I was getting ready to speak at a conference a few years ago, and at this conference I would be speaking in front of some people that in my opinion were more talented then me. All of a sudden I was feeling insecure and not qualified. I know we all know what that feeling is like. In praying I was asking God for a super powerful message. Something that would drop their jaws and flood the alters.

In praying the Holy Spirit spoke to me: "If you go in there as a communicator then it can go two ways really good or really bad. If you go in there as my daughter then every time you get up to speak it will be good."

This is total reverse of how I have always thought. I always thought if you could be a better speaker, with amazing illustrations and powerful points then that makes you a good preacher. Developing your gift is always something we should do as we go thru life, but that should never be our focus. So many times as leaders we fall more in love with our gift then we do with our Father. In these moments we take God out of our central reliance and put our reliance on the gift.

God calls us sons and daughters, no longer slaves we have been adopted in to the family. That means our development of our gift does not determine our position in Christ. Our position in Christ determines the development of our gift.

If every leader got real honest it is really easy to enter into a business transaction with God instead of a ongoing relationship with Him. The most powerful messages preached come out of a place of intimacy first, not from books read, or study time spent.

So I am saying all this to say
The earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God.--Romans 8:19

The Earth doesn't have expectation for a better business man, sales person, preacher or evangelist. The Earth is waiting for a people to rise up as sons and daughters and thru that become a vessel for the Father's heart beat to be shown. Could it be that you aren't waiting for your destiny to come to fruition but rather your destiny is waiting for you to take your position?

Daniel in the Bible understood this as he kept close to God then God put the spirit of excellence on him. The best fruit in life comes in a place of abiding. After all Jesus said it best that you will produce no fruit apart from Him(John 15:5). You can have fish bumper stickers, head usher at your church, know scripture by heart and still not be in a place of abiding. Abiding happens as we get away and spend time with the amazing Father.

In closing the definition of insanity is doing the same thing time and time again expecting a different result. If what you are doing isn't working why not just try a place of resting in Him? I promise with Jesus you will get places you never dreamed possible.

The power of a single question....

I was running the other morning on the treadmill. I began to think about things....When you are in minsitry you get the priviledcge of meeting people in all kinds of different walks in life. Some you walk with in good times others in hard times and few you walk with thru both. In all people in life I have noticed one constant theme. They refuse to challenge what they have always known.

It is as though thru life we begin to get a settledness in our mind of this is the way it has always been so this is the way it will always be. Why are we ok with life dictating to us who will be and what will become of us?

Words. Words in and of themself are nothing. As you read this they are just black font against a stark white background. Words have no power until they are released over someones life. That is when everything begins to radically change.

You know growing up I was always rejected by every coach that came my way. I was never given a second look as being an athlete. I was poked and ridiculed by peers for my obvious lack of ability to do anything athletic. I now get to go into schools all over east Texas and preach the Gospel to sports teams. Kind of funny when you think of it. For the last four years I have seen countless salvations and peoples lives radically transformed with the Gospel of Jesus on baseball fields, dugouts, and locker rooms. A coach looked at me at one of those schools recently and commented "Man I bet when you were in school you were a star athlete". He then began to list all the reasons why he thought so from my height, build etc. I couldn't help but laugh out loud and say no it was quiet the oposite I was always told all the reasons why wasn't good enough. He then said "Sounds like the problem was never your potential because the potential is still there today. The problem is you didn't have the right coach to see beyond where you were to what you could be."

WOW!! I stood there in awe as I listened to his words. So many times we take everything that has been said over all our life as the truth, and refuse to ever question its validity. I was running on the treadmill that morning and my mind became flooded with all of the people in life that I have watched with huge potential on their life yet they refused to question if the negative stuff that had been spoken over them was actually true.

You see words are powerful they have the ability to affect our entire being yet at the same time words when challenged can make a radical impact. So I have to ask you a question.....

What if everything that has been spoken over you all your life was a lie?

What if you really can do more with your life than where you are now?

