Monday, October 29, 2007

A Refresher from Home...

this past weekend cailyn and i got a chance to go back to purdue for a couple of days, and it was amazing. there are so many stories that i could share...but i will try to keep it to a few...

a friend of ours from here in warrensburg is a pilot and own's a plan, and so he flew us to purdue. the last part of our flight was definitely a little bit interesting. we flew the last hour or so in the clouds and as we got close to purdue, we started into our landing pattern and then they put us on hold and so we had to wait and at that point in time, we had a little bit of trouble with a gauge and it got us a little bit off course. a long story short, we were a little bit nervous as we flew around in the clouds. it is just so crazy because you can't see a single thing and you have no reference at all for direction as you fly around in the clouds. but God totally took care of us and the most awesome part of the whole thing was that when we got everything working properly, we started to descend for our landing and at about 1200 feet we came out of the clouds and all of a sudden we could see everything on the ground and right there in front of us was the airport. it was amazing!!

cailyn and i were talking about it afterwards, and she talked about how it was like God just delivered us. and i thought that was an amazing analogy. God is constantly in the business of delivering us from the turmoil of life and that i absolutely what He did for us as we flew around the skies above purdue on saturday.

we also had an amazing opportunity to spend time with our families, which was amazing as always. we are just so blessed to have such an amazing family! it did, however, make both cailyn and i think a decent amount about how we would really love to be a little bit closer to home by the time our children are getting past the toddler stage. but ultimately that comes down to what God desires, and we will just have to trust him with all that and look to him for guidance and direction.

lastly, we got to go to church at campus house yesterday morning, and it was absolutely amazing. it was so refreshing and encouraging. it reminded me that the "church", according to what God designed it to be, it about people and about relationships and about love. that is the way He designed it from the very beginning, and that was absolutely what i was reminded of as i was back at purdue. however, it also came with some pretty significant challenges. it made cailyn and i think about how we would really like to get back to that area again eventually.

the challenge right now for us seems to be tied up in figuring out how we pray for the opportunity to one day return to purdue or to the area and yet to also be serving God and giving our all here at central missouri and warrensburg. i am not really sure what that needs to look like, but as i think about it i really feel like there is a way for both of those things to happen at the same time. i just really want to strive to figure that out one step at a time.

it was an amazing weekend and i was absolutely reminded of what an awesome God we serve!!

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Frustration...

one of my faults is that i tend to get pretty frustrated with what i feel is immaturity, especially in the church setting. especially when i am teaching!

i feel like this is kind of where we are at campus house right now. my opinion is that the students are very attentive to what we are doing and that they are there more as a social event. the assumptions that i tend to come to from this are that they are immature and not very deep.

and so in my inadequacy, i tend to feel like i would rather just not have those people there at all because they are just a distraction. but i was gently reminded by a friend that that is not the case. he reminded me that if people aren't there, then there is absolutely no possibility in them hearing anything. and if they are there, even if i don't feel like they are listening or paying attention, i can never be sure what they might really be hearing.

so i really want to strive to instead of getting frustrated with people, use it as motivation to seek out new thoughts and philosophies to try to meet these students and grow them in there walk from where they are standing right now. i pray that God will begin to shift my mindset and open up new ideas to me.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Tired Times...

i have been pretty tired and worn out the last week or two...and last night, God blessed me with an awesome piece of grace!!

last night i got a call from todd burkholder from back at pcch (purdue christian campus house) and he was just checking to see how things have been going. i told him that i was really feeling tired and worn out. he said that that feeling was pretty much the sentiment of the majority of the staff there at purdue right now as well.

what an amazing blessing it was for me to be reminded that this time of the year in campus ministry tends to bring a feeling of tiredness. i think that God has designed us for community, to relate to people in community...and sometimes i think that simply means sharing with people who are in similar places as we are, to give us strength and encouragement. i know that is what it provided for me last night as i had a chance to simply be reminded that a feeling of tiredness at this time of the year really is normal.

i will just keep pushing on, and before long, thanksgiving will be here, and that will give me a few days to rest up. and then shortly there after it will be christmas and the students have 4 weeks off. it will be an awesome time for me to spend time with cailyn and our families, and also to get readied and geared up for second semester.

it may be tired times...but God is living and active, even in the tired times!!

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Leading Leaders...

as i have taken on the role of campus minister at director at campus house here at ucm, i have been struck by the difficulty that exists with leading leaders. maybe this is not a challenge for all leaders who lead leaders, but it certainly seems challenging to me. now what do i mean by all of this...

well, i just feel like the process of leading people who are in a leadership position can be a very challenging thing because it is hard to feel like i have a "right" or "place" to be leading them. it just seems challenging to be leading them when i don't feel like my place dictates a place of leading them.

as i think about it, i come to think about the fact that it really is not about me leading at all, but it is about God leading through me. that is what it really needs to be all about. when i am able to look at it that way, then it is much less about me having the "right" or "place" and it is much more about simply being used by God.

Lord, use me to lead one day at a time!!

