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Posted By Aaron Marcelli on December 8, 2011

Believe me, friends, all I want for Israel is what’s best for Israel: salvation, nothing less.

Romans 10:1 The Message

I read the verse above and was hit by its practical message.  Salvation is what’s best for people!  It sounded so simple but I could not believe I had not heard or thought of it before.

As Christians, of course we want others to come to Christ.  Of course we want them to receive eternal life.  We want people to get saved because God loves them.  We want them to get saved so they will go to heaven.  We want them to become Christians because of the positive change it will make in the world.  But I had never considered that salvation is actually what’s best for people.  All people, everywhere – the best thing that could happen for and to them is salvation.

So when we share with others the story of Jesus, the testimony of our faith, and an invitation to accept Christ, this should be our attitude.  We’re not trying to talk them into a religious system that will limit their earthly life only to make up for it in the next.  Rather, we are inviting them into what’s best for them.  We’re trying to give them what they need.

Salvation provides a relationship with God, freedom from condemnation, and community with all believers.  That’s what everyone needs.  When we are able to show people this we are doing them a favor.

May we no longer fear rejection or worry that we are annoying people by sharing our faith with them.  We are simply trying to share with others what is best for them.

Category: Bible Study, Jesus, Life Change | No Comments »
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Posted By Aaron Marcelli on December 1, 2011

For the million people who I’m sure want to get a copy of my book, Repentance and Recovery, but have not gotten around to it yet, I have decided to create a December deal.  In the last two years I have released a book and announced that we are planning to start a church in downtown Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Though we do not know when God is going to lead us to move forward with the new church, we are already accepting contributions that will be there to support the church whenever it is launched.  This month we are connecting the church and the book to create a special offer for anyone who would like to read my book but for whatever reason has not bought one.

By following this link you can make a credit card or paypal donation to our church plant.  Anyone who makes a donation of any amount anytime during the month of December will be emailed a Word copy version of my book.

Thank you for your support!

Category: Chattanooga, Church Planting, Repentance and Recovery | No Comments »
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Posted By Aaron Marcelli on November 29, 2011

In my experience, the people who are most successful in life are extremely driven individuals.  They have a deep sense of passion or calling.  There is a cause (whether social, political, or religious) that compels them to give of their time, money, and effort.  They make a difference, rather small or large, because they are dedicated.

Is there anything you have that sense of passion for?

Do you have a calling that calls you to action?

If not, I would warn you against laziness and apathy.  At some point, something must move you enough that you get up and take action.

If you don’t feel your work is important, you will only do the minimum to get by.  If you’re not passionate about your relationships, you will have few close friendships.  If you don’t sense a calling to work toward a social, political or religious cause you will likely waste your time away rather than do volunteer work or take part in a public movement.

Living life without anything you get this excited about does not sound appealing.  It sounds like a waste.

That’s why I would encourage you to ask God to bless you with a burden.

The word burden may not sound like a good thing.  The word implies weight or responsibility but it can be the kind of productive responsibility that provides something you can give yourself to.

We all need a cause.  We all need some way of contributing to making the world a better place.  We need that thing we can give ourselves to.  Whether it’s music, parenting, missions, or the environment, find your burden.  Find that thing you feel like you must do!

Ask God to bless you with a burden and then give yourself to it.  It’s the better way to live.

Category: Ministry, Prayer, Spiritual Growth | No Comments »
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Posted By Aaron Marcelli on November 16, 2011

I once had lunch with a man from the Georgia Baptist Convention who wanted to meet with me.  I had just lost my job on staff at a GBC church and this man wanted to make sure I was dealing well with my unfavorable circumstances.

We talked about sin, discouragement, financial troubles, depression, guilt, stress, and several other things that can distract and dominate our lives.  These are the things that cause us to say, “Not good” when someone asks us how we’re doing.

The gentleman (whose name I cannot remember) then lumped all of these things, these feelings and distractions, into one category and labeled them circumstances.  Whether it’s sin, a bad economy, a failed relationship, whatever, it is a present reality in our daily lives that affects us.  It’s our circumstances.

He then taught me that the key to sustained joy and spiritual growth is to keep my gaze on God and a glance on my circumstances. 

