faith perspective

Mission Trip Day 5 – Open The Eyes of Our Hearts Lord

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We all spend so much time in our daily life worrying about this and that or scurrying here and there.  All the while the single greatest command God gave is “Love one another”…..I spent time tonight experiencing an Immersion into the city with three incredible youth from our church.  The assignment…we were given $8 and a mass transit pass total for the four of us to eat and get around a specific neighborhood.  We were to find dinner somehow some way and as we walked through the neighborhood we were encouraged to talk with people to learn about the city.  Tonight we didn’t necessarily “follow” the path suggested for us and because of that the holy spirit was able to guide us and lead us to a woman I will call Mary.

We encountered Mary sitting on a camp chair on the sidewalk in the middle of an affluent neighborhood…..we stopped and talked to her about the city and how things have changed in her life.   She told us she has been homeless since the war ended, which war we don’t know.  She explained how she had been beaten by people in order to steal her things and her food.  She told us about her friends in the neighborhood and she even told us what areas of the city to avoid for our safety!  Imagine a woman who has been living on the streets and suffering worried about our safety.  We should all consider being so generous.  The youth had decided that we should find some food and share our meal with Mary.  Again, we had $8 to buy our meal.  The only place we found was a drug store and for a total of $6.91 we bought a package of buns, a packet of deli turkey meat, a 2-liter bottle of ginger ale (Mary’s request) and a large bag of chips.  We returned to Mary.  The four of us each had a bun with some turkey on it and everything else, including more buns and turkey we gave to Mary.  We asked her if she would pray with us and she agreed and provided the names of others we should include in our prayer.   Eventually we needed to be returning from our assignment so we said goodbye to Mary and began the journey back.

Through our entire time with Mary the one thing I can’t get out of my mind is the reactions and facial expressions of the hundreds of people passing by while we spent our time chatting and eating with Mary.  So many of them looked so surprised or shocked and how sad is that…..it makes me realize we all need to do a better job of opening the eyes of our hearts to the people in our world that need our help, myself included.  We can’t help them all but our little group spent a wonderful evening talking and sharing a meal with a woman that the world around her has no idea even exists.  Help us Lord, help us see the Mary’s of our broken world.

Peace.

Leaving For a Mission Trip Today

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I am heading out with a few other adults and 20 or so senior high youth from our church today to go and serve others in need.  We are hitting the road driving to a city much larger than our own but it could be any city, including our own, that has people in need.  Our bible verses surrounding us for this trip come from Luke 10:1-12…

“After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go.  He told them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.  Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.  Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. Do not take a purse or bag or sandals and do not greet anyone on the road.  When you enter a house, first say, ‘Peace to this house’.  If a man of peace is there, your peace will rest on him; if not, it will return to you.  Stay in that house, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages.  Do not move around from house to house.  When you enter a town and are welcomed, eat what is set before you.  Heal the sick that are there and tell them, ‘The kingdom of God is near you.’  But when you enter a town and are not welcomed, go into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town that sticks to our feet we wipe off against you.  Yet be sure of this: The kingdom of God is near.  I tell you it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town.”

I have come to understand that the only way we can grow in our spiritual life is to try new things and challenge ourselves regarding faith.  There was a time in my life that a mission trip was the last thing on my mind and yet that probably means God was the last thing on my mind as well.  I am glad that times have changed…

I pray for our group on the trip that we can all grow in faith and grow closer to God and that all people we encounter will see the love of God through our actions.

I will post as often as I can as we go to share my thoughts and reflections…Peace to you.

Trying to Live With Balance

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Reflecting on different times in life I realize the moments that have the most peace and contentment are the times when I was restoring some balance in life.  It seems we all have at least four key elements of life that can get out of balance and when they do, chaos is more than willing to show up.

