Humble Gratitude (from Douglas Poole)

Dear Cypress Family and Friends,

May heaven's grace abound on you this Thanksgiving. May you bask in the wonder of God's passionate love for you. And may your heart respond with humble gratitude.

Happy Thanksgiving from the Poole household to yours!

Blessings,
Douglas
PS. Of all the many blessings in my life, Cypress Meadows ranks up in the top layer of what I am most grateful for. Thank you for the profound privilege of being your Pastor. 

Twitter me this (from Douglas Poole)

Greetings Cypress Family and Friends,

Okay, I’ve got a crazy little idea to run by you. Next Wednesday I head into Haiti where I’ll have a day stopover in Port-au-Prince and then three days with our partners in St. Louis du Nord. Whenever I travel to be with our international partners in Haiti and Kenya a good number of people ask me how they can pray for me and while I’m away they ask Jacque for up-dates on how things are going. So here is my crazy little idea as to how you can know both how to pray for me and get live updates...twitter!

You tech savy-ites are saying what is so crazy about that idea...duh...welcome to 2010. For the rest of us tech dinosaurs let me offer the one sentence cliff notes: Twitter is “text-based” messages of 140 characters or less that you can view either on your smart phone or computer. Cool huh?

Anyway, here is how to sign up if you are interested: using your smart phone text follow douglasdpoole to 40404 or you can follow on your computer by going to www.twitter.com/douglasdpoole

As always, I covet your prayers. You can start praying right now that I might be used of God to bring His grace to a group of people who have been hit with an earthquake...slapped by a hurricane...and now are fleeing from the death shadow of cholera. I will be working with our Haitian partners on advancing the chicken farm, completing next steps to secure a water source and purification system and of course pouring into the leaders of the school. My traveling companions will be our resident “chicken business” expert Steve Ham and Haitian-American Pastor Caleb Deliard.

Finally, this weekend we will observe communion and our own Molly Bail will be with us in all the services for an up-date on our partner orphanage, Springs of Hope Kenya. You don’t want to miss the stories of God’s grace and power transforming the lives of children forgotten by the world they live in. And for my Saturday night friends...we have two new cool additions to the 6 o’clock service...one has to do with music and the other with atmosphere. This thing is starting to grow wings! Yea God!

Blessings,

Douglas

Unplugged Part 2 (from Douglas Poole)

Dear Cypress Family and Friends,

One of the scripture verses that sort of always stays on my radar screen is 1 Timothy 4:16: “Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do , you will save both yourself and your hearers.” Who can argue with this wisdom of God’s Word? Not me. Can’t we all name either someone we know personally or someone we know of with a very public life who didn’t pay the kind of attention they should have to their marriage or their morals or their finances or their health or their (you fill in the blank) __________ and then they (and usually others around them) paid some major “stupid tax”.

That said, this week as I was doing some leadership reading and this quote jumped off a page at me: “An insidious enemy of a leader is exhaustion. Keep it at bay.” How true...how true in my life. I rarely make my best decisions  or do my best thinking when I’m exhausted. I rarely am the kind of husband, father, pastor or Christ-follower I want to be when I’m exhausted. In fact, if I let myself stay an exhausted me for any length of time at all, I usually end up paying some “stupid tax” over something I said or did that probably wouldn’t have been said or done if I wasn’t feeling so exhausted. A-r-r-g-g-h-h! And then I find myself offering apologies and making amends. My guess is, I’m not the only one exhaustion effects in just such a manner. I think this quote is applicable in just about any and every role and realm of life, isn’t it? Can’t we also say: “An insidious enemy of a spouse/parent/friend/boss/teacher/or (you fill in the blank)___________ is exhaustion”. Keep it at bay. Question...Who is ultimately responsible to see that you are leading your life in such a way that you keep exhaustion at bay...you right? Right! So as I told you in my previous e-note, last week I unplugged from most of the duties and responsibilities of the urgent to study, plan and listen for the whispers of heaven in some silence and solitude. What do you need to do to keep exhaustion at bay? You can find reasons to not do something or you can find reasons and ways to keep it at bay. Do what you need to do before exhaustion makes you into more of the person you don’t want to be and you live another day of the life you don’t really want to live. “Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, for if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.”

One small step you can take to fight exhaustion is to set your clock back one hour this Saturday night as we return to standard time. What a gift, an extra hour of sleep.

Blessings,

Douglas

PS. To all my Saturday night friends...see you 6PM...10-10 baby...10-10.

Reminder

This weekend is time change weekend.  So, remember to set your clock back an hour before you go to bed on Saturday night.

See you at services this weekend.





[photo by peapodsquadmom]