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Joseph.. a Hero of the Faith

Recently while on vacation I did some studying on the life of Joseph. Alot of space in scripture is devoted to his life (Gen. 37-50). Joseph was an amazing man. His brothers hated him and sold him into slavery, yet God poured out continual blessing upon him. When he faced temptation, he knew that sinning would violate God’s trust in him and he refused to dishonor God.

You may know the story that Joseph rose to second in command in Egypt and only Pharoah himself was above him. When his brothers went looking for food because of a famine they encountered Joseph in Egypt. Once Joseph revealed to them who he was, he said something that shows his character: “I am Joseph your brother whom you sold into Egypt. But don’t feel badly, don’t blame yourselves for selling me. God was behind it. God sent me here ahead of you to save lives.”

If anyone had a reason to seek revenge upon someone it was Joseph. His brothers did him wrong! Yet he consoles and encourages them not to blame themselves. Joseph saw the greater vision God had for him of saving lives. He knew that even when his family turned their back on him, God never did. Even when Joseph spent time in prison God poured out favor upon him.

Genesis 50:19-20 is one of my favorite verses in all of Scripture. His brothers still fear that Joseph is going to seek revenge on them now that their father has died. Joseph says to his brothers: “Don’t you see, you planned evil against me but God used those same plans for my good, as you see all around you right now- life for many people.”

I want to learn from Joseph how to treat people with love, forgiveness and compassion even when they don’t deserve it. He showed grace to his brothers after they had despised and hated him. That is a true hero.

Church Chat

We have an awesome weekend at GracePoint. First of all, Win Green delivered an awesome message and challenged us to bear much fruit. It was so great to be back after having been gone on vacation. I was reminded once again how incredible this church is and how much I love it. Win and I had a discussion about GP and he was blown away by the church. He said it was the most cutting edge church he had ever seen, and was an awesome place not because of the technology of equipment but because of the amazing people. He is right. We have great leaders and volunteers at GP and the people are what make this church amazing.

Sunday night we had a “Church Chat” where we updated everyone on a number of things from the current state of the church, where we are going, an update on our efforts to go into east Wichita, and the latest building floor plans. It was an awesome night. We heard from Doug Frahm, our board of directors chairman, Mike Snow on our east project, and a couple of videos that were off the charts! If you are a leader at GP, we will send you a link where you can watch the entire event.

If you did not get to see the latest building designs, we will have a PDF file available on our web site under the UNLEASH banner. Everyone loved the changes that have been made to the facility and we are so excited as we move forward in the design phase. We also announced that GP is purchasing additional land that joins our current property. We now have 27 acres right across the street from the NW YMCA where we are going to build a worship facility that will reach out to thousands of people. 

This is such an exciting time at GracePoint. We have just scratched the surface of what God is going to do in the days ahead. The dream God laid on our hearts is becoming a reality!

Guest Speaker at GP

This Sunday is the last week in our series ONE Prayer. The last two weeks we have had video messages from two amazing communicators. This Sunday we go back to live teaching with a long time friend of mine named Win Green. I first met Win at Asbury Seminary in 1995. He was taking part in the Beeson Program at Asbury, which is a doctoral program, and I was a second year student in the Master of Divinity program.

Win was single at the time and wanted a couple of roommates to live with him in the Beeson townhomes. I had lived in the dorms before and I jumped at the chance to live in his posh pad. Over the next year we had a blast. Ours became a bachelor pad where many parties took place and Win taught me a great deal from his vast experience in life. This guy has done just about everything you can imagine from working on an oil rig to being a nanny! He is down to earth, yet an Ivy Leaguer having attended Yale undergrad, Yale Divinity school, and now living at Princeton.

Win has started a couple of churches, one of which is Everglades Community Church in south Florida. He is a great speaker and recently wrote a book entitled “All You Ever Wanted.” Win penned me with a nickname that is right on, though I can’t share it here. Ask him about the nickname he gave me on Sunday.

