I am one of the world’s best procrastinators.  Well, I used to be.  I’m not as bad anymore.There are always things going on in our lives that are important.

What new iPhone apps do I need?

I have to call him back right now!

I’m really tired.

Every day we find things that are so important that we can’t put them off until later.  But then we put off the truly important things for another time.

I read a little of the Bible the other day, I’ll do it again soon.

My neighbor doesn’t know Jesus, but I’ll see him this weekend.

I know You asked me to do this, Jesus, but 24 is on tonight.  What’s that?  Oh, you meant do it tomorrow.

It’s really easy!  We do it all the time (except for the obvious 24 because we all know that God loves 24 and I would be willing to bet that’s what God watched on Day 7 of creation).  We make it our lives to occupy our time and waste it all away.  There is nothing wrong with a new iPhone app.  There is nothing wrong with sleeping.  It’s true.  But if we are neglecting the calling on our lives to glorify God, then we are just a bunch of losers.

Jesus said to another, “Follow me.” 
He said, “Certainly, but first excuse me for a couple of days, please. I have to make arrangements for my father’s funeral.” Jesus refused. “First things first. Your business is life, not death. And life is urgent: Announce God’s kingdom!” Then another said, “I’m ready to follow you, Master, but first excuse me while I get things straightened out at home.”

Jesus said, “No procrastination. No backward looks. You can’t put God’s kingdom off till tomorrow. Seize the day.”

Luke 9:59-62

Stop procrastinating.  Stop looking behind you to see what you missed.  Seize the day!  So often it seems that we are just like this guy Jesus was talking to.  Something in our lives happened and when Jesus calls us to follow Him we are content to tell Him just a minute and finish updating our Facebook status.  Hang on, Jesus.  I’ll be there in a minute….or tomorrow…or next month when our bank account feels better.

I don’t want to live my life that way.  I want to live without procrastination.  I want to live with life as my business, not death.  I want to seize whatever it is that Christ has for me.  That’s my prayer.  And today I’m praying that for you, too!  No more putting off God until next time!

Being a Music Pastor with a wife that enjoys music nearly as much as I do, our iTunes is PACKED full of music.  It ranges from Ace Of Base to Hillsong United to Metallica with sprinkles of *NSYNC and Tupac.  But the other day I as I was jamming a song that I haven’t heard in a very long time came on.  It’s a Shane & Shane cover of a Steven Curtis Chapman song called Remember Your Chains.  Since it has been so long since I last thought about this song and that my wife is pregnant so my memory is just gone (that’s how it works right?), I started thinking about the words.  They are huge!

Remember your chains
Remember the prison that once  held you
Before the love of God broke through
Remember the place you were without grace
When you see where you are now
Remember your chains
Remember your chains are gone

Imagine what your life would be
If Jesus had not set you free

Many times we want to forget the past.  It reminds us of when we were awkward or immature or without salvation.  We even teach ourselves to put the past behind us, move on and forget things ever happened.  I am no therapist or psychologist so I am not going to say that this is always a good thing, but there are times that we need to remember the past.

We need to remember where we came from.

…what we have been through…

…how we got to “here”.

We need to remember our chains.  No matter when you came to Christ, you lived a life prior to Him that was destined for death.  But through Him we have been scooped out of the pit of death and given life!  Some have more battle scars than others, but the fact still remains that we were all trapped in a prison and chained to our sins.  And now we have been set free from the life of an inmate on death row and given a whole new identity in Someone much bigger and stronger than we can ever be!  Maybe you feel those chains right now.  If so, know that there is a way to freedom.  Whether you have been freed before or not, there is freedom in Christ.  He wants to give it to you!  Just ask for it!

As painful as it may be…

As humbling as it may be…

Remember your chains.  Remember a life without hope, mercy or grace.

But more than that, remember that you are set free from it all in Jesus Christ!

For Christmas I received some iTunes money.  Woo!  But now the hard part.  How to spend it in the best way.  Do I go for practical apps?  Do I buy games?  Do I get things that my wife will like?  Do I get things that only I will like?  I just don’t know!  Here’s a list of some that I’m thinking about.

