The I Heart...

Throwing fits...

I don’t understand why when something does not go our way we feel like we need to throw a fit. As I sit in terminal 4 in Dallas Love I have been waiting for a flight that was supposed to take off at 850 p.m., instead it is now taking off at 2 a.m. because of weather. Obviously nothing that can be controlled. Sometimes these things just happen and you learn to be patient and go with the flow. There is nothing to be upset about, though it is tough waiting and whatnot. There is a great group of people (sarcastic) across from me that are flipping out and writing letters to be typed demanding refunds. I just don’t understand why? How can someone come off like that? Sure we all have somewhere to be and it has been a long day but still what is there to be done about it. Be Patient. Keep cool.

50,000 in 50 days

Everyone has $5 (or more!). and everyone has 2 minutes. from start to finish, donating is literally three clicks. No fluff. No hassle. Anyone can donate. It is so, so easy! Soles4souls is great charity located in Nashville, Tennessee that has one mission: get shoes to people who need shoes. Over 300 million people around the world don’t have shoes and are forced to walk around unsafe and in potentially life-threatening conditions. Not only is it unsafe physically, but having to look down all the time causes these people to also live without dignity and confidence I did my part now do yours... Spread the word

This is life...

Another new season is on the horizon. Since coming to Life little over two years ago I was introduced to this idea of an accountability partner. Even this summer in Washington Eddy approached me in the beginning of it and asked me if I wanted to be an accountability partner with him. I’ve been saved for about 10 years now but this is a new thing for me, even with Eddy I really had no idea what I was supposed to do. I am currently in a class at Life called Disciplines of Leadership, it is about what it means to be a leader, what is called of us and so forth. Though that class has really nothing to do with accountability with another person, we have touched on it a little bit on persons in leadership and their actions in their lives involving other people...

I don’t really like the term accountability partner, I don’t like the idea of having a person who you just tell all these terrible things you have done within the past week. I believe accountability flows naturally out of true friendship and relationship. I desire friendship, true fellowship with another. I was thinking about me and my friends, my closets friends. If we all got together, even though we are super tight and love each other, most of us wouldn’t know what was happening with the person next to us. We wouldn’t know certain struggles or joys, things they need prayer for and stuff like that. One of my friends even told me a while ago that he wishes he had the type of friend that he could call anytime he wanted just to talk to. All it takes is opening up to one another...

In light of that last week I talked to my friend Sweet Al and it is with all that in mind, that we discussed and talked about being that person for each other. This is something I am excited for as well as Al. It is all about relationship, community, and love...

The Season To Come...

By summer 09 I will write 5 songs, wait, 5 quality songs that are real and from the heart that worship God. I don't want to write anything that is not meaningful. I don't do this to make a deadline or anything, but in class we've been talking about taking initiative and actually doing something about dream or ideas. What good is a vision without action. If this is something I want to do with my life then here we go...

This is something I started on tonight..

I am free and not held down by sin

The greatest love has welcome me in

In Your grace I stand

With Jesus all that I am

Victorious

The Time...

Their is so much I wanted to say and write about... My summer in WA, the challenges with coming back home, adjusting to having a relationship, starting school again, jumping back into ministry and the expectations and the hopes I have for our youth group... 

The list can go on, but the truth is, there really is no time to just sit and really write and reflect on any of those topics... I started this hoping to make this a regularly updated blog... But as of right now there's really no time...

Healer...

Turns out Pastor Mike G was lying... Pretty crazy... Whats even more crazy is how Christians are reacting on message boards to this as if they've been devastated for life... Mike is a man we all fall but he should not be condemned, let us be the hospital not a police station...

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24216087-5006787,00.html

The Chosen Ones...

