Ready for the next chapter

Putt putting during life group!

During my major trial a couple of weeks ago, I was feeling that I wanted nothing more than to just go home and get life back to normal. I was sick of not having the ability to go get something to eat after midnight. I wanted something besides freakin' McDonalds. I was just sick of Estes Park.

Now that the trial has passed and my heart has been restored by God, I'm feeling as motivated as ever to keep on going in ministry and at LT. Since that happened, that means that I should be dreading leaving here in a week and a half, right?

Nope. I want nothing more than to be back in Columbia doing work for The Rock right now.

Don't get me wrong, I'm really enjoying and savoring my last 10 days out here in Colorado. I've learned so much about leading out here in Colorado that I'm not even sure I've processed it all. God has been incredibly faithful with all my prayers and hopes and desires and I know he has what's best in store for me. I've got a great group of friends that I'll miss dearly when they go back to Bowling Green, Kent State, Illinois, Texas A&M, etc. I will miss the crap out of my project group, JDC, too.

Even with the amount of fun I am having and the growth and trust that I'm constantly gaining in God out here in Colorado, I still can't stop thinking about next school year and how we as a church can make the biggest impact for Christ at Mizzou. I can't wait to live in Columbia and be reunited with Irene, Elizabeth, Ben, Tony and all our other awesome friends in canvas group.

I love Mizzou.

This desire was fueled pretty heavily last night. We had an awesome Mizzou get-together last night that started with sharing a little bit of what God has done with us this summer and ended with a extended time of prayer in beautiful Moraine Park. After a long time of group prayer focused on the campus as a whole, we split up into canvas groups and made a number of specific requests to God for people in our group and for the health of the group in general.

Nothing could have excited me more than to hear my brothers and sisters in Christ from Mizzou praying expectantly for God to do crazy work this year on campus. I felt that insane passion that God has given me for the college campus rise up and really overwhelm me, so much so that my body was shaking out of excitement. I can't even fully express in words what I was feeling last night.

There is so much passion and desire for our church this year. We want awesome unity in our canvas groups. I felt God calling me to pray for specific people and for a huge focus on outreach throughout the whole 2012-2013 school year. We want to be able to raise up enough leaders to multiply canvas groups next year. We just want God to move radically in a way that no one can even imagine.

My heart for Mizzou is just overflowing right now. I just want to get to the next chapter of life and see what God has for me in the next year. I just want God to use me!

God restores those who return to him

The Y on the 4th of July. Awesome day.

<sup>Since my last blog post, I've learned first hand how awesome and faithful God is when you come to him desperately.

After figuring out what was distressing me over the few weeks preceding my last post, I heard God calling me to rest in him and allow him to fill me up and restore me. Through that, He put this verse on my heart:
 
Psalm 23:1-3

1</sup> The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
²     He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
³     he refreshes my soul.
He guides me along the right paths
    for his name’s sake. 

This verse has spoken so much to me in the past week. I didn't even remember the reference when I was thinking about it, I just knew the part about leading me beside quiet waters and refreshing my soul. That's exactly what God did for me over the past week.

Since I felt God calling me to rest in Him, I basically took four days to spend a lot of time alone with God, reading, praying and waiting expectantly to be filled up by him again. I'm not one to usually do a thing like this, but I certainly did learn the value of it when God showed some of his basic truths to me again. 

It's amazing to me how dumb we as humans can be. How can I forget that all I need is God's love to be sustained? That is something I have known for years, but in a moment of a trial, it is easy to forget in your heart for some reason. That's what happened to me this week. Through reading and being still to listen to God, he revealed those truths to me and really showed me how he loves me individually.

I'm learning how it's tougher than most people think to be in a leadership position in a church. There are a lot of outside pressures. The pressure to serve everyone in your group effectively is quite draining, but there is no doubt that I'm learning on the job and enjoying what God has taught me this summer. 

Continue to pray for all of us out here as we are all feeling some cabin fever and anxiousness to return home and back to our campuses. We just want to make sure that everyone makes the most of this awesome opportunity and grows as closely to God as possible so we can be as effective as possible when we get back on campus.

