Another year has passed by again! As believers, can we look back on 2011 as a year that saw our relationship with God draw closer? I’ve had the privilege of watching believers grow in their faith that was evident by just looking at them! What a great God!

   Conversely, I’ve watched with a broken heart, as believers make the same decisions they’ve made years before, excluding God from their lives. They seem like rats trapped in the cage of Christianity. They’re in, but rest assured one bad experience, one misunderstanding, one convicting message too many, and they are out as though the cage door was left open.

   There are four L’s that I would like for us to consider as we enter 2012. The first L is LEARN. Spiritual leaders spend considerable time in training, Bible doctrine and life application studies at TBC. We try not to be ambiguous with the application or how to apply scripture to meet the everyday demands of our lives. More importantly, real-life examples are presented to demonstrate what it means to be a living sacrifice. Learning requires application or it’s no more than the accumulation of facts.

   The second is LIVE, specifically LIVING SACRIFICE. We live in a world that offers convenience and ease. We want church to conveniently fit our schedules. We want doctrines that don’t affect our personal life choices. And we want a religion that makes no demands nor sets any expectations. Relationships demand sacrifice!

   The third is LAUGH. Believers have gotten programmed to believe that a Christ-like walk means no more laughter. As one comedian said, all I have to do is get up in the morning and look in the mirror to realize that God has a sense of humor! If our walk with Christ doesn’t resonate with joy, gladness and laughter, is it really Christ with whom we walk? Who wants to accept the Savior I preach and teach if my life seems to be a continuous Shakespearean tragedy?

   Lastly, LOVE. As a pastor, I.ve seen families broken over the loss of a loved one. Their sorrow brings an awareness to the very short amount of time we really have to love God and love each other. There’s a lot of wishing they had been closer to God, closer to each other; more faithful to God and more forgiving to each other. The bible never gives us a definition of LOVE (at least from my studies). It does give us examples of what LOVE looks like; what love does. We need to spend as much time doing what love does, as we do talking about it.

   LEARN, LIVE, LAUGH and LOVE. 2012, here we come!