The Me I Want To Be

I WANT TO BE BETTER. I am striving everyday to become a better person, a better preacher, a better pastor, a better parent.. I want to be a better me. Our preaching theme for January concentrated on "Giving Back to God" with the main scriptural reference being Psalms 116:12. Our theme for the month of February is"The Me I want to Be" with the scriptural reference being Jeremiah 18:1-6. I am praying that God will allow me to preach out of Jeremiah as well as Ephesians 2:10, Romans 12:2, II Corinthians 5:17 as well as Colossians 3.

My reading goal for February is to read through John Ortberg's book, "The Me I Want To Be; Becoming God's Best Version of You" and Jenna Lucado's Book, "Redefining Beautiful": What God Sees when God sees you. I had the blessed opportunity to LIVE the sermon I intended to preach Sunday as a fellow pastor in South Bend under instructions from God, left the church where he had served faithfully to start another church.

Because I am trying to be an Acts 5 preacher, I felt he had enough people who would judge him for what he was doing. I decided to be a better me. Preachers can be so judgmental of other preachers instead of trying to lift each other up. I knew many would call to be nosy but I decided to call and say, preachers need to preach so since you have two weeks before you walk into your new situation, COME OVER TO MACEDONIA AND HELP US. We pray for Pastor Matt Adams and his family as they embark on their new assignment. He did a wonderful job Sunday and we were blessed.

When I was in college, I did my first church internship at the Northeast Missionary Baptist Church in OKC. During this time the church did not have a pastor but an interim pastor who although he had won the vote 5 times, their by-laws stated that a candidate had to win with 75% of the vote. The hang-up with this candidate was, although he had a Master of Divinity, he was in residency to become a Doctor. His passion was to be a Pastor and a Doctor.

He would take me on rounds at the Oklahoma Memorial Hospital as it was known then. He taught me charts, codes, and conduct. One phrase I remember that I learned was FTT (Failure To Thrive). Babies who gained no weight or would not grow adequately or older people who would lose weight and not function like they should would often be tagged with these initials on their charts. I had no appreciation for what I was learning but I kept living.

Psychologists speak of the largest mental problem today as FTT, not depression or anxiety but languishing. John Ortberg suggests that Languishing is the condition of someone who may be able to function but has lost a sense of hope, meaning and purpose. It is not the presence of mental illness; it is the absence of mental and emotional vitality. In ancient times it was called ACEDIA and was considered a deadly sin. It was a weariness of one's soul and an inability to delight in life.

Someone understands what that means, dead marriages, dead end jobs, dead churches, dead on the inside to the point where we have giving up on dreams, hopes and inwardly resigned ourselves to an existence of no hope, no joy, no vitality, NO LIFE. Jesus said, "A thief comes to steal and kill and destroy, but I came to give life—life in all its fullness".(NCV) So deadness is not what God desires. God wants us to delight in life, not life how the world defines it but life how God gives it to us.

Vitality of life is not found in the accumulation of toys and things but it is found in the consumption of Jesus. Saint Irenaeus wrote, "The glory of God is a human being fully alive; and to be alive consists in beholding God."

Keep running,

Owens