Thanks for all your support, everyone!

Spiritual dryness

It was a rainy week in Estes, too, which could be affecting everyone's mood!

So it seems like we're getting to that point in LT where everyone is tired, getting tired of being around the same people all the time and basically everyone just feels like they want to go home. Guess what? I'm feeling the same way. Just cause I'm an intern and just because I didn't go through that at all last year doesn't mean I'm immune from these feelings all the time!

This is part of the reason I didn't blog last week. I couldn't find the energy or the motivation to do so and I feel like I'm just kind of treading water right now. It's no fun.

Through this dry spot, I have felt God calling me to keep pushing on and persevering so I can see beautiful fruit at the end of the summer, but I honestly have no energy or desire to do that. It sucks because I know time at LT is precious and I need to take advantage of it, but every part of me is having a hard time desiring to be close to God. That sounds terrible, but a relationship is not always perfect, even with our Lord. Please pray that I can get over this spiritual low and that I can allow God to fill me up again as soon as possible.

The trial has allowed me to take the last couple of days to try and think and process why I am feeling this way, but I can't really pin it down at all to any specific things. This is something I have really struggled with too: feeling bad or uneasy and not knowing why.

Still, through processing all of this, I think what God is trying to teach me is that everything in ministry will not always be fun and games. That should be an obvious fact of life for me, but experiencing it so strongly here at LT while doing ministry work is giving me a good image of what to expect for a full-time staff member.

That's exactly what I wanted from this internship. I wanted to gain a full and clear picture of what full-time ministry could look like for me, both good and bad.

I don't want to be dishonest with anyone and tell everyone that it's all going great out here, but I don't want anyone to think that it has been a terrible last couple of weeks for me either. I've had some great project days, I got to hang out with my girlfriend, Irene, and there has been some awesome spiritual growth out here to watch! LT is still a great thing and I wouldn't rather be anywhere else for this whole summer.

I hope to post a more encouraging update next week!!

This year's struggle

Over two weeks in and I feel like this summer has been the exact opposite of last year's summer in many ways thus far. 

Social Life

First Rockies game of the year! "We" won 13-3

As an intern this year, my schedule is so flexible that I've had all the time in the world to hang out with whoever I want whenever they are available. I can adjust my work around when other people are available. I also no longer have to sit in the Rustic Cafe and watch my friends play card games and have a great time while I'm stuck at work. That's awesome for me because that was the hardest part of my summer last year. Now there is no excuse for me not to make deep relationships with everyone that God puts in my life.

The bad thing with not working at the Y, though, is that I'm having a hard time meeting non-LTers, especially since the Y put basically all of LT into one dorm by ourselves. Having a community with non-believers is one thing we really need to be able to reach out to people at the Y. It is hard for me specifically because I don't work or live with any of them. Pray that I am still able to find and seek out non-believers and share my faith with them

Time

Another huge difference for me this year has been how I spend my time. Last year, I had just become aware of my desperate need for personal growth and an understanding of God's love. While I'm still desperate for that (as every Christian should be), my job with GCM has made me turn my main focus outward to the students involved with LT. 

This desire isn't an inherently bad thing. Focusing on helping others improve their walks with God is a much needed thing and it's the thing that excites me most in life. I can't tell you how many times I've caught myself just smiling uncontrollably while listening to people talk about how much they have grown at LT so far. I desire to see that in everyone who has a budding relationship with Christ and that's what makes me think I want to do this full-time!

I'm still learning how to find the appropriate balance between spending time with others and building into them and spending time with God and allowing him to build into me.

Relationship with God

Sweet moonrise over Twin Sisters

Over the first week of LT, I basically neglected my relationship with God because of the hectic nature of the start of the program and because I think deep down I was starting to believe that I didn't need to focus on myself or my walk with God. Obviously that was dumb.

Through that trial, I've learned that the best way to be a good leader in a church setting is to set a great example of a fully-loving relationship with God for the people I am leading.

 

Like I've said before, my goal for the summer is to more fully understand Jesus' life and realize with my heart why God is worthy of my eternal praise.