 So often we are obsessed with the circumstances going on in this life and allow them to be our complete focus.  We are gazed on to what tragic thing is happening in our lives.  These circumstances dominate our thoughts and feelings.  Occasionally we may glance to God to pray for wisdom or deliverance, but then we immediately put our glaring focus back on what lies around us.  This method simply provides depression and steals our joy.

Rather, our gaze should always be on God.  He is the consistent One.  He does not change.  Our circumstances change but not our God.  He should be the one who gets our gaze – our focus, our attention, our belief.  From time to time we must take a glance at what is around us in order to know what we’re up against, but God must be the one who gets the first and most of our attention, our energy, our time, and our effort.

As in driving a car, we keep our gaze out our front windshield just as our focus should be on God.  Occasionally we must check our mirrors, just as we must glance at our circumstances, in order to know what’s behind, beside and all around us.  But keeping our eyes on our mirrors would cause us to get off course and end up in danger.  Our glare must be focused on Christ.

We glance at our circumstances in order to not be in denial of reality, but those things don’t define us.  Our gaze is on God.  We only glance at our circumstances in order to not give them too much weight.  And even when those circumstances are bad, we are able to withstand, because the subject of our gaze is so incredible that it provides a joy that cannot be taken by simply a glance.

Category: Jesus, My Life / Personal, Spiritual Growth | No Comments »
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Posted By Aaron Marcelli on November 10, 2011

Here are a few things that have been going on with us lately:

• Katy and I have really enjoyed leading our new small group.  This is allowing us to form deeper relationships with some great young couples.
• I’m contemplating going back to school to finish my Master’s degree.  This most likely would mean I take a class or two at a time online.
• Our time-line for planting Freedom Church is still on hold but the church’s website is up and you can now give online.  There have already been a couple donations from the site.
• Katy and I have been having some great conversations lately as we are learning how to effectively deal with conflict and are discussing our dreams about life and family.
• I’m pretty excited that we will be taking a week off at Thanksgiving and going to visit my family in Ohio.
• We really feel a burden to be more involved in ministry and are currently praying and seeking just what that may look like for us in the near future.

As always, your thoughts and prayers are appreciated.

Anything new going on in your life?

Category: Church Planting, Marriage/Family, Ministry, My Life / Personal, Travel | No Comments »
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Posted By Aaron Marcelli on November 7, 2011

I grew up with parents who taught me to always say please and thank you.  If someone gave me something, my parents would make sure I thanked them before allowing me to enjoy my gift.  Saying “Thank you” became a habit for me.

Then I moved out and began living life as a single man.  For several years as an independent single man I took care of most of my own needs and I slowly got out of the habit of saying “Thank you.”  I realized this a couple years ago when a coworker brought in lunch for our entire department and as I was eating she called me out for not thanking her.  I was embarrassed and ashamed of myself for having become so ungrateful.

God recently brought this to my attention again.  I strive to be so self-sufficient and able that I deny my need for others and therefor don’t acknowledge what they do for me.  This is not an issue of dependence though as much as it is spiritual health.  Someone with a proper view of God will always be aware of all they have been given.

Thankfulness is a characteristic of a heart returning to God.

 Being grateful/thankful is the first step in worship.  It is our reaction to the initial realization of all our blessings.

In September I heard Steven Furtick deliver a great message (which you can watch here) on gratitude.  One of the things he said was “Gratitude begins where our sense of entitlement ends.”

What we think we deserve and see as our right, we will not be thankful for.  If we think because we are Americans we are entitled to a job we will never be thankful for that job.  If we think we should be married because it seems like everyone else is we will not be thankful for our spouse.  I could go on.

For me, these thoughts about gratitude came together to remind me how much I need to be thankful.  I need to acknowledge and recognize what God and other people have done for or given to me.

Are there blessings in your life you think you’re entitled to and that attitude is keeping you from being thankful?

Category: Emotion Issues, My Life / Personal | No Comments »
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Posted By Aaron Marcelli on November 3, 2011

The following is a guest post by Marcia Colgar.  She owns the site OnlineChristianColleges.org and writes various articles about faith-based education.

1.  Lakewood Church (Houston, TX) – Pastor Joel Osteen – 43,500

This non-denominational evangelical Christian megachurch has the largest congregation in the country. It has four services in English and two services in Spanish each week. It is housed in the former Compaq Center, which housed the NBA’s Houston Rockets in the 1990s. It was started by current pastor Joel Osteen’s father with the same name in 1959. The weekly services appear on several television networks, including Trinity Broadcasting, Daystar, and secular stations including USA and Fox. They are viewed by 7 million viewers each week.

