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."