Prove your passion. Shut up and live.

"Prove your passion. Shut up and live." My friend Lindsay left this as part of a comment to a post I wrote nearly a year ago. Though many things have changed in my life: personal, professional, and church-wise in the last year, this simple statement still rocks me.

Prove your passion. Shut up and live.

Who cares how many people KNOW of your faith? Who cares how many people HEAR me say every week at church how much I love Jesus? Are they seeing Jesus in me, by the way I live, by the way I act, by the way I react, by all my actions, day in and day out?

Probably not. Sometimes, sure. Most times, negative. What a mixed signal we tend to send out. We (read: I) tend to show a little glimpse of what Jesus has done for me, then dive right back into the cesspool of the world. They saw a little bit of Jesus, right? That should be good. Maybe I'll show a little more next week.

So to me I say: "Mike, prove your passion. Shut up and live." Not so easy when you're accountable is it? Nope. But it's eternally worth it.

Reclamation of Time

It's been a long time since I've felt like my time was mine. Scraping around the bottom of the barrel to muster up a few minutes here and a few minutes there to give to God and my wife. It wasn't working. Between church meetings, praise band practice, special events, I would be home maybe one or two nights a week, feeling trapped by my "service" to the church.

SUFFOCATE!

I recently stepped down from the praise band at my church, which was a very hard thing for me to do, which will require an entirely different post, but simply, I felt God leading me to focus on me growing with my family, not against it, and that can't be bad.

So, this is my first week of not playing with the team, and I will actually get to sit with my wife at church this weekend (albeit in the nursery)!! I'm excited about that.

Unrelated to my decision to leave the praise team, but related in the fact that my pastor was also being suffocated by nightly church meetings almost every weeknight, our church went to a "Meeting Sunday" format, meaning all meetings are going to be held one Sunday afternoon/evening a month, and that's it. No more first Monday, second Tuesday, every Thursday, some Wednesday, etc. meetings. Once a month and BAM, done.

All of the sudden, my time feels like it's actually MY time. It's been a looooong time, and it feels GREAT! I had begun seeing any church-related activity as a wedge driving itself between me and my wife and kids. Don't get me wrong, serving in your local church is important and necessary, but not at the expense of your relationship relationship with your wife. I find myself already being ultra-protective of my time. I have it back and can spend it on what is most important to me, and dole out my time as I see fit rather than wrestling with my schedule trying to cram in yet another event I don't have a day for.

I love it. Be possessive of your time. It may sound selfish, but I like to see it as time stewardship, not selfish... ship?