• Frogger
• Red Laser
• Uno
• Monopoly
• Live Cams
• Bejeweled 2

So, for those of you iPhoners out there, help a brotha out!  What apps do I need and why?

For those of you that haven’t heard or seen the news in the last few days the weather here in Southern California has been a little crazy.  I would say it is best described as Oklahoma weather, if you will.  It seems that over the past couple weeks Oklahoma and California have traded weather.  Who knows.  Maybe the weathermen out here finally got bored with the “no weather” weather.  Maybe Oklahoma got tired of sitting still.  Maybe California got tired of the constant need for chapstick since we are in a constant state of drought.

Whatever the reason, last week those paying attention in Oklahoma felt a California earthquake.  Good times.  You can keep them.  I’m not a big fan.  I don’t like not having any warning!  But this week here has been quite something (for the area).  It has been raining very hard.  At the moment the wind is blowing very hard and tossing the rain against the windows.  The roads are flooding and covered with debris crap.  I heard thunder for the first time in over a year!  I saw lightning last night.  We have been under tornado warnings!  There have been some tornadoes on the ground!  WHAT?  This is California.  I thought it was just supposed to be sunny and hot all the time!

Well apparently not.  So here is a glimpse of the fun weather that we are enjoying (I’m told this is from a couple days ago, but I don’t believe it actually is).  Gary England and David Payne eat your heart out (because Dallas Raines is actually doing something…or freaking out because he isn’t sure what to do)!

Last week I had something on my mind and wrote a post called I Work Out Therefore I Am.  I don’t know why, but God brought up the issue of image and what others think.  Living in Orange County, people think that they are different than the rest of the world.  We aren’t any different here than anywhere else.  We still have issues. We still have money problems.  We still don’t understand the concept of using credit in our favor (and how that doesn’t mean to go buy a Lotus because the bank upped the limit).  But one of the biggest issues that I continue to see here is that of image.

I have seen in all over the place.  There is a constant need to be prettier or better dressed or have nicer stuff or write better, speak better, sing better, surf better than the next person.  But then as God put this on my heart last week, I came across a couple verses in my YouVersion reading plan that to me really nail it down.

“Has anyone by fussing in front of the mirror ever gotten taller by so much as an inch? All this time and money wasted on fashion—do you think it makes that much difference? Instead of looking at the fashions, walk out into the fields and look at the wildflowers. They never primp or shop, but have you ever seen color and design quite like it? The ten best-dressed men and women in the country look shabby alongside them. “If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers—most of which are never even seen—don’t you think he’ll attend to you, take pride in you, do his best for you?

Matthew 6:27-30

“There’s trouble ahead when you live only for the approval of others, saying what flatters them, doing what indulges them.

Luke 6:26

I love it.  Has fussing in the mirror ever made you taller?  No!  If He gives so much attention to some random flowers that no one ever sees, how much pride and love and thought did He pour into you?!  Be you!  That’s who you were made to be!  And for those of us that only live and breathe and do because we want the approval of others, we have a rough road ahead.  If those don’t smack you across the face either you either don’t have any issues with this at all or you didn’t read it!

This is officially the 100th day in a row for me to write here.  I actually made it that far!  I decided back in October it was time to step it up and take this blogging thing to the next level.  I would say that blogging for 100 straight days is doing that.  I didn’t think I would actually write every day for this long, but I have loved seeing God do some cool stuff all over (including my own head) through this.

I have no intention of letting up.  I believe that God has more in store for me and I believe that this site will be a tool for that.  I don’t know what that will look like in the future.  I have lots of ideas and thoughts.  But we will see.  God knows what’s up.  So, here’s to 100 straight days.  Thank you all for being a part by reading and adding your thoughts!  From here, God, it’s all Yours!

Our wedding anniversary is February 29th.  That date doesn’t seem to come around that often.  So we generally celebrate it on February 28th/March 1st.  This year we decided that there is a good possibility that we might not be able to do that, what with the baby coming sometime around there.  She isn’t due until March 12th, but who really wants to run off and do something fun at 38+ weeks preggo?  I wouldn’t (but thankfully I’m a dude and we can’t get preggo).  We also wanted to go on some sort of “babymoon” for the last time (for the next forever years) as just me and my wife before our little baby girl comes in and tosses our lives into complete chaos.

