As Listener (video below) exclaims “We are all born to broken people on their most honest day of living.” I am not yet a parent, but I can imagine that when you see you are child born there is a moment in which you get extremely real with life. You stare into the eyes of someone you had a part in creating. Anyone with a beating heart has to have at least a moment of time in which they give thanks for that moment; taking an extremely honest look at their lives and where they’ve been and where they are going as it relates to this moment in time.

We cannot choose who our parents are, but we sure can choose the parents our children have. As Christ urges us to raise our children in the way of the Lord; we must prepare for this moment. We are all broken people that someone will grow up looking to for advice, for examples of love, and even discipline. We must remain honest about our brokenness while guiding those around us to Christ’s perfect and enduring love.

Galatians 2:19-21 For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.

Heavenly Father I pray You give all of us a healthy sense of mourning and an extra heavy sense of jubilation in this Easter weekend. As Your wrath was satisfied on the cross through the shedding of Your son’s blood we celebrate knowing that the enemy has been defeated. I pray that many would come to the knowledge of Your saving grace through Your Holy Spirit softening their hearts and through the prayers and their interactions with the saints. To God be the glory. In Christ’s name amen.

Dysfunctions from Tyssul Patel on Vimeo.

This is a really good visual representation of 5, of the many, dysfunctions of a team. I have definitely seen these in my own life in the various teams that I’ve been a part of. The difficulty is always coming up with solutions for each of these. As with anything the first step is to identify where the “issues” are, then finding the best ways to resolve them.

As I’m learning team building from a master team builder, I have realized that team building is an art form. You have to be very people oriented and big vision driven. You will never have the perfect team to start with, maybe that’s why it’s called team building. I don’t know all the answers that’s for sure. I try to look to Christ for the example, but when He built a team all He did was tell them to drop their nets and follow Him! The key, as I see it, was Jesus knew His audience. All it took was for a rabbi to ask these common men to follow Him. They felt honored to serve Him, and honored that He asked. Not only that they were just young enough to be crazy enough to believe who He was.

The point I’m at in this journey is definitely learning how to know the people around me. How do I put myself in the right positions to come alongside the right people? How do I pour into their lives in a way that points to Christ? How do I get them invested in the vision of what Christ has for His Church?

Just some thoughts from my brain to yours. Again I don’t always have answers as I’m trying to pursue them as well.

“God created man in His image and ever since, man has attempted to return the favor”.

This quote has always intrigued me. I have heard many different variations on it as well. What’s interesting is that it can be used to further many different agendas. The atheist might say this is pointing out that all ideas of god or God are man made as man saw fit. The Christian might say that many have tried to form God into what they want when they want. However you lean on this I think most would agree that we all do it. In our pursuit of God we often want a comfortable God to believe in. We want someone who will justify us, but a justification that says we are doing things right not showing us the right thing to do. The God of the gospel, however, cannot be contained by any image we have cast upon Him. Throughout the Bible God flipped popular thinking on its head!

As we enter into a season of mourning and celebration with Easter this week, we should be reminded that it is His image that we are made in, not the other way around. God’s choice to completely flip the world upside down by coming as a lowly man to show how counter cultural His Kingdom truly is, points directly to this idea that He cannot be contained by our image of who He should be. Often the reason God lets you down or you stop believing in Him is because He refused to be who you wanted to make Him. How does a creation create its creator?

Take this season to remind yourself that a God that can be changed and molded depending on how I feel, is not a God worth believing in.