God works everything out for a specific purpose. It doesn't matter what the circumstance is, I truly believe that for everything that happens, there's a reason for it. Maybe I don't fully understand why things happen the way they do, but I don't have to know that. I just need to keep in mind that God has a purpose.
We sit and wonder why this big thing happened. It's not going to do anything but hurt us. What we fail to realize is that God has a plan. You may not like the process. You may not even like the plan he has. But it's to bring someone closer to Jesus, or to further his kingdom.
It may be a challenge, but don't challenges help you grow?
This is something that I've had on my heart a lot tonight. God has a plan. For everything in life, there's a reason.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Importance of a Team (Led by God)
So tonight during my quiet time, I was reading in Exodus 18. Moses's father-in-law, Jethro , sees people standing before Moses all day long, and questioned him about it.
(The following is from The Message.)
"What's going on here? Why are you doing all this, and all by yourself, letting everybody line up before you from morning to night?"
Moses said to his father-in-law, "Because the people come to me with questions about God. When something comes up, they come to me. I judge between a man and his neighbor and teach them God's laws and instructions."
Moses' father-in-law said, "This is no way to go about it. You'll burn out, and the people right along with you. This is way too much for you - you can't do this alone. Now listen to me. Let me tell you how to do this so that God will be in this with you. Be there for the people before God, but let the matters of concern be presented to God. Your job is to teach them the rules and instructions, to show them how to live, what to do. And then you need to keep a sharp eye out for competent men - men who fear God, men of integrity, men who are incorruptible - and appoint them as leaders over groups organized by the thousand, by the hundred, by fifty, and by ten. They'll be responsible for the everyday work of judging among the people. They'll bring the hard cases to you, but in the routine cases they'll be the judges. They will share your load and that will make it easier for you. If you handle the work this way, you'll have the strength to carry out whatever God commands you, and the people in their settings will flourish also.
__________________________________________________________________________________
Wow. Jethro laid it out pretty clear. Moses couldn't do it by himself. He HAD to have a team with the ultimate authority being God.
It makes me think of my team... for those of you who don't know, Lauren Barnes, Kayla Walker, and myself lead a worship team in Reality Student Ministry. We have a team of 15 people who serve every other week. (Some of them every week!) It reminds me of how terrible worship would be in Reality if me, Lauren, and Kayla did it by ourselves. No band, no singers, no guidance, no supporters - nothing. Worship would be limited based on what we could do by ourselves.
Looking from another perspective, if we didn't have a team of people, we wouldn't have a TEAM full of God-loving leaders who spend their Sunday/Wednesday ministering to others - whether it's by talking to them, loving them, or leading them in worship. If we didn't have a team, there wouldn't be as much a difference made.
So, if you're reading this and you are on the Reality Worship Team, I just want to say how much I love you guys and appreciate everything you do for me, Lauren, Kayla, Pastor Patrick, Pastor Addison, and all of Reality. We love you, and we can't do it without you.
Another thing we need is God being the ultimate authority of that team. Jethro said, "Let the matters of concern be presented to God." If we don't have God leading our team, we could be sending things in a completely different direction than what his plan REALLY is. It kind of relates to my last blog post (about letting God be the one who is in control and us being on HIS schedule/plan).
Maybe you're reading this and you are trying to tackle something huge on your own - you might want to rethink that. Get a team of people who will help you in this. And ALWAYS make sure that God is the ultimate authority of whatever you are doing.
(The following is from The Message.)
"What's going on here? Why are you doing all this, and all by yourself, letting everybody line up before you from morning to night?"
Moses said to his father-in-law, "Because the people come to me with questions about God. When something comes up, they come to me. I judge between a man and his neighbor and teach them God's laws and instructions."
Moses' father-in-law said, "This is no way to go about it. You'll burn out, and the people right along with you. This is way too much for you - you can't do this alone. Now listen to me. Let me tell you how to do this so that God will be in this with you. Be there for the people before God, but let the matters of concern be presented to God. Your job is to teach them the rules and instructions, to show them how to live, what to do. And then you need to keep a sharp eye out for competent men - men who fear God, men of integrity, men who are incorruptible - and appoint them as leaders over groups organized by the thousand, by the hundred, by fifty, and by ten. They'll be responsible for the everyday work of judging among the people. They'll bring the hard cases to you, but in the routine cases they'll be the judges. They will share your load and that will make it easier for you. If you handle the work this way, you'll have the strength to carry out whatever God commands you, and the people in their settings will flourish also.
__________________________________________________________________________________
Wow. Jethro laid it out pretty clear. Moses couldn't do it by himself. He HAD to have a team with the ultimate authority being God.
It makes me think of my team... for those of you who don't know, Lauren Barnes, Kayla Walker, and myself lead a worship team in Reality Student Ministry. We have a team of 15 people who serve every other week. (Some of them every week!) It reminds me of how terrible worship would be in Reality if me, Lauren, and Kayla did it by ourselves. No band, no singers, no guidance, no supporters - nothing. Worship would be limited based on what we could do by ourselves.
Looking from another perspective, if we didn't have a team of people, we wouldn't have a TEAM full of God-loving leaders who spend their Sunday/Wednesday ministering to others - whether it's by talking to them, loving them, or leading them in worship. If we didn't have a team, there wouldn't be as much a difference made.
So, if you're reading this and you are on the Reality Worship Team, I just want to say how much I love you guys and appreciate everything you do for me, Lauren, Kayla, Pastor Patrick, Pastor Addison, and all of Reality. We love you, and we can't do it without you.
