Hey Guys....and Gals....and Humans

Well, I'm really just posting because I'm in one of those rare moods where one just feels like saying something constructive to thousands of people online...not that thousands read this blog just yet, but we all know what I'm talking about.

God has been doing a lot in my life recently. He's truly been challenging me to look beyond my circumstances. Have you ever felt like God wasn't there for you when you've needed Him most? I know I feel like that plenty of times. We tend to get distracted by just the stuff of our daily lives, and so God seems far away as a result. As a student, I'm pretty much busy from the "time I wake up 'til the time I go to bed, He's in my heart and in my head...." Okay, just ignore that quote. What I was saying is that my schedule is pretty full. It's hard to see God on campus, or at Wal-Mart ( or at a red box movie rental machine...but I'm not going to go into that story ) if our hearts are not in the right place.

If all we're looking at is what we're looking at, then we're missing the point. Think about that last sentence. If we think all there is to life is what we can see with our own eyes, touch with our own hands, hear with our own ears, smell with our own nose, and taste with our own tongue... ( There goes the five senses for you ) we're missing the big picture. Its truly a culture shock every time I come from somewhere and go to church after wards. But why is it such a shock to me? Should it be a shock? I'm starting to think that it shouldn't.

We must get to a place where we're not compartmentalizing different aspects of our lives. What I mean is that most of tend to say we "have a life" after school or "have a life" after church or "have a life" after work; this is the partition mentality. Where we segregate every different area of our life. Notice how I said these are all areas of our lives. We really do only have one life, people. And I don't mean life in the sense of living and breathing, I mean it in the sense of our day-to-day existence. What is a normal day in the life of Christina? I go to school during the day, then do extracurriculars ( school clubs and the like), and last I'm off to a meeting at church or a special event ( and if nothing's going on, I go home and relax, think about doing my homework, and get ready for the next day )

And this is where the problem starts. See how church is separated from everything else? Why do we do that? Aren't we the Body of Christ? Are we not the church? If so, why does it take us getting within those four walls for anything meaningful and significant to happen? Shouldn't our relationship with God bleed into every part of our existence? Is our spirituality merely something to be taken into consideration on Sunday morning? I know this might be intense, but we must begin to realize that our lives should so be impacted by God that we can't help but see others around us being touched by His love. We don't need to conjure something up; the move of God should be natural in the life of a believer.

What I want you all to do is just think about your day-to-day life. When was the last time you prayed for someone at school? Helped out because you genuinely wanted to make a difference in your sphere of influence? Seen a person's life touched simply due to the fact that you were there and open to what God was doing in them? Picked up someone's pencil or pen when they dropped it? When was the last time you made a difference?

Why does it seem no one knows that you're a follower of Christ? Why doesn't your life reflect the changes you say have taken place in your heart? Where is your passion for the kid sitting next to you on the school bus or your co-workers on the job? When will you take a stand and actually do some of the things you've always wanted to do? If you've always wanted to see a new dance team started up that's focused on honoring God, then start it. If you've always wanted to see your classmates surrender their lives to God, then start talking to them about it. If you want to see the things that will impact your school, home, workplace, doughnut factory, whatever...be the change. Be the one to take a stand. If you're passionately pursuing the heart of God, then you have everything that you need at your disposal.

What are you waiting for?

B-) Oh yes...posting on the blog via sms texting. We're moving up in the world.

Check this out...

I was just reading up on Michael Fletcher's ( Senior Pastor at Manna Church of Fayetteville...an amazing church if I do say so myself ) blog, and he posted something super-relevant as to what churches should strive to do in regards to social media, such as the very blog you are now reading...

And I quote....

I just returned from a conference on social media – made my head swim. Of course, to the young guys I took with me, all of this stuff, the bulk of which was less than five years old, was old hat. They were very underwhelmed. My first take was, “Who has time for all this?” Who has time to tweet every thought that comes into their head, take enough pictures to keep their facebook page interesting, or have enough profound thoughts to post in a daily or weekly blog? BUT, in order to reach this generation, we have to learn to speak the language they speak in the manner in which they speak it. It isn’t about information; its about connection; its about being. You don’t have to be profound or picture perfect or insanely articulate. You just have to be yourself and connect. And once that connection happens (provided it is real and not simply a form or social media manipulation) ministry can happen. The church HAS to get this! Not using social media in this generation is like preaching in a robe in the previous generation. Who has time for this? Who doesn’t? The man who ignores social media will wake up one day in a room by himself preaching a message that no one can hear.

Michael

If someone tried to send me a message via messenger pigeon, I would do two things:

1.) Take a picture

2.) Laugh, and think the person who did this rocks

Okay, scratch that example....but yeah, we need to realize when things become archaic. Most people nowadays do not use VHS ( I do, but we're not going to talk about that right now. ) Even less people use Cassette Tapes, and vehicles are not equipped with this type of technology. Your average technology user goes on MyFace ( Inside joke... ), They Twitter, Post blogs, and has some type of mp3/and or video playing device...in most cases it's their cell phone (Unfortunately, my phone does not quite do all of that...)

If the church remains ignorant of this and just has to do it "The way we've always dun did it" We're going to miss out on a whole generation of people. A good example is my little brother. At the wonderful age of 7, the not-so-little guy knows how to competently use a computer. He can go online to play games, download stuff ( without permission, to my dismay ) and just a lot of other fun things. When I was 7, I could probably barely use a telephone ( But I loved to play Super Nintendo) let alone a computer. Imagine what his generation will be doing when they become teenagers? Piloting giant robots to school? ( Okay, so I'm a bit of an anime nerd...ha ha ha )

We have to be willing to think "outside the box" so to speak, and just get with it. Ask people what they are doing, and use it to advance the Kingdom of God.

