**Disclaimer: On Sunday night Trisha and I sat in two different rooms writing blog posts. She wrote her post yesterday, and I wrote this post. Neither of us knew how God had laid such similar things on our hearts. I love it when God works that way.**

Last month, Trisha and I celebrated 15 years of marriage. We also celebrated our oldest son Micah’s 14^th birthday. Just typing that feels weird. We don’t feel old enough to have a 14 year old.

It is a very interesting season of life, because our oldest son and our youngest son are 7 years apart in age, but look very much alike. As I watch my youngest son, I think about Micah at his age. Micah had some friends come over to celebrate his birthday on Sunday, and as I sat and watched them at the pool I thought to myself:

“How much of the journey did I miss because I was so focused on the destination?”

When Micah was 7, I was busy building a church. I’ve always been busy building something…a reputation, a student ministry, a bank account, an image, a fund raising plan, a leadership structure, an organization.

Here is the tricky thing…none of these things are bad. But the focus I had on what was next usually clouded my enjoyment of what was now.

As a husband, I wanted to figure out how to have a better job; how to have a bigger house; how to have a newer car; how to take better vacations; how to save more money; how to have more toys. Arriving was more important than becoming.

As a father, I was waiting for the boys to crawl; then walk; then talk; then get out of diapers; then get in a big boy bed; then go to school; then play sports.

As a pastor, my whole focus was on the destination. I can’t wait until we have a building; I can’t wait till we have 50 people; 100 people; 300 people; 500 people; 700 people; I can’t wait until we go to two services; I can’t wait until next Easter, its going to be bigger and better than this Easter.

There is nothing wrong with having goals. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with being driven. I’m not suggesting that a person, a marriage, a family, a church, a business shouldn’t grow and improve.

But when we pursue the destination more passionately than we do the journey, we often miss both altogether.

Focusing on the destination allows you to achieve some goals and experience some success, but there is always a cost.

Seeking the destination has:

• Cost me joy
• Robbed me of memories
• Caused me stress
• Made me ungrateful
• Left me discontent

What I have discovered is that God’s presence finds me on the journey. He is more concerned with who I am becoming than where I am arriving. Oddly enough, so is my wife; so are my kids.

What I have realized (often the hard way) is:

• Intimacy grows on the journey
• Moments are created on the journey
• Contentment is found on the journey
• Gratitude is overwhelming on the journey
• Life is savored on the journey

Is there an area of your life that your focus on the destination has robbed you of joy in the journey?

Often on our RefineUs blog we write about the hard stuff in life, love and relationships. Today I (Trish) just feel compelled to share about a heart that’s full. Not the kind of full that says life is perfect without problems or flaws but the kind of full that makes your face hurt from too much smiling.

I have found myself in a constant state of reflection over the past couple of weeks. Whether its spending time with good friends or snuggling on the couch with my boys I seem to drift into reflection. I feel a sense of joy and gratitude that even though life has been hard and sometimes even cruel I still get to live THIS LIFE! God doesn’t just redeem he makes things new.

Yesterday we had a completely impromptu birthday/pool party for our 14-year-old son Micah with some of his friends from school. The scene was a bit surreal! My “little guy” is not so little anymore (he’s now taller than me) and so as I have in days past I started to reflect. Thoughts of only having five years left with him start to flood my mind. Thoughts that one of the girls splashing him in the pool could be his future wife! Say what?

As the afternoon continues on I look over at Justin then over to the pool and then back at him. I see my 7-year-old Isaiah completely enamored with the big kids yet content to play on his own. Again I look at Justin and then back to the scene unfolding in the pool. I think about my 11-year-old Elijah and know he must be having a blast at the lake house with one of his best buddies. And again I gaze back at Justin…

For a moment in time I felt an overwhelming sense of humility and gratitude for my life! To have Justin and my boys in my life is such a gift. Not only am I grateful to have Justin’s friendship but to see and be a part of the legacy he is leaving within the hearts of our boys…

HEART FULL!

To be blessed with so many friends in so many different places of the world…

HEART FULL!

