it's a gloomy rainy day today...
seems somehow appropriate for what we know as Good Friday...
i was reading through the events of this day in Luke's account this morning and these words of Jesus when the guards came to seize Him really stuck out to me:
"Am i leading a rebellion, that you have come with swords and clubs? Every day I was with you in the temple courts, and you did not lay a hand on me. But this is your hour - when darkness reigns."
"THIS IS YOUR HOUR - WHEN DARKNESS REIGNS"...
this is the hour when darkness reigns, but it only reigns so that the amazing Light can be exposed - fully and completely exposed. it is a day and an hour where darkness reigns, but the light is eagerly waiting to burst forth. it will not be restrained for long - it can't be. the Light is too bright...the Hope is too perfect...and the Plan is almost complete. it is a day when darkness reigns...but only that Light may reign all the more...
Friday, April 10, 2009
Friday, April 3, 2009
Prayer Works...
sometimes it can be easy to say that prayer works and to not really ever process what that actually means, but today i was reminded of specfically what that actually means...
back before the school year started, we did a prayer walk around campus where we prayed for different parts of the campus and that God would have a presence in those places. as i was walking, i walked past the football stadium, the team was practicing and i was led to pray for the team and specifically to pray that God would bring someone onto the team that would be a light and that would represent Christ to those guys.
in our intern meeting today, one of our interns shared about how he is really excited about a guy in his small group, evan, who is on the football team and is really growing in his faith a lot and who is wanting to lead a small group next year with guys from the football team. and this intern reminded me about how he has not forgotten about how i shared at the beginning of the year that i had prayed for the football team...
it was a super cool reminder of the fact that prayer works and that prayer is a big deal and that God is doing things all around us if we will simply stop and see it.
back before the school year started, we did a prayer walk around campus where we prayed for different parts of the campus and that God would have a presence in those places. as i was walking, i walked past the football stadium, the team was practicing and i was led to pray for the team and specifically to pray that God would bring someone onto the team that would be a light and that would represent Christ to those guys.
in our intern meeting today, one of our interns shared about how he is really excited about a guy in his small group, evan, who is on the football team and is really growing in his faith a lot and who is wanting to lead a small group next year with guys from the football team. and this intern reminded me about how he has not forgotten about how i shared at the beginning of the year that i had prayed for the football team...
it was a super cool reminder of the fact that prayer works and that prayer is a big deal and that God is doing things all around us if we will simply stop and see it.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
More Than a Phrase...
being around and in ministry for quite a while now, i have heard the phrase, "ministry happens in the interruptions", quite a few times. and it is a phrase and a concept that i believe very strongly in...
however...it is most definitely something that is much easier said than done. i feel like i am just overwhelmed with busyness right now to the point where i feel almost an animosity towards the interruptions...and i hate it.
i pray that God would give me an ability to simply put aside the stuff that just simply doesn't matter and to be able to allow for the interruptions to truly be ministry.
however...it is most definitely something that is much easier said than done. i feel like i am just overwhelmed with busyness right now to the point where i feel almost an animosity towards the interruptions...and i hate it.
i pray that God would give me an ability to simply put aside the stuff that just simply doesn't matter and to be able to allow for the interruptions to truly be ministry.
Friday, March 20, 2009
What an Experience...
i am sitting again in the airport...this time in kansas city...
i just spent the last 6 days building a house in juarez, mx with 23 other people for a family who desperately needed it....and it was amazing!
we saw God in so many different ways....i saw students moved to tears and processing through so many things...God messed us up in a lot of ways...i was reminded of how incredibly selfish and entitled i can often be...and there was so so so much more. i hope to write more about it in the coming days, but i want to share two things that made me so sad and so frustrated...
as i mentioned a few days ago...there is much negative media coming out of juarez right now concerning violence in drug trafficking...and as a result there are many people and many teams that are backing out of working with casas por cristo and building houses for families that really need them...
and this makes me so sad and so upset with and for two groups of people...
first, it makes me sad and upset with the american media...because the picture that the media paints about juarez mexico was NOTHING at all like what i actually saw and experienced. as a matter of fact, if i hadn't heard stuff through the media, i never would have guessed any of it was going on at all. it really makes me feel like the media simply cannot be trusted....it makes me feel like they are just like so many other businesses...just interested in numbers and not in truth...
