Pizza Sub Anyone???

Yesterday I had lunch w/ two of my best friends in e world at Subway in beautiful Robinson, Texas. After a vigorous morning of moving a minimal amount of desks we moseyed down to Subway to receive nutrition. As we walk into the restaurant, i cannot decide what I want, as usual, but m leaning toward tuna. However, both of the afore mentioned best friends highly recommended the pizza sub. They both then proceeded to describe into detail the heavenly sandwich made of pepperonis, mozzarella cheese, and meatball sauce. They told me how much they loved this particular sub and how I should try it...since they were paying I politely agreed. Well to make a short story shorter the sub was amazing and I immediately called three of my friends and told them about it.

Now how is it so easy to tell someone about a sandwich they have never heard of before and also tell them about how it has affected your life (or taste buds, whatever) and we as Christians are terrified of telling our friends about the love of Jeus Christ and how amazing it is to be able to have an intimate realtionship with the creator of the world???

I think we need to get past two key aspects to be able to share the love of Christ with others effectively.

1. Fear of failure - You know what...so what if the first person you try and "witness" to doesn't fall on their faces and praise God that He has sent a classmate to show him the wonders of God's majesty.

2. Fear of rejection - We need to forget about trying to be popular around friends for four years that after you get out of high school will never talk to again. Plus, do we honestly think that everyone thought Jesus was the bomb back in the day? There were tons of people that thought Jesus Christ was full of pinto beans. We cannot e intimidated by the fear of rejection.

I honestly believe that if we are true Christ followers that there exists a burning desire to share what you have w/ others around you. I also believe that this desire is squashed 98% of the time by one of these two fears.

Let's not be afraid to share the love that Christ has for us. We can't hide our little lights under bushels...we gotta let it shine.

Amos 5:3-5

With everyone going back to school this week, we should be looking forward to the new year but also remember that if we claim the name "Christian" or 'Little Christ" we have to live accordingly.

In Amos 5 God is addressing a sinful Israel. His chosen people are pursuing other gods and idols and God is pretty much pissed.

He tells them to quit seeking after anything other than Him. He says numerous times in chapter 5 "Seek me and live"

God does not need our worsip, he allows us to worship and praise Him. We should feel privileged that we even have the opportunity to seek after Him.

We need to start really seeking God right now. We need to figure out that high school does not matter. 5 years from now the jeans you wore will not matter, who you dated will not matter, the popularity we work so hard to achieve and maintain will not matter...but God always matters. Our personal, intimate, genuine relationship with Christ slways matters. That is the only thing that will last.

When we seek after God w/ all our heart. we will find true life. We will find a fresh, new, abundant life with Him.

This yearwe need to cast off all the things that we seek after instead of God. It can be sports, boyfriend/girlfriends, what people think about us. Man, let's just cast it all off, lay it at the foot of the cross and we will all have a great year @ school.

Oh and don't worry about what will happen if you change the way you live. God says in Jeremiah 29:11 that he's got our back no matter what.

Bottom line...if we genuinely seek God, come broken before Him, then we will have LIFE!

Who, or what do we live for?

It has become blatantly evident to me over the last couple of months that we as Christians do not always live for Christ as we are called to. Now I know this sounds like a pretty late epiphany but think about it...you could not tell that we as Christians are in love with Christ. We are supposed to have an incredibly intimate relationship with Christ so why do we sometimes think of being a Christian as some sort of hobby or club instead of having a burning desire to seek after God, to hunger and thirst after righteousness.

Sometimes we just fill our lives up with so much crap, we forget all about who we live for.

An "idol" in a more modern def. is "anything that takes the place of God or steals our affections from him."

We cannot take the words "take the place of God" lightly if we are to call ourselves dangerous disciples. If we are to live a radical lifestyle like Jesus did then we need to really understand that when we put sports, relationships, jobs, hobbies, even family time infront of God, we are letting something or someone TAKE THE PLACE OF OUR GOD!!!!!

That is ridiculous to even think about it, isn't it??? But we do it every hour of every day of our lives.

We are called to serve the Lord, foresake everything of this world and put nothing between us and the Almighty God.

Let's live for the crucified Christ, the one who we desperately seek after.

Our Living Hope

1 Timothy 1: 1-16


Paul, in verse one writes to Timothy that he is on a special assignment for Christ who is our living hope. This is a great piece of daily bread because Paul recognizes his job for Christ and then refers to Him as our living hope. That is some awesome imagery right there. To think of Jesus Christ as our living hope is pretty encouraging because it means that Christ is not some "pie-in-the-sky" hope or a distant, iffy kind of a hope...He is a living hope, a hope that drives the hearts of passionate Christians.