Monday, October 15, 2007

God at Work...

i often have a problem with underestimating the immense opportunity that we have to influence other people's lives. i have been really striving to have a more holistic view of the effect i can have.

i had a really cool and very eye opening experience this past weekend...

from time to time, we will travel to area churches that support campus house. they invite us to come and give an update on things going on at campus house and then they will also often ask me to preach. this past sunday, a church in a little town called amoret, mo invited me to come and share and preach.

i preached on the 4 non-principles of spiritual growth. many of the ideas came from a book by mike yaconelli called messy spirituality. one of the principles was that we must give God 60%. it was basically the idea that there are some circumstances and situations in our lives that make it so that at that particular time, 60% is 100% of all we can give.

after the service was over, i had a gentleman (probably in his 60) come up to me and tell me that i helped him understand something that he has been searching to understand for 30 years. he told me that 30 years ago his son was 7 years old and he was hit by a car and killed. he said that since then, there have been many times where the pain has been so great that he has felt like 60% was all that he could give God. he told me that he had never heard it put that way before and that it gave him a renewed hope.

what an awesome blessing to be used by God. i pray that i would not become cocky or overconfident, but i also pray that i would come to understand the immense opportunity that we have to affect people's lives as God works through us.

thank you Lord, for working through someone so ordinary as myself!

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

A True Love for Humanity...

the other morning i was reading the words of acts chapter 4, where it talks about all the believers sharing their possessions. it says things like, "no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything that had."

last wednesday night at DIG i taught on luke 6 where it talks about loving your enemies and praying for those who persecute you. it talks about giving to everyone who asks, and ultimately talks about doing unto others as we would have them do unto us.

all of this really got me to thinking about how far this world is from what it was originally designed to be.

but really, i just wonder what the world would really be like, what it would really look like if we took these words from luke and acts seriously. i mean really seriously, to the point where it changed the way that we lived our lives.

part of me feels like it wouldn't really make a difference, because there are such a large number of people that are not living that way. but i hate the thought of being about logic that sounds like that. i really want to strive to figure out how i can take these words from luke and acts really seriously, completely seriously, as i live out the every day of my life.

i am really not sure what it looks like, but i pray that i might be able to figure it out a little bit at a time...

Thursday, October 4, 2007

A New Covenant...

last night at DIG we talked about luke 6, where Jesus is interacting with the pharisees and he is trying to get them to understand that he is bringing a new covenant of love and grace and that it doesn't look anything like their legalistic rules and regulations that they have been living by.

Jesus then basically goes back to the drawing board and realizes that the only way that He is going to be able really communicate this new covenant to His people is through modeling to them one day at a time and by showing them first hand what it really looks like to be all about love.

we talked a lot about this last night...about the idea that to truly be like Christ we absolutely have to be all about love...and not just loving people that are easy to love, but loving everyone, even those that we would rather not love.

we talked about the idea of loving the sinner and hating the sin. that seems like such a difficult, ambiguous, thing to me. it is very hard for me to figure out in practice what it looks like to love the sinner and to hate the sin. but here is what it have come to understand...i do know where it begins...it begins with love.

i know that without a doubt, if we are truly going to follow Christ with the entirety of our lives, then we have to be all about love! that is the bottom line!!

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Trust...

each week as i lead up to wednesday night when i will be teaching at our large group study, i am always confronted with the challenge of trusting God.

after i teach, i look back on the lesson and the words that i shared, and pretty much every time, there are things that i look back on and i can't help but simply think 'man, that was God'...

and yet, each week there continues to be the battle of trusting Him to provide the proper words and to make the lesson what He desires for it to be...why is that...why do i go through the same cycle every week...what do i need to do to break that cycle...

...and how do i break the cycle without becoming cocky and over-confident?

i guess it is really a matter of praying that i will become completely and totally confident in the Spirit's work in me...realizing that it is absolutely nothing that i do on my own, but that it has everything to do with what God is doing in and through me. that is my prayer for every single part of my life...that i will be so in tune with the Spirit that i will feel Him leading me constantly...

Lord, lead me as i teach your words!!

Monday, October 1, 2007

Victories and Growth...

On Victories...

i have been thinking a lot lately and talking with cailyn about the idea of using the word victories do describe the ministry work that i am doing. i am such a sports mind and so the idea of victories is a very palatable one for me, and the bottom line is that when a young persons life is changed for Christ it is absolutely a victory...a huge victory. so i am working on starting to use that type of language because i feel like it will help me to remember the true importance of what i am doing.

along those lines...the last week or so seems like it has been filled with many victories! not necessarily massive ones, but just lots of little ones. it has been hard for me to get my scheduled items done the last two weeks or so because i have been having students wanting to get together with me and whatnot, which is absolutely a victory...even if it means rearranging some of the other things that i need to get done.


On Growth...

since i have had the opportunity to teach every week this semester, i have really seen it bring some awesome growth and development in my teaching skills and abilities. it is really exciting to feel like i am growing every week and that i am getting better at what i am doing. this past wednesday i was very comfortable with the material and it allowed me to be really free from my notes, almost completely free, which really allowed for the message to come across in what i felt was an awesome way!

so, it is just awesome to see the way that God grows us when we simply let Him. i feel like He just continues to put awesome thoughts and awesome materials right in front of me. almost as if He is saying, "here, i would like for you to say this this week". what an awesome feeling!

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