is that to say that bad things aren't happening there...no, of course not...but it is so sad that there representation of what is going on in juarez is keeping incredibly needy people from receiving a house in the name and Christ...
and secondly, it makes me so sad and upset with american christians who allow themselves to be scared by the threat of a lack of safety when it comes to following the call of the Lord. it makes me realize just how domesticated and civilized we are becoming as american christians. it is as if we have taken God's call to "go and make disciples of all nations" and turned it into "go and make disciples of all nations as long as it is safe". and that is simply not the case. it wasn't safe for so many people in scripture...it certainly wasn't safe for someone like John the Baptist...so why do we seem to think that we deserve a guarantee for safety?
these are a few of my frustrations right now...hopefully in the coming days i will find some time to elaborate on some of the amazing ways that we saw God show up and some of the amazing ways that students were being changed and processing through different things...
i just spent the last 6 days building a house in juarez, mx with 23 other people for a family who desperately needed it....and it was amazing!
we saw God in so many different ways....i saw students moved to tears and processing through so many things...God messed us up in a lot of ways...i was reminded of how incredibly selfish and entitled i can often be...and there was so so so much more. i hope to write more about it in the coming days, but i want to share two things that made me so sad and so frustrated...
as i mentioned a few days ago...there is much negative media coming out of juarez right now concerning violence in drug trafficking...and as a result there are many people and many teams that are backing out of working with casas por cristo and building houses for families that really need them...
and this makes me so sad and so upset with and for two groups of people...
first, it makes me sad and upset with the american media...because the picture that the media paints about juarez mexico was NOTHING at all like what i actually saw and experienced. as a matter of fact, if i hadn't heard stuff through the media, i never would have guessed any of it was going on at all. it really makes me feel like the media simply cannot be trusted....it makes me feel like they are just like so many other businesses...just interested in numbers and not in truth...
is that to say that bad things aren't happening there...no, of course not...but it is so sad that there representation of what is going on in juarez is keeping incredibly needy people from receiving a house in the name and Christ...
and secondly, it makes me so sad and upset with american christians who allow themselves to be scared by the threat of a lack of safety when it comes to following the call of the Lord. it makes me realize just how domesticated and civilized we are becoming as american christians. it is as if we have taken God's call to "go and make disciples of all nations" and turned it into "go and make disciples of all nations as long as it is safe". and that is simply not the case. it wasn't safe for so many people in scripture...it certainly wasn't safe for someone like John the Baptist...so why do we seem to think that we deserve a guarantee for safety?
these are a few of my frustrations right now...hopefully in the coming days i will find some time to elaborate on some of the amazing ways that we saw God show up and some of the amazing ways that students were being changed and processing through different things...
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Headed to Mexico...
i am currently sitting in the airport in dallas headed for el paso, texas with a group of students to build a house for a family in juarez mexico. it has been a long process of planning and preparing and praying to get to this point, and it is so good to just be going.
i don't know if you have been following the news or not, but there has been much violence in Juarez in the past year...and it has put a stress on our team and on many of the parents of these students. but i am so proud of the group that is actually going. i feel like they are trusting God in some really awesome and really healthy ways. it is refreshing to me to see young people who are not caught up in the pressures of the world, but instead are willing to follow the call that they believe God has put on their lives.
does that mean that we are ignorant to the dangers or that we believe that we are invincible. no...of course not. but we do believe that we are following the call of an insanely huge God, and that is awesome!!
it is good to be ready to go....now i just hope that we all end up safely in el paso...(we are flying on 5 different flights.)
i don't know if you have been following the news or not, but there has been much violence in Juarez in the past year...and it has put a stress on our team and on many of the parents of these students. but i am so proud of the group that is actually going. i feel like they are trusting God in some really awesome and really healthy ways. it is refreshing to me to see young people who are not caught up in the pressures of the world, but instead are willing to follow the call that they believe God has put on their lives.
does that mean that we are ignorant to the dangers or that we believe that we are invincible. no...of course not. but we do believe that we are following the call of an insanely huge God, and that is awesome!!
it is good to be ready to go....now i just hope that we all end up safely in el paso...(we are flying on 5 different flights.)
Friday, March 6, 2009
Did You Know...
