Men of Fuel,

A guy that lives in my neighborhood recently told me that Belmont Country Club had this “Amazing” deal in order to get new members to join.  Apparently Belmont was slashing the initiation fee by more than half and allowing people to pay it off over three years.  Not being a member, my first thought was “You would be pretty fired up if you were thinking about joining”.  My second thought was “How pissed are the people that recently joined at full price?”

Think about it for a second.  If you had joined for full price and heard about these people having to pay much less than you, would you be thinking “I am so fired up that these people are now part of my club” or are you thinking “That’s not fair”.

What if you were the one that got in for half price, would you be excited?   What if two months after you joined they cut the price in half again?  Would you be excited new people were getting in, or would you be thinking that it wasn’t fair?

I wonder if that’s how we treat a relationship with God?  “It’s all good that I am in, but everybody better be paying the same dues as me”

Just some thoughts on a Sunday night.

Look forward to seeing you guys on Wednesday morning

“Wide Open”

D.R. Carlson

What if something you believed wasn’t true, would you want to know?  An interesting question, and it was in fact the question that was the driving force behind this series.  The more you ponder that question, the more we believe that you will come to one conclusion – it depends.  It depends on how important the thing is that you believe that isn’t true.  Most likely, how badly you will want to know if something you believe isn’t true will be directly proportionate to what the consequences of that incorrect belief are.

How Important Is It?

If you believe that Jiff peanut butter uses more fresh peanuts than Skippy, the consequences of that belief being wrong are fairly insignificant.  Consider on the other hand if you believed that smoking wasn’t bad for you and that, in fact, it actually had some health benefits.  The consequences of that incorrect belief could be quite devastating to many people.  However, people still have a choice to make – what you do with that information is up to you.

What has God actually said?

Our goal in this short series is to clear up some potential misconceptions about God that you might believe.  To clear up areas where what you believe isn’t true.  What you do with that information is ultimately up to you.  At the conclusion of our series you are free to do what you want with that information, but at least you aren’t making decisions based on something that isn’t true.  We simply want to try to better clarify and give you a better picture of who God is, and what His message is to us today.  That’s all.  Ultimately, you may not act on something you know to be true, but you certainly won’t act on something that you believe isn’t true.

All Comers – Something for Everyone

We are not assuming that you enter this series believing any, or all, of the incorrect beliefs about God that we will cover.  In fact, for you, some or all of the areas covered may be things that you already don’t believe.  They will be things that you already believe are not true.  In other words, what you believe is true is true!  That is great!  This series is for you as well.  Our hope is that you will walk about more sure of what you believe and with a new depth of understanding.

We Want to Hear From You

We certainly don’t have all the answers and are not here to tell you what to believe.  You are free to disagree!  In fact, we have intentionally created an environment where you will have time to discuss what we cover each week.  This is meant to be a dialogue, not a monologue.

When and Where?

Our series “The Greatest Story Ever (MIS)Told” begins on Sept 26^th from 6:30 – 7:30am at Hidden Creek Country Club (1711 Clubhouse Rd, Reston, VA 20190).

Men of Fuel,

At 3:03 pm last Friday I landed at Dulles airport after five days in Las Vegas, where my company had held their annual Global Sales Kick-Off (GSKO).  To be honest, unless you are about to win the World Series of Poker, or are a performer for Cirque du Soleil there is no reason to be in Vegas for five days.  That place is a grind.  Believe me this is no moral stance against Vegas, this has more to do with health and well-being.

Now I must admit that I might have allowed the excitement of Vegas to cause me to act differently than I would if I was at home.  From eating, to sleeping, to working out, to drinking, to money management, I acted differently (Can you call Poker money management?).  How sad that I would allow a place determine how I acted, that a location could have so much bearing on who I was.

However the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this wasn’t the first time this had happened in my life.  As a matter of fact I think that for the majority of my life, I have allowed a location, or situation determine how I acted, or worse dictate who I was.  It might have been a job, a relationship, a title, a hobby a time of my life, or even a city, but the more I thought about this the more I realized that all too often, where I was determined who I was.

Am I alone?  Or can each of you point to a time in your lives (Maybe even now) where you allowed a location (Job, Relationship, etc.) to determine how you acted, or worse dictate who you were?  Set your alarms and come on out tomorrow morning (6:30am) as we begin our new series “Identity” with week one” “Where are you?”

See you guys in the am.

D.R.

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