Steven Furtick has officially jacked me up, set me off, spun me round and got my mind spinning.

Page 6 >> if your vision for your life isn’t intimidating to you, it might be insulting to God.

That line alone sold me on this book.  I haven’t been able to shake it.  It has me sprinting through it and tweeting like a mad man.  Most people I know don’t even have a vision for their life.  Not a real one.  I don’t.  I can’t go to a whiteboard or a file or a piece of paper and say, see here, this is what I envision happening in my life.  I wish I could say I did.  But I don’t.

And then to expand that vision to something that intimidates you.  That’s brash.  That’s ridiculous.  That’s enormous.  That’s awesome.

And then!  Then, to say that if it isn’t intimidating to you, then it is insulting to God.  It’s beautiful.  It’s motivating and immobilizing.  Motivating because it makes me want it so bad.  Immobilizing because I have no idea where to go or what to do to get it.

Let’s just say I am glad that there are 169 more pages in this book.

It doesn’t come out till September 21st, but seriously, jump on it.  Click on the picture of the cover above.  It will take you to amazon.com.  You can pre-order it there.  You will not be sorry.  If you are sorry, I’ll buy it from you and give it to someone that wants to see God move in unexplainable ways in their life.

We just got back from an amazing week at Mt. Hope Bible Camp.  Their website was/is hideous, but the camp was awesome to the core.  The staff was awesome, the food was awesome, the grounds were awesome, and the weather was awesome.  The week was incredible.  God moved in ways that only seem to happen at camp.  We had a ton of fun, and not enough pictures because we lost our camera battery charger. (I think Bella hid it in some clever spot)  We did get a few pictures from the ybod games, and you can see those at the bottom of the post.

One of the incredible things that I got to be a part of this week was speaking.  It was my first time speaking at a camp for a chapel service, and God moved in such an incredible way.  I am so humbled to be able to speak into so many kids lives.  God gave me the topic and the idea and the words and stirred up a crazy fire in me where I was really dying for these students to know what God had done in me.  All of it was through Jesus and what He said and did, and the theme was so contagious throughout the week that by the time I got to speak on Wednesday night, the students were incredibly eager.

The theme was I Am Second, based on the website where people offer their testimonies about why God is first and they are second.  I found myself returning to a Steven Furtick quote all throughout prepping for this sermon, right up to the point of praying before chapel started.

I will see God wring glory from my life, some where, some way, some how.

I feel like God really started to wring my life that night, and thanks to Abe and Kyle, I can now share the mp3 with you.  A few people have already told me that they wanted to hear this, and I am more than happy to share it.  For those of you that prayed for us while we were gone, thank you so much.  God set kids free in ways that they didn’t even know they were trapped.  It was a beautiful week.

Here is the audio from the sermon.  It’s called 5 Frogs on a Log.  

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Friday was one of the more incredible matches that I have seen the US play. The first half was a tragedy. The second half was unbelievable. And when the final whistle blew, we had come away with a point, still in contention to get out of group play and into the round of 16.

But when the post-game interviews started, all anyone could talk about was the horrible call that the ref made. And it’s true. It was a horrible call.

We get angry about the things that we can’t control. It is misdirected anger. It is unproductive. Better placed anger would be our lack of intensity and leaving wide open spaces for Slovenia in the attacking third to score those first two goals. That kind of anger can motivate change where it is needed.

But I think we are doing with this game the same thing that we do with real life. We get so angry about our crappy circumstances which we can’t control rather than angry about our own lack of discipline or self control.

Frustration with results is healthy.  Frustration with circumstances you have control over is healthy.  Frustration with circumstances you cannot control is wasted energy.

Let’s quit wasting energy.  That goes for Team USA as well as us ‘normal’ Americans.