Eric's Blog

How to Grow in Your Faith

We often get this question or people check "I would Like Information on How to Grow in My Faith" on the back of their connection card. First, you are ultimately responsible for your spiritual growth. Not your mama, your church, your pastor, or your small group. Your church should ASSIST you in your spiritual growth but you must take advantage of those opportunities.

Basic things you need to do (things you know and hear about but probable don't do) :

• Read the Bible. You can start with a least a chapter a day. Read a chapter in Proverbs in the OT and John in the NT.



• Pray. Don't make this complicated. Just talk to Him as you would a friend.



• Be faithful to you church. Note: If you are not being challenged by the preaching, your toes are not getting stepped on, and you are not getting offended then you are probable in the wrong church. At times growing hurts and is painful.



• Share your faith. Now that sounds hard and scary but all it means is that you tell people what Jesus has done and is doing for you. We can all do that.

Other things you need to do but probable don't think about as helping you grow in your faith:

• Start giving some of your money to your local church. God's starting place is the tithe (that's 10%) but if your faith is not there yet then just do something. I am amazed at the number of people who do nothing. Just start and be honest with God about it. Pray about it and watch God work in you and for you. Believe me this will grow your faith.



• If you are giving the tithe then increase your given. Give to the mission or benevolence fund. Raising your level of giving raises your level of faith which causes you to grow. By the way: Don't get mad about me writing about the tithe or giving more if you have never tried it.



• Get involved in a ministry. You grow by serving others. You grow by using your God-given gifts. This is not something you need to pray about. Get involved this week. Your church needs you.



• Get involved in a small group. We grow better together. Who is holding you accountable? Who do you have to pray with? Who are doing life together with? Do you really want to grow? Then get in a group and BE accountable to it.



• Get involved in outreach. That means you have to get outside the four walls of your church building. Reaching out to others keeps you in touch with the needs around you. Reaching out to others challenges the fear in your life and causes faith to rise up on the inside of you. Outreach will definitely help you grow.



• Read books and blogs that challenge you and help you grow in your faith.

You can sit in your room every day and pray for hours and not achieve certain types of spiritual growth. What I am saying is that giving, serving, and getting involved in outreach will grow you in ways that prayer cannot. Yes, prayer is important. But if you want to be ALL that God's wants you to be then you have to get off your chair, get out of your comfort zone, and reach out and serve others. This post is all about growing in your faith. There is no magic formula. Do these things and do them in increasing measure and you will grow!!!

Look What God is Doing At New Life

Look what God is doing at New Life...

Including Easter Sunday and the three weeks after there has been...

• 29 First-time or Re-commitments to follow Jesus Christ!



• 17 People sign up to be Water Baptized!



• 18 People sign up for the Newcomer's Fellowship!

We averaged 111 in attendance for the Identity Theft series for this four week period. Please stop right now and pray for all the new attenders and for all those who have committed to taking a "Next Step" in their faith journey. This is humbling and exciting as God takes us to places we have never been before. This means we must depend upon Him like we never have before. God is great!!!

This is just the beginning of what God wants to do at New Life. Keep praying, keep inviting, keep serving, keep believing, keep your faith up and watch what God will do. Believe me He wants to do so much more. So who do you know that needs to be at New Life this Sunday? Begin to pray for them right now and do whatever it takes to get them to the service this week. It's going to be great!!!

Know Your Enemy

God is moving!!! When God moves the devil takes notice. When you are no threat to his kingdom he normally leaves you alone. But when you begin to grow spiritually or your ministry begins to grow and people start accepting and following Jesus Christ, he will do everything he can to try to put a stop to it. Here are few ways he works:

Destroy: John 10:10 says, "The thief's purpose is to steal and kill and destroy" (NLT). Let's be clear. He plays for keeps. He desires to destroy you. That means your marriage, your future, your finances, your joy, and your future. He wants to destroy all the God in you. That is his ultimate plan.

If he cannot destroy you then he tries to detour you.

Detour: He will take you off the path. You could be one step away from your blessing or breakthrough but you turned away. You did not keep on the path. Deut 5:32 says, "So be careful to do what the Lord your God has commanded you; do not turn aside to the right or to the left" (NIV). How many times do we give up? We started right, we were growing spiritually and something or someone took us off the path. See, satan's detours do not put you back on the right path. Then keep leading you further and further away from God plan and purpose for your life. Remember, he plays for keeps. His detours lead to destruction and death.

If he cannot detour you then his next tactic is delay.

Delay: Ps 119:60 says, "I will hasten and not delay to obey your commands" (NIV). This is a big one and we fall into this trap ALL the time. God has blessings for us, all kinds of blessings. But blessings follow obedience. Deut 28:1-2 says, "If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully follow all his commands I give you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations on earth. 2 All these blessings will come upon you and accompany you if you obey the Lord your God" (NIV). Stop right now and read all of Deuteronomy 28.

We talk ourselves out of God's blessings all the time. "I'll get water baptized next time. I'll tithe next pay check. I'll get involved in small groups later. I'll go to church next Sunday. I'll sign up to for a ministry next time. I'll invite them to church next week." Stop it already. No you won't. You are falling right into the plans of the enemy of your soul.

What is God asking you to do right now? What are you waiting on? Do it now! Take the next step now! Don't delay! God's blessings are right on the other side of your next act of obedience. So, what are you waiting on???

Ten Questions: Ministry

Here is another 10 questions post from Craig Groeschel's blog...

