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Blessings!

We learn brevity from Jesus. His greatest sermon can be read in eight minutes (Matthew 5-7). . .He summarized prayer in five phrases (Matthew 6:9-13). He silenced accusers with one challenge (John 8:7). He rescued a soul with one sentence (Luke 23:43). He summarized the Law in three verses (Mark 12:29-31), and he reduced all his teaching to one command (John 15:12).

He made his point and went home.

There are many who think that because they have langthy speeches or sermons, many words, etc that they are being impactful.  Yet, fewer are sometimes better! 

Be blessed and keep your eyes on Jesus,

Chris “Losi”

We owe God a perfect life. Perfect obedience to every command. Not just the command of baptism, but the commands of humility, honesty, integrity. We can’t deliver. Might as well charge us for the property of Manhattan. But Christ can and he did. His plunge into the Jordan is a picture of his plunge into our sin. His baptism announces, “Let me pay.”

Your baptism responds, “You bet I will.” He publicly offers. We publicly accept.

You have a God who hears you, the power of love behind you, the Holy Spirit within you, and all of heaven ahead of you. If you have the Shepherd, you have grace for every sin, direction for every turn, a candle for every corner, and an anchor for every storm.

You have everything you need.

Encourage those who are struggling. Don’t know what to say? Then open your Bible . . .

To the grief stricken: “God has said, ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you’” (Heb. 13:5 NIV)

To the guilt-ridden: “There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1 NIV).

What a wonderful comfort!!

Imagine standing on the edge of achieving your life’s dream. You make a small mistake that will cost you your dream — but if you don’t say anything, you might just get away with it. Would you own up to the mistake, or would you keep quiet and hope for the best?

Brian Davis isn’t the best-known name in golf — or even the hundredth-best-known — but after Sunday, he ought to move up the list a few notches. Davis was facing Jim Furyk in a playoff at the Verizon Heritage, and was trying to notch his first-ever PGA Tour win.

Davis’s approach shot on the first hole of the playoff bounced off the green and nestled in among some weeds. (You can see the gunk he was hitting out of in that shot above.) When Davis tried to punch the ball up onto the green, his club may have grazed a stray weed on his backswing.

So what’s the big deal? This: hitting any material around your ball during your backswing constitutes a violation of the rule against moving loose impediments, and is an immediate two-stroke penalty. And in a playoff, that means, in effect, game over.

Okay, you can think that’s a silly penalty or whatever, but that’s not the point of this story. The point is that Davis actually called the violation on himself.

“It was one of those things I thought I saw movement out of the corner of my eye,” Davis said. “And I thought we’d check on TV, and indeed there was movement.” Immediately after the shot, Davis called over a rules official, who conferred with television replays and confirmed the movement — but movement which was only visible on slow-motion. Unbelievable.

As soon as the replays confirmed the violation, Davis conceded the victory to Furyk, who was somewhat stunned — but, make no mistake, grateful for the win.

“To have the tournament come down that way is definitely not the way I wanted to win,” Furyk said. “It’s obviously a tough loss for him and I respect and admire what he did.”

Furyk took home  $1.03 million for the win. Davis won’t exactly have to beg for change to get a ride home; he won $615,000 for second place. And he may have won much more than that by taking the honorable route.

To be sure, this isn’t quite in the same category as J.P. Hayes, the golfer who disqualified himself from qualifying school after learning — in his hotel room, all alone — that he had played a nonqualifying ball; or Adam Van Houten, who cost his team an Ohio state title when he admitted signing an incorrect scorecard.  For starters, Davis’s shot was on television, and while he could have “not noticed” the movement, the TV cameras still did, and someone might have called him on it later on.

But the bigger deal is this — the guy gave away a chance at winning his first-ever PGA Tour event because he knew that in golf, honesty is more important than victory. It’s a tough lesson to learn, but here’s hoping he gets accolades — and, perhaps, some sponsorship deals — that more than make up for the victory he surrendered.

***Taken from today’s Yahoo News.

Reflection:

Would you have been this honest?

Could you forfeit the victory?