Another thing we need is God being the ultimate authority of that team. Jethro said, "Let the matters of concern be presented to God." If we don't have God leading our team, we could be sending things in a completely different direction than what his plan REALLY is. It kind of relates to my last blog post (about letting God be the one who is in control and us being on HIS schedule/plan).
Maybe you're reading this and you are trying to tackle something huge on your own - you might want to rethink that. Get a team of people who will help you in this. And ALWAYS make sure that God is the ultimate authority of whatever you are doing.
Friday, August 5, 2011
A Great Day w/ A Lesson Learned
So if you have paid attention to my statuses the past few days on Facebook, you would notice that I (and the other leaders of RWT) have been getting ready for our Reality Worship Workshop (which went GREAT, by the way!) But afterwards, I was thinking through the day..
We started off by spending time in prayer. We dimmed the lights and created a worshipful atmosphere. I sat down and started worshipping for a few minutes, and then I started thinking about the rest of the day - how we would practice the songs, if I would teach my leadership lesson well, etc.. when I suddenly thought.. "What am I doing? We are trying to lead our team into the presence of God and I'm sitting here trying to figure out what I want the Band to do on the Intro to one of our songs. That's not right. I need to worship." But then I got some worries.. What if we weren't ready? What if we had forgotten to bring something in the Reality Room? What if, what if, what if..
And then I realized that if me, Lauren, and Kayla tried to do this on our own, it would fail miserably. We needed God's help and God's direction and HIM to be the "first-hand" leader (if that made sense) of the workshop. Even if we spent the whole day in prayer, it didn't matter because we needed to be following HIS lead and his direction.
Now, we eventually turned the lights back on and moved on to other things and I let go of all the stress and everything that was building up.. I was completely at peace. And as we went on with our day, everything was falling right into place. We got our entire backstage area clean (something it hasn't been in a long time), we grew as a team, had some great ideas together, taught a bunch of leadership skills, learned from my dad, and got a bunch of practice in on some songs we haven't ever done before. (But plan on doing) The singers spent more time than scheduled in practice, but the result - some tight harmonies on a tight new song. (And their extra time they took gave me a chance to work with the band some more and get that song really cool.)
It seemed that as a team where things would usually be falling apart because of the stress we're keeping on top of God, things were falling right into place because we lifted that stress up and gave it to God and said, "Here, God. Do as you want. We're following your lead and your direction."
We need to do this in our lives more often. Not just for a big workshop you've been planning for. For everything in our lives - school, work, and for me, regular worship practices and services. We need to lift the stress we're trapping God under and give it to him. He'll always come through, and your results will be better than you could imagine.
We started off by spending time in prayer. We dimmed the lights and created a worshipful atmosphere. I sat down and started worshipping for a few minutes, and then I started thinking about the rest of the day - how we would practice the songs, if I would teach my leadership lesson well, etc.. when I suddenly thought.. "What am I doing? We are trying to lead our team into the presence of God and I'm sitting here trying to figure out what I want the Band to do on the Intro to one of our songs. That's not right. I need to worship." But then I got some worries.. What if we weren't ready? What if we had forgotten to bring something in the Reality Room? What if, what if, what if..
And then I realized that if me, Lauren, and Kayla tried to do this on our own, it would fail miserably. We needed God's help and God's direction and HIM to be the "first-hand" leader (if that made sense) of the workshop. Even if we spent the whole day in prayer, it didn't matter because we needed to be following HIS lead and his direction.
Now, we eventually turned the lights back on and moved on to other things and I let go of all the stress and everything that was building up.. I was completely at peace. And as we went on with our day, everything was falling right into place. We got our entire backstage area clean (something it hasn't been in a long time), we grew as a team, had some great ideas together, taught a bunch of leadership skills, learned from my dad, and got a bunch of practice in on some songs we haven't ever done before. (But plan on doing) The singers spent more time than scheduled in practice, but the result - some tight harmonies on a tight new song. (And their extra time they took gave me a chance to work with the band some more and get that song really cool.)
It seemed that as a team where things would usually be falling apart because of the stress we're keeping on top of God, things were falling right into place because we lifted that stress up and gave it to God and said, "Here, God. Do as you want. We're following your lead and your direction."
We need to do this in our lives more often. Not just for a big workshop you've been planning for. For everything in our lives - school, work, and for me, regular worship practices and services. We need to lift the stress we're trapping God under and give it to him. He'll always come through, and your results will be better than you could imagine.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Blogging Now!
As I look around, I see people blogging all the time! So, I decided I wanted to get in on all the fun!
But more importantly, I want to use this as a place where I can come to remember all of the spiritual "checkpoints" in my life (if that even made sense) and never forget God's love, grace, and mercy he's revealed to me throughout my life.
Too often, we visit a camp or a conference and we have a life-changing experience. We've been baptized in the Holy Spirit. We felt a call to ministry. We truly felt God for the first time. All of these are real impacting, and you would think we remembered them forever. But do we really?
We go on with life and (let's face it) we forget about it. We may remember that we have a call to full-time ministry, but we may not remember the impact it had on us the night we got called. I don't to become a "living just in the moment" Christian. I want to remember the life-changing experiences I had two years ago, and two years from now, I want to remember today's.
I also feel like blogging will help me grow. I don't know exactly why. I've spent like ten minutes trying to figure out how to word this paragraph. Leaders in my life who are farther ahead in the journey than I am just have always said that. So I figured I'd give it a shot.
Now I am starting at a horrible time. (A week and a half before school starts back up.) So be on me to post new blogs often.
Well I'm almost done with this "Intro" blog which means I'm about to dive into what looks like a really cool way to keep track of my spiritual journey and the things God has spoken to me about or revealed to me, etc. So...
Here I go!
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