 

Since that first week, I have been reading through various passages in the New Testament, but I'm mainly focusing on the Gospels, starting with Matthew. In reading and studying these chapters (with my new ESV Study Bible! Woo!) I am coming to a fuller understanding of who Jesus was and how his story and life connect so beautifully with what was prophecized in the Old Testament.

 

As far as the second goal, I have been in a constant state of joy and wonder so far this summer, rejoicing in what God is doing in my project group and in my life in general, which has certainly given me more reason to praise Him and realize his overwhelming power. Obviously, there is a long way to go in this goal and I'm sure I'll never be done learning!

Thanks for all your prayers and support!

Learning to lead

Awesome sunset on Monday evening

LT has really gotten into full swing since I last posted, so this will probably be a pretty long post (but it's all really exciting!). We've had our first LT service, our day-long retreat and my project group had its first project day all in the last six days! I don't think we could have asked for a better or more fruitful start to #LT2012 than we have had in the last week.

Weather

Snow on CCYF

We all knew that Colorado would be fairly  cold, especially at the beginning of the summer, but no one expected this kind of weather! It has snowed twice since we have been here and I've had to wear a jacket during the day almost every single day. Hopefully it starts warming up soon so we can start playing baseball and tennis whenever we want!

LT Talks/Retreat

Andrew Schulz leading worship on Kickoff Night

Man, I can't tell you how awesome the talks have been so far this year. John Drage from Mizzou, Chris Ridgeway from Illinois and Brian Wiles from Bowling Green all hit great and thought-provoking points in the first 5 talks this summer and they have really challenged me and others to chase God fully this summer.

The kick-off talk by John Drage last Thursday really struck me because he talked about asking God what you want from Him in faith. A parable in Mark 10:46-52 says that if you do that, God will give you the desires of your heart. I've read that before but I can't say I've ever fully believed it. Since then, God has been super faithful in answering my prayers because I have truly decided to believe that God can answer prayers.

Talks at LT really strip away all the garbage and get to the point quickly, which is what I love. The theme of our Tuesday night talks is Jesus and the theme of our Thursday night talks is God's Leaders. I'm sure that through these talks and the stories from the Bible that are used in them, faith will be challenged and a deeper love of Christ will be formed. I would be willing to say that some people will become saved through the things they hear in these talks! Prayer for that will be fully appreciated!

Project Day - JDC!

Everyone telling our Project Group why they came to LT

My biggest job as an intern is leading a project group, a group of 20 people (in my case) that get together on a common day off to spend the day together searching for the Lord in a variety of ways. That includes worship, testimonies, small accountability groups and large group discussions, among other things. This group becomes a tight-knit community and is usually every LT participants favorite part of the summer.

My project day falls on a Monday this year, so we got lucky and got to be the first ones to have a project day!

Our day started with breakfast and a couple of "get-to-know-you" games. We wanted to form a good sense of community from the get-go, so we spent the entire morning asking silly questions to each other, playing Catch Phrase, etc. When we were making the plan for the day, I felt kind of silly and lame planning this much time for icebreakers, but in the end I'm glad we did it.

After lunch, God worked pretty quickly in our group to break down the walls and we seemed to be able to open up fairly easily when it came time to share testimonies and figure out what we wanted our vision for the group to be. All of our group is excited to be in Colorado and is solely focused on chasing the Lord, which isn't a given, even at Colorado LT, so that is very exciting for me. The atmosphere for growth is very high at LT, so I'm confident our group will help facilitate a lot of growth.

Establishing our vision was my favorite part of the day. This has been a big focus for the staff this year and I'm really happy our group has decided to run with it. We all discussed our values and what we all want to get from the summer, and through that, we decided that we wanted to accomplish three things in the next 10 weeks: establish a loving community, practice great encouragement within the group and be expert evangelizers.

Now that we have a vision, we will be able to keep each other accountable with it. Hopefully we can accomplish our goal!

We spent the rest of the day just hanging out, playing kickball and getting ice cream in downtown Estes Park. I can't wait for our second project day now!

