It's Finally Here!!-- The Essence of Leading Prolific Small Group Meetings!

After a long anticipated wait-- your leadership package has finally arrived. The Essence of Leading Prolific Small Group Meetings is finally complete. I want to thank all of you who have been patiently waiting for us to get the kinks out and deliver you a quality product. Some of you have been waiting since August when our package was scheduled to come back from the printer and on behalf of R4C Ranch Productions I hope you know how much we appreciate you hanging in there with us.

We hope you enjoy your new training and motivational package. We have packed it full of powerful tools and ideas to help you transform your weekly meetings into life-changing small groups. The Essence of Leading Prolific Small Group Meetings covers skills in relationship building, leadership development, facilitating empowering discussions, and group member management. Your feedback is vital to our continuing desire to create quality leader materials and training. Let us know what you think of your new Leadership Package by commenting to this blog or emailing us directly at r4cr.productions@yahoo.com

If you haven't ordered your Leadership Package yet, you can do so at www.theleadinglife.com

Dream Ranch Journey

R4C Ranch Productions presents

--"The Dream Ranch Journey"--

This new blog at http://dreamranchjourney.blogspot.com is dedicated to reviewing and sifting through the billions of books out there to find and bring straight to you the "How Tos" and "Great Ideas" as well as the "Intellectual Stimulation" and "Spiritual Inspiration" to help keep you going on your Dream Ranch Journey.

Remember: The dream is the passion God put in your heart to lead you closer to him but the Journey is everything. . . no destination on earth is worth stopping at. . . so keep dreaming until God brings you home.

Welcome to the Country-- city girl!

What a blessing to have my children spending a Sunday afternoon working in the fields with me! While my 10 year old helped me with the new fence, his main chore to ride the ATV back and forth to the house and get us refreshments and tools we forgot, my 20 year old daughter born and raised in the city, was learning how to pick up round bales with the tractor. After she got her first bale set, she got a ride from my son on the ATV to come talk to me.

"Is something wrong with the tractor?" I asked.
"This just isn't working," she explained. "We are going to have to go get the truck and the flat bed. I was thinking we could stack several bales on the flat bed and move them like that. You can't seriously think we are going to be able to move all of these bales one at a time that is going to take forever."
After I regained my composure from chuckling so hard I said, "Welcome to the Country, city girl." After we exchanged a few more ideas and truths about tractors, lifts, and money, I suggested all she needed was some suntan lotion and patience.
"This isn't the internet, girl, it's farming. Relax and enjoy the sunshine-- one bale at a time."

It's Finally Here~ The Essence of Leading Prolific Small Group Meetings

After a long anticipated wait-- your leadership package has finally arrived. The Essence of Leading Prolific Small Group Meetings is finally complete. I want to thank all of you who have been patiently waiting for us to get the kinks out and deliver you a quality product. Some of you have been waiting since August when our package was scheduled to come back from the printer and on behalf of R4C Ranch Productions I hope you know how much we appreciate you hanging in there with us.

We hope you enjoy your new training and motivational package. We have packed it full of powerful tools and ideas to help you transform your weekly meetings into life-changing small groups. The Essence of Leading Prolific Small Group Meetings covers skills in relationship building, leadership development, facilitating empowering discussions, and group member management. Your feedback is vital to our continuing desire to create quality leader materials and training. Let us know what you think of your new Leadership Package by commenting to this blog or emailing us directly at r4cr.productions@yahoo.com

If you haven't ordered your Leadership Package yet, you can do so at www.theleadinglife.com

R4C Ranch Trail Ride Beginnings

Our first small group trail ride set out Friday, 9/14/2007. They opted out of the traveling through the herd and the woods but instead took the trails out to the hay field where they could let the horses go on a loose rein and enjoy some high speed adventures around the hay bales. We followed up with a second ride on Sunday and it was absolutely beautiful. We dodged the thunder and rain-- remaining mostly dry. The weather was absolutely wonderful. Not as chilly as the Friday night lifegroup on the deck. I just think we are not used to the sudden drop in temperatures of over a 40 degree spread from 105 degrees down to the low 60's.

The R4C Ranch Trail Ride Prayer:

Lord,
As we saddle up our horses and prepare to ride
We ask that you would be our guide
Not just on this trail but all trails of life
Lead us out of darkness and into your light

We thankyou for our equine friends
and Your majesty revealed through them
Let them carry us safely as we ride today
Reveal more of you, Lord, along the way

Prepare us for you, Lord, renew our minds
As we venture out, new treasures to find
Following our leader, Faithful and True
Every where we go, Lord, we'll follow you

In Jesus name, Amen.

Train Yourself up to be Godly

"When we are ambushed, survival kicks in and we revert to our training," Major O. explained, "that is why discipline and training is so important." Not all attacks are military and not all are physical. We are constantly fighting off spiritual attacks that strike at our greatest areas of weakness physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. If you have strengthened your faith and disciplined your mind in God's word, then you have a firm foundation to fall back on. "When we are ambused, survival kicks in and we revert to our training."