What if it isn't too late to restart your life over?

What if this is the day that will change everything?

What if this is the moment you seize and decide to fully grab ahold of everything God is doing in and thru you?

What if you are valuable?

What if you are worthy of love and affection?

What if life is more than a mortgage a car payment and a job?

What if God sees you differently than you see yourself?

What if this is the first day of the rest of your life......

Where is the love?

John 13:34 This one new commandment I give to you that you love one another as I have loved you.

To understand Jesus' words let's look at what love is

1Corinthians 13:4-6 (amp)
Love endures long and is patient and kind; love never is envious nor boils over with jealousy, is not boastful, does not display itself haughtily. It is not conceited (arrogant and inflated with pride); it is not rude (unmannerly) and does not act unbecomingly. Love (god's love in us) does not insist on its own rights or its own way, for it is not self-seeking; it is not touchy or fretful or resentful, it takes no account of the evil done to it (it pays no attention to a suffered wrong). It does not rejoice at injustice and unrighteousness, but rejoices when right and truth prevail.

In a society based on shows that glamorize love as sometimes you love them and sometimes you don't. With the divorce rate higher than it has ever been and broken homes more common than not. With shows that come on for children that portray manipulation and back stabbing as common place it is no wonder how we have lost what love really is.

My heart is saddened as I have watched lately how people will begin to tear others down?

Why is it that it is ok to push other people to a place below us in an attempt to make our self look better?

In the christian circle it looks no different than the world. One pastor blasting another pastor through public forums such as Twitter, Facebook or a blog. It grieves my heart to see this happening and it makes me wonder have we all forgotten what love is?

Are we so obsessed with being right that we will do anything it takes to prove our point even if that means defiling another man's name?

There needs to be a revelation in the body of Christ that we are all on the same team. Weather you are Baptist, Methodist, Assembly of God, Non-Denominational or fill in the blank. We are all on the same team. The minute we start mud-slinging at other believers in an attempt to prove our point we have lost what Jesus sent us to do. Jesus didn't send us to fight against one another He sent us to save a lost and dieing world.

Somewhere along the way we think it is our job as believers to go around and correct every one's doctrine and point out their sins. T.D. Jakes puts it best like this "We should be known for what we stand for not what we are against."

Romans 14:22 Says for YOU to follow your convictions and to keep them to yourself. Your personal convictions are not a platform to now try and wound your fellow believer......

You might be asking has someone spoken out against me that has me upset? The answer is no. In fact most of the people I have watched this happen to I personally don't know I just feel grieved in the spirit to watch this happening.

So in closing I will end with this quote by John Osteen "Make your words sweet because you never know when you might have to eat them." Let your words be full of encouragment not negativity. I hope this touched your heart as it has mine.

Empty Arms Real Promise

There are some stories in the Bible that capture my heart no matter how many times I read them. The story of Hannah is very much one of those kind of stories. In 1st Samuel chapter one we get to meet this amazing woman.

There are some people in the Bible it is so easy to see yourself in their shoes. Although the time which we live in is so varied and even the difficulties differ yet there is something that makes our hearts connect.

Hannah wanted a baby so bad while her sister had children with ease Hannah had none. She had a dream in her heart of a baby yet it says year after year she had none. All the while her sister uses this as an opportunity to belittle her sister.

We have created a society that is so unwilling to wait for anything. We want instant dinners along side our instant success. Unfortunately in life things are anything but instant. I think about how Hannah had a dream in her heart for a family and she was unwilling to budge no matter how things looked or how long it took. She knew that God was going to give her that which she had asked for...

How confident are you about the desires in your heart? Do you quit at the first sign it isn't going to happen? Would it be written that year after year you still believed?

I preached a message on this the other day. Take a moment and listen here hope you enjoy it!

Together we make an Impact.

Sometimes you have moments that are God given, and you don't even realize it till quiet sometime later. There are times where a thought will come across our mind, and when that thought is captured there is no limit on what can happen.