Oh, and we came up with a pretty awesome name, but we are trying to keep it within the group for a while. All you need to know is JD! CCCCCCCCCCC!
 

Mizzou People

Steven and our new friend, Mabel, from Kent State!

I've been super excited to see how my friends from Mizzou are already growing closer to the Lord and giving up their whole summer to Him. It's nice to see everyone in the group do that, but when you watch people you have known for the last year or two dedicated themselves like that, you get a different and more satisfying feeling. Either way, it's awesome to watch God work and he is certainly already doing that in the first week of LT.

It has also been awesome to start to get to know the 4 staffers from Mizzou that are up here for LT: Kirstin and Andrew Schulz and Chris and Aimee Swift. They are awesome to work with and I've enjoyed just hanging out with them and leading together. If I do end up going back to Mizzou as a staff member, I know I'll have some friends and good leaders to work with!

Prayer Requests

- More personal growth in the Lord that can help translate into better leadership. I want to be a good leader, but I need to be reminded that the only way I can do that is by allowing God to have full control of my life and allowing him to do the work inside of me that he wants and needs to do.

- Pray that this program is used for awesome outreach. We've got a great opportunity to share the gospel with our co-workers and international students, but we've just got to do it! Pray for me specifically, as I need motivation and direction to do this because I only work at the YMCA 8 hours per week.

- Pray that our project group can continue to click well and that we are a great example of the love of God to everyone at the YMCA. Also pray for vulnerability within the group that leads to a better understanding of God's love, grace and faithfulness.

Thanks for reading this long post. More updates to come in the near future!

What I learned about myself this summer

Well, I’m sitting here only a couple of hours from leaving beautiful Estes Park, CO (it’s especially beautiful today, of course) and I’ve decided to blog about what I learned about myself as a person this summer.

I already discussed what I learned about God at LT, which was a lot, but I feel like I learned a lot about myself as well.

One of the themes of LT was “Chazown” which means “purpose” in Hebrew. We were all united in searching for God’s purpose for our lives. I was really interested in seeing if I could find out what to do after college, mainly because journalism is kind of running it’s course in my heart and I only have a year to really figure out what other options I have.

Even with this hope of finding a “Chazown”, I didn’t think God would put a certain passion on my heart that I could transform into a career or lifestyle, but hey, God always shows up when you don’t expect it.

Through one-on-one meetings, project days and everything else that went on here at LT, I have felt led to consider going on staff at GCM church after graduating.

I discovered that I have a passion for helping college students find and pursue God with all of their hearts. I really want to help people avoid going into a spiritual rut if they were Christians before coming to college and I want to help interested people come to know the Lord. College is a great place to do this.

Needless to say, this passion has really got me excited for the upcoming school year. I am ready to go back and #dowork in the Dobbs Canvas group for one final year.

The reason I know that this is a real passion of mine is that I can’t see myself finished helping at the college level after this year. That may be a bit of selfishness coming through (who really ever wants to leave college?), but I really think that I am built to relate with college students and I can’t wait to see what God has for me in that area.

For the first time, I actually feel ready to help lead people in their Christian walks. I have considered myself a Christian for my whole life, but I would have never felt comfortable sharing my faith, helping others through faith issues, etc. Now after LT, I am more than ready, which is another thing I have learned about myself: I am good enough to lead.

One other thing I learned about God is that he is always making me new. I blogged about this earlier, but coming into the summer I was thinking: “man, this has been a great semester of growth, what else is there for me to grow in?”

That was an obviously stupid thought, but God showed up in areas I didn’t know were problems and helped grow me in those areas. I now truly believe that God is continually making his followers new, which is ridiculously awesome.

During a quiet time today, I read Proverbs 11:26. It says this: “People curse the man who hoards grain, but blessing crowns him who is willing to sell. (NIV)”

If you apply this to spiritual growth, it makes complete sense for me going back to school.

All of the things I have learned about myself have been great and I have grown a ton, but what good will all that growth be if I didn’t pass it on? How can I help affect other’s walks with Christ?

There’s one thing I need to learn about myself in the coming year: how to balance building others up with getting built up myself. But that’s for another blog post (coming soon!)