Sometimes

Sometimes everything can be really stressful.  Between finding a job (which is now solved) and finding an apartment and finishing school and blah blah blah.

Luckily for me, I don't have to do any of it alone.  I have my best friend in the world to help me out with everything and walk by my side for the rest of my life and to be there for me.  Forever.  She's been such a blessing to lean on and to love when things get really hard.  I don't know what I'd do without her.  She helps me make it through anything.

Thank you so much.  I love you with all of my heart. I can't wait to be your husband.

The Lesson I Learned In Haiti

God Gives, God Takes, God Blesses.

The End.

My favorite website.

Classic

A few years back my friend and I coached soccer at our church's summer camp, and we had this kid named Gavin who was probably in 2nd grade or so, and he told me to call him Sonic cuz that's what all his friends call him.  He's kind of a chubby kid (that might be important to help you picture the story, i'm not sure. It could be irrelevant).

So I saw him in Starbucks the other night with his mom and his mom's friend.  They were in line in front of me.  He asked his mom if he could get something sweet to eat, and she told him no because she bought him a McFlurry earlier in the day.  Then she looked at him and said "you've been having a growth spurt lately!" And he said, "I know, i've been starving like all the time and always wanna eat. Is that what a growth spurt is?" And she said "sometimes that's what a growth spurt is. I've had a few in my life where I have growth spurts where I grow out instead of up." And he looked at her and said "Mom, Don't talk about yourself like that. You are beautiful!"

Yeah, really cute.  Just when I started thinking the same thing, I noticed that he proceeded to stick his hand down the back of his pants and scratch himself.  When his mom saw him, she got onto him and he started trying to touch her with the hand that was down his pants.

Classic.

Ayiti

I Want To Be Back Here!  Watch that.

I want to be back there.  I could definitely see myself living with these people and doing life with them while sharing the Gospel through my words and actions.

Have Your Way

I think it is safe to say that I'm currently in a dry spot spiritually.  I haven't had much desire to get into the Word lately.  It just hasn't been there for me.  I don't really know why.  It seems so quickly that I go from the high points with God where I feel his presence to the places where I'm just not feeling it.  Today has been the first day when I've gotten into the Word in a few days. 

God brought back a famous passage to my mind and it just happened that this section is the section in Mark where Jesus is asked about the Great Commandment.  This is a pretty common passage, I would say.  Jesus answers the scribes question that the greatest commandment is to love God and to love people.  But I don't think the scribes response afterward has even been brought to my mind.  The scribe says, "You are right, Teacher.  You have truly said that he is one, and there is no other besides him.  And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one's neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices."  I don't know if I've ever heard that before, but that's where God chose to reveal himself at this point in my journey. 

A lot of times when I struggle, I feel like after I sin I need to do all these things to almost make it up to God.  I need to read my Bible a lot, scriptures that address sin and brokenness specifically (Psalm 51 being a favorite).  I need to workout to just Christian music today.  I need to do this and that so me and God will be okay.  As dumb as that sounds, welcome to my mind.  The passage in Isaiah 64 about even my righteous acts appear as filthy rags before the Lord float far away from my mind.  I have to make it okay.  1 John 1:9 never pops into my head to dwell on.  This is where religion screws with my mind.  It's rough.  And it's something that him and I are working through.

In addition to reading the above Scripture, I read My Utmost for His Highest for the first time in probably a week.  And wow, it was great stuff.  This is the part that spoke to me: "In learning to walk with God there is always the difficulty of getting into His stride; but when we have got into it, the only characteristic that manifests itself is the life of God.  The individual is lost sight of in his personal union with God..." That's my prayer.  That I can walk through the difficult points of getting into stride with God and walking in his footsteps so that Matt will be gone, and all that is seen is the life of God.

My prayer for tonight will resemble a song lyric:

My whole life is Yours
I give it all
Surrendered to Your Name
And forever I will pray
Have Your way
Have Your way

Here I stand, arms open wide.

This is the Way

The plans for the future are still really uncertain.  I graduate in about 8 months and I don't really have a concrete idea of what I'm going to be doing.  I have several options, so maybe I'll just ramble about the possibilities in order to get a clearer picture of what's on the table.

• I could go to seminary right after I graduate, so next fall.  At the moment, I kind of have two options in this area.  The first is the one I've been considering all along, going to Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest.  For a good period of time that was the only place I'd really want to go.  They're just really missions minded, which I love, and they have a program called 2+2 (or 3) where you would spend two years in a classroom setting learning from books and teachers, and then the last two or three years, they would send you to live on the mission field somewhere and when that time is done you would receive a Masters of Divinity in International Church Planting.  Sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me.  Plus the campus is amazing. 
• The other day, one of my professors asked me and this other guy in my class if we were going to seminary after we graduate and that if we were, Mercer's seminary is increasing the number of full rides they'd be giving to PBA students.  She also said that she thought the two of us would be great candidates for that.  While Mercer was never really considered, and its also not a Southern Baptist school (it's some kind of Baptist, just not S.B. I'm not sure how much that matters...)  Going to school for free, or whatever a full ride means is pretty sweet.  I'm looking into whether I can take advantage of that if I choose to not go to seminary right away.
• I also want to get involved pretty heavily in the mission field after I graduate, most likely in Haiti with Mission of Hope, the place we went to in March.  Amanda and I are both looking into this.  Speaking of her, there's a good chance that we could be looking at getting married next summer (crazy-I know!) so that plays into my decisions on everything since she still has 1 more semester after I would be done.
• If we don't move to Haiti right away, I could begin to look at the possibility of finding a job, maybe at First Baptist where I'm interning/apprenticing (if that's a word) now.  Or we talked about moving to Ft. Myers and me looking for a job with Mission of Hope's base in America.  Who knows?

Big decisions.  All this didn't really help my decision too much.  I just have to trust God and not get freaked out.  I know he'll straighten out the paths and tell me where he wants me to go.  One of my favorite verses is Isaiah 30:21 which says "And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, "This is the way, walk in it," when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left."  To me, it makes me pretty confident in realizing that there's no place I can go or nothing I can do to mess up where God wants me.  Maybe that's all head knowledge, and it hasn't fully transitioned into my heart to make it real yet.  That's probably true.  That's something me and God are workin out.

Talk About Bold and Courageous

A couple weeks ago at the men's bible study I go to, one of the staff members brought up how there was a group that came to our church the previous Sunday morning and brought their religious book called "The Zohar" to the greeters at church and gave it to some of the staff too.  Not only did they bring multiple copies of their book, they also sat quietly and respectfully in all of the services in an attempt to witness to the people of the church.

This sounds crazy, but it was really convicting.  These people were willing to bring their religion to another religion's place of worship and tried to share what they believed about Ultimate Reality.  That's guts.  I started to wonder if I would really ever be willing to do that.  I mean, that takes evangelism to a whole new level if I was willing and bold enough to do something like that. 

It's funny that they take their religion, which is so full of weird mysticism type stuff, and market it to Christians.  Their book, the Zohar, is written in Arabic.  When one of our staff members said to one of them "I don't speak Arabic," the person replied "Well neither do we...but you just glance your eyes over the text and you feel a sense of enlightenment."

How much more should I be willing to share what I believe, the ultimate truth that lies in the Gospel?  Instead I just keep my mouth shut and try to live a good moral life so people will approach me and ask me about why my life is different.  Maybe things are a little backwards...