Fresh

Hey this has been an amazing past few months for me... seeing our teenagers engaging God more and more... getting to have an amazing water fight this past week... the wakey wakey was off the chain...

I have been involved in youth ministry for a few years and never have I felt this excited. At times it's tough for me to go to sleep at night. Saturday night or I guess sunday morning lol I wanted to go outside and just worship God.

To be truthful I haven't done anything different then I have done up to this point... I pray the same amount (a reasonable 13 hours a day lol)... we use the same songs at church we always have : )... but it just seems like my relationship w/ him has been reFRESHed and that I am doing these things not because i have to, but because I desire to be closer to God than I ever have. Today we discovered meat that "was" fresh haha and it got left out and it was stinking up the whole building. It had stuff growing on it as well :(... but anyway. We can do everything right... seasoned up right, cook to perfection and even be growing (mold) and not be fresh... my encouragement to us is stay fresh. Renew your love for God everyday and don't let it get stale and stagnate.... and drink sweet tea and water as Christina said in the previous blogpost, but not at the same time cause watery sweet tea is not where it is at homie...
"pastor" Chris

???

Soooo....I really didn't know what to title this entry...which is why it has the title that it does. Okay, so I am one of the Next Level Cell Leaders/Self-Appointed Photographist ( yeah, I know that's not the right way to say it. ) Christina Paige aka Christina. My blog style is pretty laid back, which in essence means that it should be relatively easy to read and such.

What exactly am I going to blog about? Who knows. If it's anything like my previous experiences, be very veeery afraid.

I don't really have much else to share besides that...just letting you guys ( and awesome gals ) know that this blog has just been made 1,000.00678% cooler with me as one of the writer-people.

Have an awesome-tastic evening, God bless, and don't forget to drink plenty of iced tea...oh, and water, too.

Burning in the All Consuming Fire of God's love

What is up people? Just something I wanted to share. No, it's not another random obsolete word (but just so you know, I'm bringing back "derf," so look out.)

Well, I was filling out this survey for I-HOP (24 hour prayer house, not the pancake place) and this question said what topics are most important to you right now. I began to answer this question in the fill out box and this was what I wrote:

"Burning" with other believers. What I mean is that we share our experiences of what God is doing in our lives and challenge each other to dive deeper into God's love through prayer, fasting, studying the Word, and living a life of overflow.

The main idea here is that your walk is something that must be shared with others. Not to see who is more "spiritual", but so that there can be an increase of unity throughout the soul of the church. To be of one accord in relationships that transcend age, race, gender, or even denominations.

Now that I look at it some more, I guess this is what small groups are for, but at the same time I want to be focusing on God outside of pre-arranged meetings. If I go to the arcade, for example, I want to be able to meet another believer drawn together by the Holy Spirit and be able to just talk with them.

Not necessarily ministering to them in the sense of "counseling" but BURNING in the flames of God's love for us, like Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego (Dan 3:22-25), or the believers on the road to Emmaus(Luke 24:32). Yeah. Sorry about the extremely long dealio here.

Kind of long for a simple questionnaire, but that is what I'm really passionate about. I'm not so naive that I think God has only been doing crazy things in my heart and in my life. It was that kind of thinking that messed Elijah up during his "bout" with Jezebel(1 kings 19:14-18). When we believe that we are the only ones doing the work of God, we can get prideful and we can very afraid of our circumstances. Both of those states of emotion are terribly dangerous places to be. On top of that, if we isolate ourselves in our walk with God then we can often miss out on a lot of things that He would have us receive. We end up cheating ourselves out of awesome impartations of His love and rob others of the chance to bless others and consequently their blessings as well.

Living that kind of life is very much a faith thing. I know the bible talks about casting our pearls before swine, and all that jazz. There are verses about a word aptly spoken. Proverbs has numerous verses about simply being quiet. But I also know about there being some verses about when you are given something, there is something that is expected of you. God shows us things, not so that we can simply bury them, but that we may share them with others which brings an increase to Him in praises and increases the Kingdom both inside of us and the kingdom around us.

Testimonies are not just limited to "well, the Lord done payed my way!," or "I got my healing!," and please don't take those as insults. They truly are great things that God does for people and valid victories in faith. However, God is always at work around us, and in sharing about our lives we hear what God has been doing and gain a greater appreciation for Him and revelation on things we may have missed.

It is the glory of God to hide a matter, but the glory of kings to search out a matter (Proverbs 25:2). I've never known a treasure hunt of any sort to be that successful, or fun, as a solo mission.

Well, that's my thought for the moment. I'm out.

P.S. "Teamwork makes the dream work!" - Thanks Ashley!

Be easy and God bless,
Rob aka Chillin

Derf... is a real word?

Yes. Yes it is. This is what I found out about the word "Derf", according to the Webster's 1913 Dictionary:

\Derf\, a. [Icel. djafr.]
Strong; powerful; fierce. [Obs.] -- {Derf"ly}, adv. [Obs.]

Now you may be asking why in the world did you post this seemingly random word.  Well, personally, I had never heard this word before and thought it was cool and so I decided to share.
I was going to make this awesome comparison of Jesus enabling us to be derf, but upon further inspection realized that this word has been corrupted and promptly decided to sidestep that [insert hazardous action that should be avoided here].

So, yeah.  That's my little blurb for the moment.  Keep checking back for updates, because a lot of very derf things in the works.  Stay derf.

Rob aka Chillin

P.S.  Y Saturday's will resume this week at the regularly scheduled time of 6:00PM.  See you there!