What informs the way you see your life? It comes from your core, your heart.
The Apostle Paul says, "Do not lose heart." Given his dire circumstance, Paul could have lost heart in many, many instances--but he didn't. He taught himself how to rise above his circumstance and find peace no matter in what terrible situation he found himself. He practiced good "heart hygiene."
Pastor Tim explains how to sustain the practice of good heart hygiene--of taking care of your heart. He shares a story of his best friend, Tony. Tony had been Pastor Tim's best friend since 5th grade and they remained best friends throughout the years. He uses Tony's life to help us understand how a believer copes with one of the worst circumstance one can find themselves facing.
Learn what it means to practice good heart hygiene, to protect your heart so that it informs the way you see life unfolding--informs it in a way that provides a big vision for your future in your life with God.
Based on John 10:11-18
Life is divided into two halves. This division has nothing to do with chronology or age. In the first half, you are told who you are by those around you -- friends, nation and culture. It works for a time, but then you begin to wonder. You begin to question. You begin a period of deconstruction as you are forced inward to find out for yourself just who you are.
What will the second half be like for you? Who will help you as you are forced, yes forced, to deconstruct and reconstruct yourself.
Father Richard Rohr offers this paradoxical truth: "The way down is the way up and the way up is the way down." Pastor Tim helps us to understand how God is present in our second half and to understand the necessity of this paradoxical process. He explains that with God, "Falling upward" is what you do instead of falling down. Finality in hopelessness, failure, pain? Not with God. He flips180 degrees and transforms them into tools that you can use to reconstruct yourself for the second half of this life here on earth -- divine tools that paradoxically result in renewal and empowerment.
The gospel of John says fall forward, fall upward. Paradoxical? Yes! Impossible? Not when your shepherd is the Good Shepherd.
Based on James 3:13-4:10
We receive wisdom from above--it is a friend if we embrace it and a foe if we resist it. It is a friend if we live by it and a foe if we choose not to.
Pastor Tim uses a metaphor where he likens us to pencils. Each pencil has two important features: it can erase mistakes and it must go through periodic painful sharpenings to be able to function properly. He explains how the Master Pencil Maker, who gave us our "lead," must sharpen us and why. As we go through life, making our marks, He covers us with His grace by giving us an eraser.
Just like a pencil, Pastor Tim explains, the most important part of us is what's inside--so go and make your mark!