I believe these four key elements revolve around the following…

Physical Life = Time focused on health and physical fitness

Emotional Life = Time with friends and family

Mental Life = Time spent reading or learning something or having an interesting discussion

Spiritual Life = Time spent in worship or prayer or feeding our faith

Now many times these elements overlap, which is great but it can also be deceiving.  Many people live with any of these three out of four areas of life getting plenty of time and attention.  Eventually that one area of your life that has been put aside will creep up and show itself and we just don’t know how or when.

Imagine carrying a yoke (a wooden frame that fits your shoulders) that has four buckets of water hanging off it, two buckets on each side.  While you carry this load, as long as the four buckets have an equal amount of water it is easier to stand and move forward.  If one bucket has less than the other three you could still maintain balance with extra effort on your part but moving forward would be very slow.  You could also try to put less in one bucket on each side to help balance but as you move along you will not have enough to share with others to help them balance.  Thankfully, our heavenly father knows us and knows we struggle with this balance.  He sent his Son into the world to save us from our sins.  In the bible in the Gospel of Matthew 11:28-30 Jesus says:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden in light.”

I encourage you to look for ways to achieve balance in your life by examining which bucket(s) you have the least water in and begin to fill them with time.

I pray that you are blessed on your faith journey today.

Attitude and Perspective

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The above picture taken by my wife shows four very important people in the history of our country.  They chose some incredible ways to respond to adversity and trouble in the world they lived in.

Today I want to share a poem by Charles Swindoll that sums up everything I could ever share about what everybody should focus their energy on while living in this world…

Attitude

by Charles Swindoll

“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. It will make or break a company … a church … a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude … I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me, and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you … we are in charge of our Attitudes.”

Indeed…we are all in charge of our Attitude towards every situation in life.  Life is not all about what happens to us…it is all about how we choose to respond to what has occurred in our lives.  How will you choose to respond?

Peace to you and yours.

Looking Back…God Has Always Been Near

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As I continue to reflect on my faith journey, I have come to realize that God has always been in control and here I thought I had my hands on the wheel of life…bad things happen to everybody.  We all experience that moment of “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe that, that is terrible” either something bad happens directly to us or to someone we care about or to a complete stranger.  We also all experience the “Why doesn’t anything go my way?” feeling at one time or another.

Here is what I have learned…the key to these moments is your perspective.  The more you think about “me” or “I” or “how this or that affects me” the more you may feel bad or negative about things.  Trying to focus more on how what has happened affects “him” or “her” or “them” and what can I do to help and support him or her or them will not only help others but also will help how you feel.  This is not an easy transition and just like faith you never completely finish working this part of life.

An example to demonstrate…

When I graduated from college there was nothing available in my field in business.  I worked in restaurants while continuing to search for a position in my chosen major, Human Resources.  This went on for 10 years before the first opportunity to work in my field presented itself as I was able to make more money in restaurant operations positions than in Human Resources.  Finally, a chance was presented and I was able to able to start my career.  I have spent the last 11 years working in my chosen field.

Here is what God was doing while I was focusing on “my career”…

In my first restaurant job after college he brought the woman I was going to marry and am still married to today into my life.  Early in our marriage when we moved to CO for a job for me he blessed us with our first child.  When we moved home to MN he led my wife and I to our church that we still attend now.  He also placed me in a job next to a Christian college that broadcasts a Christian radio station that I have listened to for the last 15 years.  He continues to guide and grow my faith and my family in many ways which I can only see if I am focusing on God and my relationship with him and others instead of myself.

The time period in my life described above is the same number of years…in both descriptions the only difference is the perspective of events.  If I choose to focus only on my work it is not very fulfilling or rewarding, in fact it is frustrating.  I now try to look at work through this perspective:

“Scripture adds a purely benevolent purpose to work: to earn money to provide for our needs and the needs of our families and then to give it away to others.  The overwhelming thrust of the Scriptures is that as God sees fit to prosper us, our abundance should begin to spill over and start benefiting others who, for a variety of reasons, are in need.”

               -Doug Sherman and William Hendricks, Men’s Devotional Bible

What ways can you start to change your perspective and try to find balance between focus on self and focus on others?