Cornerstone Community Church, San Jose Ca

About 15 years or so ago I had a most interesting encounter. I was reading when I heard the knock on the door. I don’t remember now what I was reading, but I think it was an article in Time. To be honest, I didn’t want to be bothered at the time. If it had been the phone, I would have let it ring and listened to the message later. But someone was at the door, and I was in the living room, only a few feet away, and the visitor could see me, so I felt obligated to at least go see who it was. So I put down my magazine, pulled myself out of the recliner, and walked over to our front door. And you’ll never guess who was knocking on my door – it was Jesus! I quickly opened the door and said, “Lord, what are you doing out here? I thought I let you in already?”

Cadence International

We live in a big world, a world of big cities, big corporations and big problems. To think that one person, a person like you or me, could make much of a difference … well, it just seems fanciful, doesn’t it? Years ago there was a cartoon called “The Animaniacs.” Those of you with DirecTV can watch reruns of the show on channel 294 (Don’t ask me how I know that). The best part of the cartoon was some of the songs these characters sang. One of my favorites was “Yakko’s Universe” – here’s the chorus: “It’s a great big universe, and we’re all really puny. We’re just tiny little specks about the size of Mickey Rooney. It’s big and black and inky, and we are small and dinky. It’s a big universe and we’re not.”

“STRENGTH: HOW GREAT THOU ART/HOW GREAT IS OUR GOD” The Songs That Stir Our Souls June 16, 2013 Cornerstone Community Church This year will mark the 36th year of the World’s Strongest Man competition. The first time I ever watched one of these events I thought it was a joke. I thought maybe this was a Will Ferrell or Adam Sandler movie, or a Saturday Night Live skit that makes fun of bodybuilders. But you might know that those who compete in this event take it quite seriously, that there are men who have given their lives to train for this competition. And if you’ve ever watched a World’s Strongest Man competition, you know that this isn’t a boring old weightlifting tournament. It’s not a matter of seeing who can bench press the most weight. Instead there are events like the “Duck Walk,” in which the contestants strap around their waist a rope holding up a 400 pound kettle and then see who can walk the farthes

The Songs That Stir Our Souls, Week 2

It’s not just we who are people of faith who love music – everyone loves music. We play it in our cars, we listen to our iPods while we work out at the gym, we play it in the background while we cook dinner, we hum along as we watch them sung on “American Idol,” “Glee” and “The Voice,” and then there’s that tune we just can’t get out of our heads, even though sometimes we’d dearly like to, especially when it’s a song like “Call Me Maybe” or “Gangnam Style.” What couple hasn’t said at some time in their lives, “They’re playing our song!” The latest song Brenda and I have claimed as our own is Christina Perri’s song “A Thousand Years.” Every time one of us hears it, we stop and text the other to say, “They’re playing our song.” And when we come to church it’s the one thing that we truly do together, the one thing we most

Ever since we started Cornerstone 20 years ago we’ve always offered hot coffee in the lobby. But one of the odd things about that is that in those 20 years we’ve never had a person responsible for making the coffee who actually drinks coffee. For many years that was one of my jobs, and still is from time to time. Bob Trouard did that job for a number of years, and in recent times it’s been Andrew’s responsibility. But none of us drink coffee, not even occasionally.

There’s a story about a local fitness center, which was offering $1,000 to anyone who could demonstrate that they were stronger than the owner of the place. Here’s how it worked. This muscle man would squeeze a lemon until all the juice ran into a glass, and then hand the lemon to the next challenger. Anyone who could squeeze just one more drop of juice out would win the money. Many people tried over time – other weightlifters, construction workers, even professional wrestlers, but nobody could do it.

