mike jones

Change is inevitable.

So we are learning.

Change has been a big part of our lives as a family and I am thankful that my kids are learning this lesson young.

We have seen God move in awesome ways in our family and through our family and I am thankful to be used by Him to impact others for His kingdom. We have always prayed that we would listen for His voice and then have the courage to obey Him, no matter what He asks us to do. And as difficult as it has been, this is where we find ourselves, in obedience, and moving to California.

I have accepted an opportunity to join a great, growing and God-honoring team at a church in Chatsworth, CA. The Church at Rocky Peak is where we will be carrying what we have learned to date and where we hope to learn and grow even more. We will be living in Simi Valley and are very excited to see what God unfolds in our lives as a family!

We miss our friends and the relationships we have built but are looking forward to those we will have an opportunity to grow and work with in the future. The Rocky Peak staff has made this transition relatively easy for us and we feel very loved and cared for as we prepare to join the team already at work unleashing a passionate movement of Christ-followers!

We feel like we have left The Orchard, our home for the last 4-years, very well and are excited to begin the next chapter in our journey now in California. Leaving well… that’s a whole ‘nother blog post

Thank you for following along. More to come on this blog as the story continues.

Take a minute to check out these two videos (in order). Hillsong United doing what they do best – leading people to a moment of worship of God. The song is amazing in and of itself but what I find particularly moving are the words that are spoken in the second video (the first video sets up the moment) and the crowds response.

The band doesn’t really lead them in this. The people just respond to their God. So moving. It moves me every time I watch it.

Did this move you?

Twitter – a social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read other user messages called tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page.

My twitter feed is shown on the right side of my blog (over there —>).

Are you on twitter?  Am I following you and are you following me?  It has been a great tool for updating people on thoughts and things happening on the fly.  It has also been a great tool for updating facebook and has proved to be a great networking link.

My current twitter name is @creativearts.  I chose it because there were no real intuitive names I could pick that had mike jones in it (kind of a popular name, 1,487 people in the U.S. named Mike Jones according to howmanyofme.com)

I would love to change it to something else, something more fun, and that says “I’m the real Mike Jones” (and that one is taken

Any ideas?

I have to start off by telling you a short story…

In 2004 I met a guy by the name of Todd Mitchell. It seems now that we instantly became friends. Todd and I and our families spent a lot of time together and I have to say that, although my bride is and always will be my best friend, Todd is the best friend I’ve ever had. I have some really good friends and I don’t compare anyone but the relationship Todd and I shared was very unique. He was a strong encourager, truth teller, always willing to listen and just a fun guy to be around. I admire many of the character traits that just seemed to come naturally to him. He was also a phenomenal musician and we had big plans to write music together.

For those of you who have read my blog or knew Todd, his passing from this life to eternal life has been very difficult for me. I find it tougher to even write this post than I expected. I miss him a lot as I know many do.

I share these thoughts as merely a background to what I have been excited for weeks to share!

I did something that a few years ago I would not have thought I would do. I had a friend design an image for me and he graciously undertook the project to create something that would somehow encompass everything I gave him to include. Some told me it couldn’t be done and I even doubted myself if I was asking too much for one design, but my good friend Adam really came up with something that I am very proud of and that I think is brilliant!

For this project, I wanted something that spoke of God, eternity, and the cycle of life on this earth. Something that spoke of music and my roots in music, that encompassed my loving family and… my friend Todd. I have been impacted by all of these things on a very deep level and I wanted this project to be filled with all of these life changing things.

Adam created something very beautiful. It brought me to tears because of what it meant to me personally and I am very thankful to him for his drawing.

	The bottom piece of it has one of my favorite verses… Psalm 145. It is one of the few Psalms that David wrote that is pure praise of God and states in verse 2 that “I’ll bless you every day, and keep it up from now to eternity.”
	The second part is a guitar… a stylized version of my Dad’s guitar that I played on for years and that really resembles in my mind the gift of music they gave me. It is the roots, my passion for music and what God has been able to do through music to impact me and others with this gift.
	The next piece, a tree, has so many meanings… life, the cross… the tree also shows the cycle of life from life to death. The bend in the tree symbolizes the shift in my journey, full of life that is initialed by my wonderful wife and our four beautiful kids.
	These leaves, while on the death side of the tree, will be green and contain the initials T M for my friend Todd Mitchell. The green leaves symbolize the fact that memories of him will never die and that while his leaves have fallen from the tree on this earth, he is in fact full of life in eternity.
	This is the full image that is now tattooed on my right arm. the overall shape of the image is one of the symbol for eternity. A nationally known tattoo artist, Dan Plumley, inked this on with his rendition of the art that Adam originally created for me. And while it is not yet finished (was supposed to have color added by now) it is nonetheless a complete image that I have already had the honor of telling people about over the last few weeks. the Psalm passage sticks out just below my shirt sleeve and when people ask, I have a fantastic story to tell.

Thanks for reading my story and I look forward to sharing the final image with you in June!

Two things I am really looking forward to…

1. Will be getting to take a break for a couple of weeks and head back to my roots in AZ to see family and friends. Haven’t been back to Az since 2001 and am looking forward to seeing my family and getting to spend time away with my wife and kids. It’s been a tough week and the time there with family will be good.

2. Really big announcement coming soon. Well, a big deal for me. Watch for a blog post coming later this week.

For now, back to my crazy week!