My Car Shall Be a Car of Prayer.

I AM BACK!!!!. Its been a long time no see. For those who read my blog regularly I apologize for my two weeks with out posts. The fact of the matter is I have hardly had time to sleep much less blog. I have been taking college courses online. In these courses they take a 12 week course and cram it into 6. well what happened to me was I had received my books three weeks late. So I am trying to cram twelve weeks of class into three. The teachers were gracious in allowing me to turn in work late however every assignment still had to be done. I have been waking up at 5 and going to bed at midnight every night. Its been exhausting, however I did get it done I took finals Saturday. So now I am back.
Well enough history I am excited to talk about my next adventure. As you have probably noticed with my return to corporate America life is busier and there is less time for everything, even prayer. I am a man who thrives off prayer. If I go with out a quiet time for too many days I can physically feel the difference. So in order to increase prayer I am going on a 31 day military campaign. The objective is to turn my car into a car of prayer. This won’t be easy. My natural tendency every time I get into my car is space off. I have tried to pray while driving before however often find myself in la la land. That is because my habit is when I am in my car I space off, I day dream that’s what I do in my car. Its almost as if my car is owned by that. Well its time to break that habit, its time to take my car back for Jesus. I want my habit to be when I get into my car to that I instantly find myself in place of prayer, rather than a place of semi-unconsciousness. So in order to do that, for the next 31 days if I am in my car I am praying, I don’t care if it is just a run to Wal-mart to pick up some milk, If there is 30 seconds in that car than there are 30 seconds in prayer, that’s going to be my new rule. So I am going to do a couple of things to make this work. First I am cleaning my car I figure if I am going to ask the holy spirit to dwell there it ought to be clean. Second I am keeping on my accountability through the twitter, I am going to update my twitter every time I drive I will be putting where I went and what I prayed for. Alright bloggers, I am Glad I am back and look forward to posting the outcomes of this awesome adventure. Live the adventure.

Last Nights Open Flame

We had the second edition of Open Flame Last night. If your wondering what the video above is about it was our fire last night. For those of you who don’t know Open Flame is our youth service where at the well it happens every other week at my house. We have fire, cook hot dogs, roast marshmallows, make smores its awesome
Well last night I got rained out so I took the projector and played the video above on my while we listened to fire crackle over the church’s sound system. We cooked hot dogs on the stove and instead of smores we made chocolate chip cookies and had milk. The message was awesome everybody got involved and then we watched Transformers on the big screen afterward. It was an awesome time despite the disasters.
Why do I post all this. Its just because I love it. I don’t think there is some huge spiritual lesson behind it. I just love doing what I am doing. I love having fires or watching them on a projector. I love giving messages to young people and having discussions with them in my living room. I love hot dogs and smores and hot dogs and cookies, what ever the case may be. I am just loving life right now. Anyway. Live the Adventure.

Great Kings

I had an interesting thought that last week. I read an excerpt from the Chronicles of Narnia, they were referring to Lion the king. One character said to another character in that no one could approach the great king with out “their knees knocking”. They said he wasn’t safe, that he never hurt people but he wasn’t safe. It got me thinking about the true nature of kings. I have often heard that prayer should never be a chore because we get to approach a king, or sometimes people refer to it as the president. This is the thing in today’s world most when most of us think of kings and presidents we get the picture of our political leaders. Our political leaders at least in the free countries of this world do not have the power to take lives nor throw you in prison for the rest of your life without trial. We think of our political leaders as safe, their powerful but safe.

I want us to picture the medieval kings of old, or the kings of Babylon, or even modern day dictators, people who have the power to do what ever they want. If they say you are dead then you are dead, if they lock you up, no one lets you out. Approaching them becomes a lot more exciting scenario. Think of what you would discuss with this type of person and why, how passionate would be to risk approaching men like these. How exciting would that be if you had an audience with a Suddam Hussein or Adolf Hitler and you were pleading a cause with them. How would that feel.

If it were me I would be prepared, focused, my blood would be pumping, my adrenaline rushing, I would speak with boldness not because the bible told me to but because if I did not I would not grasp their attention nor sway their decision.
This is what our prayer must be like. We must realize whom we are approaching. While Jesus does not contain the evil of these men he does contain their power and far greater. Approaching him should be like approaching any powerful and dangerous leader, it should command the same thinking and the same approach. Live the adventure.

