Change of Heart

It is amazing to me how quickly we change our minds. And it is interesting to me what causes us to change our minds. I mean, we could be totally sold out on a fact or a plan or whatever, and in what seems like a skip of a heartbeat, we are making new plans and heading in a new direction and believing new things.

Take the book of Acts for instance. Just a few "pages" before this wonderful book that records the Acts of the new Church, the disciples are hiding in homes and running away from gardens and denying the man they had been following. Then they get some visits, they get some words of encouragement, they receive a gift, and all of a sudden, they are the most devout, strong, loving, forgiving, miracle showing people you've ever heard of!

And what changed? Yes, their circumstances changed. Yes, their location changed. Yes, their rabbi changed. But what changed? Their hearts. Is that too simple? Can it be that easy? Can it just be so simple as to have a change of heart? It appears to me that that is just what happened. They lived, they saw, they believed, they changed. But what I love about that change is that it did not just change their hearts; it changed their whole lives. It changed their actions.

I heard a sermon this weekend about balancing your actions with the grace you've received. Balancing your life with your calling. What does that look like? What does it look like to have a life that is in balance with the calling you have received? What does it mean to have a change of heart?

Today, this blog is not a blog of answers. It is a blog of questions. I would love to hear what you have to say about this. What does it look like? Share a time when your life was in balance. What does it mean?

Good times were had by all....

I was able to go back to Iowa this past weekend to celebrate Easter with my family. That was delightful! I love being around my family. My parents keep me chuckling almost all weekend with their random stories and crazy antics. I was able to sing with my mom, which rocked my socks off! i was able to eat some GOOOOOOD chocolate with my padre. I got to shoot things on the Wii with my brother and his wonderful girlfriend. My mom's folks came up so we got to have dinner with them on Sunday night. It was, all in all, a great weekend with my family!

Then I got to spend Monday with a fabulouso friend. We just got to hang out and talk and cry and laugh and eat food and some more yummy chocolate. It was a great Monday. A sad one, because I could only stay for part of the day, but a great Monday nonetheless.

As I was reading Acts over the weekend and thinking about how stinkin' awesome the first church was, I was struck by just how grateful I am for the things that God has given me. I know that generally we spend time in November being thankful for things, but I found myself just reciting to God all the ways that He has continually blessed me over the years. I know that I am still struggling with seeing His plan for me right now, as I still have been unsuccessful in landing a job, but I know that in the midst of all of that, He has granted me with people that are willing to sign checks over to me and throw money in my car as I am driving away. I know that things are not always going to look like what I want them to look like or what I think they are going to look like, but through it all....man, through it all, God is faithful!

"Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father;
There is no shadow of turning with Thee;
Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not;
As Thou hast been, Thou forever will be."

Thank you, Jesus.

Knowin' Your Stuff

So, I have been reading through John just for fun and have really been struck with just how stinkin' awesome God is! I mean, I have read this book many times before, but John is really quite the author. What I love is that each of the gospel accounts are in our Bible for different reasons. I love that John doesn't leave anything for the imagination; he wants us to know exactly why he wrote this book: But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

And I have to tell you, after having read it again....I believe once again (even more?) that Jesus really is the Christ, the Son of the Living God. Man, oh, man. Does he do some amazing things in this book! Raisin' people from the dead! Walkin' on water! Feedin' thousands of people with practically nothing! Amazing!

But you know what I think is awesome? I mean, don't get me wrong, Jesus rocks my face off! But you know what I think is awesome? These disciples who ran away in the garden, denied him during the "court" process, hid themselves in a room are the ones, not three pages later (in my bible, maybe yours is bigger....teehee) that are speaking in tongues and sharing the Word of God (Jesus!) with anyone who can understand them...which is, like, EVERYONE within hearing distance! These guys see Jesus head up to heaven in a cloud (if you believe the flannel-graph I grew up seeing!) and then head back to Jerusalem to being to share the most important message of their lives.