Jesus did the same for us by dying on the cross.   He did not have to die, but He willingly did!

“Christ died for our sins.”  I Corinthians 15:3

The cross . . .

My, what a piece of wood! History has idolized it and despised it, gold-plated it and burned it, worn and trashed it. History has done everything to it but ignore it.

That’s the one option the cross does not offer.

No one can ignore it!  No one!

Whether you are just curious about church and God or a committed Christ follower, you’re welcome here. Zyxter is derived from the last word in the Oxford English Dictionary, “Zyxt” which means “to see.” Therefore, Zyxter exists to make Him (Jesus) seen so that He can become the last (final) word in our lives! You won’t feel like you’ve been sentenced to prison when you visit a Zyxter Church experience.

For far too long people have gone to church to fulfill an obligation through some ritual and so are reduced to actions without meaning. Church attendance and worship is all about an encounter with God and others that changes who we are.

This is why at Zyxter we believe it is time to stop attending church (to stop playing the game of church & to stop going through the motions), and to start experiencing God. We aren’t calling for an exodus from church attendance, but we are saying it is time for change. It is time to come to church with an expectancy to experience and encounter God in such a way that it forever impacts and changes our lives!

If you think it is time for a change in the way you attend church, come experience God with us on Wednesday nights from 6:30-8:30pm!

For more information, go to www.zyxterchurch.com (For the Kansas City location, go to the “Where ?” tab to find us).

Be blessed,

Chris “Losi”

When we come to God, we make requests; we don’t make demands. We come with high hopes and a humble heart. We state what we want, but we pray for what is right. And if God gives us the prison of Rome instead of the mission of Spain, we accept it because we know “God will always give what is right to his people.”

We go to him. We bow before him, and we trust in him.

A few years ago a group of salesmen went to a regional sales convention in Chicago . They had assured their wives that they would be home in plenty of time for Friday night’s dinner.  In their rush, with tickets and briefcases, one of these salesmen inadvertently kicked over a table which held a display of apples.  Apples flew everywhere.  Without stopping or looking back, they all managed to reach the plane in time for their nearly-missed boarding. 

ALL BUT ONE!!!  He paused, took a deep breath , got in touch with his feelings, and experienced a twinge of compassion for the girl whose apple stand had been overturned. 

He told his buddies to go on without him, waved good-bye, told one of them to call his wife when they arrived at their home destination and explain his taking a later flight.  Then he returned to the terminal where the apples were all over the terminal floor. 

He was glad he did. 

The 16-year-old girl was totally blind!  She was softly crying, tears running down he r cheeks in frustration, and at the same time helplessly groping for her spilled produce as the crowd swirled about her; no one stopping and no one to care for her plight. 

The salesman knelt on the floor with her, gathered up the apples, put them back on the table and helped organize her display.  As he did this, he noticed that many of them had become battered and bruised; these he set aside in another basket. 

When he had finished, he pulled out his wallet and said to the girl, “Here, please take this $40 for the damage we did.  Are you okay?” She nodded through her tears.. He continued on with, “I hope we didn’t spoil your day too badly.” 

As the salesman started to walk away, the bewildered blind girl called out to him, “Mister….” He paused and turned to look back into those blind eyes. She continued, “Are you Jesus?” 

He stopped in mid-stride, and he wondered.  Then slowly he made his way to catch the later flight with that question burning and bouncing about in his soul: “Are you Jesus?”  Do people mistake you for Jesus?  That’s our destiny, is it not?  To be so much like Jesus that people cannot tell the difference as we live and interact with a world that is blind to His love, life and grace. 

If we claim to know Him, we should live, walk and act as He would. Knowing Him is more than simply quoting Scripture and going to church.  It’s actually living the Word as life unfolds day to day. 

You are the apple of His eye even though we, too, have been bruised by a fall.  He stopped what He was doing and picked up you and me on a hill called Calvary and paid in full for our damaged fruit. 

Please share this, {IF you feel led to do so}.  Sometimes we just take things for granted, when we really need to be sharing what we know…Thanks. 
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