For the past couple of nights its been work, watch the olympics and sleep, then repeat. While I do love watching them and watching all nations compete and do the best they can, I have learned of something new. You hear of kids forced into labor and born into family situations which require the need for them to work and do other tasks as well. What is new to me is hearing about how China picks their Olympians at an early age. I was listening to the commentators talk about certain individuals on the diving team and gymnastics team that where chosen at the age of three and taken to begin the process of becoming a "champion." They only see their families maybe once out of the year. I've been wrestling with this subject for the last couple of days and I'll probably keep wrestling with it for a while. If forcing a child into labor is wrong and children in China, maybe other countries to that I am unaware of, are being forced into labor (being a gold medalist) then something must be wrong here to...

"in a nation with only 60 swimming pools, there are 10 elite diving schools. Students are supervised virtually nonstop, cut off from families unless relatives happen to live nearby, forbidden to date until their 20s and expected to train so hard that most wind up unfit for work outside athletics. Some are left virtually illiterate in a land where, by Confucian tradition, intellectual pursuits are prized over physical ones. "

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,976078-1,00.html

THe Olympics...

They are here... What an exciting time where the world comes together to watch the best of their nation compete against the others... Besides the Chinese Gov and olympic teams Kobe Bryant got the loudest cheers... so I read... Gotta love number 8...

I saw this video on TV right now it was pretty interesting I figured I'd post it

Off to go watch the opening ceremonies and hang out with all the interns

cause the time has come for us to start leaving one by one...

Discoveries...

Today at VBS the theme was thankfulness and how Jesus gives us the ability to be thankful. I am a team leader in charge of 10 kids (4, 5, and 6 graders) and it is alot of fun being able to interact with them in games and crafts and bible stories. I want this to be something they remember as they get older, that VBS was fun and they had a good leader that payed attention to their every word and was truly invested in what they are doing. All I hope is that this is something that will shape their future steps into walking with God the rest of their lives and knowing that He is real and loves them and desires to be with them...

At the end of the day we had like a little debriefing where we just talked about the day and what we learned as we prepared to go and end in the main sanctuary for service. So one of the questions I had asked them was what are they thankful for. If I remember correctly 5 of the kids first response was they were thankful for their cell phones... Cell Phones... seriously! I dont remember exactly what I woulda been thankful for in that age, but it sure wasn't cell phones. Something is a little disturbing about that answer... But with times changing and technology such a huge part of our culture should I really be that surprised...

Eastside Church

So being up in Bothell WA has been nothing short of amazing... I feel like I'm growing and learning alot and getting alot of hands on experience, leading worship and playing and building relationships that could take to back here in the future...  God is continually revealing things to me and people are just pouring into us like crazy... So to keep it pretty short every year the interns make a video so heres our video and its three announcements and you can see me dancing in a few and serving someone a burger in the second advertisement... I'm off to bed cause I gotta be at the church early cause I'm playing electric...

Worship + Justice pt.1

Worship and the pursuit Justice go hand in hand. I believe that Worship is not fully happening unless one is pursuing Justice. It is possible for one to pursue Justice but not Worship at all. There are many examples of that with groups that desire peace and fight for what they feel is right. In class I once heard a teacher say that he gets questioned, “what does Justice have to do with being a Christian?”

The basics of being a Christian is to love God with everything, to live a life totally in surrender to His will, to say that Christ is Lord and Savior and to be imitators of Christ and follow the example that He has set for us. Jesus loved people He really loved people and I love to read about His encounters with people who were not Jews. How he came to serve and not be served. Jesus came to 'bring good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives, new sight to the blind and to set the downtrodden free (Lk 4:18). He called us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, care for the sick and afflicted, and to comfort the victims of injustice (Mt 25). The Church doesn’t exist to go places and make more and more churches just to fill up. The Church is to see what God is already doing, to build relationships with people, to love and care for people, to see what the needs are for the people, and be available for people, how ever that may look like... I think if I were someone in a place where I was in poverty the last thing I want to hear about is a church that someone has just planted, I’m more concerned about trying to feed my family, getting water, getting medicine, getting some new clothes and so forth...  That is how I believe you can show people your intentions and heart and it is in those times when God is able to move and reveal Christ through us, the Church, who genuinely care about people...

