The things that make us cheer

So one week ago Sunday i got to go to the browns game with my dad.  We had club seats from a friend.  The game went into overtime.  The browns won.  Great game.  Great chance to hang out with my dad. 

When the Browns kicked the game winning field goal in overtime to win it the place went nuts.  Thousands of fans screaming like crazy, jumping up and down.  Complete strangers were high five-ing each other and hugging each other in the aisle ways.  Absolute celebration. 

Just 2 days later i am sitting in a staff meeting in a church, and a lady shared about a trip she just got back from.  It was a ministry to physically disabled people in another country.  She ended her story by saying that something like 70 people gave their lives to Christ.  Whoa! 

And what did we do?  We just sat there.  A couple people gave a quite clap, but most, most just sat there.  Does anyone else see anything wrong with this picture?  A piece of leather gets kicked through 2 metal poles and strangers hug each other in jubilee.  70 some people have their eternities changed forever and people (myself included) just sit there. 

I write this partly as a confession of how much i suck sometimes.  I hope that i never show such apathy again.  But i also write it as a challenge.  What is it that makes you cheer?  What would it take to get you to get out of your seat and hug a stranger?   Honest reflection into this question might hurt a little.  It did for me.  I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

the longings of our soul

Ok, so I try not post every thought that goes through my head.  I try to just give you the God moments, those moments when he just shows up and I cannot deny it, when he teaches me things or reminds me of things.  I want this blog to be a picture into my head as I journey with God.  Sometimes I get a bunch of these moments in a short amount of time, sometimes he is silent for months at a time, sometimes he speaks and I miss it cause I’m just to busy with my own selfish life.  Everyone’s experience is different, no two are exactly alike.  This is my journey with my Creator.

Ok, so tonight I had one of those moments, one of those times when you just know that this is a God thing.  One of those times that I had constant goose bumps for the whole moment, which in this case was a conversation.  At the same time I was talking to a girl, the living God was speaking into me.  Tonight we worked through a tension in the Christian faith, to be in the world but not of the world.  To know that Jesus was called a “friend of sinners” and that at the same time “bad company corrupts good character.  Throughout the study I could tell this person was a little uneasy and at the end I told people they could find me as people were leaving and I would take their prayer requests and pray for them during the week.  So she came and we talked.  She is a good person with a good heart!  I would describe her as a believer still searching for God.   As the conversation unraveled she tells me that Christians have let her down, that her non-believing friends have been there for her when no one else has, when Christians have judged her, they still loved her.  But here is the kicker, and I quote (to the best of my ability) “I have been praying for God to send a solid believer into my life for some time now, someone who understands what it’s like to fall, to not be perfect, someone who will just love me.”  She has known others who have been sucked into what God is doing, who have embraced their faiths but “it just never happened with me, I just never really got into it.  BUT I LONG TOO!  I LONG FOR GOD TO SUCK ME INTO TO WHAT HE IS DOING IN THE WORLD!  I WANT IT SO BAD, BUT IT JUST HASN’T HAPPENED”.  So there she stands, alone in the world surrounded by unbelievers all around with no help on the horizon, with little hope that there are Christians who will venture into her world and love a person who longs for God but still struggles.  This whole time I am listening to her, my heart is just breaking… At the same time God is screaming into my soul DO YOU HEAR THIS! Do you hear the cries of my children! Where in the world did we ever get the idea that people don’t want God, that they don’t need him?  When did we forget, how did we forget that people created to depend on God… will ultimately long to depend on that same God! How could we possibly ever believe the notion that we are shoving God at someone or at a world that doesn’t need one when they were created to need one! People might not tell us they need him, they might not show it on the surface or EVER let another human know, but it is still there, it is still in the depths of their soul because that is how they were created.  I beg, I plead with anyone willing to listen.  Please do not leave this world!  Please to not leave them to fend for themselves, please do not stop loving them, to extending friendship and forgiveness to them.  A world without hope longs for it, and they are begging God to send them a believer to help them find it! 

May I never forget this!  May I never forget that people were designed for God and still long for him, that they long to be SUCKED IN to his movement, that they long for Him to grab hold of their hearts and do something amazing!  May I never forget that there are people in this world begging God to send believers into their life to help them find Him. 

summer update

For those interested in my life right now here goes:

I'm at camp at SB2W right now. We are over the half way point.  Three more weeks to go.  It is going pretty well. I have been put into a lot of situations where i have
been totally unprepared to do what I was being asked to, and that wars against my engineering, disciplined, like to be prepared self.  It started by having to lead bible studies I had never really seen until it was go time. 

Next i got to be a head coach of a "team" at camp, usually people are assistant coaches first, then once they figure out what they are doing a few who are seen as ready are named as head coaches.  Not the case with me.  I went straight to head coach, with 4 assistant coaches who had never coached before.  I didn't even know where our first team campfire was let alone what i was supposed to do there.  Oh, it was interesting!

This term i was asked to lead the kitchen crew!  Me, in charge of a kitchen crew?  Before you freak out i'm not cooking, only serving and cleaning and leading the volunteers.  But again, I have never done this, I have no training, I don't really know what i am doing.   

