God's Timing

We've been quite busy over the past few months.

We found out near the end of April that we are expecting our 3rd child sometime in December (perhaps November). We were very excited about this new addition to our family and at the same time this news added to the anxiety thatwould soon follow. Yet I know that God has a plan and His timing is perfect while our timing is, well..less than. Fast forwarding here, we found out today that it is a boy and is due November 30th. Kim is hoping to hold out until the beginning of December so that we do not have yet another birthday in November. Her original hope was to have a January baby, but that may be a little long for her to hold out on delivery.

In May Kim and I began to speak with the Wabash Conference of the Free Methodist Church as we felt God's call for a differnt stage in the life of His ministry through us. We were introduced to the Robinson Free Methodist Church in mid-May and we began to pray about this move, not only from the church family and neighbors that we love so dearly, but also about the move to a senior pastor position. As you can imagine, this came with many questions, concerns, and anxiety. One of the largest concerns for us was; "how are we going to sell our home in Flora?". With the market the way that it is we knew that this would be difficult, but not impossible, because nothing is impossible with God.

As we made the decision to move and to follow what we believed was God's call for us, we began to prepare. Just over a month ago we announced to the church that we were going to be leaving the church, the student ministry, and the community. This was a very tough decision to make and one that came with a lot of mixed feelings. For many of the students this was the absolute worst time for us to leave, as a foundation had now been established and security and momentum seemed to be building within the student ministry and the church. Once again, we work on God's timetable which is so much larger and more precise than ours will ever be. And who are we to think that we can do anything without God's will on our side.



We made the move to Robinson on my birthday this year, June 28th. With limited hiccups we moved into the parsonage and the church. The love of the church family began to poor on us from the moment that we drove into Robinson. We are happy to be here and are now confident that we are exactly where God wants us. One of the measurements that I personally used was that of our house in Flora. Every month that the house sits unsold costs us money that we do not have, in the bank or in our monthly budget (we didn't get into ministry for the money). I began to pray that our house would sell quickly, Kim did the same. We began to share our requests with our family, friends, and churches. Then I began to understand that I was not praying "BIG PRAYERS"! My prayer then became that we would receive an offer our house by the end of July, an offer that Kim and I could agree upon and one that we could accept. As Kim and I joined in this prayer together peace began to come over me knowing that God was in control and that there was nothing else that we could do.

Wednesday evening we received the offer that we have been praying about. Yesterday we accepted it! God continues to bless us when we do not deserve it and amaze us day after day. Praise the Lord, He is so much wiser than we are.

Blessed are...

“You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He is risen!” (Luke 16:6, NIV) To me, these are some of the most powerful words recorded in the Bible. These words tell us that we serve a God that was crucified for our imperfections, our sins, that He died this horrible death so that we did not have to and that He conquered death. He lives, even today, He lives! We serve a living God! Think about that for a moment…..then take a couple minutes thanking Him for all that He has been through for you.

As believers, Easter is one of the most joyous holidays because, through it, we get to celebrate everything that sets our faith and our Savior apart from this world. Now that the Easter holiday is through I encourage you to stay focused on Christ, on everything that He has done and everything that He continues to do in, through, and around you.

After Jesus’ resurrection he appeared to many people before his ascension into heaven. The other day I was reading about Jesus’ appearance to Thomas, one of His disciples (John 20:24-31). One verse caught me more so than the others that morning, verse 29. Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those that have not seen and yet have believed.” Was Jesus talking about us in this verse? Was Jesus saying that we are to be blessed, to be happy, to be envied because we have not seen Him and yet we have believed? I have read this passage in the past and for some time now I have believed that Jesus was, in fact, speaking about you and I. But more recently I was reminded of Jesus’ healing of the man who was born blind (John 9). Later, when this man was questioned by the Pharisees, he replies “One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see.” (John 9:25)

Whatever your view on this passage is, whether Jesus was speaking about you and I, because we have not seen Jesus in the physical sense or not. The truth is, it doesn’t matter! For if you have seen Jesus in the Spiritual sense, you have been blessed immeasurably. Your challenge, then, is to evaluate the relationship you have with The Creator of the heavens and the earth, to come to know Him for who He is in, around, and through you! And then, live this blessing out and share it with everyone around you, today, tomorrow, and forever.

Who is our president: I finally got it

 
Over the past, I don’t know how many months, I have been receiving email forwards and text messages claiming that Obama is a horrible president. Now, I can say that I was not originally fond off this guy, his platform, or his policies, yet I was careful not to go to the degree to which many did. It seemed to me that shortly after Obama received the Democratic nomination, the comments and accusations that began focused around his past and the fear that many individuals were just being racist and were not truly giving the guy a chance. While I still did not vote for him due to my stance on his issues, I was not as harsh as others were at the time.
Since the time that Obama has taken the office I have received more email forwards than ever before, from family members and from friends, claiming that he is a terrorist and that his aim is to destroy America. Again, many of these emails come with a rather racist attitude and for that reason I tend to delete many of them before even opening and reading them. It seems to me that this world is filled with too much hatred and disgust and that I don’t need it being delivered to my desktop on a daily basis.

