I have been listening to Louie Giglio for 20 years. God has his mighty hand on this man’s life. He is being used to make an incredible impact on our world through the Passion movement. I highly encouraged you to watch this video in its entirety. It reminds us in an SHOCKING way how God’s hand is upon us holding us together through the most difficult times of our lives. He is unseen, yet His handiwork points back to Him. Thank you Cari Rae for sending the link.
I just thought you might like to see a picture of our family after business meeting Sunday night. We are such a hodge podge of people, but we have so much in common through Christ and we have such a desire to see God do mighty things in our midst.
“Father, make us one as you and Christ are One.”
30 Hour Famine Originally uploaded by pastorjay_photoalbum
The youth are doing the famine thing this weekend with half a million others around the country. World Hunger is an international organization that provides a way for individuals to sponsor a child for as little at $30 a month. In this picture, though they will not eat for another 26 hours, these youth were handing out free cookies at a major intersection in town to draw attention to hunger around the world. They also had pictures and information of “adoptable” children. The youth will stay together all night and sleep outside in a cardboard village and then conclude the famine with a lunch after church tomorrow. They will also be serving “unimix” from a tent in front of the sanctuary after the morning service to give us all a taste of one meal that is used to nourish impoverished areas of the world.
I found this interesting story about one of our members: here
Reaching Indians in Romania
June 14 , 2006
Dr. David Man Singh is an Indian believer that was converted from Hinduism as a boy through missionaries in his homeland. He is called and deeply burdened for his own people in India. So why would God call him to go on a mission trip to Romania? He certainly didn’t know. Even stranger was that this mission trip was designed to use the game of tennis as a tool to share the Gospel, and Singh doesn’t even play tennis. In fact, when he did try during the trip, he was injured! But God had other plans all along.
When Troy Geddes, International Mission Board missionary to Romania,… (more)
They got some of it wrong, like David’s name. It is actually David Mansingh. Other than that, the story fairly accurate from how I remember it when we went on this trip in October of 2005. I remember prayerwalking around that complex with David and a Romanian translator and speaking to one of the women looking out of a window of her apartment.
I was talking with one of our youth this week that has been struggling over the last year spiritually. (He speaks of this publicly and blogs about it.) One of the things that caught my attention was his perception of the peaks and valleys of spiritual life. It reminded me how high and low those peaks were for me when I was his age. Summer camp was high and feeling alone as a Christian in high school was low. Oz had something to say about this today in the Utmost devotional - posthumously, of course.
One of the worst traps a Christian worker can fall into is to become obsessed with his own exceptional moments of inspiration. When the Spirit of God gives you a time of inspiration and insight, you tend to say, “Now that I’ve experienced this moment, I will always be like this for God.” No, you will not, and God will make sure of that.
He says that if we try to hang on to and continue to live for those moments, we become a burden to God rather than helpful. This is because those special moments are gifts - gifts that we cannot choose to have at the moment of our choosing. They are encouraging and inspiring, but not for daily consumption. Moses didn’t stay on Sinai. Jesus didn’t pitch tents on the Mt of Transfiguration. John did not remain in the vision of Revelation on the Isle of Patmos. We are to be incarnational. We are to take that relationship into the world.
Father, help me to be willing to do the hard work of Christianity - even when it’s not exciting or easy.
April 2008 007 Originally uploaded by pastorjay_photoalbum
I had an opportunity recently to see the progress on the Catholic Church after our ministerial alliance meeting. It looks like it will be very beautiful.
Wisdom for Fools - Proverbs 3:11-12
11 My son, do not despise the chastening of the LORD,
Nor detest His correction;
12 For whom the LORD loves He corrects,
Just as a father the son in whom he delights.
1. What (if any) is the difference between punishment and discipline?
2. As a child, was there a time where you were punished that you learned a positive lesson? Explain.
3. How is punishment a protection? When does punishment go to far?
April 2008 013 Originally uploaded by pastorjay_photoalbum
NOTE: If you are reading this post first, it may not make as much sense until you read the previous post and compare the pictures.
5:00 pm - At the end of the day, I made it through three of these babies. So, I checked out the rest for reading at home. I did find this Hebrew Bible in the stacks which was very helpful since I didn’t bring my own. I think I need to brush up on my Hebrew!
April 2008 010 Originally uploaded by pastorjay_photoalbum
11:00 am - Today I had some time to head toward the library. One nice thing about William Jewell is that no one else seems to be using the religion books :-). There really does seem to be more of a selection of available books for me to study and I can even check them out to bring home!
One the left is a pile of books on Proverbs that I was hoping to go through for dissertation research. In the center is a grande Pike’s Place from Starbucks and on the right - well, my whole filing cabinet is hidden in there. I have about 10 dissertations, 3 chapters worth of research including dozens of articles and notes files, and every other computer file that I have made in the last 8 years. It’s time to get to work and shrink this pile of books.
Gathering 4
Originally uploaded by pastorjay_photoalbum
This seems like such a long time ago! Believe it or not, that’s Trent on the left with the basketball! I think that’s Felicia in the background. We had to move The Gathering in that night because we were afraid it would rain. I am trying to add some of our pictures to flickr. If you would like to create a Yahoo! account and join our church group to display your pictures let me know. It would be nice to see some of your pictures from church activities.
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