“Quiet time with God is like manna from Heaven. It comes each day, but it disappears with the dawn.” (unknown)

I often get responses from friends to my “first thoughts” like, “My first thought was, Cereal, or bagel?, or Did somebody turn the coffee on? I have similar thoughts…..but have tried over the last chapter of life to spend waking moments with a higher focus.

Many years ago, a mentor of mine gave me some of the best advice I’ve ever received.

“Make your first conversation each morning, a conversation with God.”

So my goal has become this: The first thing I hear each morning is a Word from Him through Scripture or a devotional. And the first thing out of my mouth is a prayer to Him. Am I tempted to check email, or Twitter first thing? Oh yes. And I’m amazed at how many times, when I do read something else first, my day loses focus and my mood is less than it could be. But on the days when I spend those first moments and first conversation with God, things stay on a much more even keel.

Interested, but too busy to deal with books first thing in the morning? As much as I travel, I’ve found a couple of great tools for making this discipline portable. I might suggest the daily read from the One Year Bible or from YouVersion, particularly if you want to use your phone or blackberry. The YouVersion app for the iPhone and Blackberry are amazing, and may even be history making.

So what’s your first thought? Where does your first conversation go each day?

I hope that a First Thought, maybe better titled a First Tweet will help you in some small way.

follow me on Twitter and get your first thought on most days (I’m not perfect….ask my family)

This post originally appeared in 2009, and has been reposted as a result of the growing popularity of the daily #1stThought. Thanks for your comments. Keep them coming!

Trouble is, if you’re like me, you’ve spent some vacations missing the whole point….and you work your tail off to have fun.

Ever stress out trying to make record time on the drive to vacation? Ever get anxious wondering if you can maximize your fun time with scheduled activities? Ever get home from your time away, feeling like you need a vacation to recover from your vacation?

I was guilty of it all. Now, I’m in recovery…

Instead of over-programmed time away, we now only have 2 rules for vacation:

1. Eat til you’re tired.
2. Sleep til you’re hungry.

Earlier in life, I would have rushed through vacation, trying to do more things during my time off work. Then I realized:

God took a vacation. And He only did one thing on that first Sabbath day.

He rested.

Now I do too, and it’s made all the difference.

God worked, then He rested. Do you?

They call that song an old favorite for a reason.

Look upon Him, and your eyes will be lifted up. Lifted up past the hurt of this world. Lifted up past the failures of your life. Lifted to a higher vision for what you can become.

I realized this again last Sunday as our worship team offered a simple, acoustic arrangement of the Miley Cyrus song “When I Look At You” (yes Miley’s music made it into our church). Lisa Reid, a singer on our worship team knocked it out of the park. She was kind enough to send me a recording this morning.

We don’t have the professional, studio quality music of a lot of larger churches, but this was so good I had to share it. Click the link below. Take a listen. Look at Him, and find a bigger vision of life and who you can become.

When I Look At You – Cypress Creek Worship Team

The patriots were celebrating one year of a new country, new independence, and a new endeavor.

“Freedom must be declared before it is realized.”

The rest of the world? Well the rest of the world didn’t even regard us as a country. Had you asked a Londoner what he thought of the new country, he might have laughed. Freedom had been declared, but it would be a long time before that freedom was won. Six more years of battle, uncertainty, and pain were ahead before the British surrendered in the war.

But that didn’t keep our founders from declaring their freedom, living as if they were free, and believing that it would one day come to pass. Despite the overwhelming circumstances surrounding them, the cost before them, and the uncertainty ahead of them, our founders declared freedom, believed in their freedom, and even celebrated it….long before it was a reality.

That was a new insight for me, and may be the best Independence Day spiritual lesson I’ve heard.

Freedom must be declared before it is realized. It must be lived into, believed in, and trusted before it’s ever a concrete reality. That’s a core lesson in the Bible and on the road of faith.

Follow our founders, and the lessons of the Word. Declare a freedom in your life today. Believe it no matter the circumstances surrounding you. For freedom declared is the pathway to freedom realized.

I will awaken the dawn with my song (Ps 108:2)

The longer I live, the more I believe that

The first thoughts of your day determine the course of your day.

If you spend your first thoughts worrying about your troubles, your day will be a day dominated by a troubled mind. If you fix your first thoughts on criticism of someone who has done you wrong, your day will be dominated by a critical mind. If you spend your first moments worrying about what you don’t have, or what might be lost today, your day will be consumed by a mindset of scarcity.

But if your first thoughts are spent counting your blessings, and blessing God, your mind (and your day) will be dominated by blessing.

The early bird really does get the worm. The early thoughts of our day really do set the course for the day.

What kind of early bird are you?

As churches often do, they shared with me their staff structure, which had much of the normal setup of high growth churches.

However, I saw a staff position I’ve never seen before.

At the senior level, they have a Pastor of Prayer Ministries. The church has a dedicated ministry of prayer, where people can text in concerns, and the Pastor of Prayer, along with his team, develops a list and notification system so that the volunteers in the prayer ministry are immediately notified.

Unlike some “prayer concerns” (a.k.a. – gossip morsels) I’ve seen elsewhere, these guys are serious. They have developed a volunteer corps that is structured, supervised, and set up such that the church and its prayer needs are being lifted up all day long by at least 4 volunteers – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with individuals taking assigned 30 minute slots.

