John Markum

Tag: Quad Cities

Monday Morning Review

Posted on by johnmarkum

Welcome back to a regular work week! I hope you all had an AMAZING Thanksgiving day with friends and family. Last week for me, our family, and church broke down like this:

  • Spent the first part of the week recovering from my trip to Indiana where I got to speak to 80 teens at an All-Nighter.
  • Shopped, prepped, and cooked Thanksgiving dinner with my family. Pics and recipes coming soon, I swear!
  • Ate food, played with kids, and spent time with my wife. So grateful for all the good things God has blessed us with!
  • Stayed up way too late playing video games as my coupon clipping, sale-hunting, savings queen-of-the-universe wife (official title) left at 11:30 Thanksgiving night to spend the next 8 hours systematically hitting the best black-Friday sales available. She spent far less than most. God loves me…
  • Took wife and kids to the Festival of Trees Saturday morning. Ran into a friend from church who gave us a $10 punch card to play the games. I love our church family! We all had a great time together.
  • Got our worship on Saturday night with a good crowd. Saw more visitors, some from out of town visiting family. We worshiped like we loved Jesus, preached God’s Word, and people gave their lives to Christ. Jesus is awesome!
  • Came back Sunday morning to see more of our out-of-town college students. I love their generation! They are world-changers… you watch and see!
  • Came home, cleaned the house from a crazy week and watched Iron Chef America with the newest Iron Chef winning his first battle. I’m a food nerd…  I can’t help it.

I hope you have a great week getting back into your routines. May you experience God’s blessings and power in your life. I look forward to seeing many of you back this Saturday for our new series “Shine.” More on that later this week!

Blessings,

John

REAL: “Speak Life”

Posted on by johnmarkum

This past week, we wrapped up series “REAL: life meets church” with a message called Speak Life, (Proverbs 18:21, “Life and death are in the power of the tongue…”) in which I shared the story of my teenage friend, Bryce, who literally spoke life into me when I was on the verge of suicide. You can read all about that under my post here. We looked in James 3:1-12 which deals with the potential power that our tongues possess to do good or destruction. We also looked at a few other passages and took some principles away from how we talk to people:

  • Your sin is my business. And my sin is your business. As brothers and sisters in Christ, we are to call one another into our potential to be Christ-like. Hebrews 3:12-13
  • Build up, don’t tear down. Whenever we speak to others, even when correcting, we use words of life to build them up not tear them down. Jesus did this even when confronting an adulterous women. He did not condone her sin, but called her out of that lifestyle and into her potential.
  • Don’t be a fool. Proverbs 12:15, “A fool is wise in his own eyes; but the wise receive counsel.” Assume that you can learn something from anyone.
  • Deal with the person. Matthew 18, Christ tells us how to handle conflict with people which begins with “go to them…” Don’t try to deal with a tense situation over facebook! Go to them, or at least call them.
  • Stay out of it. Refuse to listen to someone else tearing another person down. It’s gossip, and you should refuse to receive it or spread it. Period. Don’t give-in to your curiosity at the expense of someone else’s reputation.

You can watch the message here if you want to more. God bless!

John

The phrase no pain, no gain has been a mantra for athletes and fitness junkies for years. And what they understand about physical pain needs to be broadened to a much more general use in all of our lives. Pain hurts. That's the whole problem. No one enjoys it, and if someone does, we rightfully

The Premium of Pain