More Midnight Night.

Here is a compilation of stuff from Midnight night. It's mostly video. :)

I have now drank from the fountain of blessing. I had a Diet Coke with "minerals and vitamins." It was an expired can from over a year ago but I figure it was filled with vitamins and minerals so it was probably okay. Seems like an oxymoron to fill my body with "Formaldehyde" like chemicals and then add a few vitamins and minerals...but hey, we're all about marketing here anyway, right?

I don't post alot of blog like this one...but I thought it was worth sharing.

pc.

Thanksgiving and Christmas Fast Approaching.

Every year, I get to this time and think, "My goodness...this year has gone fast." But it usually is not till Christmas that I begin to reflect on the last year. And so last year around Christmas time, I put in my calendar for today to reflect on this last year. it's a good thing to do and it will give me time before Christmas actually approaches to really process what happened this year in my life.

On a different note, Thanksgiving and Christmas will be alot of fun this year as my wife, Isaiah, and I are going to Orange City for Thanksgiving and then Alleman for Christmas. Sweet stuff!

-pc

Matt's New Guitar.

So today, right now actually, I am sitting in the Activity Center at church listening to Matt play his new guitar and thinking about what it means to serve God with the gifts and abilities that we have. Matt is a talented guitar player and will serve God with this gift and ability and passion that he has, especially with his new guitar. But it wasn't his new guitar that made him have the gift or ability or passion. It was his hard work and now he can play the new guitar with brilliance. I think often God gives us opportunities to "play our new guitars" and we must be ready for them. We must have developed the gift that God has given us with great stewardship and care taken for what he has given us and blessed us with.

Flipping Stones of Criticism

Recently, I was contemplating criticism. No one (this is my unofficial poll) enjoys criticism. We hate being told what we are doing wrong. And in and of itself, criticism is not necessarily a terrible thing. In fact, it helps us to move forward and learn and grow. The issue that I have with criticism is this. I go looking for it. I don't know exactly why I do this, but I want to know what the issues that everyone has are and I want to fix them. And in the process of desiring something that I perceive as good, I end up burning myself in several ways.

I want people to input into what is happening. But I already get enough criticism that I don't need to go turning over rocks to find more criticism. As I have already said, no one really enjoys that.

When I was little, I would go to the local pond and flip over rocks in the small pond that was there to catch whatever was underneath the rocks. Usually, I found Crawdad, small fish, large alligators (not really) but every once in awhile, I would try and grab whatever was under the rock before examining it. And often, I got nipped by something that was not very nice. Crawdads hurt when they bite.

While I think that I will continue to turn over rocks trying to help people, I must be careful not to reach for whatever is under them until I have surveyed the situation.

God, give me wisdom and knowledge when criticism comes my way in life.

Amen.

The principle of "revealing Santa Clause."

When I was an intern in youth ministry, I was working with a group of middle school students and teaching on the idea of grace. I had started with this brilliant (or so I thought) illustration about Santa Clause. I basically said that we give Santa Clause alot of grace. I mean, we let him come into our house, eat our cookies, track on our carpet and then he leaves. Sometimes he leaves the right gifts and other times he does not...but we give him grace.

I then said something that I regret saying but learned a principle for student ministry for years to come. I said, "You all know Santa Clause is a myth right?" Ugh. Wrong thing to say. You don't say things that kids are taught from an early age to believe without their parents telling them first. It really just illustrated to me this idea that parents really need to be the primary spiritual providers of their children in a lot of different ways. Parents need to be involved in telling their kids about sensitive issues. I learned this principle the hard way. One of the boys in the front broke down and started crying.. "WHAT?!!!" He asked...

For those of you who want to know the answer...Santa Clause may or may not be real...but the principle is true. Parents need to be the primary spiritual provider of their student. THat much I know. :)

By the way, God has given me the tremendous privilege of partnering with parents to disciple kids. How cool.

pc.

What is the dream that God has given me?

Today, one of the speakers that I listened to challenged us to think about the “dream” that God has given each of us and not to give up in the process of the dream. I had to think about what the dream that God has given me really is. If the dream that God has given me is all about me, than it isn’t a dream from God. If the dream that God has given me is really all about him accomplishing it, than it is about him. So, I will be fairly transparent and honest in this blog (which is my desire through Contemplating different things) and talk about my dreams that God has really laid into me in the past.