But God has been good to me through out my recent challenges.  He has shown me that he can use me even if i suck, or am totally unprepared.  It's really been a theme this summer. It makes me nervous like God is preparing me for something really big that i am not ready for!  So i am mid kitchen crew right now.  The 4th and final term should be back to normal, but there are no guarantees! yep, i will give you more as i get it.  Peace!

A trip to the dentist

When I got back from my South East Asia trip I headed off to camp and arrived mid-term.  So during my first week of camp I got to try to catch up on learning bible studies, meeting and getting to know staff and some other random things.  One afternoon that I had set aside to go over studies I got asked to take a kid to the dentist who had chipped his tooth.  So I thought ok, slight inconvenience.  But it will be a good chance to talk one on one with this kid and then I can still go over studies while I’m in the waiting room.  So we drive there and have a less than deep spiritual conversation. He goes back with the dentist and just as I start to dive into these studies this lady comes in who is in her 40-50’s and just starts talking, and talking, and talking.  And she just keeps going.  So outwardly I’m listening and nodding but inside I’m kind of talking to God.  “God can you make this lady just go away so I can work on these studies.”  But she just kept on talking.  “Don’t you understand God?  I need to work on these studies.  I mean I’m doing this for you, for your kingdom.  Why can’t you make this lady just stop, call her back with the dentist or something!”  Well to keep this story somewhat short She didn’t go away but we ended up having a pretty sweet conversation about how God can use people wherever there at, whether they work in a church or at the gas station.  We got to talk about her sharing her faith at her work and some of the difficulties that she has had to face.  It even turns out that her company sells stuff to this camp I’m at and that the sales rep’s name is Robin and that she just found out that she has a tumor.  The lady really just needed someone to talk with.  Dang.  Sometimes I get so busy with life that I miss the opportunities that God places right in front of me.  And I can be busy with good stuff, even God stuff, and sometimes I just get so fixed on the task at hand that I forget to keep my eyes and ears open to what God is trying to do, especially when it gets in the way of my busy schedule.  So my challenge is this:  Do you leave space for God to show up in your life?  Would you recognize his voice if he called on you?  Would you listen?  God’s plan doesn’t always line up with my plan, but it is the path I desire to take even if it gets in the way.  May God allow us to see the world the way he sees it, with compassion and mercy and full of opportunity.  And may he give us ears that hear the still small voice when he leads us through it.     

So the other day I got to share at my home church about my trip to South East Asia and I was asked 3 questions so I thought I’d share my answers with everyone.

Q-What was it like there?  What was the same? What was different?

A- Wow, pretty much everything was different.  Obviously the language, the climate, the landscape, the food was definitely different.  They eat some crazy stuff there.  Pretty much if you can kill it you can eat it.  They eat water buffalo, dog, rat , snake, etc.  They also eat similar foods but they eat the whole thing.  Like Chicken or fish, they eat it all: feet head, scales, tail, eyes, etc.   I ate seaweed soup and soup with cow’s blood in it.  Work is much different.  They work till much later in the day but take a 3 hour seasta in the middle of the afternoon.  That was pretty sweet.   What was the same?  People.  Despite everything culturally being different at the core people are the same.  As we got the chance to build into there lives and see their hearts I got to see that they had the same needs and desires as we do, the need to be loved, to be accepted, to have meaning and purpose in their lives.

Q-What is one thing that you will take away from this trip, one thing you learned?

A-While we were there we were not allowed to talk about God or church.  So we had to speak in code the whole time we were there.  We couldn’t pray before meals, etc.  So after about a week of being there we had our first underground church meeting.  So we went to the top floor of this building, closed the doors and just worshiped God.  And it was the most excited I have been for church in a long time.  I think they I have always taken for granted the fact they we can gather freely wherever we want or talk about Christ whenever we want.  I can’t tell you how many times in the past I have gone to church and it has felt more like an inconvenience than a privilege.  But on that day it was definitely a privilege. 

Q- What is one challenge you can leave us all with?

A- Here is the one I gave our students so I guess I’ll give it to you too.  Our students raised thousands of dollars and gave up 5 weeks of there summer to travel to the other side of the world to take part in what God was doing.  And it wasn’t revolutionary stuff either.  We played games with them, went to an amusement park with them, taught them about our culture and learned about there’s.  What we did do was live very intentionally.  They were very intentional about building into the lives of people and made friendships with unbelievers that will probably last a lifetime.  Now the problem is that I know that some of those same students will come home to a circle of only Christian friends.  The problem is that back here they couldn’t build into unbelieving lives if they wanted to because slowly over time they have created this little Christian bubble around themselves.  Mainstream Christianity seams to tell us that we must run with the right crowd if we want to live good Christian lives, that we should loose the friends that that could lead us astray.  So slowly over time we do and before we know it we have lost the ability to be the very thing Jesus created us to be.  If I remember right Jesus was called “a friend of sinners”.   Anyway, so my challenge was this.  You don’t have to go to China to share you faith, or to be used by God.  You can do that here, right in your back yard, at work, at school, on your team, wherever.  And it isn’t rocket science either.  Try becoming there friend.  Try hanging out with them, listening to them and caring about them and I guarantee they will notice a difference and you will get the opportunity to share your faith.