Third Quarter Living

This past four months has been full of much soul searching and evaluating my life which is causing some refocusing for me. I am comparing life to a football game which consists of four quarters. I am realizing that I am in the middle of the third quarter. I have moved out of half time and need to be focusing on finishing the second half well.

My health issues this year have been like my coach pulling me out of the game and sitting me down on the bench and giving me a good talking to about my approach to the game. Here is some of the instruction I have gotten.

Son, if you don't quickly begin to focus on health then your not going to be able to finish the game. Your body (the tool that it is) will not be able to withstand the rigors of the game anymore. If you don't learn to say no to greasy foods like cheese fries and chicken fried steak and cheeseburgers then your body will not perform for you anymore. So I have traded in chicken fried steak for grilled chicken salads. I have traded in tacos and fries for breakfast for a protein shake. I have traded in my cheeseburgers for turkey on wheat w honey mustard.

Son, if you don't exercise for health you can't expect your body to act healthy. The reason it is not performing is you are not exercising it right. Adrenaline can only last so long before many pieces of the body give out. So I have begun running 2 miles at least three times a week and lifting weights at least twice a week. The others days I am trying to walk as exercise.

Son, if you don't exercise your heart with the thoughts and attitudes it needs, your heart will wear out. A quaility life depends upon how your heart is. As proverbs says "Guard your heart with all diligence for out of it flow the issues of life". More specifically you have to meditate on God's word day and night. This will direct your heart to the healthiest desires and thoughts it can have. They will be kingdom thoughts and kingdom desires. They as much as anything can bring you health. -- So I have set a goal of reading a minimum of two chapters of the word each day. And I have begun a blog on the gospel of John to keep up with some of the things I am learning and to help me focus on a specific book of the Bible.

Son, if you just live to survive, if you just live to take care of today, you will get weary quickly. You will live wanting to give up. Live with a transcendent cause. Live for something bigger than yourself. Live to leave kingdom legacies on the earth. Live to prop up other men and women and their gifts and ministries. This is a cause worth giving effort for. This is a cause worth being disciplined for because it gives glory to the giver of Life, the Lord Jesus Christ.

So I have been sidelined. I am on a blood thinner right now which slows me down whether I like it or not. Since I am a doer it has been hard to be slowed down, but good as I am learning the importance of being consistent with my coaches advice so that I can live on with the health I need to finish the full game, all four quarters, and to be able to say I ran the race well, I finished the fight and to further hear my coach say "Well done son, you listened and you learned, and you have completed the task on the earth you have been created for."

Can we change ?

How do we change ? Modern Psychology says we gain a cognitive understanding of what is wrong and make right choices to correct the problem. In others words we get the right thought track and change our doing. I think in the church we take this tact also. We find five steps to change our habits.

I think we see a different pattern in the Word of God. It is true that we must think differently and that thinking differently we change who we are which in turn changes our actions. What is missing too often in the equation though is that the only way to change is through a relationship. It is a relationship that has the power to affect change in us. It is a relationship with a master mentor. Someone with all wisdom to help us. Our change doesn't come in our putting some new thoughts in our mind. Our change comes as we get in relationship with God himself and begin to think His thoughts. We begin to get to know Him and how He thinks and how He is. In the context of that relationship we begin to change. We begin to grow in wholeness and health in all parts of our being.

The key is to think, be, and then do in context of a relationship with God.

Update 04/01/08

This has been an interesting season in my life to say the least. I have had a serious illness that causes problems to my spleen and put me in the hospital for 10 days in December. The doctors could not find a cause for my problem and since that time I have been on a blood thinner. The blood thinner makes me tired often and quickly. During my time in the hospital which was rough both emotionally and physically the Lord has strongly had me focus more on health in my life.

In recent years I had allowed eating what I wanted and not exercising become a habit, as well as not being daily in the word. It has been impressed upon me that HEALTH, both physically and spiritually needed to become an emphasis in my life.