...did you know that if you are not buying fairly traded chocolate, or some sort of chocolate where you know it's origin, then it is likely that the cocoa in your chocolate has been harvested by children of have been humanly trafficked onto cocoa farms in the ivory coast of africa...
let me explain a little bit more...
about 43% of the world's cocoa for producing chocolate is grown in the ivory coast of africa, and there have been some 12,000 or more children trafficked into that region to work on these farms. and unless your chocolate is fairly traded (which guarantees that trafficking is not involved) then it is likely that you are contributing...
there is an organization (you can get more info about all of this on their website - www.stopthetraffik.org) called stop the traffik, that believes that God has a huge heart for injustice and believes that we as followers of Christ have a role to stand up and to say, "stop, in the name of Jesus, stop"...
so how do we do that...well, they bet method that they have found in this case is to try to enducate people about what is going on and then to ask people to only buy fairly traded chocolate (or chocolate where you know it's exact origin)...so that the producers of the chocolate feel the pinch, and in turn they will need to turn to the growers in the ivory coast and ask for fairly traded cocoa, which would bring nothing short of total revolution to what is going on in the ivory coast...
and i know, it seems like an issue that is way too big for one person to make a difference in, but seriously, with that attitude, how are we ever going to change the world for Christ. true change in the name of Christ is only going to happen with one individual at a time...it is only going to happen from the bottom up...and it is time that we as Christ followers stop sitting around and just expecting everyone else to do something...
let me explain a little bit more...
about 43% of the world's cocoa for producing chocolate is grown in the ivory coast of africa, and there have been some 12,000 or more children trafficked into that region to work on these farms. and unless your chocolate is fairly traded (which guarantees that trafficking is not involved) then it is likely that you are contributing...
there is an organization (you can get more info about all of this on their website - www.stopthetraffik.org) called stop the traffik, that believes that God has a huge heart for injustice and believes that we as followers of Christ have a role to stand up and to say, "stop, in the name of Jesus, stop"...
so how do we do that...well, they bet method that they have found in this case is to try to enducate people about what is going on and then to ask people to only buy fairly traded chocolate (or chocolate where you know it's exact origin)...so that the producers of the chocolate feel the pinch, and in turn they will need to turn to the growers in the ivory coast and ask for fairly traded cocoa, which would bring nothing short of total revolution to what is going on in the ivory coast...
and i know, it seems like an issue that is way too big for one person to make a difference in, but seriously, with that attitude, how are we ever going to change the world for Christ. true change in the name of Christ is only going to happen with one individual at a time...it is only going to happen from the bottom up...and it is time that we as Christ followers stop sitting around and just expecting everyone else to do something...
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Prayer and it's Urgency...
the last couple of days i have been processing the fact that it seems like we have this tendency to lean into God and to be so much more prayerful when there is some sort of pressing need or worry or concern...
in the last month cailyn and i have decided that we feel like God is calling us to seel our house, and so we are currently working through the final details of getting the house on the market, and it is certainly a stressful time to say the least...and with it comes a desire to worry for sure.
and in that worry, i find myself praying much more than i typically do. and i know it is good that i am praying about it, but what i have really been thinking about is what does this say about my prayers in the rest of my life. shouldn't i have that same connection and urgency to connect with the Creator of the universe all the time. not just when i feel like i need something???
i want to be seeking out a constant connection that brings an insane intimacy...not just when i feel like i have need....because God did not die so that i could use him...that, i am sure of...
i definitely don't know what this all means yet...and i am not totally even sure what my next step needs to be, but i do feel like God is putting some thoughts in my path, and for that i am thankful!
in the last month cailyn and i have decided that we feel like God is calling us to seel our house, and so we are currently working through the final details of getting the house on the market, and it is certainly a stressful time to say the least...and with it comes a desire to worry for sure.
and in that worry, i find myself praying much more than i typically do. and i know it is good that i am praying about it, but what i have really been thinking about is what does this say about my prayers in the rest of my life. shouldn't i have that same connection and urgency to connect with the Creator of the universe all the time. not just when i feel like i need something???
i want to be seeking out a constant connection that brings an insane intimacy...not just when i feel like i have need....because God did not die so that i could use him...that, i am sure of...
i definitely don't know what this all means yet...and i am not totally even sure what my next step needs to be, but i do feel like God is putting some thoughts in my path, and for that i am thankful!
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