Okay

What a tough week. School, work, and more school can put a lot of pressure on my mind. By now, all of the schools have probably started; so those of you who go to school may know what I mean. Whenever I have a rough week or two, I tend to not get enough sleep and end up at school, work, or other things extremely tired. And, based on the looks I would get, I look tired. People will also ask stuff like, "Are you okay?" Now a lot of people will get offended by that question, but I make sure I don't. They are just making sure everything is all right. Sometimes with me everything is all right and sometimes it definitely is not. Though, unless it is my friends or family, I will probably say I am okay every time. Those phrases, "I'm okay," "I'm good," or "I'm fine" come out of our mouths almost automatically. Even sometimes when it seems like the world is crashing down around us we will find that answer coming out of our mouths or sounding off in our thoughts. Okay is defined in many dictionaries (I use definitions a lot if you haven't noticed) as "satisfactory or under control." So when can we truly answer "I'm okay (satisfactory and under control)."? We often are in the middle of all of this stress and all of these problems. A lot of times we forget why we are here and what God wants to do in us. We get lost trying to sort everything out on our own. I think the biggest thing that gets me is worries. A lot of times when I am worrying about school, church stuff, or my health I just lose myself trying to find my way out. But here is something that struck me recently. God wants me. He wants everything. He wants my entire life. He wants to take on my worries. Recently, a band named Leeland (I love this group!) came out with a new album called Love is on the Move. The album has a song called "Holy Spirit Have Your Way in Me." The chorus gave me something to really think about:

"As I lay down my life and pick up my cross, what a joy it is to give my life away to You. All that I need, All that I seek is You here with me. Holy Spirit have Your way in me."
"Holy Spirit Have Your Way in Me." Leeland-Love is on the Move 2009

My favorite part is "what a joy it is to give my life away to You. In everything you go through remember that God is with you. Everything you have, good and bad, give it to God. Dedicate your life for his glory. Let God work wonders in you and through you. If you joyfully give your life to God, you won't only be "okay," you will be alive for Him.

"Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about what happens to you."
1 Peter 5:7

Wait

Wait. A word I have heard over and over again. The District Superintendent of the Missouri District Church of the Nazarene talked about waiting on the Lord. I heard my pastor mention that word. Just last Wednesday I heard that word in a message I will never forget. It was a small message in length but God was speaking through this guy that night. Without a youth pastor we have been having what is called "Wednesday Night Live" led by our pastor. But since pastor could not be there last Wednesday somebody else spoke. The guy who spoke has earned my respect in the three or four years I have known him. God used him to speak to me that night. He compared our youth group's situation to the disciple's situation in Acts. For instance, he compared how the early church was without a designated leader such as our youth group was without a youth pastor. He showed how both we and the disciples were both challenged with the impossible task of going into all the world and preaching the gospel. But what did the disciples do? They waited as they were commanded to by Jesus. ("Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised which you have heard me speak about.") The disciples waited and the Holy Spirit came upon them. They were speaking in tongues and people from all over who had come for the Day of Pentecost heard them in their own language. With the Holy Spirit working within the disciples, the task was not impossible anymore. Our speaker challenged us to wait for the Lord.
Now that I think about it there are many times in the Bible where people had to wait for the Lord. Noah had to wait 40 days in a big boat with stinky animals who probably pooped all over his boat. Abraham had to wait multiple times for the Lord. Joseph waited in prison. The Israelites waited for years in slavery plus 40 more wandering in the desert. Esther waited. David waited. Job waited. Daniel waited. Jesus even waited. How we wait is another important thing. The disciples stayed in Jerusalem as they were commanded and prayed. If you look back. You would find that these famous Bible characters didn't just sit around doing nothing. They were praying and seeking God's will. To me, stopping and listening to God should be a big part of waiting. (Here is where I might get slightly blunt.) Today, I don't see people waiting for God's guidance. A lot of us are definitely guilty of that. Definitely me. We are seeing churches who are being infected with all sorts of worldviews. Christians are accepting some things because the world says it is okay. Large denominations of churches are beginning to be drawn into the world. I believe that is because we are going in blind. We are going into the world to preach the gospel by ourselves. We aren't waiting and we aren't letting God carry us through. Without God guiding us and working in us, we may blindly walk into a trap. God wants us to go into the streets, He wants us to show his love and compassion to EVERYONE, but without Him inside of us, guiding us, we will lose our focus and fall.
Wait. Listen. Talk with Him. He has a plan far beyond the highest point of our imagination. His foolishness, His weakness, is stonger than our wisom and strength. He will show you what He wants you to do. Wait. Don't go into the battle alone. He is here. He is with you and me right now. He wants to talk with you. Listen.

