Golf is my release.  I wish, however, that I was good at it.  I am decent at best.  That is so freeing to say.  I did however redeem myself a little this week.  I came in second only to Nathaniel.  I am coming for you though.  It was really fun just to get out there.  Thanks God for such a fun/frustrating game. 

As many of you know Rachel Olreud has taken a turn for the worst.  If you don’t know, Rachel is a 6th grader at our church fighting cancer.  Stop reading and take a minute to pray.  I also ask that you wouldn’t pray the safe pray of “God’s will be done”.  In the scriptures, there were certain men of faith who would dare to pray prayers contrary to the predicted actions of God.  Dare to pray a prayer with no backup plan.  A backup plan prayer would say “God heal her, but your will be done”.  Just once try praying, “God heal her, and with everything in me I ask you to heal her”.  May we dare to look foolish with a prayer that may be answered with a no.  May we never fall short of asking God for big things, or of believing in Him to provide big answers. 

God, HEAL Rachel!!

Tonight was such an amazing night.  God truly is advancing our student ministry toward a goal of the ultimate pursuit of God. 

We talked tonight about God being the ultimate and only truly satisfying thing.  In John 6:35, Jesus captures the attention of His audience by proclaiming that He is the bread of life.  Appropriate because Jesus just feed that 5000 bread that spoils.  Those people had come back to Jesus wanting another miracle and Jesus said stop seeking fulfillment in what I do but rather who I AM.  Jesus knew that we all desire satisfaction.  Not only did He know it but He designed it, and He designed it so that we would long for Him.  The biggest problem that we face is that we try to fill that need for satisfaction with mere temporal pleasures. 

I know that I can fulfill my hunger by eating dirt, however that is probably not a very good idea.  Yet that is what most people do.  They have a mud feast and fill themselves on mere dirt.  This is a stupid idea especially if you realize that God has an enormous grandmama kind of feast available to any who would just eat. 

It is interesting to think that God did amazing miracles to bring the Israelites out of Egypt, including plagues, protection, and the stinking splitting of a sea.  After all these the first thing out of their mouths was “What’s to eat?”.  Talk about missing the mark. 

This is what we are doing!  We are constantly being pursued by God and He is constantly putting growth opportunities in our lives, yet we are continually saying to God “What’s to eat?”.  We are seeking fulfillment in anything but the One who can give it. 

I pray that we would open our ignorant eyes and begin to eat at the feast that God has had prepared for us since He became the Bread of Life!!

The dividing line in the lives of most people isn’t between good or evil, most people struggle with the line between ordinary and extraordinary.  We are surrounded by the temptation to maintain the status quo.  How I dread the thought that believers everywhere would refuse to take hold of the adventure that God wants to give their lives.  There is nothing that the enemy would love more than to see a bunch of stuck, stagnant Christians. 

The thing we have to realize is that our pursuit of God is never, never stagnant.  Every day and every moment creates either a increase or a decrease in our relationship with God.  The mediocre decision of doing nothing creates a decline in our intimacy with God.

Don’t be history, make history!  We are all allotted a particular amount of time.  Don’t waste your life on trivial pursuits.  Whatever you do in your life make it a pursuit of the cross and making God’s name famous. 

Praise God that He gives us an adventure to live!  There is nothing stagnant about being intimate with God!  Fight for Him, it is worth it! 

We had an amazing night last night!  There were 325 middle school student that heard the presentation of the gospel.  Amazing!  Our students are truly catching the vision of investing and inviting their friends.  We had about 25 students that accepted Christ for the very first time.  God is doing an amazing work with our students.  I truly believe we are developing students who want to be recklessly abandoned to God.  I pray that our students continue to invade the world.  The world will never be changed by avoiding it like the plague.  We have to teach our students that they are involved in a spiritual battle, one in which you can not dodge the draft. 

This is why so many of our students get sucked into the world, because they don’t know how to fight.  The options are fight or be destroyed. 

Our world and yes even the church world have been so babylonized.  We truly believe the deception that if our students grow up without getting into much trouble, graduate high school and then college, get a good job, and get married, then they are successful.  Bullcrap!  Success should be measured by if our students are passionately resolved to the Lord and spreading His fame.  May our hearts be convicted when we settle in comfort over combat. 

Therefore, let us raise the standard of success back to what it was meant to be, a God-filled adventure.