To be blessed to be a part of a church family that loves God, the lost and the broken…

HEART FULL!

To have family (especially our moms) that loves us regardless…

HEART FULL!

To know and be known by a Savior who loves me and those I love so deeply that he gave his life for us…

HEART FULL!

Reflection has been a gift from that has allowed me to see what God has and continues to do in and through my life. My prayer and challenge for you today is to take a minute to reflect on what has made your “heart full” lately?

I am pretty sure that this post is going to tick some people off. I am confident that there will be some people that read this next principle and think that I am being legalistic; that I am going to extremes and that I am not in touch with culture. Some of you will read this post and you will say that I just became irrelevant to the world in which we live. Some of you will think…“He isn’t as strong as me, he isn’t as wise as me, he isn’t as _____________ as me. He doesn’t get me.” As tempting as those thoughts are, I hope that you take some time to really think through this principle and how it might play out in your life, because we both believe to take a step away from destruction and toward restoration, this principle is essential.

When Trisha and I were separated, I began to go to counseling and a few weeks later, Trisha joined me. One of the first assignments I was asked to consider and engage in by our counselor was to fast from TV for the duration of our separation. I was confident we could have things put back together in a week or two, so fasting from TV didn’t seem like a big deal. As we have mentioned before, we were separated for two months and God showed up, and used that time to awaken some things in my heart that I had failed to recognize and deal with.

Restoration Principle #3: Without a sold out commitment to purity of heart, our marriages will naturally drift toward destruction.

Philippians 4:8 says “ Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable-if anything is excellent or praiseworthy-think about such things.”

The truth about me is that I struggled with sexual sins. Those weren’t the only sins that I struggled with, but those were the ones that ultimately destroyed my marriage. Here is what’s wild: I taught this passage on Sunday morning. I quoted this passage to guys I met with that had pornography addictions. I often shared this verse with friends I played basketball with that couldn’t stop cussing. I knew this passage…but didn’t apply it. Well, I guess I applied it to the point that it felt comfortable…but not when it conflicted with CSI Miami, or Grey’s Anatomy, or The Practice. I never quoted it when I was trying to talk Trisha into watching a rated “R” movie that “only has one sex scene that we can fast forward through.” I never broke out this verse as I was walking into the movie theater to watch Wedding Crashers. I knew this verse was truth, but didn’t take seriously the downside of not applying it to my life.

During the time that I fasted from TV, God really broke my heart with this verse.  I spent so much more time in His word than I had probably ever spent, and came to terms with the fact that I was a hypocrite when it came to Philippians 4:8. He showed me how compromise and justification had become second nature. Once I admitted to the struggles I had with pornography and lust, I began to see how some of the things I was filling my mind with were being used by the Enemy to point me and even our family in that direction. I had blown it off and thought I was above it, and honestly, judged people in my church that didn’t watch the shows that I watched or went to the movies that I went to…”they must not be as strong in their faith as I am.”

Wherever sin lives, intimacy dies. That is true in your relationship with God, and it is true in your marriage. But the good news is that wherever intimacy lives, sin dies. I don’t know what this looks like for you…really that is between you and God. But for us, we watch very little network TV. We attend very few movies these days. I guess that is a price that we have chosen to pay…but the payoff is huge. We have shared this principle with couples, and they say… “So, no Office? No How I Met Your Mother? No Grey’s Anatomy?” No…not for us. We feel like being sold out to purity in our thoughts, in our hearts, in our marriage and in our family means saying no to things we know violates this principle.

A few months ago, my 12 year old son had some friends over. They were going to play X-Box 360 for a while then they wanted me to take them to the movies. They started talking about different movies to see, what movies some of them had seen and what was good and what wasn’t. I just began praying that God would give me the wisdom I needed to help my son navigate the situation. Here is the cool part…we have talked so much about this principle of purity and how to protect our hearts…I didn’t have to say anything. My son went to the computer, went to the PluggedIn web site and reviewed all of the movies that were playing. He then told his friends the two or three movies that he would feel comfortable attending…end of discussion. I know it won’t always be that easy…but that is just one instance of “whatever is pure, whatever is holy, whatever is right” paying off in a big, big way.

