Community

So for school we have chapel 2 times a week. It is pretty stinking amazing most of the time, especially since this is a worship service where I am not in charge of anything. Sometimes I like being able to listen to what other people have prepared. ANYWAY, the speaker we had on Tuesday had some things to say about service and worshiping. He was actually preaching from the story of Martha getting mad at Mary for sitting at Jesus' feet while she was doing things around the house (Luke 10:38-42). One of the things he said that I quickly wrote down on my had so I would remember to think about was "If community is our goal, then we have the wrong goal." In my mind I was thinking "whoa wait a minute! We have tons of books on community in the Church and small groups and all that! What do you mean community is not the goal?! Have you not read Acts 2?" As he continued talking and as I started to really think about it I saw that he was right. God must know I have a lot to learn about this subject because it was in our chapel, We discussed it in class today, and I have really been struggling with it. The speaker's point was that Jesus is our goal. Mary had the right attitude. She was sitting at the feet of Jesus, that was more important to her than anything else. She wanted to learn from the Man who had everything to teach. Mary was placing Jesus in the right spot in her life, something that many of us today struggle with. We have small groups, and we meet together with others not just so we can. The Church should not be some glorified country club. We have so much more to offer the world than just a close group of friends. Don't get me wrong it is super nice to have a close group of friends to go through life together but the point in the Church is that we are focusing on Jesus and working our way towards Him. As a body, or as a community we love Jesus, we place Him as number one in our lives and we let Him transform us through His Word and through His body. This last year at Bible college has been hard. Now that I am off campus, I feel so far removed from the group of people I had grown close to. I am no longer surrounded every part of the day by people who are working toward the same cause. It was that community, that close bond with other Christians that was so amazing and so helpful during hard times. We should strive to have community in our lives. Humans are designed for community. As Christians that is how the body of Christ works. Let us not remove ourselves from other Christians, let us work together as the body to come closer to the life that God has designed us for. Let us build each other up, and let us seek Him now and forever.

provision

It is absolutely amazing! Every time I start to think that things are out of control and that I have no idea what I am going to do God steps right in a provides. Of course He has been working all along I just have been too blind to see it (much like Balaam and his talking donkey). Jenny and I have been wondering what we should do. I need to do an internship in order to graduate from school but CCV did not work out and I could never get a hold of anyone else so I decided to stay at Bowling Green, which I was very excited about it because the thought of leaving there right now leaves me feeling uneasy. So we decide that this is what where God wants us but things still do not seem to line up. How am I supposed to do the ministry there in BG and have another job. I do not get paid near enough to support my wife and I let alone the baby that is coming in September! Then BAM! On Thursday Jim calls me and tells me of a mens group that may support us more if I go down on Monday and present the work that we have been doing at Cornerstone. He wants me to do this so that I can come on full time starting this summer and work there as long as both I want to and they want me to. AMAZING!! Then at the management team meeting yesterday the men decided that in June they want to bring me on full time and wrote up this great contract and everything! Starting in June I am going to be able to do full time ministry! There will be no other work to get in the way, I will be able to devote all my time to this great work God has placed in my life. I still cannot believe it! It is a huge answer to prayer. On top of that, in June the church wants to ordain me. God is working great things and I just hope that I can continue to follow Him more and more closely so that I can be apart of the things He has in store for me. This kind of thing just keeps right on happening, every time I start to wonder God reaffirms that He is in fact God and I am not!