"For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge, and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perserverance; and to perserverance godliness (God-Likeness); and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing meausre they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ." (2 Peter 1:5).
And this discipline will prepare you for when you are ambushed and help you prevail when you must stand on your training.

"So then brothers stand firm and hold to the teachings we passed to you..." 2 Thessalonians 2:15

"Have nothing to do with godless myths, but train yourself up to be godly. For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come." 1Tim 4:8

Hope and Faith

Sometimes I think, it would be a cruel trick for the Creator to have opened our eyes to life and death and then let us live only to die into an abyss of nothingness. That is why I put my Hope* into the God of Creation that has made so much of humans that he came to us in Spirit and in Flesh to teach us about the plans he has made for our eternity after our dance on earth.

*Hope--> Archaic. Trust and Confidence

"Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." Hebrews 11:1

So what is that we do here?-- what is the point, you might ask. I love what Cat Stevens asks in his song, O Very Young. "Oh Very Young, What will you leave us this time?" It's not about what you had when you were here and you can't take it with you when you go, but what will you leave behind: An invention, an unfulfilled promise, a bit of wisdom in the heart of young person? No it's not about your loving will-- you can leave money and they will spend it, property and they will sell it, things and they will rust and depreciate-- all these things seem valuable to us but true value can not be left in a will. True value sews Hope and Faith into the hearts of those you leave behind.

Teenage Wisdom

I am always perplexed by the insights I gain from my teenage children. I was thinking about how hyper-sensitive they are to what other people think about them. If a teenager, and I am not naming names, doesn't have the proper attire that is a cause to skip school. You can not go to class if your new. You can't go to class if you've worn your only clean shirt already once this year unless its your absolute favorite and then you can wear that up to three times a week but not four or five. You can't go to class unless you drive a cool car or truck and if you have to have a ride from your parent-- you can only go if you get to drive up to the school or are dropped off at a friends so you can ride the rest of the way with them.

As I contemplated how to offer wisdom to my teenager about learning not to be so hyper-sensitive about what others thought something that took me two decades to get over, I realized the hypersensitivity did not seem to carry over onto what I thought about him. Okay, so maybe if you could take a little bit of the "I don't care what you think, mom" and apply that to your peers maybe you could reach a healthy balance.

Teenagers also have a strange sense of math. You can tell them how great they are for five days in a row with little response but if one day after school you ask them to pick up their mess they equate, "You never have anything good to say. All you do is yell at me when I mess up."

You would have thought I was never a teenager. But I was and that is why I probably act like I do now. Somehow I think every parent wants to protect their adolescents from going through what they did, if only they just did what we did right without doing what we did wrong--- then maybe they would be better adults than we are or at least better quicker. My daughter once yelled at me, "You just want me to be like you were as a teenager--- well I am not you, mom." The dilemna-- do I tell her? The last thing I wanted was for her to be like I was as a teenager but unfortunately I saw so much of me in her it was scarey. Well, I think she might turn out okay afterall!!

God's Glory

I just learned that the Hebrew word for "Glory" has a more fine-tuned translation than what we commonly consider splendor or greatness. The word is kavodh and means inclusively weight (or more modernly great treasure), abundance, and wealth.

"Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory (the great treasure, abundance, and wealth) of God the Father."

Interesting isn't it. Jesus brought Glory to God the Father. In otherwords, he was a great treasure to him. Jesus was God's wealth and abundance. That is why we want to be like Jesus to be a great treasure and of great wealth to God. "So whatever you do , do it all for the glory of God (1 Cor 10:31)." Do it all to be God's abundance and wealth. In all that you do be a great treasure to God.

"For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also (Matthew 6:21)." Following the logic here, if you are God's treasure--- will not God's own heart be with you also?

Meeting With God

It's a new year and I just learned that God wants to meet with me! From the very beginning of mankind, God walked with us and talked with us and even looked for us when we were hiding because of sin. He asked us to design special places to meet with us and cleansed us so that He could dwell among us.
"... Make a sanctuary for me and I will dwell among you. Make this tabernacle and all its furnishings exactly like the pattern I will show you. " Exodus 25:8-9

I wonder: what is the pattern that God is showing us for his sanctuary today. Where does God want to meet you? What does the pattern of place, time, and furnishings look like? Will you run to this place knowing God is going to meet with you there?

Think about how you react if you hear your phone ringing-- not even knowing who it is, do you leap over small furniture and stumble over toys trying to catch the caller before they hang up? If there is a knock at the door, do you find the energy to get up out of bed, put on your robe, to see who is there? God is waiting for you at your special meeting place will you not find the energy to get up and to leap over small furniture to meet with him before he leaves. Would you miss a minute of his visit with you?