I began in the hospital and have since been focused on HEALTH as a goal in my life. I am trying to read at least two chapters in the Bible each day. Along with that I am studying through the Gospel of John. I started a blog to help me record what God is showing me and what I am learning in John. On the food side my diet has changed dramatically. In the three months since I have been out of the hospital I have eaten two pieces of red meat (so no hamburgers). I am eating salads frequently and fruit. I usually start the day with a power smoothie comprised of whey protein isolate and soy protein isolate, lecithin, probiotics, apple vinegar, glucosamine, msm, flax oil, safflower oil, bananas and fruit mixed in orange juice. Ummmm doesn't that sound good. It actually doesn't taste too bad and helps me get all those good items my body needs to start a day. I have had no butter in three months. I am eating whole wheat breads. I am eating non fat yogurt semi frequently. I have taken almost all fried foods out of my diet. Turkey and chicken breast are the usual meats I have.

HEALTH take more discipline but is a good thing. I've lost about 30 pounds in three months and am working out at the gym three to four times a week. I didn't realize 40 year olds could still have actual defined muscle. I try and get on the treadmill or elliptical each time out at the gym and do some weight training.

more later . . .

Catalyst 2007 part 2

Here are some quotes from the main sessions at Catalyst.

Catalyst 2007 part 1

The Set Up

This was my first year to attend the Catalyst Conference in Atlanta, GA. I couldn't have asked for a better set up. The foreshadowing began when I arrived in long term parking at DFW airport and it took me 15 minutes to get from parking, through ticketing, and then through the checkout points and to my terminal. That itself is a miracle of unknown proportions. Our flight was smooth with no turbulence. Checking in at the motel went without a hitch

As we walk into the conference James, the friend I was with, meets a seminary friend who invites us to join him in one of the stadium suites to enjoy the conference. So we aren't crowded in rows but up in a box suite.

I must admit I kept looking over my shoulder. I don't know that I had ever been on a spiritual retreat without some sort of spiritual warfare or struggle.

First Day highlights: The labs

Reggie McNeal:
Some people think the church is a place, others think the church is a vendor of religious services. The church in reality is a group of people on mission with God.

There is a shift from an internal focus to an external focus. The church has gotten to internally focused, they have a church-centric view of the world. the shift is toward being externally focused and seeing the church through kingdom lenses..

An internal focus try's to get people to come to us. An external focus is about the church going out to them in all the domains of life.

Missional emphasis irritates church people. Church-centric people believe we use our gifts at the place (church) and that church staff are paid to serve the place (church).

The Spirit of God is out running in the streets not just hanging out at the church.

The kingdom of God is the destination for people not the church. Like an airport the church is a connector not a destination.

Chris Seay:
We are addicted to buying things. Our identity is tied to consumerism. It is the prozac of our society.

This is the original sin of Adam and Eve, wanting "more".

The church gets caught up in offering people "more".

Christmas is Jesus birthday, not ours, yet we spend much more on ourselves than Him. Let your kids give money to needy this Christmas not just be consumed with what they can get.

Leonard Sweet:
We have become a culture of consumption. Consumption is the opiate of the people. I consume therefore i am.

We need to become a culture of conception. We tend and till Gods garden.

The greatest failure of the church in this generation if the failure to confront the culture of consumption with a different model.

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Building Block of Transformation

In our Christian lives the destination is transformation into the image of Christ. If the destination is transformation then the road to the destination would be called maturation. And there is a way of navigating this journey.

The Bible is clear that as we have become new creations we are to think differently. Here are some of the steps of that journey which I would call the building blocks of transformation.

1. Think kingdom thoughts
2. Saturate yourself by Meditating on the word day and night
3. which encourages you to Act upon Gods will
4. Which will develop Godly Habits in you
5. Which build strongholds of character in our lives
6. which leave kingdom legacies for others

As my pastor says "if you elevate your thinking you elevate your life". When Gods word empowered by the Holy Spirit dominates your thinking you are transformed.

Getting current

I had quit using this blog for a season, but I am going to begin to update it again. I am a bit frustrated at the thieves of cyberworld. I moved this blog to my website berryalvis.com for a while and tried to move it back to my address on blogger. Only to find someone is poaching the site. Someone has stolen my site and is using it to advertise. My new address is http://berrya.blogspot.com. I am pursuing the issue with google but haven't heard anything yet.

Deconstruction

I got to hang out with Justin, Kelly and Aiden Nygren tonight at Starbucks. In our conversation the idea of deconstruction came up. I think Aiden mentioned it.

