Staying out of trouble vs. Walking in your calling

Steven Furtick (www.stevenfurtick.com) of Elevation Church in Charlotte, NC posted a great blog recently.  Actually, he has posted a lot of great blogs recently but this last one really hit me hard enough that I decided to share.  Enjoy.

Staying out of trouble vs. Walking in your calling Posted: 10 Jun 2010 02:00 AM PDT I have a deep passion to see this present generation of students have a God-sized impact on the world. In my opinion, there has never been a group in history with more potential to be used by God to further His Kingdom. They have the resources. They have the gifting. And most importantly, they have the audacity to believe that God can actually use them to accomplish the impossible. Which makes it all the more aggravating that we’re losing this generation. Some think it’s their lack of commitment. Others think it’s because they lack structure and are just too wild. Each of these suggestions places the problem on the students. I think the problem lies with us. We haven’t given them something worthy of giving themselves completely over to. Instead we’ve settled for simply trying to keep them out of trouble. We are training them to be good little boys and girls. God did not raise them up for that. He wants them to be great men and women of God. He has placed a calling on their lives. Collectively and individually. And this is what we need to spend all of our time and energy communicating. Students do not need us to be behavioral modification specialists. They need us to demonstrate what it looks like to walk in your calling. The vision we are casting before them is too small. The challenge we are presenting isn’t great enough. I feel that the greatest peril in modern Christianity relating to youth culture is that we are under challenging this generation of students with an anemic alternate version of the Gospel that isn’t worth keeping your pants on for. We lull them to sleep with do’s and don’ts instead of waking them up to the God-given potential inside of them. The truth is you can stay out of trouble but fall short of your calling. You can stay out of trouble, but live a life of little impact or significance. When a student comes to understand that God has something for them far greater than sex, alcohol, and the pursuit of short-lived high school popularity, everything changes. These things lose their attractiveness. And it has nothing to do with staying out of trouble. Their motivation is that they would not dare risk the glorious destiny God has for them by wasting their time on anything that could short-circuit it. Students (and all of us for that matter) don’t need rules to live by. They need a calling to live for.

Amazing 12-year old girl speaking to adults!

Sunday's Coming

So I’m sitting here in Lock Haven, PA enjoying a great cup of coffee at Avenue 209 on an absolutely gorgeous Wednesday.  While sitting here, inspiration has hit and there is something that I just have to write about right now.  We are in the middle of Holy Week, the week prior to Easter.  Well, my mind was wandering this morning and I suddenly remembered a phrase that one of my favorite professors in college would use.  The class was Introduction to the Gospels taught by none other than Dr. Weatherly.  I think the quote is significant, especially for this week and what this week represents.  While we would be discussing the Gospels, Dr. Weatherly would regularly reference something that wasn’t positive.  Then he would go on to say, “It’s Friday...but SUNDAY’S COMING!”  This thought and statement has stuck with me through out the years since I finished his class and for some reason it is strongly on my mind right now.  Do you get what he was saying?  Man that is a powerful thought.  As we go into this weekend in which we remember the death of Christ on Friday, it is very important to remember also that Sunday is coming!  The death of Christ was a horrible thing, yet it means nothing without Sunday.  If Christ didn’t rise from the dead, then Friday would have just been a bad day, and Sunday would have meant nothing.

This statement also is a great reminder for us throughout the rest of the year as well.  What I mean by that is it has a future hope in it as well.  Yes, it fits for the past and what we remember on Easter weekend, but let this though sink in your mind for a minute.  The struggles you are going through in this life, the difficulties you have in your everyday life, the good times and the bad are not always positive.  It’s Friday, if you will.  But we have a hope for the future, a hope for eternity.  Because we believe in Christ and strive to have a relationship with him, we have God’s promise of eternal life to look forward too.  In other words, SUNDAY’S COMING! for all of us.  Who knows how long we will have to suffer through this Friday of a world we live in, but Sunday is coming!  Keep the faith, trust in God and keep fighting that good fight because SUNDAY IS COMING!

Day 16 Joshua 1-14

Reading today was so refreshing. We finally got to more of a narrative, although reading (actually skimming) through the Law was interesting, it is a lot easier to read when it is more of a story...at least for me! The book of Joshua has always been very interesting to me. We get to see Israel, a nation that 40 years before, was completely in captivity, just completely destroying any country that got in it's way...that's some pretty cool stuff. But we also get to see the walls of a very fortified city just crumbling away and on another occasion the sun completely standing still for an entire day.

