Due to the holidays and bad economic times, be on the look out for desperate people looking to find valuable goods in anyway possible.

Currently, we have someone going around our neighborhood at night opening up people’s mailboxes and going through their mail looking for Christmas cards filled with gift cards or cash. So, be sure to get your mail as quickly as you can and all the packages at your door before it turns dark out.

If you never lock your car doors at night, now would be a good time to start that habit.

Be careful about who you give money to as well. I would imagine salvation army scams have risen and door to door donation offers as well.

Just be extra cautious this season, it’s a mess out there.

These are my answers in response to Ron’s blog post “Questions to Help Make 2009 a Better Year”

1. What task do you have to perform in your area of responsibility that you most need to get better at doing?

Keeping up with company finances & responding quickly to emails.

2. In what area of the ministry (organization) do you wish you had more experience?

Coordinating projects, delegation & effective communication.

3. What personal or spiritual discipline do you want to improve in 2009?

Quicker morning routine, exercise (typical I know, but then this will add to my morning routine…) & reading through the old testament (I find it boring at times and less straightforward than the new testament - Jesus & Paul just rock).

4. How can Chad and I personally help you improve in your work, spiritual, or personal life in 2009?

Call me out on lame blog posts, tweets, facebook updates & make sure my status on facebook stays to married.

what to get me for Christmas… Well, if you won’t see me then a Barnes & Noble or amazon.com gift certificate would be awesome.

If you will see me, then here’s my wish list of books… I would love any of them.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/RCNHVNG932TQ

Here’s a quick list of things that I’m thankful for this year that God provided and made happen:

1. A beautiful, considerate & passionate wife who amazingly serves me even when I don’t deserve it. She’s teaching me how to be an awesome & godly servant to God, her and others.

2. Another year spending time with my parents & siblings.

3. Paying off my last ‘bad debt’ (car)

4. Started to doing something I’ve always wanted to do… Travel the world. My list is long & life is short, but I’ve begun to make a small dent…

5. A great house decorated by my talented wife and I had AC in the Summer and heat in the winter.

6. Something to eat for every meal. And eating the most amazing food I have ever eaten (thanks to my wife)

7. Financially helping others & being a small part in growing Gods kingdom

8. New friends - Moving to Murfreesboro has brought some great new friends into my life.

9. Great books - I’ve read some great books that have really inspired, transformed and shaped me this year.
(Bible, Messy Spirituality, Walking With God, Today Matters, Every Man’s Marriage, In a Pit With a Lion on a Snowy Day, Dangerous Wonder, The Richest Man Who Ever Lived, The Best Question Ever, The Life You’ve Always Wanted, Wild Goose Chase)

10. Frustrations and disappointments - I’ve said & done stupid things (ask my wife). I’ve wasted time, money and energy on other things. Some were worth it, some weren’t. In the end, I’ve learned valuable lessons that will hopefully help me make wiser decisions in the future and to help others in similar situations.

11. Stuff that has maybe made my life a little easier and more enjoyable this year… but brings barely a hint of joy & happiness compared to everything I listed above: iPhone, recliner, more Christmas lights, switching to all macs, Garmin, Wii and a HD DVR. (big thanks to my wife who let’s me buy this stuff)

From all my reading and listening this week I’m finding a common theme that I believe God is trying to communicate to me and for me to understand… and that is:

Learning to create margin in all the arenas of my life.

I first came across this while reading The Best Question Ever. Andy talks about creating margin for things that may tempt you in life. A lot of times we trying to find that dividing line of right and wrong and see how close we can get to it without doing the wrong thing. The problem is that without margin between the line of right and wrong (where we tend to closely hang out at), it allows us to cross that line very easily when we are in moments of weakness. By creating margin (setting your own personal boundaries), when we are in those moments of weakness, it’s much easier to avoid crossing that line of right and wrong because we are so far away from it anyways. And if we do cross our own margin line (our own boundaries we have set), it gives us time and the opportunity to get back on the other side before we actually cross over the real line of right and wrong.

I ran across this same principle today from Leo , but instead of margin he used the term ‘pare it down’. Then Tony Morgan responded to this and shared some of things in his life he has marginalized and what that leaves time for.

So I took this principle and ran with it… realizing that all our arenas of life needs margin.

Just a few months ago my wife and I made the decision together for her not to teach dance at night after she had already worked a full day. We did this to create margin. When she used to work a full time job and teach dance, there really wasn’t much time for ‘us’. We had come really close to that line… Not the line of right and wrong as in sin, but the line of what’s the right thing to do and the wrong thing to do in the relm of spending time with your spouse and being a good steward of your time, etc.. Now that she has margin with her free time at nights, it allows not only time for ‘us’ time, but it gives her time to have opportunities to meet with leaders in her ministry, counseling, friends and other unexpected God-ordained things to come up and for her to be able to tend to.

Then of course you can apply this same principle to your finances. Most people live paycheck to paycheck. If we don’t save money to create margin of what we have and what we spend, it doesn’t allow us to pay for unexpected things that come up such as emergencies, organizations that need money, etc..

I could go on and on about all the different arenas of life you can apply this princple to, but I always find that it’s best to get people going on an idea or principle and then let them figure out how they can apply it to their life. Otherwise, they will just read it and forget it, if they don’t actually think about how they can apply it.