Fight Night

Once a month on a friday night a"The Well gets together for fight night." Actually its called watch night. Its our once a month late night prayer session. Where we fight the Devil and seek our lord for our church, our city, our country and the world. As our pastor would refer to it "its hot nasty stinky prayer." Its a fight. In other words is its good, its good like climbing a fourteen thousand foot mountain. For those of you who don't about fourteen thousand feet mountains or 14er's as us mountian folk call them, they have peaks that are above the tree line. The tree line is the point at which you are so high there is not enough oxygen for tree's to grow. Tree's not being a very active creature you can imagine how little oxygen there is up there. Anyway back to being good like climbing a mountain. climbing a mountain of that height is pretty difficult. Your body is weak you gasp for air, your constantly taking breaks due to exhaustion and when you look at your progress you may have gone ten feet. Its a strenous process. So you must ask why people do it. The view and thrill you feel at the top is unlike anything on earth. In other words when you push through the difficulty you recieve the awesome blessing of being on top of the world, where few people ever go. Its worth it. Thats what friday night fights (or watch night) is like, difficult at times but if you push through its worth it.

Well on to the moral of the story. This last friday one of the things I got to pray for was some new facilitys that we needed for our various services that we do at the church. One of them being Watch Night. I was excited because this is something that I have been passionate about we really need a new spot for Watch night. Well as I began to pray I realized that I didn't seem to have anything to pray, I tried to push through but at times I wondered if I was even making sense. In short is was an ugly prayer,quite ugly. So I had to take a moment afterword and reflect. Why was that prayer ugly, I was passionate about it, I wanted to pray for it. In fact I have prayed for this in my own quite time why was it so bad. Upon reflection I realized the prayer is fighting and fighting is rarely pretty. forget what you see in the movies, fighters generaly do not look like Bruce Lee. The fact of the matter is they often look ugly and ungraceful and even take their share of hits. The winner is the one who is the toughest the one who perservers. So it is with prayer, its not always graceful and you take your share of hits. The winner is the one who will last the longest. To lasting the longest. Live the adventure.

Baby steps.

Hey there long time no see. Yeah its been a while since my last post, I have 3, 5 page papers due this week all of them single space, in addition I wrote a miniature play for my church I have been and am currently pretty busy. I did want to take just a minute and share what God has been doing in my life. I meant what I said in my last post, that God would make me ready. That he would make me the type of man that would be able to chose a life of the dangerous and the uncomfortable to do the things God has called him to do.

So in order to do that I am focusing on the little areas, where am I selfish just a little bit. I am focusing at being slow to anger when I get frustrated and trying to be less offendable and more congenial towards others. It’s a small step, its not doing a forty-day water only fast, nor I am praying in tongues three hours a day, but I don’t think doing those things will take me to the next level. I don’t think those things alone will make me the man I want to be. I think getting to who I want to be takes baby steps, small sacrifices on a continuous basis. This process makes sacrifice and the subduing of the flesh habitual rather than eventful. In other words when I sacrifice its not some big noticeable event, its what I do everyday, its my habit and what I default to in every situation. So that way when God asks for the big sacrifices I will do so willing and without hesitation because that’s just what I am used to. Live the adventure.

Holy Land Experience

This weekend I visited the Holy Land. Not the one in Israel the one in Florida. There is a theme park here in which the story of Christ is acted in a very real and live setting it was a great time. We where treated as kings thanks to my good friend Claudia who works there, she got us in for free and even got us food vouchers. There is one exhibit there that has really got me thinking, its called the “Scriptorium” its like a Museum of bibles. They have scrolls there that date all the way back to before Egypt which is pretty amazing but they didn’t impress me. My favorite part of the tour was section dedicated to the reformation. It was amazing to me to hear the stories of these men who where so passionate about the word of God that they where actually martyred for translating them into a language the people could understand.. I even saw one bible there called the “Matthew Bible” also known as the “Martyrs bible”. Its called that because its pages are actually stained with the blood of the men who printed it.

An impressive sight to say the least. As I saw this blood and listened to the drone of our automated tour guide the thought occurred to me that these men where not to different from me and you. Many of these men where highly educated with good paying Jobs, the story of all these translators where very similar they would first lose their jobs, then they would be threatened, then they would take there work into hiding where they worked frivolously to complete it before their very lives where taken from them.

This has got me thinking because I have often considered myself one who would be able to give his life for Christ. I don’t long for this but I think I could do it. Even if I did however I do not think that my sacrifice would equal one of these men. It would be the difference between dying in a car accident and dying of a slow cancer. I would live a life of comfort then in a moment my life would be taken from me. These men became criminals and lived their lives in fear, they suffered the systematic removal of their rights and privileges. Each step they took would be harder than one before it, yet they continued, when they were banned and outlawed they continued.

To chose between life and death is easy, when you die its over no more pain, to choose to live a life of suffering then eventual death is a much harder decision to make. I had ask myself if I could do it, if the rights of America where to cease and they did not allow me to work and I had to move my family underground could I do it. The question scares me because my yes did come easy or readily. My prayer over the last few days is that God would make me able, that he would train me to able to say yes quickly and without hesitation. I don’t want to have to make the decision I do however want to be ready if the need ever arises. Lord make me ready. Live the adventure