1. Is our vision so big that we obviously can’t accomplish it without God?



2. Am I doing ministry from memory or from fresh direction from God?



3. What ministry (or program or meeting) has lost its effectiveness and should be stopped?



4. Is there a person who needs to be moved to another role (or removed), and I haven’t done it?



5. What faith risk is God calling me to take?



6. Have I repented to my team at least once in the last year for a failure in leadership?



7. Have I done everything in my power to make sure my team is living without unconfessed sin?



8. Am I expressing love and care for my team members’ families?



9. Am I living with delayed obedience toward God in any area of leadership?



10. If Jesus my sole motivation for ministry or has my motivation become clouded?

Boy, I've got some work to do. How about you?

Ten Questions: Introspection

Today's Ten Questions from Craig Groeschel's Blog deals with introspection. Here they are...

1. In what area of life have I lost my passion? (What can I do to get it back?)



2. If the enemy were going to “take me out,” what are my three most vulnerable points?



3. What new burden has God given me in the last year?



4. What have I unlearned that has made me closer to God?



5. What new discipline is God calling me to do?



6. What has God asked me to do that I haven’t yet done?



7. Is there something that I think about more than I think about pleasing God? (Money, possessions, ministry, family, recreation, something else.)



8. Do I have an increasing joy in serving Christ?



9. Am I handling the pain of ministry with integrity?



10. Am I still being persecuted for my faith in Christ?

As always these are great questions.

BIG Announcement

OK, here is the big news: Craig Groeschel called several other well known church leaders and proposed this idea -"What if we got several churches to go in together, to actually unify the body, and we all were willing to put personal preference aside and did a series of messages together entitled, “One Prayer.”"

He posted this on blog. "The series will begin on the weekend of June 8. The premise of the series is: "If God would answer 'one prayer' for the church at large, what would you pray?" This series serves several purposes. Specifically, we believe it will...

• Promote unity in the body of Christ.
• Expose our churches to other great teachers and ministries.
• Empower churches to experiment with video teaching.
• Infuse spiritual passion into a typically challenging month.
• Give the senior pastor a three-week break from teaching.
• Raise money for a mission project.
• Teach our people to fast, pray, and seek God in concert with thousands of other believers.
• Participate in the larger work of God in His church."

It will work like this: The first week I will speak and then the following weeks we will get to hear some great leaders and communicators by video. Each message will be center around "Make Us ..." which refers to each speakers one prayer for the church. Go here to read more about One Prayer and see some of the video speakers we will have a chance to hear. We have not decided on who they will be yet but I know this is going to be awesome.

If you had one prayer for the church what would it be?  Not just our church but the church worldwide.

Don't Give Up

Have you ever prayed for something and did not see results after a short period of time and given up? I know I have. What about praying for someone's salvation and things seemed to get worse? I think we all have prayed for things and not seen the results or had our prayers answered when WE thought they should be answered.

Perry Noble wrote a post entitled Don't Give Up that encouraged me and I know will encourage you. It's a personal story that demonstrates that we should always keep sowing good seed even when we are not seeing results. So go read Don't Give Up and be encouraged today.

It's Time for Your Questions about God and the Bible

Every year during the summer we do a series called, Your Questions, God's Answers. This is where you get to ask the questions that are on you mind and we answer them on Sundays. So what is on your mind, what is a hot topic to you, what questions do you have about God or the Bible? You can list them here or email them to me.

Normally I receive more questions than I have time to answer on Sundays during this series so this year we will try to answer some on the blog. This should be fun. Let the questions begin.

Why Aren’t Your People Inviting Other People to Attend Your Church?

Here is part of an interesting article from David Foster called, Why Aren’t Your People Inviting Other People to Attend Your Church?

"If people in your church are not inviting people, they are not inviting people on purpose. We think they are intimidated, but they are not. They know very well how to invite people to great stuff. They do it all the time.

You take an average person who goes to a great concert; it’s very easy for that person to invite someone to the next one. He went and had a great experience. He was moved, he was touched, it was a great value, and it was worth the time and the effort. He knows that his friend is going to benefit from it and he’s going to thank him afterward. So he invites him enthusiastically. They make the date, they plan, they spend the money, they anticipate. We’re really good at inviting people to places that we love going and knowing there’s a benefit at the end."

Read the rest of the article here. Do you invite people to your church? Why or why not?

We are in a very important time of the calendar to invite people to church. Easter just past and there are 5 Sundays left before May. What is special about May? We live in a college town. Exams are in May then school lets out. People move and go on vacation. Then there is Memorial day when people travel out of town.

So now is an important time to invite someone to church with you. Who are you going to invite this Sunday?

Resurrection Seed Update

I did a little research today (actually a lot) and here are the totals for our Resurrection Seed offering for the last few years...

• 2003: $13,363.16
• 2004: $18,005.13
• 2005: $20,640.10
• 2006: $17,517.00 (Note: This is the year we were building our new sanctuary debt free. I am not saying that this had anything to do with the decrease, but everyone was giving to the building fund.)
• 2007: $21,453.63

And the total so far for 2008: $19,736.42. That is just $1,717.22 from becoming our biggest Resurrection Seed offering ever received!!! All things are possible to him who believes.

By the way, if you have not given your Resurrection Seed offering make sure you mark it "Resurrection Seed" so it can be include in the total. Your sacrifices and faith does not go unnoticed. Y'all are awesome!