Psalm 27:14 "Wait for the Lord. Be strong, take heart and wait for the Lord."

Living...All of the time.

Have you ever tried to write down everybody that you can remember meeting on a piece of paper? It is pretty hard. You don't realize how many people you actually have met until you look back on it. I tried to do it and it took up a quite a bit of paper. I gave up after a couple pages and that is just people I have met. This is not counting the guy at the register or people in the grocery store that you walk buy. You don't realize how many people come in contact with you on a regular basis or how many people were affected by your attitude or actions. People you may have never met in your life can be influenced by what you happened to do when you were around them one time. So what reaction would people get from how you act. As representatives of Christ, we should be representing Christ all of the time. We want people to see something different in us. We want them to see Christ in our character. Psalm 89:8 (NLT) says faithfulness is God's very character. The gospel of John says our actions are consistent with our character. We should be reflecting our faith in Jesus Christ. God wants us to have a faith in action. He wants our faith to be evident to those around us. This doesn't mean wearing bright yellow shirts and running down the street proclaiming our faith. Sometimes all we have to do is pray and ask God to use us to be a light in the world. And that may just be doing everything to the best of our abilities, with joy, and an attitude which reflects our character, which reflects our faith, which reflects Christ. It is hard. Very hard. But even just a good attitude can show something different in you to someone around you.

Inseperable Love

Romans 8. This is my absolute favorite section of the Bible. If there was one author that could really get your mind going it would be Paul. Peter called his writing "confusing" and "hard to understand," but if you look past the countless run-on sentences and composition errors(translators had no choice with his style of writing) you see the power and the voice behind his writing. Now back to my favorite chapter of the Bible. For the most part this has a positive and encouraging theme to it. With all the struggles and persecution going on in Rome, this is what the church in Rome needed to hear. However, this is something all of us need to hear as well.
In the end of Romans 8 it says:

"For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor deamons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to seperate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Romans 8:38-39 NIV

To me that is the most encouraging verse. I make bad mistakes all the time. God still loves me. I say or do something that hurts someone. God still loves me. I think terrible thoughts at times. God still loves me. I turn my back away from God. God still loves me. How does he do that? It would be the hardest thing for me to love someone after they hurt me or was mean to me, yet if I hurt God He still loves me with all of his heart. Now this doesn't mean I can just go around doing bad or even terrible things because God will still love me anyway. No, God wants something more out of me. He wants my life. He wants me to live for Him, and Him alone. The reality is this. Nothing I ever do will make God love me less.
I probably accepted Christ at a younger age than most. I was 4 (almost 5) when I accepted Christ. I was raised in what today we would call a "sheltered home." In fact, I lived in a parsonage on the church property. I attended that church, went to the Christian school sponsored by my church, and went to all of the church events. Through my whole childhood I lived well within my comfort zone until a sunday school class got me thinking (see "Captivating") and a youth pastor in 2004 challenged our youth group to break out, to be a rescue shop to those "unsheltered kids" in our neighborhood. Here was a problem. I couldn't look past what these kids have probably done or were still doing. I just couldn't see the point in reaching out to these people. I couldn't see how He could still love them. But God loved them anyway. He knew their hearts and he looked past it all. He forgave them. Nothing could seperate them from the love of God. I still had not quite grasped it. That winter my grandpa died of esophogal cancer and that just did not help my perception of God's will at all. It was a missions trip that opened it up for me. In June of 2005 twenty-seven of us embarked on a 13 hour journey to Denver, Colorado to serve for and among the homeless and those in rehabilitation. Bang! It felt like a smack to the head. I got it! I finally got it! There was no one that could do anything to make God not love them. God's amazing love is what is bringing people to know Him and have a relationship with Him through Jesus Christ. Showing God's love, the inseperable love of God, is how we can reach out to people and share with them the next step: a relationship with the One who loves them.