They told me of a boy who was hit by a car last week in a relatively minor accident. By the time he got to the hospital, he had several people from the church there, and scores of text messages telling him he was being lifted up in prayer. And by the time he got to the hospital, he was healed.

Spiritual and strategic, huh?

I wonder why they’re growing so fast?

At his funeral, one fellow at the center of (and instigator of) the conflicts asked to speak. Nervously, we granted the request. I’m glad we did.

He stood up and delivered.

“You know, we went through a lot together as a church. And I would like to have a lot of those days back. But one thing about Jack was sure. No matter how heated the discussion, no matter how terrible the situation,

Jack was never a part of the problem, and always a part of the solution.”

That’s money. In all my years of leading churches and funerals, I’ve never heard a finer eulogy.

When they bury you, will they say you were a part of the problem, or the solution?

I’m going to try to live on the solution side.

The way I see it, that’s the side of the Empty Tomb.



I have no idea who wrote it or who deserves the credit/blame. It just seemed like good Monday humor.

EFFECTIVE AUGUST 1, 2008

NEW OFFICE POLICY

Dress Code:
1) You are advised to come to work dressed accord­ing to
your salary.

2) If we see you wear­ing Prada shoes and car­ry­ing a
Gucci bag, we will assume you are doing well finan­cially
and there­fore do not need a raise.

3) If you dress poorly, you need to learn to man­age your
money bet­ter, so that you may buy nicer clothes, and
there­fore you do not need a raise.

4) If you dress just right, you are right where you need
to be and there­fore you do not need a raise.

Sick Days:
We will no longer accept a doctor’s state­ment as proof
of sick­ness. If you are able to go to the doc­tor, you are able to come to work.

Per­sonal Days:
Each employee will receive 104 per­sonal days a year.
They are called Sat­ur­days & Sundays.

Bereave­ment Leave:
This is no excuse for miss­ing work. There is noth­ing you can do for dead friends,
rel­a­tives or co-workers. Every effort should be made to have non-employees attend
the funeral arrange­ments in your place. In rare cases where employee involve­ment is
nec­es­sary, the funeral should be sched­uled in the late after­noon. We will be glad to
allow you to work through your lunch hour and sub­se­quently leave one hour early.

Bath­room Breaks:
Entirely too much time is being spent in the toi­let.
There is now a strict three-minute time limit in the
stalls. At the end of three min­utes, an alarm will
sound, the toi­let paper roll will retract, the stall
door will open, and a pic­ture will be taken. After your
sec­ond offense, your pic­ture will be posted on the
com­pany bul­letin board under the ‘Chronic Offend­ers’
cat­e­gory. Any­one caught smil­ing in the pic­ture will be
sec­tioned under the company’s men­tal health policy.

Lunch Break:

* Skinny peo­ple get 30 min­utes for lunch, as they need
to eat more, so that they can look healthy.

* Nor­mal size peo­ple get 15 min­utes for lunch to get a
bal­anced meal to main­tain their aver­age figure.

* Chubby peo­ple get 5 min­utes for lunch, because that’s
all the time needed to drink a Slim-Fast.

Thank you for your loy­alty to our com­pany. We are here
to pro­vide a pos­i­tive employ­ment expe­ri­ence. There­fore,
all ques­tions, com­ments, con­cerns, com­plaints,
frus­tra­tions, irri­ta­tions, aggra­va­tions, insin­u­a­tions,
alle­ga­tions, accu­sa­tions, con­tem­pla­tions, con­ster­na­tion
and input should be directed elsewhere.

The Man­age­ment
Pass this on to all who are employed!

Not too long ago, I studied and found that the word hope does not occur in the Bible until the book of Ruth. That may not sound important, but a little reflection brought me to  an important realization. The word hope cannot be found in the first five books of the Bible, the books that our faith has called “The Law.” My realization,

You will not find hope in the Law.

You will not find hope in your behavior. Nor will you find it in what you know.  You will find it in a different kind of relationship with God, one that is based on a heart to heart connection to the Risen Savior….even on the day after Easter.

So the Monday question that will bring hope isn’t “Have I done enough?” or “Have I earned enough?” Rather, it’s “How is my daily connection to the dead man who walks?”

Keep that question at the forefront of your soul, and you’ll have hope for Monday.

Funny thing is, in that Last Supper, Jesus was ushering in something new, not saying goodbye to something old.

He told his disciples He was starting something new and giving them a new mandate (which has been translated “maundy”).

The new mandate? Jesus took the Seder feast of old, the most sacred ritual in the Jewish year, and turned it upside down.

The old Passover feast looked back, remembering the deliverance God did in Egypt.

The new Passover that Jesus started called His people to look forward to the coming deliverance when all that is wrong is made right.

The vision of the first Lord’s Supper was a bright, optimistic, forward-looking vision of a Last an Permanent Festival at the end of time, not a faint memory or tradition.

Even though He was only moments away from being arrested and beginning His darkest day, Jesus looked forward. Beyond the pain of the immediate to the promise of a better tomorrow.

Do you believe that your best days are yet to come? Do you live looking forward, or backward? Jesus always set His eyes forward.

And that made all the difference.