a thinking man

I'm a thinking man. You didn't know that, did you? Yeah, it's true. Unfortunately, I don't think before I speak often enough. I make up for that for thinking way too much before I sleep. The thinking I do before I go to sleep is often about the things that worry me. When either Sarah or Jakob doesn't feel well, I tend to lay awake for a while thinking about what's wrong with them. Then I sleep very lightly and react to their tossing and turning. When I was laid off last year, I spent a lot of nights thinking about my severance (sort of) running out before I found a job, whether I should be a youth pastor, children's pastor, or lead pastor - I decided youth or children's, and God blessed me with both, because He's crazy awesome - I wondered about going into the military as a chaplain, wondered why God would bless us with a child and then allow me to lose my job, worrying about the delivery, worrying about losing Sarah and/or Jakob during the pregnancy and delivery, etc. I thought a lot about a lot of things, and it always left me with a stomach ache.

I would put a lot of time in thinking and worrying - usually at least 30-60 minutes a night. When I came to my senses, I would start to pray about the things that had me worried. I usually only prayed for a few minutes, though. I would start out every prayer asking God to relieve me of my worry, to give me peace, and to give me the faith to trust in Him. It didn't take long. Every night, I would feel Him removing my chains of worry. I only regret that I put them back on every night like a pair of pajamas. Luckily for me, God was waiting there with the key to my freedom every night. As soon as I would give my worries to Him, He would give me peace, and I would sleep. And since I was laid off, I would not only sleep, but I would sleep in.

Philippians 4:4-7

"Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

For more posts on peace, head over to the Peace Blog Carnival at Bridget Chumbley's blog.

This song doesn't necessarily relate to my post, but it does mention having peace through God. Despite my affinity for heavy metal and hard rock, I do love a little R&B here and there. I guess that's from growing up with Take 6 in my tape player.

forgive and be forgiven

This weekend was the last weekend of our Inked Series at Reach Student Ministries. I have seen God moving in our youth group throughout this series, but I think it has more to do with the adult volunteers than the teaching. Actually, I don't think, I know. Starting on the first week of this series, we started coming 30 minutes before service to talk about the evening schedule, the lesson, and small group questions. More importantly than that, we've been taking time to pray for each evening. I think coming together to pray before the service builds unity, provides focus, and creates momentum going into the night. I think that when we, as leaders, are united, ready, and rolling, the impact is huge. On the flip side, when there isn't unity and we're not moving in the same direction, the impact is huge, but the exact opposite of the impact you want. So you might suspect that I'm glad that it is going the way it is going.

Tonight we talked about forgiveness. First, we looked at the story of the prodigal son, and how he was instantly forgiven by his dad. Then we quickly shifted over to talking about the brother who did not forgive him, and how that is not the way God intended His children to behave. We looked at the story of the debtor who was forgiven, but did not forgive the one in debt to him. This story obviously represents the relationship between the debt we were in due to our sin, which has been forgiven by Christ, compared to the debt we feel is owed to us due to someone offending us. How can we hold someone liable for hurting us after Christ has forgiven us for all we have done to Him?

Main Scripture Passage
Luke 15:25-32; Matthew 18:32-35

Attendance
Students: 42
Adult Leaders: 14

Game/Activity
Haley asks if we can play hide n seek every week; since it was her birthday, we played that tonight.

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!

if you wait till you're ready, you're too late

I had a professor in seminary named Dr. Butler. On the first day of the first class I had with him, he made a statement that changed the way I looked at being ready to serve God. He said, "If God called you to preach two years ago, and you haven't started, because you're waiting till you finish school, you're already two years late. He didn't call you to be ready to preach. He called you to preach." It was an interesting point. I had always thought that one should finish being trained before following God's call on his life, whether it was vocational or in a volunteer role. But what Dr. Butler said made a lot of sense, especially when you read the Bible. I think God calls a lot of people to do a lot of great things for Him, but often times, we wait till we feel adequately ready. We go to Bible school, conferences, seminars, small groups, etc, trying to prepare ourselves to do what He has called us to do. Sometimes we spend more time getting ready to be obedient than actually being obedient, which could be called delayed obedience, and my mom and dad always said delayed obedience is disobedience.

I'm not saying you shouldn't pursue perfecting your calling, because I think you should. And I'm also not saying that you should start out at the same level you plan to be at when you've finished training. But if God calls you to do something, start doing it. I was reminded of this premise when reading Ezra 3. God's plan was for the people to build a temple in Jerusalem where they could eventually perform sacrifices to Him, but He had already called them to observe the feasts and sacrifices. They started well before the temple was ready, because God expected obedience. They didn't even start building the temple until the 2nd year of their inhabitation, but they observed God's ordinances all along. They weren't going to wait till they were ready to start obeying Him.

