I AM SECOND

"I am second" is a ministry that seems to be devoted to posting videos of people's testimonies. I have been very encouraged by these videos and I am throwing out a minor promotion for people to go to youtube and search out these videos because they are mind blowing! Here is one of my favorites from the baseball player Josh Hamilton. He went from being banned from Major League Baseball to being one of the most feared hitters in 2008! God is good!

When in Rome

So Romans is one of my favorite books in the Bible. Tonight I am planning on going through the first half of Romans 5 in Student Ministries. There are 3 points I want to communicate to my students about God's goodness given by this passage. The first is that God gives us peace. We are given a peace that stands no matter what happens to us on this earth. God is faithful to fulfill His promise to raise us from the dead and allow us to come into His presence in Heaven and that is awesome. Second, we can rejoice in the promise that God makes! We rejoice because we have hope and we rejoice in suffering. It is crazy to think that we can rejoice in suffering but when one is filled with the hope of God then we can rejoice in any circumstance. The last point is that God loves His children dearly. One of my favorite verses in the whole Bible occurs here. "While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." The fact that God would come down and die for us when we were still playing around in the mud of sin shows how deeply God loves us. If we were doing good then it wouldn't be a big deal but God died for the ones that were spitting in the face of Truth and slandering His name. God is so good and when we view His death in the midst of us sinning I cant help but be humbled! I pray that you also will be humbled and filled with the love that God showed us on the cross.

One World Under God

OK so the title is based off of Americas "Pledge of Allegiance". I want to make a quick note about how we, Christian Americans, perceive the world at large and specifically the nations that America decides to fight in combat. Now I am not trying to propose that those reading this should become a pacifist or anything like that, even though that would be nice, I am just bringing up that sometimes we view America as always in the right and other countries in the wrong. America is not a Christian nation and does not represent Christ to the world. In God's Kingdom their are no national lines or mandatory cultural norms that need to be followed in order to be a child of God. The only prerequisite is that one believes in Jesus. The video that is posted below this blog post is highlighting the fact that a terrorist is just as much a human being as you or I. A person who is an American and doesn't believe that Jesus came to earth, lived, died and rose from the grave is no different in the eyes of God than the terrorist that is planning to crash his car into the tanks of the US soldiers. I pray that God will open our hearts and give us eyes that view people as God's creation and nothing less than that!

So its been a while since I last posted anything on this thing and so I thought I should make an appearance. However I actually do have something to say so this is a little more than just an appearance. I am sure that many of you have heard the Brian 'Head' Welch testimony before but this hit me really hard today. The thing about Christ is that he changes!




The day that I forget that God changes lives is the day I should pack my things up and leave the Church because without life change what does God have to offer? Salvation goes way beyond just going to heaven but it is about a better life now! The better life doesn't mean that you will have all the money in the world or everything will line up and make sense. What God does offer though is freedom! For Head it was freedom from drugs and the freedom to finally love his daughter the way he needed to. What do you need to be freed from?

I Got Friends in High Places

Good friends are hard to find! One thing that I have learned throughout my short life (22 years) is that the people I surround myself with are the people I will become more like. I have found that I pick up words that other people say and use them in my sentences. I doubt I use the words correctly but I like them so I pick them up. One word I do use often is the word deuce. A sentence can go like this, "I can't go with you tonight. It is deuce tight on me." (courtesy of J. Kidd). So in that way I became more like my friend in that manner. But more than just words when I would spend enough time with someone I would pick up their mannerisms. The little things they do with their body language I would start to pick up on. Eventually their mannerisms become mine. I think the implications here are pretty easy to figure out. But I will spell it out anyway. See when I spend time with good friends then I become like them. This is why it is super important to choose your friends wisely and make sure their influence is positive. Also we need to spend time with Jesus. If the same rule about becoming like other people we are around stands then it must stand with Jesus as well! So keep your friends close and keep Jesus closer!

Life Lessons from Golf

I haven't posted anything for a while but that happens sometimes. So I have been able to play a few rounds of golf lately and I am feeling great playing! I had shoulder surgery in December and I am glad it is healing well. But golf is a very interesting game that teaches me how to be patient. I am a club thrower! Sometimes when I make a terrible shot I will throw a club towards my bag and it is really not a big deal but sometimes it blows up. The other day I made a shot that was absolutely repulsive and I threw my club across the fairway. Now that is not the way to play the game and I had to take a second and pray for a better attitude and I am glad to say that I didn't throw anymore clubs. Golf can get the best you me and life does the same thing from time to time. Sometimes I need to stop letting life get the best of me and stop and pray. This is a lesson that I need to re-learn everyday.

