In the New Testament, Paul describes the Christian life as a race, and I often hear from Christian Leaders that this race is a Marathon; go at a slow and steady pace so you don’t burn out (a la the Tortoise and the Hare).  In that classic story, the turtle wins but it wasn’t because the Rabbit was burnt out…it was because the Rabbit took his eyes off the prize, he got cocky, and fell victim to distraction.

I am learning to lean into the Hare’s style of running minus his lack of focus and pride problems. I actually think this Christian life is more like a series of sprints with some time to rest in between. At Northway, we are in a season of Sprinting. From Easter, to multi-site stuff, adding services, restructuring and so on, there is no time to run slow. There is a new sense of urgency that is so compelling and convicting that if I were to go slow I’m afraid I would miss IT. There is too much at stake to run slow.

Paul goes on to say that we should run in a way that will allow us to WIN…you have got to know your rythmns…there are times we need to REST…but when you are in a season of Running…Run Hard…Sprint.

I am running as fast and as hard as I can after God’s calling on my life, and next week, I will rest as hard  as I can on the beautiful beaches of SoCal that he created for me to rest on…so that I can get filled back up to start Sprinting again…and this time I plan on doing better then a fifth place finish.

Do you align yourself with the Tortoise or the Hare way of thinking? Why?

Check back soon…blogging will resume shortly.

In the meantime, follow me on TWITTER

If you just can’t get enough of the conference you can also check out these blogs:

www.pacehartfield.com – behind the scenes at C3 with various Fellowship staffers

www.jasoncurlee.com – this dude twitters more than anyone ever…you won’t miss a thing if you follow him

All I kept hearing about from my church peeps was that the Cardinals were going to win because of Kurt Warner and his faith…first off games aren’t won because a team has a Christian on it but if they were…my boy Troy had the Steelers covered. Check it out

You can Obamicon yourself by going HERE …. You know you want to

• Early Friday morning My brother called me to tell me he scored two tickets to the the AFC Championship and wanted to know if I would like to go…ummm yes.
• I told him I did but it wasn’t realistic, cost of flight…to long of a road trip…I “work” weekends…
• I put out a post on my twitter that subsequently feeds my facebook page asking if anyone knew how I could get hooked up with a cheap flight…shot in the dark?
• A couple hours later, my good friend Steve calls to tell me he had seen my facebook message  and said he booked me a flight using his skymiles…ARE YOU SERIOUS??????? STEVE YOU ARE THE MAN!!!!
• I call my boss to ask him for the Sunday off…being the Eagles fan he is, he told me how bad the Steelers were but he said I should go anyway!!
• I went to the store and bought them out of long underwear last night…
• It’s 3.30am on Sunday morning and I can’t sleep…I feel like it’s Christmas only I know what I’m getting and I like it!!
• I hop a plane at 6am…layover in DC where I will be rocking my Steelers jersey and hating on Ravens fans…and then land in the Promised Land of Steel a little before 10am.
• I will keep you updated on my trip and the game on my twitter…you can follow by going here or just checking the left hand corner of the page for the delayed report.

Yesterday, I hit the jackpot!!! I went looking for a watch in my wife’s jewelry box…she steals mine and put’s it in there if I “leave it laying around,” so I don’t find the watch but I do find a bunch of quarters, dimes and nickels!! With the recent decline in the economy we have been doing our part to “cut back” so that means a few less coffee runs during the week. However this change changed everything! I took enough of the change but not quite enough to know it had been taken and headed to out to work with the intentions of grabbing a coffee on the way in.

So there I am in line, all excited for my coffee with a pocket full of change…and then it hit me…I was about to pay with change. Not so bad right?? Except all of a sudden I felt inferior like my change wasn’t worth the same amount as the crisp dollar bills that the peeps in front of me were paying with. I had fallen victim to the “American Change Bias” …You should have seen the barista roll her eyes when i took out my quarters…you should have heard the sigh from the chorus of people in line behind me…it was obviously an inconvenience at the very least. We have a problem in America…Obama was right, we do need CHANGE…let’s end the Biased notion that our metal money is inferior to that of the paper and plastic variety. 

Who want’s to use change and not be hated on??? Who’s with me???

Let’s be honest between family, work, and everything in between sometimes our dreams take a backseat to our reality. Not to say that reality is all that bad, in fact sometimes it’s great, however it’s not always what you thought it might be. Somewhere in the course of reality-rationalizing we stop dreaming…the daily grind becomes the norm, your status becomes quo. Time starts telling you what you can and can’t do…circumstances call the shots. We get used to Normal, we accept normal, in fact we deify Normal….”if things would just get back to normal,” we find ourselves saying it all the time. The What if’s turn in to What’s and the Why Not’s turn into Why’s….

 I think for the past few years I have done some settling for Normal…sometimes out of laziness, sometimes out of confusion, and sometimes I think I settled just to survive. For me, that season is over…a new season is here. It’s time to dream again, time to throw as much as I can on a white board, time to fill journals with what could be and should be, it’s time to get to bed early because I know I won’t be able to sleep because my imagination is on overdrive…

Have you stopped dreaming? personally? in your career? in your ministry? It’s a new season…It’s time to DREAM AGAIN.