Finally, I want to share one of my favorite Win Green stories. When we were at Asbury Seminary, we were celebrating Win’s 39th birthday. We took Win to a nice restaurant near the University of Kentucky and we were having a blast. The waitress was a hottie (I’m not supposed to use that term my wife says, but this was pre-wife!) I said “let’s set Win up with this waitress because she’s a babe! When the waitress came back, we told her that we were celebrating Win’s birthday. She asked Win ”how old are you?” Win said “39″. She said “That’s how old my MOM is!” They have their babies when they’re young in Kentucky! Needless to say, Win did not go out with her because he was a father figure!

You are going to love hearing from Win Green!

ONE Prayer Video Teaching

I had breakfast with a good friend of mine this morning and in the midst of our conversation he began to tell me how much he had enjoyed the last couple of weeks in the series we are doing called ONE Prayer. We showed a video each week of a couple of the best communicators in America today.

The first was Craig Groeschel of Life Church. The thing that my friend said that really made him think was when Craig asked a question that went something like this: I wonder how it makes God feel when he looks down and his children are unwilling to work together. If we were to come together as the church we could end poverty throughout the world.

Last Sunday was Perry Noble of New Spring Church. Perry is one funny dude. The thing my friend remembered about Perry was his southern humor and love for his mama’s food, especially biscuits. Perry also said that after finishing a meal his mama would sometimes say “Perry keep your fork.” This meant that the best was yet to come in the form of an amazing dessert. Perry went on to tell everyone to keep their fork, because the best was yet to come from God.

What is really cool is that people accepted Christ at both of these video teachings. The fact is that a live person does not have to be on the platform teaching from the Bible for the Holy Spirit to move! God is big enough to work through technology! For me, this series confirmed our plans to begin a second GracePoint site in east Wichita that will use video as the primary way to communicate.

If you attend GracePoint and were at either of these two video teaching experiences, I would love to hear your honest thoughts on what you liked and did not like about the video teaching. As always, I want the unadulterated truth of what you REALLY thought of it…  

We’re Back!

What a great week we had at Horn Creek in Colorado. It was a 10 hour trip both ways and that is not very fun with triplets, but they did fantastic. The camp was amazing. If you have a family and are looking at summer vacation options, this one is hard to beat. Mark and Janita Stephens from GracePoint invited us to join their family on this adventure. 

Horn Creek has great lodging and everything you can imagine to do with your time. Horseback riding, white water rafting, pool, hot tub, water slides, tennis, rec. center with wood floor basketball court, racquetball court, bowling alley, rock climbing wall… Wow. It was incredible. Our kids absolutely loved it. The people embraced our kids much like the people of GracePoint. The older girls hung out with our girls which made it easy on Susan and me.

I have 2 HUGE highlights from the trip. The first is climbing to Horn Peak. It is about 13,500 ft. up this mountain and Mark Stephens led 9 of us on this adventure. Susan climbed most of the way and I was amazed at how well she did. The last 1,000 feet were above the tree line, very rocky, and just about straight up! We had to zig zag only taking 2-3 steps at a time and trying to breathe! It was amazing at the top and then on the way down we sat on out butts and slid down part of the way. It was a blast, but my feet are still hurting!  

The other was on the last night when they had a final worship service where the men were invited to come together, join hands and pray over the communion and then serve their families. Men all over the room were praying for each family member and offering them the body and blood of Christ. People were crying all over the room, and it is a powerful thing to watch men encourage their wives and kids. We’ve lost much of this practice in a world that has attempted to stifle the strong spiritual role of men.

I listened in on my friend Mark Stephens speak over his wife and 6 kids. He told them “I love each of you so much. I am proud of you, and I love how you love each other.” I watched Mark’s brother lay hands on each of his kids and pray for them and speak words of blessing over their lives. I walked away from this experience blown away. If we as men would take our leadership role in the home, and decide “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” I can guarantee you that the divorce rate would drop and more of our kids would become fully devoted followers of Christ.