If God called you to do something, for corn's sakes, do it! God called you, He's equipped you, and He's waiting to use you. Don't make Him wait much longer, okay? If you haven't started, you're already behind.

inked: beneath the surface

I'm changing one of my blogging habits. That implies that I've had any regular habits, which I haven't, but humor me. I'm stealing an idea from Tom, because Tom's smart, and his ideas are swell. His idea was to use Monday blogging to let his boss know what happened at YG, how things went, how many were there, etc. I'm going to be doing that going forward, just so my boss, Dave, has an idea of what went down before we get to our weekly meeting...if we get to our weekly meeting. That means every Monday, I'll recap my Sunday night lesson (or the lesson of the person that teaches the night before), put attendance, main themes, and games...starting now. Get ready to live.

This was the second week of our Inked: Beneath the Surface series. The premise is talking about what it looks like to have a true relationship with Christ, one that goes beyond the surface of just fluff Christianity. Last night, I talked about Jesus' Parable of the Sower, and compared poor quality tattoos to rocky soil. Like a poor quality tattoo, seeds sown into rocky soil do not go deep enough, causing them to fade away, especially under the heat of the sun (trials). We need to seek to be the good soil that Jesus talks about, causing us to be so deeply inked by God, that no matter what happens in our life, we stand strong. Our relationship with Him should not be negatively impacted by outside circumstances. We need deeper ink.

Main Scripture Passage
Matthew 13:3-22

Attendance
Students: 36
Adult Leaders: 16

Game/Activity
Dream tattoo drawing contest. Submissions will be posted this week on our Reach Student Ministries Facebook page, voted on, and a winner will be named next week.

Dear Snoopy: I hate you.

I hate getting shots. I am terribly afraid of needles. If I have to get a shot, I will pace the floor of the waiting room, hoping an emergency comes up and I have to have my appointment moved to another day some time next year. But why be so afraid? Well, to be honest with you, I blame Snoopy and the entire medical field.

I had a really bad experience when I got my first tetanus shot at the age of 5. The first thing I wanted to know when I saw the needle was, "Will this hurt?" I was told by the nurse that it would only hurt a little. I guess her threshold for pain was slightly higher than that of a 5-year old boy, because I thought it hurt like a wet handed pink belly. I started crying, and the nurse, showing faux sympathy said, "It's okay. Here, let me put this band aid on you. It's a magic band aid, and it will make the hurting go away." It was a wonderful looking band aid. It was a Snoopy band aid. It was blue. It was not magic.

The sting of the shot went away fairly quickly, leading me to believe in Snoopy, magic, and medical personnel. However, an hour or so later, when I was at home, my arm started to throb. I'm sure you've had a tetanus shot and know the pain I'm speaking of. I went to my mom and told her that my band aid wasn't working and that I needed to go back and get a different magic band aid. She thought that was funny, and told me there was no magic band aid.

Stupid nurse. Stupid Snoopy. One lied to me, the other let me down. And now I'm a grown man that's afraid of shots.

trying not to laugh in church

I like to laugh. I really like it when someone on stage at church says something that makes me laugh. You know what I don't like? I hate when someone not on stage makes me laugh at an inappropriate moment in church. If you are unclear on when an appropriate moment to laugh in church would be, I will help you. If the speaker tells a joke or shows a video, and it is really funny, you should laugh. If he tells a joke, and it's not funny, you shouldn't encourage him to make more unfunny jokes by laughing. Also, if a speaker tries to say something from the Bible, but he accuses a Biblical character of giving himself a self breast check (like this guy did), you should also laugh a little.

Do you know when it's inappropriate to laugh in church? Pretty much every other time. Let me give you a couple of examples. On our last Sunday in Florida, I found some googly eyes in my Sunday school room, and I put them in my Bible. Sarah thought an SNL skit with Christopher Walken, house plants, and googly eyes was hilarious. So, when we got done reading the main passage and praying, I showed the googly eyes to Sarah. She laughed out loud - a lot. It was my fault, I know, but no one else knew. They thought Sarah was crazy.

It's also really bad to laugh in church when you are sitting on stage, everyone is facing the front, and the choir is singing. I couldn't help myself, though. It was also in Florida, and it happened a couple of times. The choir got up to sing, and I was sitting there looking through my Bible/doing whatever I could to not just stare out at the crowd. They got to the chorus of the song they were singing. It was at the chorus that I recognized it as, "It's Shouting Time in Heaven," which was sung a lot by a group at the church I grew up in. And it amused me, because they mildly choreographed the part about walking down the highway with the Lord. So when I heard the choir - sitting right behind me - singing the same song, a smile spread across my face. I tried to play it cool, like I was enjoying the song, but anyone that knew me knew that wasn't it. The first time they sang it, I almost kept my cool. The next couple of times, though, I couldn't contain the laughter. It was silent, but my hand was up over my mouth, head bowed, eyes squeezed shut, and the jovial shaking one does when he laughs was going on. Maybe some people thought I was praying, and God told me a good joke. I don't know. But I do know that I have never felt more awkward about laughing in church before or since.