"God is pleased with you when, for the sake of your conscience, you patiently endure unfair treatment" 1 Peter 2:19

This was one of my Journal entry's for one of my classes so I just copied and pasted it so the beginning part probably won't make sense. I haven't posted a blog in awhile so here it is.


This chapter is so necessary to where we are in this program. If I may I'll quote Susannah.. a lot of times we feel like slaves and not sons and daughters of our Lord. I think we need to keep in mind, "No one on earth posseses more authority than Jesus, yet He never defended Himself before authorities." I feel like a lot of times I'm frustrated and confused because I'm getting asked to do things I don't quite understand. Especially in my track time. I get asked to do certain things but because everyone is pressed for time they can't explain to me what I'm doing and why. I just do it and it's incredibly frustrating and I don't feel like I'm gaining anything. But in reality I am and God knows I am.

We're taught to stand up for ourselves but no one ever told us to take harsh ridcruel, this kind of throws all of the foundation of our thoughts out the window. It's so strange to think to bite our lip and not justify our situation because Jesus did not do that. Whoa... Jesus did not stand up for himself and he took it all for someone else. That someone else is me. We think of hard times as building character but never viewed it as a blessing."He uses it to set us up for a blessing." But we need to humble ourselves and allow that blessing to come. I loved this verse, "He left his case in the hands of God, who always judges fairly" 1 Peter 2:23 It's hard to remember we're not of this world when we don't know of anything else. This is just temporary and we need to be treated unfairly and be broken because "a prerequisite for intimacy with the Lord is a broken heart." How will we ever truly know how much we need to cling to him if we have it all together? I think keeping in mind that nothing gets by God and realizing that he is the ultimate judge.

Atlanta

Monday we left to go to Atlanta to help with the flood victims. It was, I don't even know because words can't describe. I was there, I saw it, I talked with the home owners and I still can't imagine how I'd react. I can't comprehend it.

This picture was when we first arrived. This guy was one of the pastors we partnered with. He was telling us that we were one of the first groups to arrive. I was really confused to why we were the first groups to arrive. A lot of the people in Atlanta did not have flood insurance which left a lot of people homeless and lost. The pastor here told us a lot of people were so confused on what they should do that a lot of people ended up going back to their homes and sleeping on garbage bags. That means not only are they breathing in mold they're breathing in waste; sewage.

I know this is a funny picture but if you look at the trees you can see the discoloration on them. That is how far the water went up. We were told the water was up at least 30 ft. Crazy..
The two pictures above are what we did all day. We tore people's homes apart and threw their lives out of windows and took them to huge dumpsters. One of the interns said it was awful that he'd ask the home owners something like, "This uh is your family photo it's water damaged but do you want to salvage it." And most of the time they just reply with just throw it all away.
These are what the homes looked like after we gutted them.


Some girls I met and some girls I already knew. Even though it was a traumatic time it was also a wonderful bonding time.

One of the most moving things to me was our last house. It was eight at night and it was dark. I was tired and I was ready to go home. I wanted to be done but we ended up doing one more house in the dark but lit up by two car's headlights. I was so annoyed but as we were busting our behinds I realized that the man who owned the house was sitting outside on his lawn watching us. He was an older gentlemen named, Mr. Leon. He was by himself. I started to think If we hadn't done his house, who would have or at least how long would it have taken for someone to do it? He sat there and watched us rip apart his house. Not just his possessions but his carpet and his walls. Throwing stuff out of the second story window and dragging it out into his front yard for garbage. How would you react to that just sitting there watching your home be demolished? I don't know how I'd feel. I don't know it's things like this that we do in the internship that make me appreciate life so much more. That make me more of a humbled person and become more compassionate towards people, because that's hard for me. The authenticity that we brought helped out a lot. And I think we forget where the glory should go.

