Him We Proclaim

It's a dastardly scheme of the enemy's. A devastating blow against the Christian walk when a believer does not have the Christ as the Lord over his life. So easily do the attractions of the world creep in and arrest our attention. We turn from the reason for  our existence and allow our minds to grow dusty in regards to how we think of Christ. When materialism, or social help, or Christian ministry, or community service, or hedonism, or any other entity or idea other than Christ becomes our aim, we are trapped in a temporal state of mind. I drove down from Ohio to Georgia last Tuesday. I was concerned about money and the maintenance I had to perform on my car. I had just gotten my oil changed and was forcefully warned about all of the different ways my car could spontaneously combust at any moment if I didn't immediately drop $1,000 on it. Driving to Georgia, I began to worry and fret about finances. Need I elaborate? I think everybody's been here before. Sometimes worr...

Jonathan and I had an open house this past weekend. Maybe the timing was wrong or the location was too far--- regardless, we had very poor attendance. Being a very positive person, this was what threw me into the ocean of reality. However,  God is very intentional, so we started thinking about a different direction God would have us take in getting to Costa Rica. C onsidering we live in a college town...  God has put us in this location, home of Miami University, for a specific reason. I believe one of the reasons is to help students understand stewardship. Maybe God is wanting us to ask for support not from established individuals but from the poor, college student who can only give up a coffee a week. I just finished Andy Stanley's Fields of Gold.  The book does a wonderful job of addressing stewardship and what prevents us from giving. Fear   is the reason Andy suggests why we don't give back to God. We're afraid that when it comes down to it we won't have en...

I am more than eager to go to Costa Rica. This picture of the youth group is the background for our computer. Every time I see it, which is often, I pray for the students that they would seek God and find Him. I pray for the young women that they would find fulfillment, satisfaction, love, and encouragement from God in His Word. I pray that the youth will desire to know God and know His Word. I pray for Jonathan and I that we will be leaders worthy of this ministry He has called us to. We pray that He will use this time in preparing for Costa Rica to teach us how we can better minister to these students. There are so many different ways God has made it clear that He desire for us to go to Costa Rica. I'll have to write a post about all the different ways at another point. We trust that God will provide the necessary funds for us to actually go and be the youth directors. However, it is challenging to trust Him when things aren't going at the rapid pace we desire. We're ...

Last Thursday, two of my Youth Climbing Team students made me very proud. They led up our indoor wall. There are two type of rock climbing with a rope: the first is top-roping, where you have an anchor at the top. The rope goes from the climber, up to the anchor, and down to the belayer, who takes up the slack as the climber moves up the wall.  Lead climbing is the second type, where the rope is tied to the climber, and as he moves up the wall he clips the rope into anchor points in the wall along the way. The belayer feeds more slack to the climber as he moves up the wall. If a climber were to fall top-roping, he would fall maybe 2 feet. In lead climbing, you fall the slack to where you last clipped in to an anchor--and that much more (if you're 5 ft above you're anchor, you fall 10).  Where as top-roping can require no previous experience, lead climbing requires hard work at skill and technique. I had these two students training on more and more difficult routes while sti...

Patrick stealing his first cookie Patrick loves to talk. He'll babble all day to anyone or anything. The other day I heard him saying his normal "Dadada  dat dat dat adadad," so I went to check on him. He was talking to the baby on the diaper box! With his constant attempt to communicate-- and my linguistics background-- I'm very interested in how he'll soon start to understand and even say more words. This got me thinking.... How is Patrick going to understand the word love?  I say "Patrick, I love you" about 20+ times a day, but what will that mean to him? How will he learn to understand love? Then it dawned on me... Patrick will understand love because I demonstrate it's meaning to him. I comfort him when he cries. I feed him when he's hungry. I play with him and cuddle with him. I consistently show Patrick that I love him. He'll understand love because I love him and demonstrate it.  1 John 4 came to life in this context. Verse 19 s...