When Paul is writing this letter to Timothy, he is extremely grateful that God has made him adequate to do his work. He cannot even begin to fathom how God could possibly trust him with this ministry after what he used to do to the very people he is trying to reach out to now. Then in v. 14 Paul gives all the glory of his hard work back to our merciful God when he writes, "Grace mixed with faith and love poured over me and into me." That is a greta example of God's mercy. No matter how bad we screw up or how far we stray away from him, he can still use us to better his kingdom. Paul then goes on to confess that he is Public Sinner # 1 (v. 15) Paul does not say this to draw attention to how great of a change he has made but instead to give God the glory for changing and convicting. He also proves to the people around him that Jesus Christ really did come into the world as a sacrifice for EVERYONE.

Paul is a great person to try and pattern our daily lives after. I would love to be able to say, "Hey, you want to follow Jesus...really follow him and seek after him with all your heart??? Then you can come follow me...I can show you the Way."

God's Plan

Over the past month or two I have realized that my plan does not always line up w/ God's plan. Where I want to go to school in the fall may not be where God wants me to be. This has been a pressing issue on my mind the last couple of months.

I just have to ask myself the question, "How hard is it to follow God's will?"

Why can't our church today just get out of the way and earnestly seek after God's face and follow his plan for our lives?

Today the average American (including myself) is so caught up with jobs, money, dating, school, friends and all kinds of other crap that God and his plan for us gets shoved to the back burner.

I say that it is time to start following God again. We cannot have our churches as meeting grounds for people. Our churches need to be meeting grounds for God to work in congregations as a whole instead of a social hour.

Figuring out God's plan is not the hard part...it's following it once he reveals it to us. God will not withhold his plan for our lives from us. He will reveal it to us in His time, not ours. All we have to do is follow it.

Luke 9:23 - look it up

God is so awesome

Man, I love our youth group. We have grown so much over just the last month, not just in numbers but spiritually as well. It has been great to see some new faces w/ us. I love when leaders have to drive their own cars because our 15 passenger van actually has 15 people in it.
God has great things planned for our student ministry and has placed excellent leaders to carry out his good and perfect plan. I only hope that when Allen and I are ministers that we are apart of something half as awesome as this youth group. Tonight was great. We had a rockin' good time w/ R.L. Ah, good ol' D-Now days (Only Allen knows what I'm talkin' about)
I'm really excited to see our ministry molded into what God wants it to be, a beacon to lead our church into change. I love the way we as a group have stepped up and just like Paul said "Look at us...we as a student ministry are following God. It doesn't matter if there are a million different problems w/ this church or none...we will continue to seek after God's plan for our lives. Man to all of you who read this from WHBC, I love you guys w/ all my heart. You guys are amazing.

Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Servanthood

Working at a crappy grocery store such as Albertsons has enlightened me in many ways. I have learned that people can be real, 100% certified jerks sometimes. It's not so much that this offends me but I just hate to see people from my very own church come into the store on a Sunday afternoon and be extremely rude to a high school kid just tryin' to save up for college.
Now don't get me wrong I'm not complaining, it's just that God is an awesome teacher and even though I catch more crap a day than a port-a-potty does all week He still taught me to be more kind and compassionate to the people that serve me.
Like today the lady @ Wal-Mart messed up my checkout somehow and had to call her manager over for something. The lady had obviously had a long day and was becoming frustrated so I struck up a friendly conversation w/ her instead of getting my feathers ruffled over the situation like the guy in front of me did. At the end of my transaction I said "thank you, and have a good rest of the day" to which she responded with a grateful smile and said "Thank you, you too."
Along w/ her grateful smile came somewhat of a curious glance like she was wondering why I wasn't like every other rude customer she had dealt with on her shift.
We are called to be Jesus to the people around us and sometimes that makes us stick out. We are resident aliens on this earth and are called to a higher purpose than anything we can strive for here. If you're not good at talking or teaching about Christ's love (which I'm really not) then show his undeserving loe to the people that surround you because imitation is the sincerest form of servanthood.

Mission Trip

This past week I had an amazing opportunity to embark on a mission trip to the one horse town of Coweta, Oklahoma. I went with Amy's church so I didn't really know anybody but it didn't matter because our work team of 7 people came together and meshed so well. We basically rebuilt the inside of an apartment that a sweet old lady named Ms. Lu Prather is trying to rent out. She only makes $12,000 a year and receives her food consisting of pinto beans and rice from her ex-husband. She had no electricity, heat or A/C. Her son, Allen, started the repairs and then they got in a huge fight and he packed up and returned to NYC. Despite all of the obstacles in her life she would not stop telling us about how God blessed her so much throughout her entire life. I am extremely grateful that God presented me with the chance to be his hands and feet. We finished every part of the house except the bathroom. Keep Lu in your prayers and pray that somone else will finish the work we came so close to finishing. She is the lady in the pink in the middle of the picture. Oh yeah and I'm the dork holding the speed square up to my face.

One last note: to all of you who saw me on Sunday when I was feeling like crap....I so have pneumonia and a wicked case of bronchitis. It's cool though cause I'm a beast.