Maybe there is some unidentified destruction in your heart and marriage because of a lack of purity? I have been there. It is so hard to admit…even harder to deal with and not justify. What would your marriage look like if you really took Philippians 4:8 seriously? How could intimacy grow as sin was put to death in your life and in your marriage? This post won’t win any popularity contests…but it has been and continues to be one of the most essential steps in our move from destruction to restoration.

I can remember sitting in a counseling session talking to our marriage counselor. Trisha and I were still separated at this point. One of the things were discussing was integrity. When you’ve had an affair, there’s no doubt that you lack integrity…but this discussion was about something bigger.

This conversation was about the origin of integrity lost; it was about how my heart initially got disconnected from Truth. At one point, our counselor said, “You seem to lie, even when the truth would do.” That statement hit me right between the eyes.

The lies I told weren’t always big lies. Sometimes I left out a detail; sometimes I added details; sometimes I embellished; sometimes I exaggerated; sometimes I withheld truth. My motivation for lying when the truth would do was to look better than I really was. I wanted to appear smarter; more gifted; more capable; more spiritual; more impressive, more lovable.

One of the things that our counselor helped me realize is that my desire to stretch the truth; to withhold truth; to embellish a story; to exaggerate details is directly connected to my intimacy level with God.

This temptation is almost like a gas gauge to my spiritual life. When I’m tempted to compromise truth, that is a red flag to me of a heart condition that I need to recognize…a distance exists between God’s heart and mine. If left unchecked being tempted to distort truth will turn into a loss of integrity.

My guess is you have the same gauge in your heart. It might not be the same as mine, but there is a signature temptation in your life that indicates danger. It isn’t something that starts out big; it’s not something that starts out destructive; it’s not something that would appear to do damage to your relationship with God or others. But you know that when that temptation hits your mind, it is a huge sign that you’ve drifted away from the heart of God. It is in that moment that so much hangs in the balance; and you have the potential to choose life or death.

So often we lose sight of the opportunities we have to avoid sin. Because of insecurity, or pride or our shallow character we don’t admit the temptations we experience. As a result they grow into destructive behavior patterns.

My prayer for the last five years has been “Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a right spirit within me.” Through that prayer, God has revealed in me the “why’s” of my sin, and not just the “what’s”.

Without understanding the motivation we have to allow compromise in our life, it is almost impossible to overcome that desire to compromise.

Is there a signature temptation that you have that indicates distance between you and God?

One thing that I have learned over the past five years, is that the relational quality of my marriage is often just a reflection of my relationship with God. There have been so many times that I tried to change an aspect of my marriage, or how I reacted in my marriage, without recognizing this truth and what it brought me was temporary results. I have found that I can change my behavior for a while, but until God changes my heart, its only superficial change.

Here is a list of 12 words. My guess is one or two of them may describe how you feel when you think of your marriage these days. One of these words has become normal to you.

Numb   Distant   Exhausted

Disappointed  Guarded  Absent

Dull   Mechanical   Repetitive

Controlled   Beat up   Uninspiring

For you and your marriage, distance has become the norm. Disappointment has been something you’ve learned to deal with. Dull has described your relationship with your spouse for quite some time. Beat up has become a constant companion.

You have tried to make changes, but they don’t last; they are short-lived. So you feel exhausted and frustrated and have come to see these words as normal.

Can I ask you one more question as it relates to these words? Do any of the same words describe your relationship with God? Do you feel numb when it comes to God these days? It is very hard to have true intimacy with your spouse, the oneness that God created, when you feel numb or distant or disappointed with God. There have been so many times in my life I have underestimated the spiritual aspect of my marriage and have done everything I can to “fix” it; and been unsuccessful.

What if there was a new kind of normal in your relationship with God?

Connected   Close   Energized

Exciting   Free   Inspired

Spontaneous  Life-giving   Encouraging

How much better would your marriage be if these words were the normal way to describe your relationship with God? How much richer would your friendships be? So often we try to fix our earthly relationships without taking an inventory of our relationship with God.

