Hey!

I know this post doesn’t really fit that great here at my blog site, but I was hoping that this would be a blessing for both of us.

Last year, I took a huge, stretchy step of faith and decided to become a tent maker.  After 17 years of full-time ministry, I started my own business, and continued to speak, write, take missions trips, etc, without receiving a weekly paycheck.  I know that sounds backwards.  Most people work a job outside of ministry until they can go “full-time” at a church or something.  It’s an experiment I wanted to conduct and the results aren’t in yet.

The business happens to be a media/marketing business.  We build web sites, create graphics, videos, etc for churches, ministries, and small businesses.  We also build blogs, which leads us to this opportunity…

I would like to set up a first class blog for you for free.  One with a real address like www.yourname.com instead of www.yourname.blogger.com.  One built with a premium theme that you can customize and make your own.  And I’d like to give you a super cool email address with your own url in it instead of that old gmail address.  What will this cost you?  NOTHING!  Just pay your hosting fee ($10 a month) and you’ve just stepped in to Awesome Bloggerville.

Why?  Because your monthly hosting fee helps me to keep leading prayer experiences, keep preaching, and keep taking equipment to Irish church planters, that’s why.  It’s a blessing to me and my family AND a blessing to you because you get a premium blog setup for free.

So here’s how it works.  We’ll take care of your domain name (how about jesusisawesome.com?), give you two email addresses, build the required database, install WordPress on our servers, and hook you up with one of the best themes available.  It’s the same theme I use (without the wood background and other customizations I’ve made).  Then you take it, add your own personal touches to it, and blog like the wind!

It’s a super great opportunity to upgrade to a first class blog site AND support a cool ministry!  Just send an email to contact@leebezotte.com with your name, email address, phone number, and current web site (if any), and I’ll contact you to get started.  You’ll be glad you did!

Thanks so much!!

Lee

I almost forgot!  Please consider hitting that Tweet button on the left.  It would be great if LOTS of people knew about this opportunity.  Thanks in advance!

Risk is… risky.  How’s that for profound?  We like sure things.  When we invest out time, money, and energy into something we want to KNOW it’s going to succeed.  It’s heartbreaking to put yourself out there, pour yourself into a project, or invest your life into something just to have it fail.  I know.  I’ve been there.  In 1999 I sold most of what I owned, packed up my family, and moved to Ireland to plant a church.  You know what happened?  It was an epic failure…  More on that later, but let’s take a deeper look at this thing we call risk.

Look at the great successes in our world and in scripture.  Esther’s role in the deliverance of her people, Moses and the Israelites at the bank of the Red Sea, David standing up against Goliath.  How about William Wilberforce against the slave trade, The Pilgrims coming to America, or any of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.  Today, we only read their stories from this side of their struggle.  We hear about the victory.  But to them, in that moment of engaging in a mission, they had no idea how things would turn out. They were risking everything with no promise of success.  I’m so grateful they decided to risk it all!

I want to share a couple of things I’ve learned when it comes to risk:

If you want to do anything of significance, it’s going to require risk.  From planting a church, to establishing new relationships, to reaching the lost, or helping the poor.  From writing that book, to interviewing for that job, or preaching for the first time it all requires risk.  There’s a chance for failure and we have to be willing to live with that because the moment we decide to stop taking risks we lose all potential for doing anything great.

All risk in God’s economy is worth taking.  This one is tough, especially in a culture that worships security.  We want to know that, whatever risks we take, we’ll still be able to live at the “standard of living” we are currently living at.  I think, as Christians, we should be far more concerned with our standard of dying than our standard of living. We’ve been fed the gospel of success for so long that the idea of a venture not turning out as we hoped leaves us feeling disenchanted and hopeless.  The truth is this: when we take a risk for the sake of Christ, whether we fail or succeed, it was totally worth taking.

1st Corinthians 15:58 says, “So, my dear brothers and sisters, be strong and immovable. Always work enthusiastically for the Lord, for you know that nothing you do for the Lord is ever useless.”

NOTHING you do for the Lord is ever useless!  What an amazingly comforting word!  That means my failure to plant a church in Ireland was not useless.  Something came out of it even if I never saw it.  And truth be told, I don’t regret doing it.  I risked, and I lost, but I also gained, and I’m sure there were people who were blessed along the way.

So go ahead and take that risk!  Focus more on obeying God’s call and less on what-ifs.  “be strong and unmovable”.  Whatever the outcome, it will have been worth it!

Thanks for reading. You can subscribe to my blog by Clicking here.

Inspire.  That’s a huge word (for only two syllables).  It’s what I love to do.  I had my first opportunity to inspire a church body way back when I was just a teenager and now, all these years later, I still love to provoke people to reach farther, pray harder, dream bigger, and love stronger.  My hope is that, somewhere among these paragraphs of stories, anecdotes,  and (unapologetically) sermons you’ll think, laugh, feel, and be inspired.

Thanks for taking the time.

Lee