I had the opportunity last week to work in the missions dept. of Eastside and meet the missionaries they have sent and support in the Philippines. I thought to myself these people really care about the people there and the way they are helping others find faith by being people who genuinely care is amazing. You can’t help but be moved by genuine people. I want to be a genuine person that wants to talk to people without an agenda for what I need to fulfill, but because I love what God loves and that is people...

I’m not looking for a reward when we go to skid row to give a meal to a person who’s hungry. I don’t feel burdened to take off my shoes and give them to a man that has no shoes. It’s a joy to me to stand on the corner and shake a hand of a man or a woman and ask them how they are doing as I give them a bag of soap and shampoo. I feel it’s the only natural thing to do, if I am connecting with my Creator and my Creator loves people, I have no choice but to be drawn to people and love them as well...

This was kinda scattered but there’s so much to say. I don’t even know how or what to write but it helps just to get some of this out... more to come...

I can't stand your religious meetings. I'm fed up with your conferences and conventions. I want nothing to do with your religion projects, your pretentious slogans and goals. I’m sick of your fund-raising schemes, your public relations and image making. I’ve had all I can take of your noisy ego-music. When was the last time you sang to me? Do you know what I want? I want justice—oceans of it. I want fairness—rivers of it. That's what I want. That's all I want (Ams 5:21-24 MSG)

Shout! A full-throated shout! Hold nothing back—a trumpet-blast shout! Tell my people what's wrong with their lives, face my family Jacob with their sins! They're busy, busy, busy at worship, and love studying all about me. To all appearances they're a nation of right-living people - law-abiding, God-honoring. They ask me, 'What's the right thing to do?' and love having me on their side. But they also complain, 'Why do we fast and you don't look our way? Why do we humble ourselves and you don't even notice?' "Well, here's why: "The bottom line on your 'fast days' is profit. You drive your employees much too hard. You fast, but at the same time you bicker and fight. You fast, but you swing a mean fist. The kind of fasting you do won't get your prayers off the ground. Do you think this is the kind of fast day I'm after: a day to show off humility? To put on a pious long face and parade around solemnly in black? Do you call that fasting, 
a fast day that I, God, would like? "This is the kind of fast day I'm after: to break the chains of injustice, get rid of exploitation in the workplace, free the oppressed, cancel debts. What I'm interested in seeing you do is: sharing your food with the hungry, inviting the homeless poor into your homes, putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad, being available to your own families. Do this and the lights will turn on, and your lives will turn around at once. Your righteousness will pave your way. The God of glory will secure your passage. Then when you pray, God will answer. You'll call out for help and I'll say, 'Here I am.' "If you get rid of unfair practices, quit blaming victims, quit gossiping about other people's sins, if you are generous with the hungry and start giving yourselves to the down-and-out, your lives will begin to glow in the darkness, your shadowed lives will be bathed in sunlight. I will always show you where to go. I'll give you a full life in the emptiest of places. (Isa 58 MSG)

With Everything...

I will never be perfect... That’s a tough thought... Lately I’ve been looking at it from the perspective of I am a work in progress. We will never be perfect, no one. What I do know is this; we are a work in progress. Everyday I strive to be better than I was the day before, to learn from my mistakes, experiences, and situations. I think that is what God desires for us. If we are not progressing into the person God has for us then one day we will wake up and look in the mirror and ask ourselves “what did we do with all the time we had.” It’s never too late to change but as time goes on there is less of it to live the life that we are meant to have. The thought of that scares me in my life. I hope I never get to that point in my life when I wake up and wish I could do it all over again. I am in the process of getting into good daily habits that I want to carry with me for the rest of my life. I don’t want to realize one day that I am 60 and my habits got the best of me, my thoughts got the best of me, decisions I’ve continually made shaped me into the person I wish I never was. I hope that I have many opportunities to work with people that I could help prevent that day when a person asks, “What did I do with all my time.” Cause if I don’t want that for myself, then I don’t desire it for anyone else...