I was thinking on my way home that deconstruction is a part of every Christians life. When we are transformed in our hearts becoming sons and daughters of God then we begin a life journey of deconstructing all the parts of our lives that are not in unity with God. It is a deconstruction toward simplicity. It is deconstructing our lives to simply follow Jesus. It is deconstructing our religion to simply following Jesus.

I like that phrase "deconstructing to simplicity".

Ripples in the pond

I had the privilege of speaking to the songwriters of the At Your Feet community this past weekend and on Friday night to the greater community as a whole.

The key scripture that the Lord put on my heart to share was Hebrews 3:13. It says "encourage one another while it is called today, lest your hearts be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin"

And also Acts 14:22 in which Paul exhorts disciples to continue in the faith.

Why would Paul encourage people to continue in the faith ? As I thought about it, I realized that life can be really hard on all of us as we journey this road of faith in Christ. As Hebrews says our hearts can be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. Sin will lure us or seduce us into hardened hearts. Sin makes itself available when we are stressed, when we have been wounded (sometimes by other believers and even trusted believers), when we get overconfident because Gods grace has come through us.

Sin is like a mouse trap, luring us with bait that entices us only to snap on us and do real damage. And sin seems often at our doorstep.

This is why Paul is calling us to encourage one another. That word for encouragement is not just a pat on the back. It is a summons to fight the good fight, it is a passionate plea to continue. When I was sharing this with my wife, she said the picture that came to her mind was from Braveheart as William Wallace rides down the line of men to encourage them that the fight they were about to face was about their family, their sons and daughters, their country.

One encouragement can be a pebble in a pond and will send out ripples to the rest of the pond. Let's remember to encourage one another often because the battle is real and we all get wounded.

Time keeps on ticking ticking ticking into the future

It has been about ten months since my last blog. It has been a time of hibernation in some senses for me. A large part of that is becuase the business I am in has been very busy. I really think the Lord is directing me to a new season of time where my availability to people increase. I hope to spend time blogging again.

A vision aligned with "the vision"

My friend Loren Bishop has revisited his vision for his blog: Pulpit of the Last Days. It is a great reminder that our Biblical hermeneutic (way of interpreting the Bible)is to have a Christ centered one not a human intellect centered one. Check out his vision on his blog.

link

Real versus False Religion

One afternoon on our recent trip to Kansas city the kids and I decided to check out an authentic Kansas City barbecue restaurant. I had heard of the fame of KC barbecue and wanted to check it out. We ended up at a place near downtown.

We walked in and you could smell the smells of barbecue cooking on a grill. One of the first sounds we heard as we walked in was a high shrill voice almost yelling "Hi may Heeeeelp U". Honestly it was a little freaky because this lady was yelling this statement over and over. My first thought was that this was a gimmick used by the restaurant so that people would remember it. I've been to places where the waitress poured your tea from a distance of three feet above your glass as a gimmick or another place where all the employees had to say "Welcome to Moe's" as soon as you walked in the door. So again, I'm thinking okay this is a ploy to advertise and it's kinda weird.

As we got to the counter I saw a little sign saying you got your meal free if someone didn't say to you "Hi May I help you". It dawned on me that this lady with the shrill yell had taken on a false religion. The store had a statement that was intended on politeness to their customers. They so believed in it that it was required for every customer. It was meant to be done with a heart to serve. This lady had taken that principle and decided to yell an abbreviated version of it so often that every customer would hear it. She didn't realize that the meaning and heart of the matter had totally been lost. Instead of leaving customers with a sense of being truly served, they were left with entertainment at the most and irritation on the other side.

This reminded me of the church today and where we get in trouble. The commandments of the Lord were given as a means for loving and serving God and one another, but at times we manipulate them to serve ourselves. This was a great example of true and false religion.

postnote: the barbecue was good, but didn't quite hit Texas standards.

All the plates are never spinning at the same time

I was listening to Mike Bickle teach and he said some things that really made me think. He was talking about the human propensity to look towards the future to a time when everything in our lives is in sinc, we have all the plates spinning. He laughed and said this is not a perspective birthed from reality. The reality is that there is always a plate not spinning. It helps us continue to depend on God.

Either the devil is keeping one of the plates of our lives from spinning, or our own immaturity, or at times God keeps that plate from spinning.

