It’s that time of year again!
Next week, I’m spending five days in Colorado at CIY Wilderness.
I do this every year, and I refuse to miss it, it’s that important to me.
It refreshes my soul.
In a nutshell, Wilderness is an opportunity for youth ministers to connect with God and one another. It’s a chance to get away from the daily stresses of life and ministry. It’s a chance to let God revitalize me.
Do you want to know what I really hate?
Hearing complainers.
Hearing someone complain just might be the number one thing on my list of pet peeves.
That includes my children complaining about doing their school work or chores, the guy at the bank who complains about having to wait in line too long, and everything in between.
Imagine my horror when I realized this morning that I have been in a season of life where I have been complaining a lot. Too much.
You know that feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when you realize you’ve done something bad, and there isn’t a thing you can do about it?
That’s the feeling I had this morning as I read Philippians 2.
Sure, I’ve read it before… dozens of times, if not more. But, for some reason, it really stood out to me this time around.
Here’s the passage that impacted me so forcefully, Philippians 2:14-16a, in the NIV:
Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life.
That was a pretty intense wake-up call. Because, as I read that over a couple more times, instances of complaining started flashing through my head from the past few days:
When is the last time you took a good, deep look at the book of Proverbs?
I don’t mean a cursory reading, or finding the few verses you need when you want them.
I’m referring to a cose study that results in new understanding.
That’s what I’m attempting for the rest of the year.
With the start of 2012, I started a new Bible reading system, by Professor Grant Horner. So far, it’s been a great fit for me. I’ve been more consistent than I’ve been in a long time, and I’ve experienced a deeper understanding of the inter-connectedness of God’s Word like never before.
For the rest of 2012, as I continue to work my way through this reading system, I’m going to add a deeper look at the book of Proverbs.
Here’s my plan. Each day, I will write out several verses of Proverbs into one of my favorite pocket journals. Armed with this in my pocket, within easy reach, I will examine each day’s verses several times throughout the day. If needed, I’ll consult a couple of good commentaries I have on the shelf. But since most of the Proverbs are common sense, simply meditating on them all day long should be sufficient to implant their wisdom in my head.
This week, I had the opportunity to write a guest post for Sundi Jo Graham. You can read my post here.
Sundi Jo writes about life, faith and leadership on her blog, as well as about other issues such as social media, health and more.
As an author and speaker, Sundi Jo shares Jesus through her story of abuse, addiction and redemption.
I suggest you check out her blog. You’ll find a lot of great things there that will help you along your own journey.
If you took the time to read my guest post at Sundi Jo’s blog, what did you think? You can leave your thoughts in the comments below.
Sometimes God does amazing things in such a way that you can’t help but be in awe of the way in which he handles the situation.
He’s done just that in my life recently.
I’ve been hearing some road noise in my car for the past few days. Sounded like I needed my tires rotated. So I headed to the tire shop down the road from the church to see what I could get.
After looking at my car, the guy determined that I had one tire with a belt that was separating. I would need to replace a couple of tires. Fortunately, he had a couple of used tires that would fit my vehicle. I wasn’t too thrilled about buying them used, but $75 for both was way better than $125 apiece.
As the mechanic removed the wheels from my car, he noticed that my brake pads were in dire need of replacement as well. That would cost me another $200, for pads and rotors. But the brake guy was off that afternoon; I’d need to come back the next day.
Before I could make it back to the tire shop, I happened to mention the situation in passing to a few guys at the church. In the space of a few moments, I received a gift of new brakes and four new tires.
I was floored!
I believe that it is important to develop certain disciplines in your life. One of the most difficult disciplines for me has been the discipline of journaling.
I’ve been a sporadic journaler ever since college. It’s been hit or miss, on again off again for most of my life since then. I start big, with grand intentions, but it always seemed to fizzle out after a few weeks.
Until a couple of years ago.
When I attended CIY Wilderness for the first time in 2009, I started journaling more consistently, and I’ve managed to stick with it better than ever before.
I believe that this is because I’ve discovered and become convinced of several incredible benefits of regular journaling.
Here are ten of my main reasons for journaling:
As you probably already know, a major earthquake hit the islands of Japan on Friday. With a magnitude of 9.1 on the Richter Scale, this places this earthquake within the top five worst earthquakes since 1900.
Hundreds are dead. Thousands are unaccounted for. The quake caused massive tsunamis that added to the devastation, and reached as far as the west coast of North and South America.
The quake also caused damage at the nuclear energy facility in the city Fukushima, resulting in a radiation leak that is growing more ominous by the moment.
And added to all of this are the aftershocks and additional earthquakes that continue to hit the islands.
This is a terrible tragedy. The loss of life and property is staggering, even horrific.
But there are a few things we can learn from this catastrophe. Here are a three things that come to my mind.