Friends

There is a lot going on in my life these days. Our church is searching for a new youth pastor, school is starting and I am soon going to be running around like crazy from my high school classes to college classes. I also am on a mission to get my license before the end of this year. I am 18. I should have had one two years ago. With all this going on in my life I do not know what I would do without my friends and family. I am going to talk about my friends right now. Through the stress that high school has thrown on me the past few years, God has given me awesome friends to help me through. I honestly have no idea what I would do without my friends. I can talk to them about almost anything and they are usually good listeners. I do my best to return the favor to them. My friends came from all sorts of places, but my closest friends have come from church and school. When I look back in the Bible it is obvious that friendship is an extremely important aspect of life. People like David and Paul were strongly impacted by their friends. This past weekend I was reminded about how great my friends really are. The memories that are made, the conversations, and the inside jokes that form are awesome and irreplaceable. Yes, they may disappoint or hurt me at times--and I know I disappoint and hurt them at times--but that usually doesn't get in the way. The best thing about true friends is that they are not afraid to be honest about what they think and are not afraid to be genuine--to be themselves around their friends. The biggest thing I learned this past weekend is that I would not trade my friends for anything in the world. I love them a lot!

Captivating

Captivating. That just seems like and interesting word to me. The word captivating means "to attract and hold the attention or interest of, as by beauty or excellence; enchant." When I was 12 years old there was a person that God used to captivate me. I went into my preteen Sunday school class not expecting anything different. I expected it to be the normal bible story and craft project I had in previous Sunday schools. Boy was I wrong. The teacher was Rick McCoy, a family friend. He had decided that we were old enough to be taught something that would be valuable to us. Not that the previous Sunday school classes weren't valuable. By that time we, a class of boys, had done plenty of scripture memorization, but we had not learned much of comprehending and taking something away from those verses. This class changed that. He told us we would be studying the book of John. When I heard that I was just thinking, "John. I have a friend named John....what a boring book....I like Luke better...and so on." Then he gave us this notebook with a breakdown of what we would be learning this year. He wanted us to take notes. Then he asked a friend of mine to read John 1:1-2 which says this: "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning." Then he asked us what that meant. Our thoughts were, "Wait! We have to think!!! This guy is crazy!" Sure enough, the whole year was like this. He challenged us to think and had us reflect on what we learned. We spent 2 months on John chapter 1. And I'll tell you what. God caught my attention. Here I was sitting as a comfortable home schooled preteen thinking I could not do anything till I was older, and he proved me wrong. He gave me a teacher who showed us how the Word of God could be captivating and how we could share that with others.
So what is so captivating about God? What is so enchanting, so excellent, and so beautiful about God. To me, it is His mercy and grace. You have to admit that a God who sent His one and only Son to give us a way to Him is the most captivating thing you have ever heard of. Why did he do this? He loves each and every one of us despite of what we have done. He does not want us to miss the joy of being with Him. So Christ took on the sins of the world and died with them so we might be saved if we believe and have faith in Him. That to me fits the definition of captivating.

I'll tell you this: God has been so amazing, and He still is amazing. I want to follow Him always. I want to follow Him all the way to the end. I don't want to let back, I don't want to give in to temptation. I want to serve Him with all my heart, I want to be built to last an eternity with Him. And I will, because I don't want to miss the joy of the Lord whose everlasting light Christ put in our reach.

My week and a lesson of guidance.

This week has been somewhat slow. Rock the River kicked off the week really well. (Skillet specifically) That had to be the largest concert they have ever had under the arch. Just imagine Jefferson National Expansion Memorial full of people. It was AMAZING. Unfortunately that was the last night for our youth pastor who is going to be moving on to wherever God is leading him. It is sad to see him go, but I am glad he is following God's plan even if it is not clear. I began studying for Bible quizzing this week. We are doing 1&2 Corinthians. 1st Corinthians had a verse that was very interesting to me:

"For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength." 1 Corinthians 1:25

I am still stuck on this topic in my head. I always want to make the perfect plan for my life, but there are so many complications in the long run. God just knows what He is doing and I need to put my life in his hands. Right now I know that God wants me to seek Him with all my heart and he will guide me in the right direction. He has control of my life, but that is still very hard for me to understand.

JST