He also said he considers this life like a 70 year internship preparing us for the kingdom of heaven.

For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels. that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. 2 Corinthians 3:6,7

From the mouths of pups !

I ran across this on Dan Kimballs blog and thought it was relavantly funny.




Originally published August 9, 1976 by Charles Shultz

The New Blog and Dialogue

For a time I have wanted to put together a blog on the topic of the Kingdom of God. It seems God brings that theme to me over and over. So the Kingdom of God dialogue has been birthed . It is my random thought on the Kingdom.

This blog isn't designed to be a thorough treatise on the Kingdom or a well built linear theology of the subject. It is primarily a place for ruminations, meditations, and a growing ideology about the Kingdom. Come visit and feel free to leave a comment.

Zoom, zoom, zoom

How can it be almost Christmas time ? Time flies. I remember being in high school and wondering if I would ever finish those four years and then get out on my own. Now I'm on the other end of the curve, time is always flying.

We have decided that our community called Resonance is to be released into other endeavors in the kingdom. It seemed to be God's timing to move on. I will write a prologue on our church planting experience later. We are going to stay in North Dallas and focus on getting out of debt for the time being. We are not in a hurry to move on and will attempt to wait on the Lord and hear the next step from Him.

I am amazed at the hurried pace of life here in the metroplex. I am also awed at how quickly I am drawn in to that cycle. I can imagine the Father sitting on a park bench and saying Berry slow down and fellowship awhile. My response too often seems to be "Let me get caught up God and then we can spend some quality time together."

God continues to speak to me that His ways and His plans can never be separated from relationship. God speaks direction, and then God walks along the way fellowshiping in that direction. Truly knowing Him is not designed to get direction at the beginning of the day and carry out the task, but to stay in fellowship with Him at the beginning (guidance), throughout (the journey), and until the end (fulfillment).

Seek first the kingdom of God and all these things will be added unto you !

Calling: the journey continues

In my Christian existance, I have found the understanding of calling to be an ongoing developmental process. Let me explain.

In my first years of truly following after Christ I began to recognize a pull within myself to encourage other Christians. If you would have asked me in my two year understanding of the Christian journey, I would have said that God had given me a gift of encouragement.

A short time after that, God allowed me to be a leader in our college ministry. I was the one who would plan our weekly prayer, worship, and teaching time on Sunday nights. At this point I probably would have said that my calling was to teach and encourage.

Maybe four years after giving my life to Christ a scripture, Isaiah 61:1-4 began to stir me greatly and was involved in a very specific call on my life. The unveiling of that call came with a very dramatic week that supernaturally confirmed a call of God on my life. At this point I would have said God called me to preach.

Years later I was involved in pioneering a young adults ministry as an intern at a large interdenominational church. My understanding here was that God had put me in a place of peer leadership. I taught, cast vision, discipled people as God led.

After some other wilderness experiences, some school experiences, some other ministry experiences God began to deal with me and say you are getting older, your no longer a peer leader, I am calling you to Father. I wasn't sure I wanted to be old and a Father but I recieved this direction from the Lord.

I give all this background to remind myself of the process and to say that our calling in the Lord is ongoing. It is not an event and it is not stationary, it is always evolving. It is a growing understanding. It is an ongoing relationship. We can't define it by yesterday or tomorrow, but have to define it within the context of our relationship with Christ today.

Today I am reminded that our callings are always subject to change. We are not our own, but we are bought with a price. It is God's will that directs us today in whatever direction He deems beneficial to His glory and His kingdom.

Riding under the waves

I like blogging, but like my life right now I am riding under the waves. Most people unless really close can't see me, my life, and the realities of my journey with the Lord. I keep saying over the next horizon I will have time for this or that.

I think reality is: accept the reality I have. So I'll keep popping up for air from time to time.

I'm learning about calling these days. It will sound simple, but I'm learning when my friend is mad at me, I am still called to be a friend. When my wife is mad at me I am still called to husband her. When my kids are mad at me, I am still called to father them. When I am mad at me, I am still called to pastor others, father my kids, husband my wife, serve the body of Christ. I am not my own but I am bought with a price. Circumstances don't dictate our calling, being obedient to Christ does. I'm learning.

Angelic

I ran across this mural on a side of a building in the Greenville area of Dallas so I took a couple of shots.