2.  North Point Community Church (Atlanta, GA) – Pastor Andy Stanley – 27,400

This evangelical Christian church spans 5 campuses in various areas around Atlanta. It was founded in 1995 and has a Southern Baptist heritage. Messages from the main church are simulcast to the other campuses so that all the satellite churches stay connected.

3.  LifeChurch.tv (Edmond, OK) – Pastor Craig Groeschel – 26,700

Although based in Oklahoma, LifeChurch has 14 campuses in five states, along with one on the Internet and another on the virtual site Second Life. The church began in 1996 with 40 members and grew rapidly. It started to incorporate satellite video into the services in 2002 and has since opened other campuses across the country. It is part of the Evangelical Covenant Church

4.  Willow Creek Community Church (South Barrington, IL) – Pastor Bill Hybels – 24,300

This non-denominational evangelical church is located in the Chicago suburbs. There are six regional congregations with their own worship teams and pastoral staffs where the main message is simulcast from the South Barrington campus. In a national poll of pastors, the church was voted as the country’s most influential church.

5.  Without Walls International (Tampa, FL) – Pastor Paula White – 23,900

Without Walls church emphasizes New Testament-style evangelism, which involves preaching the gospel in the streets and local communities. This has brought a great amount of growth to the church. They have a number of outreach ministries with the local community. The church was founded as a non-denominational charismatic church with two locations around Tampa.

6.  Southeast Christian Church (Louisville, KY) – Pastor Dave Stone – 20,800

In spite of its size, Southeast Christian Church emphasizes meeting the needs of individual members with various ministries. It has three campuses, including one in Indiana. It is associated with the churches of Christ.

7.  West Angeles Church of God in Christ (Los Angeles, CA) – Pastor Charles Blake – 20,000

As part of the Church of God in Christ denomination, this church has a Pentecostal background with a predominantly African American congregation. It is known for its dynamic city ministries and celebrity members, including Denzel Washington, Stevie Wonder, and Magic Johnson.

8.  Saddleback Church (Lake Forest, CA) – Pastor Rick Warren – 19,700

Located in southern Orange County, this church is associated with the Southern Baptist Convention. Pastor Rick Warren founded the church in 1980 and is known for his bestselling devotional, The Purpose-Driven Life. The church currently has nine campuses in the surrounding area.

9.  Woodlands Church (Woodlands, TX) -  Pastor Kerry Shook – 18,300

This church is located in the organized community of The Woodlands, located about 30 miles north of downtown Houston. It has three other campuses in nearby communities. Pastor Kerry Shook and his wife wrote the bestselling book, One Month to Live, about living with no regrets.

10.  Central Christian Church (Las Vegas, NV) – Pastor Jud Wilhite – 18,200

Central Christian is a non-denominational Christian church just outside Las Vegas. The main pastor, Jud Wilhite, struggled with addiction as a teen and now leads ministries to help those who are hurting to heal through church. There are several other campuses in the surrounding area, including prisons in a few states with the God Behind Bars program.

Category: Churches, Guest Post | No Comments »
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Posted By Aaron Marcelli on November 1, 2011

You probably know that I’m a pretty heavy reader (After all, I did get excited to be summoned for jury duty because I knew it would let me read all day).  I read about 25 books a year.  For a long time reading a book was simply one more thing I could check off my list.  I was going through them so fast that I was not really gaining much or allowing myself time to process and apply what I had read.  So I came up with a system.

As I read through books I personalize them.  I underline, make notes, cross things out I disagree with, and write arguments to the author in the margins.  This is why I can’t read books from the library.

When I’ve read through the book, I place it on a separate book shelf for books I’ve already read.  As time allows, I later grab books off my ‘already read that’ shelf and sit down with them in front of my computer.  I will open a fresh Word document and flip through the pages of the book I read a month or year ago.  I look at anything I underlined, stared, or made notes about and copy it into the Word document.  For a good book I will usually end up with about five or six pages of notes.

These notes are most of the time quotes from the book but could also be references to what page(s) to go back to if I want to study that topic further in the future.  It may also be a thought that the book provoked in me though it was not directly in the book.  I then title the file according to the book’s title and author and save it in a desktop folder for book notes.