"The Longest Distance Between Any Two Points is the Shortcut"

This may be a short one but it is something that I recently.. like as in now.. had a revelation about. I'm reading a book for my Healing of the Inner Man class call Change Your Life with Changes That Heal by Dr. Henry Cloud. It got me thinking about time. In the past couple of years I've come to think how time is a man made thing. It's just a way to measure the day so it's not really important. It's just something we made up from when the sunrises till the sunsets. I'm sure you all knew or assumed that back in the day people woke up when it was light outside and went to sleep when it was dark.. simple as that. Time to me is relevant to a clock... well it use to be that way. It's a moment.. significant and small and impactful. God invented time. You know that verse in Ecclesiastes where it's like there's a time to be born a time to die a time to plant a time to... blah blah blah.. by the third line you're completely drained from saying,"a time to a time to." But it's actually quite moving. "God understands developmental process; he invented it. He uses time." What I find funny is I say time is man made I don't care about it but I always get to where I'm going before the scheduled time. I plan my day out I'm not strict to it or anything but I use God made time. Since the internship started our directors talk about how we're here to do and not waste time. Because if we waste our time then we're wasting God's time and none of us want to be responsible of that.
The most moving part of this book I decided to post so here it is.
"We have always been enticed by shortcuts. But shortcuts often spell failure, and this is Satan's goal. Satan tempts with quick riches and money-making schemes; God offers the blessings of long-time faithfulness: 'A faithful man will be richly blessed, but one eager to get rich will not go unpunished' (Proverbs 28:20) Satan tempts with instant intimacy through sexual passion, but God offers the faithful building of a loving relationship. Diet fads tempt with quick weight loss, but such diets do not develop the long-term discipline needed to maintain weight loss. Drugs and alcohol hold out immediate relief from suffering, but do not build character that can endure."

Erika said something the other day in one of our classes that I found relevant to my thought. She was talking about how whenever she fasts someone from the office brings in a chocolate cake. She like so many of us try to justify our situation. She debates for that slice of cake and the taste of it but she told us how when she wins her battle against herself it's beautiful. If she had ate the cake she could have missed out on a revelation God planned to give her all for a slice of cake. For that moment, however long it takes her to eat a slice of cake would be lovely but afterwards we'd just feel regret. We would have messed everything up just for that instant just for a taste.. when it comes down to it when we turn away cake we're still serving.. we're serving God in ALL THAT WE DO even turning down cake.
One of the sermons given not to long ago was what is our purpose in life... A lot of us wonder that. What in the world am I doing and the three bullet points were for being a follower of God were.. 1. It'll cost you your past ie Stop getting caught up in what you've done stop wondering what could have been 2. It'll cost you your future ie stop worrying what tomorrow holds stop trying to do your own thing 3. Ultimately it'll cost you everything. Salvation is free... You're going to have to forgive and you're going to have to forget.
"There is not a Devil in Hell that can over take you. God created you, he gave you existance, he cares for your future, there's no way he'll let that go away."

I guess that was actually quite long sorry guys! and I typed it quickly so the grammar is going to be bad! LOVE!

Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Romans 12:9

9-13-09

We're in a series here at Celebration called Amazing. This past Sunday Pastor Chris Hodges came to speak to us. He spoke about Passion. I wasn't going to type any of my sermon notes to my blogs but I feel like I should because the same day Sarena texted me and told me that the message at her church was about being passionate too. Thought it was a sign... this might be a little jumbled but hopefully something is moving to you. He talks about how we get so caught up in doing we forget to sit in silence and just take God in. We fall in love with doing things that we forget. "There are things to love but not love above God." One of my favorite things he said that night was, " I don't want to be in the temple doing stuff and forget to fall in love with Jesus." Which is so true we think we need to do things for God to love us. Question is out of all this doing do we love God? Imagine him sitting up there and we are grocery listing off what we do for him and he says, "I know what you DO for me but do you love me?" "God loves us doing things for him but his highest desire is for us to just love him." A couple of bullet points of what to have passion for are... 1. Passion for worship... it's not just about standing and sitting raising your hands singing the words on the screens it's a relational time with God. 2. Passion for prayer... if you've read my past entries you'll see that prayer that is something I'm really focusing on. "prayer is something that deserves a lot of attention." "Get passionate about prayer, be serious about prayer or else it won't work." God knows what's going on inside of you but he wants you to come to him with it. Lizzie, an intern with me said, "A friend can tell if something is wrong with you and they might even know what it is but you have to still confide in them." James 5:16 says, "....The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective." 3. Passion for people... People are going to last forever so get passionate about them. All of your material items are going to burn down. Take interest in listening to one another. We're complex and you never know what someone is going to do or what they're capable of. We're forever.. 4. Passion for purity... this was actually number three but I loved what he had to say here I put it last. "Impurity is a passion for YOU." It may be lovely at the time but what about forever? Pastor Stovall said today, "Pay now with discipline or pay later with regret, you'll pay either way." Pastor Chris told a story about how his son got swine flu and he was freaking out. He said he stayed clear of his son for three days and was constantly washing his hands. Trying so hard not to catch it to. As he was washing his hands he heard God say, "Look how hard you're working when you've found out something can get on you." I loved that. Just because sin isn't an itchy bump on our skin doesn't mean it isn't real. Actually it probably hurts a lot worse than the itchiest itch. We can forget that the Devil is real too and he's plotting against us. When things are going along smoothly he's making a customized sin for all of us. He knows just as well as God does what our weaknesses are. I felt like that message was pretty intense. Of course I didn't portray it as good as the original.