“WHEN LIFE GETS OUT OF CONTROL: JESUS CRASHES OUR DAMAGED LIVES” Life Crasher: When It’s Time For A Change April 14, 2013 Cornerstone Community Church What is your default setting when something around your house breaks? Is your first inclination to fix it or to replace it? In our home Brenda is the “fix it” person and I’m the “replace it” person. If one of our appliances has a problem, Brenda wants to fix it. And I have to admire her confidence, because she wants to fix it herself even when she has absolutely no idea how the appliance works. I’m at the other extreme. If something is broken, even something simple that pretty much anyone with half a brain could repair, I still want to replace it.

Have you ever gotten an invitation to something that at the end of which had this phrase: “Regrets only”? What it means, of course, is that you don’t need to tell the host if you’re coming to the party, but you only have to send them your regrets; you only have to tell them if you can’t come. And I’ve sometimes thought when I’ve received those invitations, “I wish I could send you my regrets. I’ve got a whole ton of regrets that I’d love to unload, all sorts of things I’ve done that I regret doing. If there was really a way I could send you my regrets, trust me – I’d do it.” Some regrets we can tuck away in the closet so we don’t have to see them every day. We can push them to the back of our minds. And then there are the regrets that are constantly in our faces. I told you this story a few years ago. Not long after we moved into our house we got some dirt on the carpet in what we call o

A little while ago one of you reminded me of a story I once told quite a long time ago about our family. I looked it up in my records; I actually told this story 16 years ago, so it surprised me that anyone remembered it. I actually think about this story at least once every week, every time I walk past the street drain located right by our front steps. And I thought about it again now, at Easter time, because it’s a story about a time when hope seemed lost. This was back in the days when life in our family was particularly hectic. I was working as a lawyer in Palo Alto, and my wife – in addition to raising three young kids and working fulltime – was still recovering from a car accident in which she was t-boned by a pickup truck. While I usually drove our children to school at that time, this was one of those mornings I had to be out of the house early and wouldn’t see them before I left. Brenda was still unable to drive at the time because of the accident, so one

A motivational author and speaker named Charlie Jones – whose nickname was “Tremendous” because his best-selling book was titled “Life Is Tremendous” – once said this: “Five years from today, you will be the same person you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read.” It’s a bit of an overstatement, of course, but I doubt any of us would dispute the fact that the greatest influence on our lives is other people. People inspire us, and people drag us down. For good or for bad, you and I are who we are largely because of the people we’ve allowed to shape our character, our values and our beliefs.

Like a number of you, I enjoy listening to sports talk radio and watching sports talk TV, at least to a point. For example, after the Super Bowl, if you are a 49ers fan, there was a lot to talk about, a lot to argue about. We argued about the play calling on those last four plays, where the Niners had the ball on Baltimore’s seven yard line with a chance to complete an historic comeback and win the game, but instead fell five yards short of victory. Why didn’t they run Frank Gore, why didn’t they run Colin Kaepernick, why didn’t they throw to Vernon Davis? Or if you didn’t want to argue about the game, you could argue about the commercials. Which one was the best? Was the commercial with the kiss between a supermodel and a geek too gross? Was the commercial about the Clydesdale who remembered the man who raised him the sweetest thing you ever saw? Or you could come at it from a different perspective – isn’t it a bit obscene to spend 3.8 million dollars

I was never in the military. My Dad was a Marine who fought in the South Pacific during WW2. My Stepdad, Kenny, was in the Army, and he fought in the European theater in WW2. My oldest brother Jim was also in the Army and spent 18 months fighting in Vietnam. None of them liked to talk about their wartime experiences, other than to say that they had been well trained and that they were grateful to escape with their lives. But my Dad and my brother did tell me a few stories from their basic training days. Neither of them liked basic training, and they were quite sure I wouldn’t either. It’s not that I don’t like to work hard or that I am a rebel when it comes to discipline. But according to them, a fair bit of basic training involves doing things over and over and over again, many of which seemed to have no discernible purpose, and they thought I would have a hard time with that.