Given this, I have been struck with the understanding that Obama really has not done anything significant since taking office. At first I was encouraged by this, knowing that he may go down as a failure of a president and also knowing that if he wasn’t doing anything, than he wasn’t doing anything destructive.
Yet, as I began to read more and more about what he has actually done it occurred to me that he has done quite a lot while not doing much at all. Obama’s budgets and spending sprees have driven America into one of the largest deficits ever. Spending more money than any president ever has and also committing more money to projects that will not prove to benefit our great country in the coming years. Obama truly is aiming to destroy America yet much of the population will not come to realize it until it is far too late. This article really opened my eyes to this fact.
Social Security to start cashing Uncle Sam's IOUs - Yahoo! News
We may, in fact, be living during a time when our president is a terrorist. We definitely are living during the era of the worst president ever!

Simply Youth Ministry Conference

I'm not a "blogger" but I figued that this conference was the best time to complete my first true blog post. And because I'm up at 5:00a (Chicago time) today, why not?



Day one of the Simply Youth Ministry Conference 2010 in Chicago was amazing. My friend, mentor, and fellow student ministry director Micah Hudson encouraged me to join him for this event which could not have come at a better time for me, personally and professionally. I needed a time of relaxing, refreshing, reflection, and recommitting!

As we only had a three hour drive from Indiana to Chicago we didn't have to leave until 3:00 in the afternoon. I took Friday afternoon off from the church to spend some quality time with the kids and my wife, Kim, this too was much needed. The trip over was good and gave Micah and I a chance to talk and share stories from our journey (me more than him).



We checked into our hotel soon after arriving in Chicago, the Aloft. Now this is a very nice hotel, fairly trendy and, well, hip is the only word that could be used! While it is very modern and I have no real complaints about the room, the staff, or the stay in general. I would add one thing that you should be forewarned about before agreeing to share a room at this hotel with a person that you don't normally live with, and that is a warning about the echos and lack of a true bathroom door! That's right, in an effort to be a truly "hip joint" the Aloft has removed the bathroom door and opted for a sliding mirror to partition off the commode and shower room from the rest of the hotel room. This may not present an immediate problem but when you arise well before your roommate and have to use the facilities in any manner, they will here you and they will hear it! Early Saturday morning I became aware of this fact and I became aware of every splash, every plop, and every bodily noise that I made. I"m just saying, think EVERYTHING through before you book! Yet as I write this, I am sitting in the lounge next to a blazing fire and I have no real complaints.

The theme of this year's Simply Youth Ministry Conference in Surprising Legacy. The opening session kicked off on Friday evening with musician Tim Ward leading the worship music. It took me several songs before I was able to join with him and much of the rest of the body of pastors and Christ's followers. Initially I attributed this to the fact that I didn't know the songs and I just didn't connect to the music. Yet as the night progressed I realized that I had not truly prepared my mind for worship and that I was coming here to connect with God. I believe that this is much of the problem that we as Christ's followers have today. We continue to search and search for God, all the while He is right next to us and is trying desperately to get our attention. And when He is the most obvious in His pursuit, when His Spirit is flowing all around us, we focus on something else, the lighting or the music, the people rather than The God.

As the opening session progressed so did I. Doug Fields opened the conference by encouraging us to "have fun" and to relax and find healing throughout the weekend. He reminded us of something that I personally needed to hear very much, that we were not in charge of this weekend, not in charge of any of the details or the mistakes of this weekend.

The Skit Guys did a candid view of Joesph's story from the Old Testament, hitting the main story points while giving it a 2010 spin but concluded by pointing out that Joesph could have done pretty much whatever he wanted to his brothers when they came to him for food but he chose to leave a legacy, to forgive them and to obey.

Duffy Robbins gave a very moving teaching on Philippians 2:-11 relating the passage back to the theme of surprising legacy or Christ's legacy. He spoke of his father and the relationship that he had with his wife of more than 50 years and especially his love for her during the last days of her life while she struggled with Alzheimer's disease. He quoted his father; "she loved me so much that it was nothing but a privilege to love her back". Some of the main points of his teaching revolved around the passion of Christ; authentic passion always looks a little irrational, the excessive love of Christ; (v.7) God "made Himself nothing" and was humbled, the costly life of Christ here on earth; (v.8) not just death but one of the cruelest most painful and humiliating deaths. He concluded by pointing out that most of us here in the states are not called to die for Christ, we are called to live for Him. This is Christ's legacy, what is yours?



The opening night ended with a number of late-night options. Micah and I were torn between attending a performance by The Skit Guys or an informational session by Doug Fields on a new movement "1 By Youth". "Society gives teens the front page of the newspaper for some pretty 'low bar' reasons, let's give teens a chance to really serve and to make a difference". 1 By Youth has set their goal to have 1,000,000 teens serving, check out their website for more information. 1 By Youth is coming to Indianapolis on May 1st through the work of the Mayor and will be one of the first two cities ever to embrace what will soon become a national, and hopefully international, movement.

Thank God that I am here and I am a part of something so much bigger than myself.

what to write in a "blog

This is a test to see what would flow from my fingertips if I were to start writing a blog on a semi-regular basis. While it is my question as to what I would write, it is also my question as to who would read a blog written by me. Do I have anything to write that others would want to read? Why would I consider my written words to be of any use. What pride it must take for an individual to begin to write a blog. How does a person go from no blog to having a regular blog? What do you do if no one follows your blog? Do you keep writting or do you cease writing and come to the realization that no one really cares about what you have to write in a blog.