The thought came to me about doing something that would make a difference in the lives of women, and would pull a community together. So with that said we began our steps toward our first ever Susan G. Komen 5K. I have been the women's pastor at our church for 3 years and have helped host many events. I set a goal of 50 runners with around $5,000 being our projected goal. In my heart I felt like the goal was so large that I feared that I would be dissapointed in the end.

As time went on excitment spread in our community like wildfire. Within the first hour that the posters went up around town we had 100 runners signed up. I knew in this moment that God was about to blow our mind......

"If ever there comes a time when the women of the world come together purely & simply for the benefit of mankind, it will be a force such as the world has never known."
-Matthew Arnold
19th Century British Poet
(excerpt from Lisa Brevere Lioness Arising)




The morning of October 23rd 2010 I looked out over a crowd of well over 900 people with over $16,487 raised. All because of a thought......One little thought......With a goal of what I thought was impossible of 50 runners and to raise five thousand I had watched grow into something bigger than I could have ever asked. All because of putting one little thought into action.


A thought that brought together people of all backgrounds, denominations, education levels, ages, colors, economic status'. Yet in those moments none of those things mattered. We all stood united behind one cause. I looked over that huge sea of pink, and could feel Jesus smiling down on us in those moments....In those moments we came together to make a difference in a life that we may never meet face to face, but in those moments our heart knew them well.


We are called to something so much bigger than the 9-5 work weeks. Trying to get the biggest best house car and job. We were created to make a difference in the world which we live in. Our potential to play a part in making a difference is directly reflective to how we respond to the time we are given today.


Esther 4:14 You were created for such a time as this and for this very occasion


I hope this inspires you to do something that will make a difference where you are in your community! This is our time chiks lets rise up as one body and make a difference in our world! What do you say?!

For some reason I am having trouble uploading the video so click here to see the all the pictures from our event.

Everything we need....

This morning there were a lot of things weighing on my mind. It felt as though my mind was so cluttered with so many different things pulling for my time, efforts and attention. I woke up before the alarm even went off just thinking about everything.

As I made a pot of coffee wiped the sleep out of my eyes and pulled up my calendar for the next to see what all was on the agenda the next few days this overwhelming feeling of inadequacy came over me. How am I going to be able to do all that I need to do the next few weeks....

I finally got my mind quieted to spend time with Jesus.......

Finally my mind was silent and it was just me and Jesus.....I love moments like these.....

All of a sudden all of that weight from all of the things that were wanting my attention so badly moments before were just an after thought. As I spent this quiet time with nothing going on all of a sudden I got the solutions for everything I needed one by one.

You know the thing we forget so easily is that Jesus really is everything we need. In Colossians it says that ALL the treasures of the Earth lie hidden in Christ. I believe they stay there hidden because we don't seek Christ to ever find the treasures. We go through life trying to obtain our own answers and solutions to problems that we were never made to solve.

Jesus is the perfect parent, spouse, employee, boss, business owner (He is running a pretty big world ya know?), author (His book is a best seller!), counselor, listener, friend and helper. He is literally everything we need. For some reason it is the simple things that we forget in life.

Things have gotten so busy and the first thing I wanted to do was to begin to carry loads I was never made to carry and that is why I was feeling stressed and overwhelmed. After an hour with Jesus....there was nothing different in my schedule, the deadlines were still there, e-mails still piled up, calls waiting to be returned, and yet I came out a hundred times lighter then when I went in.

Isn't it comforting that the solutions to all our problems is that which is inside us and all around us everyday....We just have to be quiet enough and still enough to receive the answer.

I began to think the other day about how each of us are on a pursuit that we our self didn't even really realize that we were on. Something inside of us desires to find that which is lost from a young age we begin doing this without even needing to be told how or what to do you will see a child begin to play hide and go seek. What is it inside of us that desires to reclaim that which we had at one time. It is as though we have this yearning from a young age that there is something missing in our life.

The other Sunday I preached a message called Found. Click here , listen, and realize that the hunt you have been on all your life is over.