Get a Bowl Full

I am sometimes a lazy guy. Especially when it comes to cleaning and keeping things clean. I am just not very good at that. My messiness taught me an important lesson in my spiritual life. I like to eat food, those of you who know me well know this, but I don't like to always clean up after myself after I eat. This can cause quite the nasty mess. And so do you know what happens to ice cream after it is eaten and left out by the sink for a few days? It gets super sticky and is a beast to clean off. I have to scrub and scrub to get it clean. This is sometimes the way it is with us and sin. Unconfessed sin is like a sticky ice cream covered bowl. God can forgive us and make us clean in an instant but we need to go through the daily struggle of taking care of that sin and working towards keeping that part of our lives clean. James 5:16 a says, "Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed." So may we stop holding on to our sin and instead confess our weakness to others so the Father can restore us to what He wants us to be!

Today is just one of those days that seem to drag on and on! I am excited for student ministry tonight cause the students are awesome but I am sick and not feeling very energetic. These days remind me how in need I am for a savior! I am a weak and fragile man who is like a cloud in the sky. I am there one moment then soon enough I will be gone. I thank God that He reached down to pull me out of the clay and I love that He gives His children strength to face the day. I am believing that God will answer my prayers to give me strength and allow me to be a servant for His Kingdom!

This is a funny video!

Ha this dude cracks me up!

I'm Not Smarter than a Fifth Grader!

I am on an internship for the Youth Ministry Program at Crown College. I am very blessed to work with a church plant in Waconia and it has been awesome thus far! One of my tasks in my internship/job description is to work in Good News Club. This is a ministry that meets in the elementary school after classes on Tuesdays. There are about 10 kids in it ranging from 1st to 4th grade. We sing songs, play games and learn about Bible stories. It is a really fun time and as cliche as it sounds I want to teach the kids but they have been teaching me as well. I thank God for allowing me to spend time interacting with these kids and also for teaching me through that interaction. Let me now communicate what I have learned. There is a young boy, who will go unnamed, and he is a little crazy! He is super funny and he shows love in a great way but his focus is minimal. He also can quote a Bible verse better than any other boy I have ever met! He is an interesting and impressive young boy! The thing that I have learned from him and other kids in Good News Club is to not care what others think about you when you are pleasing God. This young boy will dance, sing and shout for God and doesn't care what others think! Oh man, if I only had that kind of God-pleasing spirit instead of a man-pleasing spirit. I am looking into the things that hold me back from being a child of God and by God's wonderful working grace He will bring me to a place of child like faith! I pray that we, as believers, can wrestle with this and stop allowing social correctness to rule. I have found that as we get older we learn what is 'right' and 'wrong' according to social preference. I found that when songs are playing in Good News Club some kids dance and sing and others kinda just stand and mumble. The older ones tend to just stand and hardly sing. I believe that we have taught that it is not appropriate or not cool to dance and be goofy. Yet, the younger ones have not been taught or just disregard society's view on being goofy for the Lord and I love it! God, may I not worry about being too cool as long as I am pleasing in your sight!

Love is RED

So I decided to give my new blog a title change. I have found out that black white and red are hit in the fashion world and the interior design world. These two things are not what I would like my blog to convey. So, I have decided to change the title to love is RED. The RED is the blood of Christ who is a sacrifice for the one's he saves and I want to convey the love that was shown by the act of sacrifice. So that is the title change.

Give and Take Away

One of my favorite songs sung by a dude I just ran into today. Check it out and blessed be the name of the Lord!

Really?

Sometimes the world slaps you in the face and sometimes the world just shows you how much power it has over people. The later is what happened today. Seeing reality and hearing other people converse with each other showed me something very disturbing! I walked into Mocha Monkey and past by these two younger middle-aged women. They were chatting and then something caught my ear. One of them asked, "When is Easter? This weekend or next?" I don't know why that caught my attention but I was engaged from there. The other lady proceeds to say, "I wanna go out and party for Easter! But of course I cant. I HATE having kids." My jaw dropped when I heard those words! HATE having kids? I just could not wrap my head around the idea that this lady just implied that she would rather not have her children so she could freely go out and drink! I cannot believe the control that "partying" has on our culture. I pray that these kids of her find true love from the One that can love them endlessly! Oh, God what are we doing?

LOVE146

This video was put up by a friend of mine (thanks Ash). And I recognized it from somewhere before...I couldn't place my finger on where I had seen it then I remembered. It was shown at an all night gathering that I help out with in the middle of the winter. How quickly I forget! I cant believe I did forget this because it is crazy to think of the evil things that are being done to these little girls. To think that these girls are some one's daughter and/or some one's sister! I am thankful that ministries like Love146 exist. Check it out and see how you can get involved! Social injustice is a huge deal and we can help!