Faith

Mission Trip Day 8 – The Challenge Is To Take It With You

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This is our last night together.  Our group has bonded very well this week.  We have laughed together, sang songs of worship, served the homeless in shelters and out on the street directly.  We have cried together, shared stories of our encounters with people in need.  We have been silly together and have genuinely been shown kindness from several people along the way.

When you make a commitment to step away from your daily grind and focus only on where you are and what you can do to help others it gives you an opportunity to learn so much about yourself and what gifts God has given to you.  This Mission trip experience is unique and wonderful and the best way to honor what we have done together is to make the next commitment to use what we have learned in our home community.

This is one of the biggest challenges of faith and one of the many reasons I started this blog in the first place.

The youth in our church are so amazing.  They are so much better than me and my friends were at that age.  They are kind, generous, enthusiastic and totally filled with the Holy Spirit.  I am so impressed with their ability to step up to challenges of faith.  I hope we all take this time together and truly change the way we live our lives when we return.  It is too easy to slip back into our old habits and fill our schedules with busy time and forget we need to leave time for the Holy Spirit to work in our lives.

Heavenly Father, I pray that you lift up this week we have had together as a reminder to us that we need to continue what you have shown us.  I ask that you give us the courage to make a change in how we live our lives.  Lord, thank you for the blessings you have placed in us and around us, please guide us to the next challenge of our faith and strengthen us to do your will…I pray all of this in Jesus name, Amen.

Mission Trip Day 7 – Meet A Need

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If you read about or see people working in ministry in some way and wonder “what can I do?”…there are several different types of organizations all over the world that work to help others.  Every city has multiple organizations that work towards helping the hungry or homeless or those with addictions or tutoring for students, etc.  The key to figuring out what to do is ask God to help you identify or guide you to the gifts/talents he has blessed you with.

We can never forget that God created each and everyone of us with certian gifts and if we are paying attention we can learn what those gifts are and use them to help others in some way.  Even if you have never done anything before or you think “well I don’t have anything to offer.” It is just not true because God did provide you gifts to use in this world that will help others and the only way to know exactly what those are is to try new things and see how they fit who you are.

So go ahead…think about the things you enjoying doing and look for an organization that needs volunteers in that speciality.

The most important lessoned I have learned this week is this…..I have been blessed by God and all he needs me to do is go out and try to Meet A Need in our world based on the gifts he gave me!

How great is our God?!

Mission Trip Day 6 – ‘I’ Can Only Help One But ‘We’ Can Help Many

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As we have continued serving this week we have been exploring several themes and bible verses related to our work.  Today I find myself thinking about Luke 10 verse 2 in my original MT post that states…

“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.”

When an individual works to help another that is good and both the giver and the receiver feel good about things.  When more than one person gets involved in helping others the increase in value is exponential.   The world can be a difficult place and many people have to get involved in serving others in order for long term or sustainable change to occur.  This is not to say that one to one ministry is not good it is good and often needed but in order to move from charity which is good and helpful for the short term to justice which is investing in long term change many “workers” are needed.

I know we have made a difference in the lives of many people both directly and indirectly and I hope and pray that we can bring this momentum back to our home city and find a way to invest in long term help for people in our community…after all that is exactly what our Heavenly Father has asked us to do.

Peace.
  

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.

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.

Surrender but Don’t Give Up

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In my opinion in our society and our world today…to surrender, by definition is to yield to the power of another, however, to give up is to quit.  Depending on your context one is a transition and the other carries a negative connotation or a defeated and deflated feeling.  When we listen to the news on TV or read about events online it is easy to feel defeated and deflated by how people in this world choose to treat each other.

Don’t give up…..we live in a fallen world and it is very easy at times to believe that all is lost.  The Good News is…that is not true.  We practice surrender and don’t give up more often than we realize.

For example, you are sitting at your computer doing the things you love (like reading blogs) and something happens…the computer stops responding and then starts popping up boxes and then the “blue screen”.  What happened?  You begin to “troubleshoot” with your vast PC knowledge…you are spending hours trying everything to recover what has been lost…a working computer.  Alas, you have exhausted your abilities and still nothing.  So what do you do?  Do you give up?  Never use that computer again?  No.  You surrender to others who have worked on and repaired computers for living, they often work for companies that create and develop new computer technology.

Now back to our fallen world…there we are living our lives doing the things we love when out of nowhere the world seems to stop responding to us and events keep popping up that trouble us and then we lay down in defeat looking up at the “blue SKY”……wow isn’t this a beautiful day!

Don’t give up on this world.  Surrender to the Creator…he knows what is troubling you.  The best part about faith is it comes with a guide book…the bible.  On this blog I have a Favorite Bible Verses page that I will change from time to time.  The guide book that has been provided us tells us not to give up but trust in God.  Here are two verses I look to:

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.”

                                                                                                                     Proverbs 3:5-6

“I am confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.  Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord”

                                                                                                                     Psalm 27:13-14

So take all your problems, all your concerns and lift them up and surrender them to God.  He knows you better than you know him and he loves you unconditionally no matter what.

Find your guide book and open it.

Friends and Friendships

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I read a quote on a P.S I Love You poster hanging on the wall, it states:

“Friends are like a beautiful garden.  They require regular care.”

