So this morning I found myself actually waking up early to go to a men's bible study group. Typically I do not do so well in a discussion setting as I cannot think of my own opinions quick enough or completely enough to really be worth anything, or at least that is what I think. So as it turns out, this morning turned out to be a discussion on being missional, what that means, and how that affects our lives/actions/conversations. Sadly, I became discouraged when my opinions were confronted. So naturally I ask myself, "Did I clearly communicate my thoughts?" Apparently not because it was taken in a way that I did not intend it to be taken but that is not the point of why I am bringing this up. The real question I should be asking is, "Why did I become discouraged? What are my motives for being here, for giving input?" To give input for the sake of getting a word in edge wise or saying something just because I can is misuse of what knowledge God has filled me with. So anything short of saying something that would give God the glory would be for selfish reasons. Again I ask myself another question, "What is my purpose for coming to this study?" Well, one reason is to grow in understanding while spending time in fellowship with other believers. The other reason is to ultimately be available to be used by God to speak into other people's lives should God lead me to do that. This though goes beyond just this study group because it is applicable to any where and any one we socialize with. Too often I limit myself by confining certain subjects to certain people/places. So I think I'll add that to the list of things I need to work on.

So tonight I happened to pick up todays newspaper and came across an article entitled "Teen Preachers Reach Out to Younger Peers in Tent Meetings". Upon reading it, I was struck in a weird way. It is awesome to see some young people becoming involved in ministry, but at the same time it scares me for a few reasons. First, it seems to me that they are way to young to be preaching and so without having heard the sermons, I am quite leery of their wisdom and understanding of the passages. This is not to say they are not sound, I just can't be sure from the few excepts the article included. But my major concern is why have kids take on such a high responsibility role when there are plenty of other ways to grow leadership in the generation of tomorrow. To have kids involved in the leadership of a ministry is a great way to grow the leaders of tomorrow, but to have kids take on the full responsibility of a ministry is not in my view the best way of accomplishing spiritual growth in the church. I even have my own doubts about what I might say if I were in a situation like that at this time in my life because the more time I spend with God and in His Word, the more I realize that I really will never comprehend everything there is to know about God.

Following the last post, I thought it would be a good idea to decide on some goals to shoot for this year.

• Focus my time and energy on my relationship with God
• Be a more vocal leader at Grace Community in both VI (college ministry) and RUSH (junior high ministry)
• Be bold with my faith in what I believe and in what I say in conversations with people

Our lives are filled with choices, some stressful, some unintuitive, and some painful. When it comes to relationships (or even the possibility of one), it seems to always be that a painful decision is involved. Months ago I found myself in a place that often left me frustrated and confused. Throughout the 1.5 year time span of liking this one girl, I had to endure watching her fall for a friend and then see my friend break it off. In the midst of this I was struggling to figure whether I liked this girl enough to pursue her, and so my mind ended up becoming like a yo-yo in that I kept going back and forth. This was devastating to my health in that I constantly found my self on the verge of just losing it and breaking down. It seemed that I could not let her go completely. Thankfully, this ended a few months ago when God revealed to me what I had been doing. I see now that I was focusing on the hope of a relationship to bring me pleasure and attention from those closest to me. As I look back, I wish I had spent more of that wasted time in the Word with God.

The last week of December found me weathering the St. Louis cold to understand more about God and missionary work. The Urbana ‘06 missions conference took up all of downtown St. Louis and then some, of which I will talk about in following posts. The purpose of this post is to bring to light a thought that had been dwelling in my mind since Urbana. While attending one of the worship sessions, I noticed that for the attending deaf, an American sign translator was provided. A question then occurred to me, “How do deaf people worship?” In my limited scope, I saw worship as words describing what I feel both whether I was saying them out loud or in my mind. Basically it all comes down to asking how deaf people think. Do they think in words, or in hand motions, or both? Trying to wrap my mind around the thought of expressive, descriptive worship in hand motions just baffles me. I am not saying that it is impossible. I believe that there is no constraint to worship so long as it is a persons expressive feelings towards God’s love and provision. Don’t get me wrong here, this is only the tip of the worship iceberg as worship it self goes far beyond that which is said here. What this post all comes down to is the realization that worship goes deeper than just what can be said with words through song, but all the way down to the state of our hearts. Whether we worship with our voices or hands, it is trivial in comparison to that our our hearts. I may not understand how worship works in relation to other people, but I know that God knows the conditions of our hearts.

Originally I had another blog but couldn't import some of those posts into this one. Even with that problem, this should work out better because I was going off on tangents away from the purposes of what I had originally intended for that blog. So with that said I start afresh with this blog.