When you’ve had a bad day, or you’ve messed up in some way, please remember that it could always be worse.

I saw the Book of Eli the other night for the second time with Kathryn and some friends. I find it to be a great movie. Probably not for the same reason some will though.

The movie is basically about Eli (Denzel) protecting the last bible in the world. What struck me the most about the movie is how he cherishes this book. Reads it everyday. So much so that is a part of him. With his life he protects and loves this book.

And he should. It is the book of life right? It is the inspired word of God. It is one of the most important ways we connect with God and a compass to navigate life with. But it goes much further than that. Not only do we navigate life with it, we use it to shape us and refine us. I could go on and on.

So, if that’s true. Why is it that I don’t make more of a priority to bury myself in it? Why don’t I…. why don’t you….. why don’t we…… cherish this book more?

May we find sufficiency in God’s word. May we find it to be precious. May we cherish it.

A few weeks ago I had coffee with my dad and a family friend that I’ve known pretty much all of my life, Bob Baker. Bob is a self made kind of guy probably in his late 60’s maybe early 70’s. My dad worked for him years ago and they’ve been friends since.

I didn’t say too much, I wanted to keep my mouth from making me look stupid. Or worse….. immature. Most of the time I sat listing to these two talk about topics from nothing to religion and politics. I know that’s a big span!

I remember thinking a couple of things.

I thought about how people don’t talk like this anymore. Remember that scene in National Treasure 2 when Nick Cage has tricked the President to go down in to that underground tunnel?

US President: Even if something like that really did exist, why do you think I would actually just give it to you?

Ben Gates: Because it will probably lead us to the discovery of the greatest Native-American treasure of all time; a huge piece of culture lost. You can give that history back to its descendants. And because you’re the President of the United States, sir. Whether by innate character or the oath you took to defend the Constitution or the weight of history that falls upon you, I believe you to be an honorable man, sir.

US President: Gates, people don’t believe that stuff anymore.

Ben Gates: They want to believe it.

That scene came to mind while I was listening to my dad and Bob talk. People don’t talk like this anymore. At least not in my world. They are using a sort of ‘old world’ language that is filled with wisdom, experience, integrity, victories and failures. They spoke with wisdom.

I don’t speak that language. But I know that I want to.

I also thought about a sermon that our associate pastor Britton preached a little while ago where he said, as Christian men we need to be reaching ahead and behind us. We need to be helping people rise to the place that we are. BUT, we also need to reach to someone who is ahead of us. Someone who has wisdom. Someone who speaks that language that inspires us to do more and be more.

I think that wisdom is a choice in that I can choose to surround myself with it or not. I can choose to immerse myself in it or try to figure it out on my own.

I’m going to choose to place myself around wisdom. My dad lives in Memphis, so I think I might give Bob a call sometime soon and buy him a cup of coffee. Maybe some wisdom might rub off on me.

I’m sure there is someone in your life that you need to call and offer that same cup of coffee to.

Choose wisdom.

A good friend of mine named Travis Clancy is a GREAT photographer. He was wanting to build his portfolio and I was wanting some new promo pics for my band. Here are a few shots that we came up with. I think they turned out very creatively. Let me know what you think, then, go visit Travis’s site and let him know!

Soon we’ll be taking some with my whole band… stay tuned….

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times….. I love the snow! The ice came yesterday and it’s been snowing all day today. The kids are out of school so we decided to do a little sledding. Here are some pics.

Have you ever wished that you read the bible more? Probably not. I’m sure you’re much more spiritual than I am. I do. I wish that I read more. It seems like a huge undertaking though doesn’t it? I mean the bible is big. Where do you start? Other than doing the 1 year bible. Which is…. another…. Bible.

YouVersion has a great solution. YouVersion is the site and app that lifechurch.tv created. It’s completely free. You can go to their site OR download their bible app of you have an iPhone. I think they also have a blackberry version. The pics above are from my iPhone.

What’s cool about it is that they have several different reading plans. I’m doing the psalms one.

You should definitely try it out!

Altared Worship Night Promo from Mark Ryan on Vimeo.