This process has allowed me to save and quickly access notes on all the books I’ve read.  It makes that information so much easier to locate if I want to refresh my memory or reference it at a later date.  Doing this also allows me to get rid of those old books if I want without fearing that I will one day wish I had the information from them.  This has saved a lot of room in our basement.

Do you have a system for retaining information from the books you read?

Category: Book Reviews | 2 Comments »
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Posted By Aaron Marcelli on October 20, 2011

The following is an excerpt from the second chapter of my book, Repentance and Recovery.  I believe it further clarifies the stance I took that repentance is not required for salvation; something I wrote about here.

While John did require those he baptized to confess, he did not require them to repent.  I think this is because repenting is a work and Christianity is not built upon the works of man.  If repentance is turning away, then that is a work, and a difficult one at that.  It is a work that is so difficult it requires the indwelling of the Holy Spirit to empower one to make such a life change.  John knew that those coming to receive salvation did not have the Holy Spirit indwelling them yet and therefore may not have even been capable of turning their lives around before coming to God.

Category: Repentance and Recovery, Spiritual Growth | 1 Comment »
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Posted By Aaron Marcelli on October 18, 2011

The Following is a condensed version of a magazine article I wrote about the struggles of the slow pace at which spiritual growth occurs.

“Why can’t it be easier?” is a thought that often crosses my mind when dealing with my own spiritual growth.  In the past years my life has contained no shortage of dramatic changes: moving away from home, graduating, moving again, getting fired, having to look for a new job, moving once more, and the beginning or ending of various relationships.  Whether by choice or force, some of the shifts in my physical life have brought immediate and dramatic change.  My spiritual life, however, has not followed suit.

As dramatic as they were, none of the above experiences, nor even my own salvation have brought about a drastic spiritual step forward.  I don’t know that I’ve had a dire, all at once, life changing spiritual experience.  Not because the actual experiences have been absent from my journey, but the trend I’ve observed in my spiritual walk is that it takes work, moves slowly, and is even at times longueur.  So I’ve come to believe it’s not necessary to have a life-altering experience to act as a catalyst for moving quickly forward in spiritual growth.

When we were young we were taught that if we earned it, it would mean more to us (usually a lesson about money). I notice time and effort being required for spiritual progress cause growth to be more meaningful, personal, and last longer.  I used to pray for God to pick me up and instantly transplant me to a spiritual step closer to Him.  For Him to do so would probably result in little commitment on my part.

It’s difficult for me to hear testimonies of people having a God encounter through a divine situation, supernatural occurrence, or even disastrous event and it lead them to an “a-ha moment” or 180 degree change.  “Why doesn’t that happen for me?” I ask myself.  To receive my answer and realize what God has been doing in my life, all I have to do is look back.

Looking back over the years I see growth from where I used to be.  There has been drastic change in my attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors.  The gifts, abilities, and opportunities that have come into my life almost went unrecognized because they came by what I considered to be such gradual arrival.  Also as I look back and recognize the distance I have come, I see traces of the occurrences in my life that have one by one brought about a slow shift in thought or deed.

Sometimes still I’m inclined to make a commitment to change an area of life based on such simple means as a movie, song, sermon, or conversation.  But such shallow and immediate triggers aren’t deep enough to bring about lasting change.

I cannot have a four minute song stir my emotions and cause me to jump to an entirely different way or focus of life without soon falling back into the practices I’ve become accustomed to in the past.  Even sermons often come with pressure for an immediate response when the story of our lives should prove such compact information in a short time are not significant for yielding all at once change on the major issues and practices of who we are.  We are not so simple a creation that we can be swayed or reprogrammed with such little intent or effort.  All together the situations of my life, as well as their consequences, have connected in a way for me to become more like Jesus.  Surely God uses major events, but only to point us back to our walk with Him.  That is the process of spiritual growth.

I don’t always like this process.  It still causes me to sometimes wonder if God is at work.  But every time I ask God for immediate results I imagine He grins, then perfectly arranges the situations of my day to day so I develop a habit that leads to  deep and lasting change.  So rather than looking for a dramatic situation that will give me spiritual growth, I’m going to continue walking with God, believing that the everyday events of my life are capable of producing eternal results.

Category: Life Change, My Life / Personal, Spiritual Growth, Writing | No Comments »
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