"In Shape"

So I was sitting here on the internet and all of a sudden I realized I had been listening to two half hour infomercials about how to get in shape. They were pretty intense. Apparently even Marines wanted to use this workout, you know, because they are not in good enough shape already. It reminds me of a couple things. First, our society is so obsessed with how were are perceived. I cannot remember a time when there have not been commercials about exercises to get in shape or dieting programs that sweep the nation. The Atkins diet was pretty huge once, remember that? Now we have Jarred and Subway. But they are not the only ones trying to say you can get thin using their products. Taco Bell claims the same thing! TACO BELL! Everyone is trying to get in on this action. So our society wants us in shape to look great. The other thing it reminds me of is that Christians often do not care. Our bodies are temples of God, where the Holy Spirit dwells when we become Christians. It would be wrong for us to misuse that. As Christians, should we be allowing the world to push across a message that we should be sending? Is this another area we have slacked? The secular world is pushing the skinny agenda for simply image and often superficial reasons, unless they are doctors and are telling you that you may die if you don't change your living habits. But as Christians we have a reason to be taking care of ourselves. God loves us and takes care of us, and His Spirit dwells in us! As Christians we should be helping each other. We often talk about accountability, how many of us have accountability in our physical health part of our lives? I was reading Teaching to Change Lives and on page 31 Dr. Howard Hendricks is discussing giving our lives as teachers over to Christ and he begins to list areas of our lives that maybe we have not given to Christ. He says "How about your diet? If I scheduled a seminar at your church and then walked in drunk, you'd dismiss me immediately. But if I walked in fifty pounds overweight, you'd feed me more, right?" I'm not out to attack all the overweight people in the world. I'm simply stating that sometimes as Christians we overlook this one. We are to look out for our brothers and sisters right? I think that includes our physical life. You would not want someone to smoke themselves to death. I think we as the Church should be even more concerned about our health than non-Christians. This is not so we can be the most fit and best looking people on the planet, but rather because it is what God wants from us. We are to be stewards of everything He has blessed us with, and I believe that means taking care of our bodies the best that we can. Again I am guilty of this as well. Over the passed four years I have not been taking good care of myself, nor have I been helping others do the same. But over the passed 2 months I have been doing more to get myself back on track and if others are willing I want to help them as well. Just a thought.

starting out

I have been thinking about starting to blog for a while now. I had a blog once on xanga way back when and used it like 3 times, but that was back in the days of dial up internet at my parents house. I need to write more. I am at home a lot during the week. I sit around, maybe do some homework, do some cleaning and that's it. During the day I think about a lot of different things but I never write them down. I guess that is what I want to turn this blog into. This is a place where I can jot down all the things about which I think. Sometimes there may be no flow to my ideas, I have to write them as I think about them. So here goes #1

Today I was looking through my facebook contacts' statuses. I like doing this to see what is on everybody's mind, you know just to keep up in this busy fast paced world in which we live. I came across one of someone who is a Christian. Her status was about not understanding why people like to hurt others but don't worry because it would come back on them 10 times fold. I do not claim to know everything about the Bible but I am at a loss of where it says that. Then someone else commented and said something about it being Karma and it always comes back around. Well sure it does, in that kind of fake universe! Karma is not in control! God is! And yet this other person never said anything against it. How frustrating! Maybe when I write next time I will have found that verse in the Bible and I will have been proved wrong but until then I'm pretty upset with the ignorance of some Christians here in America. And again maybe I am the one that is ignorant but we have come to a point where we just have made being an American into the same thing as being a Christian. Being a Christian has no ethnic boundaries. It can be lived by all the peoples of the world, as long as they are following God's teaching that He has given to us in His word! But because as Americans we are not forced to memorize Scripture because we do not need it because nobody is really challenging our faith, because we don't really need to hide His word in our heart because we do not need its life changing message. We have just become comfortable. We fall into the same routine, and I'm not saying all routine is bad, but we get stuck there and do not continue to change, to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. How can we ever test and prove what God's wonderful will is for our lives? Of course I have just convicted myself. I think I am so upset about this because I have found myself going down that same path. It's me who really is becoming ignorant, who is leading the same routine and doing nothing but sitting on the couch everyday. I need to hide His word in my heart. It is me who needs to be transformed. I want to memorize Scripture so that I know it. That is my challenge to myself, to memorize a passage of Scripture this week and spend time mulling over it so that I can truly understand and be transformed by the Holy Spirit. This whole writing thing may be good for me. :)