The title of this blog is "Knowin' Your Stuff" and here is why. These men did not waste any time in telling the Jews just who Jesus was and how he had been foretold from the time of Adam, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and all the prophets. They have spent the majority of their lives learning the scrolls and hearing them spoken in the temples, and they spent the past three years watching all of those scriptures come alive in the life of Jesus. If you check out the first six chapters of Acts, you will be wowed as you see these men recall scripture left and right for the purpose of saving lives! Amazing. I want that. I want to know my stuff so well that when people ask me for a recount of Jesus or what I believe or whatever they might need, I can in short order tell them what I believe using scripture in the way it was intended to be used....to save lives.

"Something Clever and Eye-Catching"

Yep, that's right. That's my title. Get over it. :)

This past week I was fortunate enough and blessed enough to spend some time in Sublette, KS at Sublette Christian Church leading worship at their spring revival. Good times. Good times. I went into this particular event quite unsure of what to expect. I mean, it's southwest Kansas....can God even exist in southwest Kansas? My answer to that incredibly ridiculous question? Most definitely!

Kurt Mortensen from Cherokee Hills Christian Church in OK City, OK was the speaker and wow did he ever speak! That man took what most of us know as everyday Christian life and spun it on its head. He challenged all of us to get out and live dangerous lives. The lives of Jesus and his disciples were anything but safe and mundane! If you look through the book of Acts alone, you will see how over and over again God was challenging people to think outside the box and step outside of what they had always done and thought to do to step out and speak the gospel on his behalf.

I was reading through part of Acts last night and was struck at the prayers of these disciples. Acts 4:24-30 is a prayer that the followers prayed right after Peter and John were released from custody and reprimanded for speaking in the name of Jesus. These men & women knew that they were being threatened and knew that death might be a very strong possibility for them if they continued in their current plan. However, they did not pray for a hedge of protection. They did not pray for the people who were plotting against them to have a change of heart. Instead they prayed these words. "Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness."

Dude. That is stinkin' awesome! Seriously! I mean just think about it. Put yourself in their time and their lives and their moment. "Lord...enable us to speak with great boldness!" That is just amazing! I try to read the Bible as though it were really happening to me, and I just have a hard time imagining that I wouldn't have been praying for protection and open doors (away from the Jews that were plotting to KILL me!) and hedges of protection! But these guys were legit!

So what does it mean to truly be a follower of Jesus? What does that really look like? Man, I am not even sure I know anymore! The more I read through the gospels and the book of Acts, I am reminded and convicted that I need to be bold. I need to be willing to die. I need to be willing to get up and walk across the boardwalk at my apartment and meet the family next door. I need to be willing to step out and LOVE the people that I come in contact with. What does it mean to you?

To love like Jesus....

Ok, so I was reading John 13 in my devo time last night and was struck by something that I have read about a bajillion times (and yes, math majors, that is a real number). John 13:34-35 says, "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."

What does it mean to love like Jesus?

I have been reading through and thinking through 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, which says, "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres."

And I know that loving like Jesus should look a lot like this. But I fear sometimes that we get too caught up in the gushy love. The love that forgives everything and is gracious. The love that sweeps everything under the rug and pretends like it didn't happen. But that does not sound like love to me. According to 1 Corinthians 13, love rejoices in the truth. There is a lot of meaning in that phrase if it means what I think it means. Speaking the truth in love is not always easy. Truth is not always easy and gushy and lovey-dovey. Sometimes it is painful and hard. But does that make it any less love?

I would like to know what you think. What does it mean to love like Jesus? What does it mean for Jesus to say that they will know we are his followers by how we love one another? Do we do this? Do we as followers of Christ look like Jesus when we "love" one another?

What is faith?

Ryan was asked to preach at SouthWoods Christian Church in Overland Park because their preacher was away for the weekend. For his sermon he decided to preach on Hebrews 11 and tackle the idea that we as followers of Christ must overcome our beliefs and live by faith. He did a great job! :) He is a man who enjoys adding in the flavor of the times and therefore, he made sure to put some video in the sermon. He interviewed a man by the name of Chuck who leads a ministry in KCK called Urban Scholastic Center who left a good paying job in a great part of the area to go back to his hometown and start a ministry helping teens and families become more than they ever dreamed of. This ministry is amazing, and if you have the opportunity, you should definitely check it out. He also chatted with the preacher of the church about his initial faith leap to plant SouthWoods 20 years ago. Ryan also asked me to share my testimony of moving to Olathe a month ago and the struggles that have come with that move. I wanted to share with you what I said on camera. Here is a link to the video itself for those of you who are more visual learners! :)

I moved to Olathe, Kansas mid-way through this past January to help plant 33 Church with Ryan and Sara Nelson. I left my friends, family and a pretty good job to pursue something I had never done with someone who had never done it, in a city neither one of us had ever lived to help people neither one of us had ever met. Yet somehow, it just felt right.