So, Priceline it is.  We have headed down toward San Diego (didn’t quite make it all the way there since we are actually in Carlsbad) to explore and have a little no stroller, diapers, bottles type of fun.  We came down yesterday (and assuming you are actually reading this, we haven’t had any crazy “James family adventures” that we are growing accustomed to on our vacations) to spend Friday and Saturday and just play.  I think we might head to the beach, sit by the pool, sleep and I think I heard something about a outlet mall or something (good lord).

Good times.  You stay classy, San Diego (and Carlsbad)!

The time has come to launch the new theme!  There are still some bugs in it that I haven’t figured out, but I guess that should be expected when the creator of the theme advises you not to use it because he hasn’t messed with it much.  Oh well.  I guess I will keep searching for the perfect theme, but for now here we are!  Thanks to Human3rror (who has some really great WordPress themes) and his Simpl3 theme, we have an all new site!  There are tons of brand new headers (with more to come), new buttons, some ads for some of my favorite places, new content and a new twist on some of the old stuff, and a Video Of The Week spot still to come!

It’s amazing how much you can learn through trial and error about something that is way over your head.  Enter html and css.  I still am not sure I know what I’m doing and know for sure that I couldn’t pull off coding my own site.  So I just modify when I can figure it out.  And here you have it!  So as the hunt for the perfect (free) theme continues (yeah, good luck, I know) enjoy the new site!

The second week of the new year is already upon us.  Crazy I know!  After a great first week, it’s time to move on to the next!  I think this week should be a pretty good one.  It’s nice to finally start getting back into the flow of things and out of the madness of Christmas (just my opinion).  Here is what I am looking forward to this week.

• The launching of the all new blog didn’t happen last week as I expected it to.  The week got busier than I originally thought it would.  So, I am looking forward to that for this week.
• Monday has a blog post that was “birthed” out of a very interesting day in Saturday’s childbirth class.  I’m excited about that.
• Sunday we are launching into a new series going through the book of John.  It should be good stuff!
• We also have a guest worship leader this week.  I expect that Sunday will be quite a different angle from which to view what we do.
• The nursery is almost finished.  Only another coat of paint or two and we will be good to go!  We are almost ready for our baby girl to arrive!  (Only have to figure out how to install the car seat.)

Gonna be a good week.  I’m sure God has great things in store.  Bring it on!

Well, I don’t like to bring to light my short comings, but yesterday’s was too good. So, here goes. I will share with you my moment of stupidity so that you can all enjoy a good laugh at my expense.

Several days ago, I realized that (since I work with people who couldn’t care less about sports) our church had scheduled a worship night on Thursday night Jan. 7th. For those of you that are a little slower, that’s the same night as the NCAA football National Championship. That is not good. And because of the time difference, I would most likely miss the entirety of the game. Boo! So like everyone else in the world now days, I tossed my problems to Twitter.

Not really even thinking that Twitter might come through for me, a few friends of mine helped me out! Melanie explained to me that you don’t actually have to have service for a DVR to work. I had no idea! I would have Craigslisted one of those suckers LOOOOOOOONG ago! Then Andrea hooked me up with her old TIVO! Woo. So it took me a bit to figure it out (mostly because it just wants to constantly tell me that it isn’t connecting to the service), but I finally figured out how to record stuff.

As I left for work Thursday morning, I turned on the TV and the TIVO and get everything set up and ready to go. Jan. 7th. FOX. 5 PM. Start 10 minutes early. End 2 hours late. Good to go. Off to work. After about 4:00 PM I decided it was time to remove myself from all social media and internet so that I wouldn’t ruin the game. Then after a great worship night, I headed home to watch the game! Ok, new machine, unsure if it worked, let’s check it out. It worked! It record…ed…something. Come to find out I got almost an entire evening of programing on FOX because the game was on ABC…or CBS…or PBS…or Lifetime or something! Are you freakin’ kidding me?! I thought the game was on the same channel that all the other major bowls had been on.

So after all that, I ended up having to watch the highlights on ESPN and didn’t even get to watch the game. Boo. I’m an idiot. Not even this book could have saved me.

New rule. No more church events on major sports holidays!