Is there a specific word that has become normal to you that needs to be traded for a new kind of normal?

My boys have been into watching the NBA summer league on NBA TV. Not much excitement there, but what has been exciting are the commercials. Apparently, advertising is much cheaper on NBA TV than most of the big networks. I base this theory on the quality of the commercials and the quantity of infomercials prompting me to buy something.

Last night, this commercial came on, and I couldn’t help but laugh (after I wrote down the 1-800 number!)

The Slim T promises to make you look thinner, without dieting; without exercising; you can have a slimmer, more fit looking body, without putting in all that hard (overrated) work. You can have the appearance of being thin, but not be thin. And best of all, no one will know you are wearing it, but you.

As wack as this commercial is, it made me think about the issues in a lot of marriages.

So often this is what we want in marriage. All of us who are married long for an intimate relationship with our spouse, but we aren’t always willing to pay the price for intimacy. All of us want to communicate better, but don’t make time for conversation. We want to have our needs met, without having to meet the needs of our spouse. We want the appearance of a healthy marriage, without having to work for a healthy marriage.

The truth is that the Slim T only hides my love handles; it doesn’t get rid of them. It only helps me suck in my gut; it doesn’t give me a six-pack. It tries to convince me that somehow appearance trumps health; and comfort is more important than authenticity. It covers up the symptoms of my problem, without getting to the root of my problem.

This has been true in my marriage more than I care to admit. I’ve often traded the commitment to a healthy marriage for the mere appearance of a healthy marriage.

Sadly, this has been true in my relationship with God too. Too often I’ve put a Slim T over my relationship with God, hoping that I could somehow appear more spiritual than I really am. I convince myself that I can have all the benefits of an intimate relationship with God, without the investment.

The reality is that at some point the Slim T has to come off…and the real you, the real marriage, the real relationship with God will be standing in front of the mirror.

Is there an area of your life, of your marriage, of your relationship with God that you are trying to make better by putting a Slim T over it?

A little over a year ago, we sat our middle son Elijah down and told him that we felt like God was leading us back into full time vocational ministry. We didn’t know what that looked like, but we wanted to make the decision as a family. Elijah immediately began to cry. Neither Trisha nor I thought this was a good thing. We began to console him and ask him if he was okay. Through his sobbing he simply said “I’m so happy, this is what you were made for.” Then we began to cry! Such a sweet kid!

Since that day, Elijah has been asking me if he could speak on Sunday morning. As kindly as I can, I have explained to him that although Cross Point is an awesome church I don’t have the authority to allow this to happen. He has continued to tell me that he has a vision to speak on Sunday morning.

Two weeks ago, Trisha and Micah and Elijah spent the week at iGNITE Camp. iGNITE is the summer camp for Eagle Church in Zionsville, Indiana. This was Trisha’s fourth year leading worship for the camp. I have included a short video of the last night of camp just to give you a flavor of what they experienced throughout the week. It was a powerful week for my kids to not only be with old friends, but to reignite their passion for Christ.

The Sunday following iGNITE camp, the camp band led in worship and the youth pastor, Ian, gave a recap of the week and shared all that God did in and through the students. At the end of his talk, he said something that threw everyone for a loop. He said to the 120 students and the 400 adults in the auditorium that during worship that morning, he saw Elijah worshiping. He felt like God was prompting him to invite Elijah up to close out the service with a challenge for both the students and the parents. Elijah’s vision for speaking on Sunday morning had become a reality. I pulled out my phone and captured it on video. (The video shakes some because I may have been crying a little.)

As I was processing this whole series of events, my heart was opened to this truth: often the way God executes the vision he has placed in our heart doesn’t look like we thought it would. God had given Elijah a vision to speak on Sunday morning. None of us expected it to happen the way that it did.

Maybe you have a vision for a relationship that seems stalled. Maybe you have a vision for your career that appears further away now than it ever has. Maybe you have a vision for your marriage that consistently to take 2 steps forward and then 3 steps back. Maybe you have a vision for doing something great for God, and for whatever reason that vision hasn’t become a reality.