The funny thing about feelings is that they come and go. There have been moments during the six months between making that decision to move and actually moving where I felt really good about what I was doing. And there were other moments it did not feel so good. But I believed I had made the right decision, and I believed the people that I loved that said I made the right decision.

So I moved. I moved, and I felt......sad. I felt lonely. I felt confused. I had expected to feel excited and pumped up and rejuvenated, and instead I felt sad. I remember crying into my pillow night after night. I remember throwing my hands up in the air and falling back on my bed and between sobs asking God, "Why? Why me? Why now? Why here? Why like this?" And no matter how many times I did this, he just kept saying, "Just wait. You'll see. Just trust me."

Trust. What a funny word. A good friend of mine has been throwing this word at me for the past few months, and you know how you hear something in one ear and totally shut it out in the other ear? Well, apparently that is what I had been doing. So when I happened across Romans 15:13 which says, "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit," my first thought was, that is what I want! I want joy! I want peace! I want to feel hope! So I called up my good friend and read that to her. And the first words out of her mouth were, "See! It's all about trust!" I stopped and re-read the passage. She was right. In my desperation to feel joy and peace and hope--to feel the way I wanted to feel--I had missed the main thing. I had missed trust.

This season is not the easiest season in my life. It won't be the hardest, but it is definitely not the easiest. I know that there will still be times that I cry into my pillow because I miss people or I miss things. I have chosen to take a step out in faith, and I know that God is faithful. All I have to do is trust.

Awareness & Vision

So today Ryan and I went to this Church Planting meeting somewhere in Kansas City(ish). There were two sessions today. The first one was about Stratgey....well, kinda. The second one was about GTD, aka Getting Things Done, which is a systematic way to organize and prioritize. I would like to focus on the first session today for this blog. Not because the second one wasn't good, it's just that....well, let's just say the first one was more applicable to me at this point in my life.

This guy named Kevin Something (not really his last name; we'll pretend that I am protecting the innocent) talked about strategy. Actually he didn't really talk about strategy. I have no idea what he was supposed to talk about, but he talked about awareness, vision, strategy, courage.

What I really loved about what he said is that planting a church is SOOOOO not all about your children's program, youth program or small groups. It is SOOOOO not about strategy. Before you can plant a church, you have to be aware and have a vision. You might be asking yourself....um, why is this important to me? My response? Cause this should be how everyone walks into any kind of ministry anywhere, regardless of if you are planting a church or not.

Being aware is about seeing your community and the area in which you are ministering through God's eyes. It is all about seeing the community for what it is and seeing things the way they are. Too often people walk into a community full of ideas of what they are going to change and do with an existing church or with their new church plant, and they never stop to figure out who these people are or what their needs are.

After you have figured out what the needs are in the community, your job is to figure out what direction you think the community needs to go. This is called vision. It is not strategy, mind you! It is not figuring out what method to use to make sure that all the young people in your community show up on Sundays. It's not about what day of the week to do your small groups or how many people should come to those small groups before you duplicate. It's about seeing the future in a sense. Vision is about seeing where you and your community need to go.

Awareness comes from spending time in your community and talking to people. It comes from opening your eyes and looking through God's glasses to see what is happening. Your vision comes from realizing what is going on in your community and dreaming about where you think it should be. Only after these two things have been worked through can you even begin to strategize.

I know that this sounds like, "Duh!" But to me, this was huge. I just quit my full-time job, left my family and closest friends, moved to Olathe, and am looking for a part-time job to help pay the bills, and I am not sure that I have any idea what this community needs or where it needs to go. Now, granted, I trust Ryan to figure this out and know where it needs to go (eventually), but it really put within me a desire to get to know this community. I am not sure what this means, but I know that it will take some work and take some time.

Awareness. Vision. Hmmm. Something to think about.