How true that is.  Friends are very much like a garden.

You could also add that you only get out of it what you put in to it!  A garden can be a beautiful thing to look at and bring joy to you and others.  If you spend time working on them every day.  You start by making sure they have a good foundation or growing environment.  You provide soil that is full of good nutrients and holds the moisture.  When you put in the flowers you need to give them space to grow.  Then there is the routine of watering and most importantly pulling out those stubborn weeds.  With regular care your garden can grow and prosper.

When I consider my friends and my friendships I would say that the ones I give the most “care” or time too are definitely the relationships that are doing the best and have grown the most.  In my best friendships I am aware that they have a good growing environment and are given space to change and grow.  I often attend to them with phone calls, emails or a text message.  Most importantly, I try to always be available when the “weeds” of life are becoming too difficult to deal with by themselves.

I have also learned that sometimes God brings friends into your life at just the right time to be messengers.  Some friends are only in your life briefly; they serve a purpose in God’s plan and move on while others are with you much longer.  God himself also wants to be one of your lifelong friends…all you would need to do for that to happen is give your friendship/relationship with God some regular care. 

Meet with him every day in a quiet and peaceful place or room…there are no rules regarding how long to do it and no right ways or wrong ways to meet with him…just find a place that feels right to you and talk to him…as I stated at the beginning…you will only get out of it what you put into it!  Talk to him, he is waiting to hear from you.

Peace be with you.

A Moment When I Followed My Faith

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I have spent many years focusing on where I work and what I am doing in my career.  The whole time God has been working his plan for me even though I was doing a poor job paying attention to him.  I had my first experience of really looking to hear God in a situation related to my work in 2004.

I had spent the prior 12 years working in different restaurants and coffee companies and had acquired knowledge and many skills needed to run a business.  I had my dream of owning and operating my own business.  My job at the time was as a new store opening GM for a company we will call restaurant B.  When I had started with restaurant B I had also interviewed for an HR position with a different restaurant company we will call restaurant A.  I had worked for restaurant B for 6 months and was getting frustrated with personnel that were causing stress and frustration.  I was turning in my notice because I had found an opportunity to complete a purchase of my own coffee cafe.  I was very excited for this opportunity.  I had already deposited $1,000 in earnest money towards this purchase.  There was risk of course, by this time my wife and I had two kids.  A 7 year old and a 3 year old and we had a mortgage and a car payment as well.  Nevertheless, I felt confident in my abilities that all would go well.  As the end of my employment at restaurant B arrived I was setting up meetings with a broker and the sellers of the cafe to begin completing my purchase.

Then one day…the phone rings…restaurant A, which I last had contact with 6 months ago was calling because they had a new opening in their HR-payroll department and they wanted to meet with me again.  It turns out that they ended up offering me a full-time position with salary and benefits and M-F 9-5, etc.  At this time, I felt it was necessary to try and listen to God first and my own worldly desires second.  I spent time discussing the options with my wife and I prayed…..

God I have before me 2 opportunities and I am not sure which way to turn…one would be fulfilling a dream and following my passion…the other offers security and stability for my young family…please guide me to what you have in your plan.

Wouldn’t it be nice if in these moments you could just hear God’s voice from a burning bush or something?  Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.  I continued to discuss with my wife and after sleeping on it and searching my feelings the next morning I knew what I had to do.  I would take the job and put the dream on hold.  I called the broker and gave him the news and after I hung up the phone…I cried and not just a tear running down my face I was bawling my head off which I hadn’t done since I was a child.  I felt it must have been the right thing to do because it was definitely the hardest thing to do.

Looking back it was the right thing to do at that time as proceeding with the cafe would have been selfish and would have left no regard for my wife and kids or my responsibilities as a husband and father.  Plus the 5 years I ended up working at the corporate office of restaurant company A turned out to be a time that I learned many valuable things about myself and about some abilities I never knew I possessed.

 Of course, when I made the decision I didn’t know how it would turn out but isn’t that faith?  We don’t have all the answers and we need to admit that and then trust God.  The trust God part also means we need to keep our hearts and mind focused on him by meeting with him daily so when he sends a message through our conscience or through other people we will get the message because we are listening.

How or when do believe God has been or was working in your life?

Prayer and Speaking to God

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My next experience of faith was in college.  One of my best friends lost his brother in a plane crash.  I didn’t know what to do or where to go…something told me to go to the Catholic Church some of us had started attending occasionally in our third year of college.  It was at night and the door was locked…I went over to the living quarters and knocked and asked if I could get into the church to pray because I figured that is where I needed to be.  The pastor looked me up and down, probably thinking a college kid asking to get into the church at night in a college town…he declined my request.  Well now what.  Feeling rejected I walked over to my car in the parking lot and looked back towards the church.  The moon was shining with some clouds passing by right behind the steeple…I looked with wonder and then I started to speak…

God, I don’t know what to do or what to say but please help my friend and his family during this sad time and this tragic event…help them anyway you can.  I don’t know what I can do but I know you can help them.

It’s my opinion that this was my first real prayer because it had an attitude of belief behind it that wasn’t there when I would “recite” a prayer during church when I was younger.

What was it like the first time you truly spoke to God?