Daily thoughts and experiences from my mind and life.
Life Shapes
When The Well Runs Dry…
Jan 20th
That title actually has a couple of meaning this morning. As I drove myself to work this morning it kind of hit how spiritually dry I feel today. This comes from the lack of reading and morning quite time I’ve had for most of the week. Oh how I long for those days of having a couple hours before I head off to work to enjoy the morning and spend some time in the word. And to the times I had to read a chapter in a good book before I drifted off to sleep. These are things I’m really hoping to get back in my routine. It’s basically come to light that I am a total creature of habit/routine. Once I can get into a rythm things are pretty good, but it’s trying to get out of a rythm, or maybe even it’s old self, that’s where things are tough. I think I’m seeing a little bit of a spiritual battle going on here. I so want to be in the Word daily, filling myself up, but the things going on in my life are just doing all they can to keep me from that. I have to make the decision to just forget about what’s going on in my life right now, an just get back to God.
The other small relation to the title is the fact that it’s been so long since my last blog post. I’ve probably lost my audience, as little as it is/was but that is fine. My blog was never intended to my pouring out to others, even though it’s maybe become that. For me if just feels good to be writing and really thinking about what’s going on in my life. This is something this is apart of the Learning Circle
, you know the Life Shapes, and I’ve come to find how much truth and life there is in those shapes. Well, I’ve cut into my work time a bit so off I go.
The Time Has Come…
Jan 10th
Well, for those that have long awaited a post to thie fabulous blog, here we go. This will probably be a short one. So much has been going on since my last post, actually a lot happened through December that I didn’t even get time to write about. I’m really looking forward to life settling down a bit.
The first day of youth group begins tomorrow, and we had are first youth praise team meeting today, since Christmas that is. Tonight we just came up with a list of songs we want to do this winter/spring. I’ll be putting together the set lists and get them all the songs. I’ve even created a schedule that will be available online as well. I’m looking forward to getting back into the swing of things with the youth. We had a really excellent youth leaders this past Saturday that really put some things into perspective for all of us I think.
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Being Apart of a Community of Faith…
Dec 15th
I know it’s late but I had to share a little of what happened today. I had the privilege today to talk with my boss, Todd M., about some exciting ideas of establishing a community of faith. He has been leading a group on Sundays, which I am apart of, and Wednesdays. We’re studying “The Passionate Life” and the Life Shapes. What is more we all have a desire to get away from the model of “doing church”, but being apart of a group of believers that is missional & relational, where Christ’s design for the “church” is lived out in our daily lives. I yearn to be building relationships that are about kingdom work not just self-fullfilling. At the lowest level of this community of believers is as desire to be real and totally open, a place that is safe and designed to bring us closer to Christ. This is something that I’ve longed for. The next level is that of one where we can have a mission to reach out to others, a way for us to provide a non-threatening place and relationships built on meeting others needs. At the top level is where all of us can come together in celebration of what God has done and is doing, this would most look like perhaps a Sunday morning worship service.
While I have had initial hesitation, because I’m very comfortable in the traditional church setting, I want to see the church grow out of it’s traditions, and into a body of believers that shares their faith journey with a mission of sharing the Good News. I think so often we can get so comfortable, and dare I say lazy, with our activities around the “church” that we forget that Jesus didn’t spend His days hanging out in the synagogue, He went out among the people that needed to hear His message. If this new community of faith has a mission like that, then it is that kind of “church” I want to be apart of. And just a note, that I’m not saying traditional churches don’t have programs that are outreach ministries. However the key is that churches do outreach, they don’t generally operate for the purpose of outreach, their outreach is programatic.
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Full Days…
Dec 6th
So I didn’t really get off to a good start this morning. Basically my whole sleeping schedule has been thrown off. Tomorrow I will be forcing myself to get up when the alarm goes off. The day turned out pretty excellent however. The Bible study I had with a couple of youth guys really revealed a wrong attitude I had about the weekend coming up. I find it can be frustrating to see people treat others with such disrespect, especially when we are talking about Christians. I guess it is easy to hold Christians up to a higher standard. This is right and wrong. While we should expect Christian to be doing what’s right in the eyes of the Lord, we also need to show them the same level of grace that we have through Christ. Without God’s grace where would any of us be. This is back to the hexagon in the Life Shapes, “forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us”, it can be so easy to forget this, shame on us (on me).
Youth praise team practice went really well tonight. I think I’ve got a plan that is going to work to do music in the fellowship hall, we’ll see. We’ll be taking a break next week, then have a practice of Christmas music to lead for the Christmas party.
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