The Thursday Update

JUNE 13, 2024

Lakeshore Friends—

Father’s Day is this weekend and it makes me think about the important role that men play in our society and in the world. 

I am thankful that God gave me just over 21 years with my dad.  I learned a lot from him and will never forget the two things he told me often:

1. “All I ask is that you love and respect me.”

2. “You’re a DiPaola.”

The latter was not a reminder of my lineage but a charge to live in such a way that I don’t do anything to bring shame to our family.  I learned so much about the right way to do things from my dad.

I am also sad that I didn’t have more time with him and that he died suddenly and surprisingly.  Nearly two-thirds of my life has been lived without my dad.  He wasn’t alive to see me graduate from college, get married to Sue (though he did know her and loved her), give birth to our kids and grandchild, start Lakeshore, and so much more.

All of this is a reminder that we can never take our time or memories of our fathers for granted.  Fathers set the leadership tempo of our homes, provide so much that the family desperately needs, and are God’s ordained head of the family.  Despite this, culture has put fatherhood (and manhood in general) in its crosshairs and attacked this institution with constant berating and insults all designed to neuter it out of existence.  It may be causing some men to flinch, but thankfully not most of us.

This Father’s Day, I hope you’ll celebrate your father at Lakeshore.  Whether you knew him well or not very well at all, whether he was a great model for you or something less than that, God knows that honoring our fathers is best for us and for society (Exodus 20:12, Ephesians 6:2-3). 

Where would we be without them?

Warmly,
Vince

JUNE 6, 2024

Lakeshore Friends—

Have you discovered that there will always be too much to do?  Too much for you to do no matter what you do or how hard you try to change it.  The requests will keep coming and so will things that you  are told you “must” do… immediately!  With some occasional fluctuations in intensity, it will never change!

So what do you do to avoid this “I’m just too busy” life?  If you can’t change your circumstances (and most of the time, you can’t), you can still change one thing to avoid getting crazy busy: your priorities!

When you live a prioritized life, you simply spend your time on the most important things first until your day ends.  When your day ends, you pick up again on the most important things first until your day ends.  You repeat this every day until you die.  Simple isn’t it?

What about if you don’t get to other things?  Well, if you prioritized right, then it simply means they weren’t that important and/or someone else should be doing them.

When I think of the book of the Bible that talks about priorities in an impactful way, I think of the Old Testament book of Haggai (pronounced “Hag-eye”).  This is not an eye disease that an ophthalmologist can treat, but the name of an Old Testament Prophet who was called by God to help the post-exile people of Israel rebuild the temple of God.  God shares how to prioritize life through Him and we’ll look at these principles on Sunday.

Do you know how to prioritize life’s demands?

Do you live by priorities?

Do you know your priorities?

If you want to learn the power of priorities, be here on Sunday!

Warmly,
Vince

P.S.,  Wow, what an amazing service last Sunday!  The eight baptisms were incredible along with our incredible music and creative team.

MAY 30, 2024

Lakeshore Friends—

Can you imagine having God ask you to do something that you could do and is reasonable and then responding to Him, “I’m sorry God, I’m just too busy.”?  It would be hard to say that to God, if we had a conversation with him.  Just the thought of saying “no” to God for a request like this would be unthinkable.  It would seem so wrong for many reasons, like:

1. Well, because He is God!

2. Imagine if God were too busy for us?

3. Our belief that God is good leads us to the conclusion that all He asks of us is good, for Him and for us too.

4. Maybe, it would reveal that our fellowship with God is not that strong.  Or worse, that we really do not have a relationship with God that is genuine.  Yikes!

I think you can see that for these reasons and more, it would be wrong to say no to God.  Even if we are busy… really, really, really busy!

Yet, this is what people do all the time to God.  They say “no” to Him at various times and in various ways.  And when you boil it all down, when we say no to God we are saying we know what’s best for our lives more than He does.  Double yikes!

Being busy is never an excuse not to do what God wants.  Being tired isn’t either.  Neither are the cares of this life.

As crazy busy as life gets sometimes, learn to say “yes” to God every time if you want to live a life worthy of His calling of you.  On Sunday, along with 8 exciting baptisms and testimonies of people who said “yes” to Jesus and baptism, I’ll share a story Jesus told about the importance of saying “yes” to God, and the danger of saying “no” to His commands.  As challenging as saying “yes” can sometimes be, it beats losing out by saying “no” to the God who always says “yes” and “amen” to us through His unbreakable promises (2 Corinthians 1:20).

I hope you’ll say “yes” to being here on Sunday.

Warmly,
Vince