housing for Deb, Abby, and Parker.
2)  Smooth transition out of the Treynor house. 
3)  Plans of the Ricley's to get located to the University of 
      Utah to begin work in campus ministry by end of August. 

We'd appreciate any prayers for us and we'd sure be happy to pray for you and your needs.  We are so thankful for the support of our friends and family in this time of transition but we continue to find peace and comfort in our favorite passage.  


¹¹ For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.  (Jeremiah 29:11)

A New Adventure

I see it's been a year since I posted last.  i enjoyed the writing when I did it, but just got away from it....so, here I am again.  Much has changed in the past year.  And wow, I guess change is word of the year for the Gordon family since I last blogged.

Where to begin.....well, in no particular order but maybe the biggest blessing in our life has been the addition of another Grandson, Parker.  As I was blogging a year ago we knew our life was going to change but I wasn't quite able to talk about it at that point.  Parker is the son of our youngest daughter Abby.  Parker was unplanned, but is definitely not unloved.  I will probably talk about Parker more in the future, but for now, let's just say he has changed our life, but it's been good and we wouldn't imagine life without him.  Thank You God for providing this adventure.

Secondly, Thanksgiving weekend The Ricley's moved into our house upstairs to help save some money in hopes of helping them get to Salt Lake City sooner and begin their campus ministry at the University of Utah.  Needless to say, we now have a real "Full House" but we also realize that this is just a small  window in our life and we are especially enjoying having more time with them, and especially Grandson #1, Jonathan.  One thing that we have going for us is that we laugh every day and are entertained by the boys.  Because of circumstances that some may see as a burden we see as a blessing and know we are creating some memories that some never have the chance to make.  What an adventure.

Since we've talked about the entire family except A.J. it's only fair that I update him a little bit.  Not much has changed with him.  He's finished his junior year at Midland University in Fremont, NE, and will turn 22 in a week.  A.J. is majoring in Secondary Education and Coaching and will student teach next spring.  He is going to work the same security job that he's worked the past couple of summers and is continuing to lift and work out to get ready for what should be a very exciting senior season on the basketball court.

For the sake of time let's fast forward to right now.  I am preparing to start a new job in Carlisle (just SE of Des Moines city limits) as their first full time Activities Director.  Carlisle is a 3A (boys)/4A (girls) size school that really reminds us a lot of Treynor in terms of the school and community support.  This position will allow me an opportunity to work full time at what I feel my strengths are and that is working full time in area of Activities and helping to provide quality programs for student/athletes in the Carlisle Community Schools.

We never really planned to leave Treynor but we feel like God has put another adventure on our road and we're excited to take it.  This move will put us 20 minutes from Deb's sister in Ankeny so we're excited for that part of the move as well.  It also puts us closer to Iowa City (Go Hawks) and Ames (not a hater of ISU).  We look forward to being able to get to a few more games on both campuses.  May even catch a few things at Drake and other area colleges as well.

Our biggest prayer at the writing of this blog is the sale of our house.  We ARE grateful that our house didn't sell last spring when we had it listed and were looking to move to a different house here in Treynor....but now, we do need it to sell and specifically would like to get it sold in the next month or so because we have our eye on something in Carlisle that we would like to move on quickly.  If you could join us in that prayer we would be appreciative....but we know, ultimately, that God's timing will be perfect and ours is not.  He's proven that time and time again.

Again, we find ourselves comforted by the words of the prophet Jeremiah.
¹¹ For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.  (Jeremiah 29:11)  Only God knows the plans he has in store for us as we close this chapter of our lives, but that's enough.  We're headed down a different road, but we'll find our way because THE Way will be guiding us through it all.

Why would that change now?