My Heart

Why am I doing what I am doing? Why when I have a degree in Mass Communications, experience managing and leading people from twice my age to half my age, a culinary arts degree and great paying job where I can set my own hours, two kids, more than enough to keep me busy, why am I in seminary? Why am I pastoring a church with as many opportunities as challenges? Why?

The biggest reason is my love for Jesus and the life I am afforded because of his life, death, and resurrection. See I spent the greater part of my life so caught up in the world I saw around me and all it told me about who I was and what I was worth and what I should value. Then I met Jesus and all that got turned upside down. Don't get me wrong, I went to church. I had heard about Jesus, but it wasn't until I was 30 years old that I had an encounter with Jesus. I wonder how many people are sitting in churches every week that still don't know who Jesus is. that grieves me.

I found out that what God saw in me was far different from the world. He calls me his precious child and has shown me who I really am. Who better to do that than my creator? Because of God's love for me I have been set free from all of that stuff that kept me believing I had to work to be good enough. Everything I do is just a response to that. Everything I do is about showing and telling others about that freedom and about that love and grace.

At the end of the day I have to say I am doing what I am doing because God called and I answered. I could never have gotten to where I am on this journey without that call. I would never have signed up for this path, BUT it is pretty awesome to commune with the creator, to hear and be heard, to be called, and to respond. I want everyone to know that such a relationship is possible for them. I know it sounds crazy right? I know God, we talk, daily. He hears me when I pray. How awesome is that?

Children and the Kingdom of God

Children are our future. That is the simple truth. Like so many things in this country our care for our children is all over the place. Some children have everything they could possibly ever need or want to the point that they don't even appreciate a bit of it while others live on the street or in little more than a shack all but thrown away by society. Some have two parents that live in the same home, but statistically more or more do not, while some will never know their fathers at all. Regardless of the situation these children are the future of our country, of our world, and of the Church. How are we reaching them with the love of Christ in each of their situations?

I met some people last week that are going to great lengths to reach children with the gospel from suburbia to project housing they are doing whatever it takes and it is changing lives of those both young and old and it is changing churches and it is changing the shape of our future one child at a time.

It is so awesome to watch someone so committed to the calling God has placed on their lives. This is not something they set out to do, yet in the midst of growing in their relationship with God, and in the midst of living in obedience, this new opportunity presented itself. It wasn't an easy decision. It meant walking away from a nice stable job and stepping into the unknown. Wow how they have blessed others and they have been blessed in return!

Is there anything risky that God is calling you to?