When I worked at camp years ago, I had a student in my cabin that asked a few very hard doctrinal, biblical questions that came straight from a heart that honestly wanted to know what scripture had to say about these questions. I didn’t know the answer. I realized at that point that I was not competent in the word. Fast forward a few years into college and my heart was broken as I realized that many of the students that I was working with that were high school students truly didn’t know God’s word. They knew concepts from scripture but they did not understand the depth of the doctrine that scripture offers. I was worried. As I processed this my first couple years of college, God seemed to impress on me that for the rest of my life I would “develop followers of him.” Okay God. I will do that. Aren’t I already doing that? Isn’t that what you called me to do in student ministry? The answer was “yes, but I want you to be completely focused on that.” Wow. Okay, so everything that I do, I must siphon through this filter of whether or not it actually develops fully devoted disciples or followers of him. My dream that God has given me is that a group of students and adult leaders that I am working with would be “fully devoted” and that would play itself out in many different ways such that others that don’t know Christ would point there fingers and say, “What is so different about that group?” and with great confidence that group would stand up and identify themselves as followers of Christ. That group wouldn’t be anemic, wishy washy, or self focused, but that they would be radical in their faith walk. And I believe that this must start with me.

The speaker said that we must enjoy the process. We must be faithful to the process. If this end result becomes about me, if the end result relies on who I am, it will never happen and my sense of who I am in Christ begins to dwindle and I begin to fade in my mission and my dream. Would I die for the dream that God has given for me? Absolutely. But would I do for the process that leads me to the results of the dream? I’m not so sure. But should I be? Being faithful in the process is incredibly important that I do. I must follow hard after Jesus in my relationship with him so that I may be the “leader” of this radical group of followers that are “fully devoted.” I will work hard, but I won’t give up, shut up, or sit down as I walk along the process. I don’t know that it is healthy to make “pacts” or “promises” on a blogspot, but for the last 2 years, my mission has been this undeniable call to develop disciples. And I am doing that. And I will continue to do that. And I am loving it. And there are days when it isn’t the most thrilling thing in the world. And there are days when people take shots that are difficult to swallow. Sometimes, I end up with arrows in my back. But I will be radical for the sake of the gospel. In my neighborhood. In my relationships. In my local church. With students. With adults. With families. With my family.

My mission is to develop fully devoted followers of Christ and it would kill me not to be able to do this.

God, don’t let the fire die within me. Help me to pace myself in this journey of discipleship. Give me good mentors and disciplers along the way. Amen.

Learning.

God is teaching me several things at the moment. He is teaching me that I really must have honest accountability in my life. He is teaching me that I must step out and live in faith. He is teaching me that if I am to be in sustained ministry i must be willing to not live the "sprinting headless chicken" viper assassin. Okay, so i'm a workaholic. I realize that. I don't like being a workaholic and I'm not exactly sure what in my psychy makes me this way, but I am. I enjoy what I do and sometimes don't feel like I got anything accomplished. I love to see what happens in peoples' lives as they begin to seek God.

But all of that comes at a huge expense to me. Not monetarily. God has blessed me beyond belief monetarily...but family wise. My family cannot suffer at the hands of my addiction to work. And if I call a spade a spade, that's really what it is. I have this danger of prioritizing in a very wrong way my life.

I'm processing this and realize that there are many folks that deal with this tension in their own lives. And if we are honest about it, we know that we cannot sustain healthy Christian principles and lives living this incredible "rat race" that we call "a productive life." It will kill us. Tonight, we heard a guy talk about being weak in a time when he was running around like a chicken with his head cut off. He talked about other character assassins being evident in his life when he was too busy to really think. I must avoid this to honor my family and my God.

Help me to honor you in my job, in my relationships, in my life. God, give me the wisdom to understand how to balance. Amen.

The More I study...the less I really know...

Seems like the more that I study God's word, the less that I really know. I continue to dig deeply into what God says to us through his word and am currently taking our middle and high school groups through Matthew 5-7 doing a series on "the heart of Jesus." But here's the funny thing about this series. The more that I dig into the passages of scripture, the more i realize that I don't actually live the principles of scripture that Jesus teaches in this sermon on the mount. Which is problematic beings that I say that I "follow" Christ. If I really followed Christ, I might want to start like listening to what he says and putting it into practice.

I guess I'm a good person...But that isn't what Jesus called people to be. He called them to be radicals about their faith. He called them to deal with sin very directly. He called them to love people, to live in a way that acknowledges his power. And for so long, and in so many different situations...I have not done that.

Matthew 5-7 is a "problematic" section of scripture for me. And yet, it has me fixated on trying to live out Jesus principles in my own context. Is this possible? It was possible (apparently) for the audience that Jesus spoke to. He wasn't speaking to a people that naturally did these things that he calls us to. He is speaking to an audience that is shocked by what he is saying. They were amazed at what Jesus was calling others to be a part of. And I am also.