The internship is still awesome!

This is Me, Alison, Erika, and Casey at TacoLu for Girl's Night!

This is, oh wow, Lee, Lizzie, Chris and Tom

We went downtown to some not so nice areas to talk to people and invite them to a movie night!

What you do to the least of these, you do unto me

9-5-09

Today was our frist outreach. Before I started the internship outreaches was one thing I was excited about because I knew it wouldn't be like holding bibles in our hands, standing on a soapbox, yelling at people about the fury of God. We made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and took bottle waters with us down to the beach, to reach out to the homeless.Before we left we talked about how no matter what they said.. or what they were on we were to look at them and see Jesus in them. Which is so hard and easy to forget. When we got there we kind of broke up into partners so no one would feel bombarded. but what had happened was amazing. There was a group of homeless people and there was a group of us so it just made sense to combine them. It was so funny how quickly they became our friends. It was amazing how awesome their faith in Jesus was. Not too long into meeting them they asked us if we could "circle pray." We immediatley grabbed eachothers hands and listened to theyir prayers. One man prayed for another man who had drowned that morning. Then another man started to speak he said, Lord I don't know how to pray but I'm going to try." He prayed for his six year old niece who has cancer. then the man standing next to me whose name was Mike also known as Pops. He started to cry, what he said wasn't quite audiable but I just knew he was crying out for help. From what I understand every monring Pops wakes up and gets drunk and abuses any drug he can get his hands on. He doesn't want to be that way anymore. He wants to be the one to get off the streets. He wants to change. Pray for Pops. Another lady we met her name was Miss Linda, When you meet these people you always wonder how in the world did they get here? She talked to us as if we were freinds. She told us her marriage was terrible. Her husband broke both of her knees. She decided she'd rather live on the streets then live with him. Another intern and I kind of broke off to hand out more pb&js. We found an older gentlemen sitting on the beach. He was my favorite. His name was Gray. He didn't really talk much. He told me he loved the ocean and I told him I liked it too. We kind of just sat there with him. I so appreciated it because I think all he wanted was for someone's company to enjoy God's creation with. When Casey, the other intern I was with asked if there was anything he wanted us to pray for he said the Veterans. Casey asked him if he was a war Veteran... he said no. After he said this I realized out of all the people we had met and asked what they would like us to pray for, they never said themselves first. I was suprised with their faith. But as Susannah said, again another intern, "When you have nothing it's easier to put your trust in God." When we're at home watching T.V. with a roof over our head, and a full refridgerator, we can easily forget to have faith. As we were walking back to our vehicles we passed the first group again. They reeked of alcohol now and I started to get annoyed. I had lost sight. I forgot to see the Jesus in them. As I layed in bed that night I was reminded of a story from one of my favorite books, Irresistible Revolution. In it he says, "I have an old hippie friend who loves Jesus and smokes a lot of weed, and he’s always trying to get under my skin and stir up a debate, especially when i have innocent young Christians visiting with me…One day, he said to me, ‘Jesus never talked to a prostitute.’ I immediately went on the offensive: ’Oh, sure he did,’ and whipped out my sword of the Spirit and got ready to spar. Then he just calmly looked me in the eye and said, ‘Listen, Jesus never talked to a prostitute because he didn’t see a prostitute. He just saw a child of God he was madly in love with.’ I lost the debate that night. When we have new eyes, we can look into the eyes of those we don’t even like and see the One we love."

"Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus."1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

I'm getting a late start on this so hopefully I can at least remember at least a couple of weeks ago. The frist day of the internship was a retreat to Fort Clinch. We arrived.. blindfolded.... We were blindfolded because sometimes God is going to ask us to do something and he's not always going to reveal a whole lot to us. It's also because we need to live in the NOW. Stop asking questions and just do what God has asked us to do. Lee, one of the directors of the internship told us about living in the now. For me it was just a conformation to a sermon I had heard in Indiana. The sermon was titled, "HERE and NOW." The Pastor at Campus House in West Lafayette Indiana said, "You can't change your past and you really have no control over your future." The first day there we broke into teams and adventure raced around Fort Clinch. One of the catches was we couldn't stray 10 feet from eachother. Point being if we're the body of Christ how can we be if we're too far away from eachother? It'd be like Jesus with a broken arm.

That night Lee told us he kind of enjoyed pain. We may find this a little odd sounding but it's because it makes us who we are, in a sense. Like if we don't know how down we can get then we don't know how much we need to cling to God. How can we fully appreciate him if we don't go through a trial? The second day was more of a get to know everyone. We hiked around Fort Clinch again, but not really racing. A lot of getting lost though. We went to the beach that night for worship. It was amazing with the ocean right behind us. The leaders there wanted to pray over all of the first years. Erika, the other director of the internship, put her hand on my shoulder and prayed outloud, over me. Once her hand was on my shoulder and her words came out of her mouth I realized I had never been prayed over. You know I know prayer is important but this is just because people always told me so. You hear people say, "Oh I've been praying for you." That doesn't really have an impact on me because I kind of view that as someone asking, "Hey how are you?" but they continue walking on never stopping to hear if you're good or bad. I feel that it's just been something that Christians say as small talk. But at that moment I felt the intensity of prayer. At that moment I truly knew the importance of prayer. Right before we went back to camp we were all looking up to the stars and I don't know but I loved what Lee said next. He said, "Look at how big our God is, look how big his creation is, you can't box that up. To even try would be foolish." We silently walked back to camp with those thoughts racing in our minds.

Before we headed back to the church we picked up all the trash at the empty campsites. We did this so we'd know no matter how small or how annoying the job is, we are to still serve God. We don't need to be a pastor or a worship leader to serve God to our fullest.

So far I've started the beginning to my awesome relationship with God, met some pretty amazing people, and have realized that I have a grand pair of directors. You can tell Lee and Erika aren't doing any of this for their own pride, they're doing it soley because they're Godly people and living a God-first life. We have something called corporate prayer, which I don't think defines it well. It's just a room where we go and pray together and then alone, just a nice meeting place with God. Now I already said that I found the importance of prayer but that does not mean I'm what so ever comfortable with it. I mean what could I possibly say to the creator of the universe that would be of some worth? At our second "corporate prayer" Erika came over to me during our one on one time with God. She told me she didn't mean to interupt me but God told her repeatedly that he wanted her to come over and pray with me. I immediatley started balling my eyes and told her that praying has been placed on my heart. I told her I felt the intensity when she touched my shoulder at the beach. I think that was my first revelation. You know just a conformation. That if I am to ever doubt God and his existense I should remember that moment. There is no way any of that was a coincidence.

Lee talked to us about sharing what God has revealed to us. I appreciate this.. he said,"If God gives you a revelation to benefit you don't share it with someone that's not at the same spiritual level as you, you could easily lead them astray." Basically people would probably think I'm a crazy person if they don't know God the way I do, it makes so much sense.

I think that's all I want to type sorry so long... I hope you enjoyed let me know! I'd love to actually have a conversation with you guys! Who knows it might provoke something...

Eh hem... entry one

So as most of you know I am an intern at Celebration Church in Jacksonville Florida. It's already started and it's been about three weeks now. You know before a big event starts you get so excited and you have this anticipation about it? Well my event has already started and I'm still so excited, my anticipation is still here in what God has in store for my next day. It's amazing. I know that through out this year my life is going to take a radical change and I get so excited to share what happens inside of me... so I thought it'd be easier for me if I just created a blog so I didn't have to keep typing to all of you the same thing. So I hope you stay connected with this blog (as I hope I will too haha)