Doing what you are supposed to

Romans 12: 4-7.....If you should be doing something
you better do it

"Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship." -Romans 12:1

Have you ever felt like there was something that you were supposed to do but weren't?

Over the past year I have been sitting in a space feeling like there is something that I should be doing but wasn't... I have been on a long, emotional, tiring, stressful and exciting journey. It has put me and my family through the ringer but we know that God has given me some gifts which I haven't been using. We know that God has hardwired me with some ways of worship, which I have not been doing. I have also been learning that I am a creative. I may not be a creative with art but I am a creative with thoughts and words.

So I have found some things that I need to do it so I am going to do them. Here is my list-

5 Things I need to start or reincorporate into my life:

1) Putting God first: This is a never ending battle. Making sure that God is first in my life and making sure I invest in my time with Him. I need to give God the best of my time, not the leftovers.

2) Put my family second: Often times my work, my thoughts, my laziness, my distractions come between me and my family. That should never happen EVER. With Baby #2 due on May 5, I know that I need to spend some serious time refocusing and reorganizing my priorities to make sure I give my family the attention they need and deserve. I am slowly learning to put down my technology, leave work at work, and I hope I keep getting better at it.

3) Learning: One thing I am learning is that I need to a) read and to b) write. But I need to do these things in the best possible way.
a)I need to read things that will fill me up and inspire me, less Facebook and Buzzfeed articles.  I need more Bible, and books that will inspire my faith, leadership and creativity.
b) I need to write as an expression of who I am and what I am learning. I am an information junkie but I need to write to process what I take in, otherwise it is all for not.

4) Preaching/Teaching: I started in ministry know that I loved to see people come to faith and I longed to help them grow in their personal journey with God. What I have learned is that God has given me the gifts of preaching, creating and teaching. I need to live this beautiful gifting out, or I am throwing away what God gave me.

5)Living differently: There are two things I don't do enough of in my life.
1) Exercise! This is probably a common one for people like me, those of us who default to reading and love to eat. But I am learning that I am more bearable as a human being when I exercise. I also kind of like it when I do it. So I am challenging myself to do it a little more often, and hope it becomes a lot more often. Sure I could stand to lose a couple more pounds, but I could stand to gain a vibrancy of life even more.
2) Bring people into my life- It's really easy for me to have superficial relationships or just depend on the deep ones I already have, but I truly love people. I love talking to them, laughing with them and even just watching and studying them. I hope that this next stint of life I bring more beautiful people into my life.

Funny Moments At Small Group

Tonight we had a great small group time with my Sr. Highs. We got together played some Balderdash and then spent some time talking about how we define ourselves and talked about how we should want ourselves defined is being after God's own heart. We used 1 Samuel 16 and Acts 13:22 to talk about it. It was really a great night but we sure had some funny moments when the students defined themselves.

Some actual words/phrases students used to define themselves:

-Broken Record

-lightbulb

-slightly OCD (but only slightly)

-socially acceptable

-alright

- if I was on the periodic table I would be Thalium

- A Mercenary

 These things were great they truly gave me a light into how the students view themselves and gave us a great chance to enjoy some humor.

Another humorous moment in the night was prayer. I don't know why but sometimes prayer just ends up being full of laughter amongst my group.

A great moment from prayer:

 Dear God, thank you for the food we ate tonight and the hands that prepared it; even if those hands were from Safeway"

Now I am sure some people might be questioning whether or not I am fit to be leading a group of youth if these things come up, but I would love to assure you that my students asked some really deep questions as well. To be honest, sometimes its also nice to just have a good time! God loves laughter- in fact its one of our values amongst our youth.

Water Slides

That feeling, when you are about to plummet down a huge slide and you know you are going to get a wicked wedgie. Pain is very possible, along with a huge adrenaline rush and a few screams of excitement.

Map of Cultus Lake Water Park

How many places can provide that feeling? Yesterday I took a crew of boys, my intern and my wife to Cultus lake water slides. It is the biggest water park around, they pump out good music and the slides are crazy with names like Tubular Terror, Valley of fear, black hole and one we jokingly called the drop of death.

I started this as an annual event last year for the sole purpose of bonding. Water Parks are great for bonding because you have to stand in line- when you stand in line over and over you get to a lot of talking. You get to chat and laugh about all sorts of things and you talk about things that might not otherwise come up. The other great thing, is you get to go down insane rides which at moments can be terrifying for some people, so you can joke and laugh and have fun together.

As usual whenever something good happens in ministry I try to glean what I can out of it, so I can build on it, and improve our ministry. And what I came up with was simple, sometimes you need to create time of socialization. We often have fun events, or bible studies but how often do we have a time that leads to lots of talking outside of a lesson. For myself I know not often, so I hope to seek out more things that could create talking.