I’m really excited about our Altared Worship Night that is coming up THIS Friday, Jan 22nd at 7:00pm! Here is the little promo video we put together to show during service. I love these nights because it is simply about lifting high the name of Jesus. No time restraints. I don’t have to worry about the next set of people coming in to service. We can just ….. worship. I hope you’re as excited as I am about it! I hope to see you at Altared THIS Friday.

Do you ever sit back and think about what has shaped you to be you?

Think about your past life experiences and how they have all brought you here to this moment in time. For instance. Over 12 years ago I was being ‘groomed’ to be the youth pastor of a methodist church in OKC. The youth pastor, the associate pastor and the senior pastor all gave me glowing recommendation letters. I was supposed the be the guy. Everyone knew it. That is, everyone, but the committee assigned to hire me. Evidently they didn’t get the memo! They choose someone else. Someone who in my estimation was not qualified nor a fit for that group.

Hind sight being 20/20, I realize now that it was the greatest thing to ever happen to me. Not only was I way too immature to handle the position but I would’ve never pursued my music. Music, connecting people with God. That is my calling. Maybe the youth thing was there to simply push me to a certain level of ministry commitment. That shaped me.

People have shaped me.
Lance Gutteridge is responsible for me even being in ministry. Sean Gutteridge is responsible for me understanding the huge responsibility of leading people in worship.  Life long friends, fellow pastors and inspirations like Israel Hogue, Andy Tilly, and Paul Cunningham have helped to shape who I am as a leader, friend, pastor and Christ follower.

Circumstances have shaped me.
Life, often, just simply happens to us. How we handle life is a whole other story. There are things that are completely beyond my control, that were seemingly detrimental to me that have refined me into a better person, a stronger follower or better husband and father.

Britton Thurlow is our associate pastor at the edge. He preached this week and one of the things he talked about was this verse in proverbs:

¹⁷ As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

He gave us a picture of a blacksmith pulling a red hot piece of metal out of the furnace and pounding it with a hammer. Not because the blacksmith is mad or trying to hurt it. It’s because it takes an incredible amount of friction to chip away pieces of metal to shape it into something beautiful, purposeful and useful. What struck me the most out of that, is the idea that the blacksmith isn’t angry. It’s easy to get in to my head that every time I’m being sharpened or shaped that it’s because I’ve made some mistake and God has to beat something out of me. Sometimes that is true, but maybe it’s more often true that He is simply refining me in to something beautiful because He loves me. And sometimes, that shaping hurts.

So what has shaped you? Who has God brought in to your life that has helped refine you in to something better? Something stronger? What circumstances can you look back on now and see God moving all the way through?

8 years ago yesterday I married Kathryn. It’s hard to believe that 8 years has passed already. Time has literally flown by! It’s also hard to believe that I was only 23 when I got married. What was Kathryn thinking!?

Kathryn and I had a very romantic evening last night, consisting of going to see Sherlock Holmes and eating dinner at Outback. I’m such a charmer! Both of which we had a gift card for. Some things haven’t changed over the years….. we are still broke! Ha!

What I cherish about our relationship is that I have complete faith that no matter what happens we’ll be ok. We love each other and we have beautiful babies and we have a God that is faithful.

We have some in our family that don’t understand our choices. My opinion is that they are jealous. Not of us. Trust me, we don’t have much to be jealous about other than our willingness to leap before looking. You could call it blind faith. We very rarely make calculated risk decisions. Maybe we should more often but God has blessed us and taken care of us through it all.

Even when the crevasses were bigger than we thought.

I think about stunt drivers when I think about our marriage. There are many canyons we’ve had to jump where if we would’ve thought about it too long, or too hard, we would’ve definitely put the brakes on.

We would’ve played it safe.
We would’ve had more money.
We would’ve had a bigger 401k.

We would’ve lost….. We would’ve missed it…. We would be longing for what we have now….

Joy.

Notice I didn’t say EASE. Things are not often easy. But things are joyful.

By the way, when did God promise things would be easy? I’m pretty sure he didn’t.

May you love your spouse enough to fight for joy even when it’s not the ’smart’ thing to do.

May your marriage be like that of a stunt driver.

Finn cultivating his courage from Mark Ryan on Vimeo.

On new year’s day we went to the mall and stopped at the play area. While we were there Finn became obsessed with jumping off of a step on this toy.

Building courage starts small….