Can I challenge you today to not miss the things God is doing to fulfill his vision for your life, even if it isn’t playing out like you thought it would. Just because it doesn’t look like you think it should, doesn’t mean God isn’t at work. So don’t give up. Don’t stop pursing your God given vision. He often shows up in unexpected ways.

Has there been a time in your life that God fulfilled a vision you had in a way you didn’t expect?

On this day, 15 years ago, Trisha said “I Do.” Those of you that are a part of our community know that we almost didn’t make it to year number 11…so to be at year 15 is pure grace.

The picture above is from our honeymoon. I know I look drunk, but I wasn’t. What I see in that picture is promise, potential, dreams, expectation. It is amazing how life, and busyness and work and kids and ministry can cause those things to fade over time.

The thing I’m most thankful for on our 15th wedding anniversary is when I look at the picture below, I see promise, potential, dreams and giddy expectation. God is a God of restoration.

If you are in a place where hope is fading in your marriage; the road seems long; the promise of what could be has been wrecked by the reality of what is…don’t give up. Hang in there. If God can bring Trisha and I to year 15, he can do anything.

Happy Anniversary to the most loving, grace-filled, sexiest woman alive. I can’t wait to experience the next 15 years of grace with you.

I had the opportunity yesterday to continue our Chronicles series at Cross Point. We have been talking about the parables of Jesus. Yesterday, I taught on the parable of the mustard seed. The big idea of this parable is that God’s Kingdom may seem small and insignificant, but through Christ, it will have a tremendous impact. God has given us each “mustard seed moments” and so often we miss them because of impatience.

There have been so many times in my life that I have been frustrated with God. I’ve been disappointed that he didn’t show up in timeframe I thought he should.  The truth is that God doesn’t do a very good job of operating on my schedule. I am not, by nature a very patient person. Because I am not patient I have missed countless opportunities to make an impact with my life for the Kingdom.

More often than not, I have been disappointed in my relationship with God because I have equated my calendar with God’s timing. I have missed mustard seed moments in my life because I have expected God’s timing to be my timing…and when it doesn’t play out that way, I lose hope.

Can I share with you today what I am learning? God is more concerned with your character than he is your calendar. God will often allow a dream, allow a passion, allow an opportunity to marinate in your heart until you have developed the character necessary to see that dream or that opportunity come to fruition.

The problem is we aren’t patient. If we’re honest we care more about our calendar than we do our character. We want results. We want growth. We want impact. So we often shortcut the character development process so we can have or achieve what we feel we deserve.

Looking back over the last 15 years of my life and ministry, I see so many times I compromised my character to accommodate my calendar. When this happens in your life or in mine, what we end up with is a false sense of God’s blessing.

Maybe there is an area of your life today that God is asking you to wait…to be patient. Maybe its in your marriage…maybe its with one of your kids…maybe its in your dating relationships…maybe in your finances…maybe its with your job. Maybe today God is asking you to view your character as more important than your calendar…to be patient and allow him to bring about the growth in your heart and life you desperately need.

What area of your life do you sense God asking you to be patient?

Yesterday, I read this tweet by my friend Lindsey:

“Do ever think a/b how crazy blogging is? You write something, anything. Then folks gather around & enrich it by adding their voice. I like”

That got me thinking. Each week Trisha and I try to be faithful to the vision of RefineUs by sharing God’s story of redemption with you. But what if everyone shared their stories today? What if at the end of the day today, this post is not just a post, but it is a singular story of God’s redemption in the lives of his people?

Maybe it’s the redemption of a friendship, a job, a dream, an addiction, a marriage, the loss of a child, the birth of a child, an inability to have kids, an adoption, a redeemed relationship with a parent or sibling…

Whatever hope rising through a hopeless situation looks like in your life, would you share it?

So, share your story of redemption, then Tweet and Facebook it to get the word out so others can share.

Check back throughout the day to see how many different ways God brings redemption to our lives.

Ready…Set…Go!