My guess is that the names Gutzon Borglum and Lincoln Borglum mean absolutely nothing to you. But let me give you four other names and see if two plus four adds up to anything in your minds – George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. Some of you are still puzzled, but I imagine some of you have made the connection. Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln are, of course, the four U.S. Presidents whose faces are carved into granite in a mountain in South Dakota that we call Mt. Rushmore. And the men who did the carving were Gutzon Borglum and his son, Lincoln. Construction on the 60 foot heads began in 1927 and was finally completed in 1941. Three million tourists visit the site every year. Even if you’ve never been there in person, you’ve surely seen the photographs. And while it’s safe to say that Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln would be remembered for as long as people study American history even if their likenesses hadn

A few years ago I mentioned a book written by Dan Kimball, a pastor in Santa Cruz, called “They Like Jesus But Not The Church.” The premise of the book, you might recall, is that while most people outside the church have a positive impression of Jesus, they don’t have a very favorable impression of we who call ourselves Christians. They told Dan Kimball that they think Christians are hypocritical and judgmental, and most of all, they said, they think Christians are arrogant for believing that their way is the only way. They think we’re intolerant because we believe that when it comes to the issue of salvation, when it comes to what happens when we die, we think we’re right and the Muslims, Mormons, Hindus, Buddhists, and everyone else are wrong.

Have you ever said these words: “Don’t judge me!” We’ve probably all said that at some time in our lives, haven’t we? Most of the time we say it in a fairly lighthearted manner. You’re sitting in the family room watching some silly reality TV show eating potato chips and ice cream. Your wife walks into the room and gives you that look – you know the look, the one that says, “What, are you two?” And before she says a word you go on the offense and you say, “Don’t judge me!” Or you’re meeting a friend for lunch and you offer to give him a ride. He opens the passenger door to your car, and he stands there aghast at what he sees – the empty water bottles, the newspaper from ten months ago, the scrunched Carl’s Jr. bag, some smelly clothes. But before he says anything, you beat him to the punch: “Don’t judge me!”

Well Good Morning Cornerstone, I trust everyone had a safe and fun New Year. It was not too long ago I can remember getting excited about what New Year’s Eve brought; a night of fun, dancing and partying with friends and family. This year and the last few have been slightly different. Just simply tired from the day and the year in general I found myself only conscious of the New Year from the howitzer grade fireworks being set off in an adjacent park. That was the only way I knew it was 2013. My wife on the other hand was fast asleep in preparation for her twelve-hour work shift the next morning and our baby girl Carmella was happily tucked into her crib with her favorite snuggle. Yes the New Year started off with a zzzzzz! On another note however, I must say I am rather pleased to be in 2013, after all just a few weeks back I thought we would never see December 22nd. You know what I mean, that ancient prediction from those seers and prognosticators in the Mayan culture, to Nostradamus and other f

“PLAN LIKE A PRO: HOW TO MAKE ROCK SOLID INVESTMENTS” Rock Solid: Doing Life Jesus’ Way December 30, 2012 Cornerstone Community Church Like many of you here at Cornerstone, I went through Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University a couple of years ago and found it tremendously helpful. At my stage of life my focus was not so much on how to prepare a budget or how to save to buy a car, but on how to plan for retirement. I wondered, for example, how much will it cost me to live when I’m 75 years old? And if it costs me say $60,000 a year to get by when I’m 75, how much will I need to have in savings and how much will I need to receive as income, whether it’s from Social Security or some other source?

My family tradition when I was growing up in Minnesota was to celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve. My Mom and Dad would pack their three sons in the car, along with all the presents, and drive us from our home in the suburbs to my Grandparent’s very old, modest home in downtown Minneapolis. After eating my Grandmother’s roast beef dinner, and after everyone pitched in to clean up, we would then park ourselves around the Christmas tree in the corner of my Grandparents’ very small living room. As kids we were eager to get to the presents, but we understood that first things came first. No presents would be opened until we had first worshiped the one who was Lord at his birth – Jesus the Christ. First we would sing Christmas carols, then there would be the reading of the Christmas story, and then Grampa would lead us in a very long prayer.