Some of the major events that I wanted to point out about this reading is we see some things repeated that we saw at the beginning of the Exodus story. First, we have the Jordan river crossing on dry ground just as we had the Red Sea crossing. And the Jordan was not just a tiny little stream either. It was at flood stage meaning it was a massive river at the time

We also see Joshua being told to take off his sandals because he was on holy ground just as we saw with Moses and the burning bush. We also see Israel forgetting to follow God on a number of occasions and we see them suffer the consequences of that.

There are two things, however, during the first two chapters that I feel are the most important things to point out. In chapter 1 verses 6-9, we see God's promise and encouragement to Joshua. A number of times, He tells Joshua to "be strong and courageous". I wonder how many times He has tried to tell me that and I didn't listen...my guess is that it has happened a lot.

The other thing I want to point out is how time and time again God uses people of "insignificance" to do His most important work. We had Moses in Exodus saying that he wasn't the right man for the job and later on we will see many other examples of that as well. But in this story, it is Rahab the prostitute that is used to hide the spies in chapter 2. You see, all God needs is someone that is willing to listen to Him and He can and will do the rest.

This thought came to mind while I was reading the text for today and writing this blog so I will end it with this. God often uses people of "insignificance" to do the most significant parts of His plan. Don't let your "insignificance" in society make you think God can't use you! Just be willing to let Him work through you and He'll do the rest!

Day 12 Numbers 21:8-32:19

This was an interesting read again today. There was more of a story so it was a little bit easier to read. There were some very familiar stories but none as familiar and interesting to me as Balaam's donkey. What a strange story. Here is a guy that is being asked to curse the Israelites and he will not do it, although he starts to travel to the person that is asking him to curse them. He's riding his donkey and all of the sudden his donkey turns off the path. So he beats the donkey back onto the path and just a little later the donkey crushes his foot up against the wall. So, again he beats the donkey. They continue on until finally the donkey just lays down on the path. Balaam is furious and starts beating the donkey again, until the donkey starts to speak. That's where this story started getting a little strange. Have you ever seen a talking donkey? I guess that shouldn't be too weird seeing how we saw a talking snake on day 1 of B90X. It's not until Balaam's eyes are opened to what's in front of him that he finally understands and likes what the donkey was doing. The donkey basically saved his life.

All to often, I think we are like Balaam. We have something happen to us that we don't really like and we don't see any reason for it to be happening, so we get mad or frustrated about it. What we don't realize is that we don't see the full reasoning behind it. God might be setting us up for something better or we might just not get God's plan for our lives at all. If our eyes were ever fully opened, my guess is that we would be very thankful for the same acts that were making us mad or frustrated.

Numbers 8-21

Sorry about not blogging every day this week. It has been kinda crazy around here. Plus, while there is always something we can learn from any Scripture, it was hard to really come up with things to point out about Leviticus other than being thankful we're not under the law.

Numbers has some interesting stories in it though. From the ground opening up and swallowing people whole to a plague running through the Israelite camp to a large group of venomous snakes there is a lot of action. Two things really stuck out to me though.

The first is that the Israelites are a bunch of whiners. When things got hard, they cried about it and said it would have been better to either stay in Egypt or die with everyone else. At the same time, I have a hard time calling them too much of a whiner since I feel like we tend to do the same things. Not that we constantly say that it would be better if we had died but when things get tough or don't go our way, we tend to complain or whine.

The other thing that really stuck out to me was the fact that time after time, God was fed up with this group of people that just constantly whined about everything and He was ready to destroy them all. But each and every time that happened, Moses and Aaron stepped in and begged God to forgive the people. I find this hugely significant. This is definitely, in my opinion, a foreshadowing of things to come. I picture Jesus doing the exact same thing for us. When we screw up and God is not happy with us, Jesus steps in and takes the blame for us. That's why He died on the cross. If we have a relationship with Him, He takes our blame! That's exciting stuff, and I think you all should at least be starting to see that everything in the entire Bible points to one event--> The coming of Christ, His ministry, death, burial and Resurrection...in other words-->THE CROSS!

First Day of Leviticus

So it's been a couple days since I have posted on here. I am still on pace with reading but I discovered something this weekend. I will probably not be taking the time over the weekends to be writing on here unless it is something that is very important.

So on with what I found interesting in Monday's reading. This post will actually be really short because the one thing that I want to point out is very simple. After starting to read through the laws, I am so thankful that we are under the blood of Christ and not under the law anymore! Thank you God for your Son and His sacrifice because I don't think I could handle the law! Thank you for the freedom we have in Christ!