Dear Jesus, Help me love like you do...

Dear Jesus,

Please help me to love people like you do. I really want to, or at least I think I do. It seems so hard to me... I mean, I want to love people but I see them doing things that I'm afraid will hurt them. I want to come along side of them to support them but they seem to push me away, not wanting to receive the care I have for them. I want to share with them, from my experience so that they will not have to experience the pain that I have felt. I want them to know You as I feel that I know You. I want them to trust You as I have learned to Trust you. It seems so hard to love them because its like opening up the door, the door that protects me from pain, the door that keeps me aloof and hands off. Lord, I've talked to you before about the pain that I have experienced because of opening that door... How do you do it, how do you love people when they can cause You so much pain? What about the ones who have hurt you before? How can you continue to love them.  It seems so far beyond anything that I can understand. Honestly I'm not sure I could or even want to try to understand it. Lord, if you would grant me to love like you do, would you do it in such a way that I don't have to wrestle with the intellectual side of the whole thing. Help me to love people because you said so, help me to do it because its You loving through me.... Get me out of the way and protect me from the potential pain. As I reason this out I am seeing more clearly that I simply need more of You. I need to feel You near me and moving through me. I can't do this on my own... it is so hard to admit that to You, because I am a proud man who doesn't like to admit any kind of weakness, but its true none the less. I hate to admit that I'm afraid of pain and failure no matter how true it is. Jesus, I believe... help my unbelief!

Thank you Jesus for letting me be honest with You and thank You for being patient with me.

How Do You Teach Worship

As a father and youth leader, I am always wondering and thinking about teaching kids about worship. It is hard enough to help adults understand what worship is all about, but gets tougher when we are talking about young people.

Worship to me is an extremely important expression of our Christian faith and as such, it seems like we as leaders need to be concerned about teaching this to our children. Seeing a young person engaged in worship, where they are really connecting with God is a sight that I will never get tired of.

My thoughts to this point has led me to believe that modeling worship is a good way to teach it, but I'm wondering if there is more that should be done. That is not to say that other teaching isn't taking place, such as teaching on God's character and his interaction with His creation. It seems like we have done a good job in teaching about Christianity, but have we done enough to explain that worship takes us into the courtyards of the King Himself. Have we explained that God does indeed inhabit the prayers of his people. If not, how can we really do this?

For me, worship did not come easy, in fact it took me a while to understand why people in church would ever enjoy all the singing that they did. I wanted to skip the singing and get on to the good stuff, I thought all the singing was a waste of time. It took time for God to capture my heart and for me to realize that it was happening. Worship went from singing songs to an interactive experience, where I moved closer to God and where He came closer to me. It was a place where I could be totally exposed before Him and where He could speak to me and deal with me in all the ways He desired.

In the end, I guess I am left with more questions that answers, but my desire is and will always be for more and more people to experience real worship. I want to help others to find this place, this special place where the veil between us and God is especially thin.

Master's Commission

Master's Commission led worship and ministry for the girls at a recent Friends retreat, which led to us inviting them to come to the church to speak to our youth. The girls from the Friends group could not stop talking the members of Master's Commission and how great they were. All of their talk really set the expectation extremely high and I have to tell you, Master's Commission more than met the expectation set... they blew it out of the park. I can't tell you how impressed I was by these young people and their obvious love for the Lord Jesus.

They spoke to the youth today about unity, something that has been on my heart for a long time. For me, it was so obvious that they were speaking the heart of God, that it caused me to weep many times. They spoke of Sacrifice, Honor, Drive and Glory and used skits to reinforce their message, which was more than cool. I am struggling to get everything out that I want to say... which is why this sounds like I'm rambling.

Drive = Passion + Desire

Drive is what moves us forward, it is taking the thing that we desire (our goals), fueling it with out passion and "Going For It!" without reservation.

Honor + Sacrifice + Drive = Glory

Glory cannot be seen until we begin to Honor someone, Sacrifice something and Drive towards the prize.

Master's Commission did what they called a human video to the song "I Need You To Survive". This was an extremely touching part of their presentation. They signed (sign language) to the lyrics of the song as they moved throughout the area where the youth was sitting. This is one of the times that brought me to tears as it was such a graphic example of our need for one another.

I am looking forward to seeing Master's Commission again real soon in the hope that the Lord will use them once again to speak to me.

My hope is that the hearts that Master's Commission touches end up being the very treasures that they are laying up for themselves in Heaven.

For who is our hope or joy or crown of exultation? Is it not even you, in the presence of our Lord Jesus at His coming?
1 Thessalonians 2:19

A very cool picture from God

There was a Worship and Ministry night at the church this evening (Thanks Kim). It was a wonderful time of being in the presence of the Lord and participating in corporate worship with a group of people I really love. During worship, I got a couple of words and God allowed me to see something very cool.

There is a guitarist in the worship band named Charlie, Charlie has a little boy named Caleb. Charlie was in the worship band tonight playing a mean guitar (Charlie is extremely gifted) and right in the middle of a worship song Caleb (who is maybe five or six) came in from the back of the sanctuary, walked right up the aisle, up onto the stage, across the stage and right to the feet of his Dad.

The Lord used this event to show me what our relationship with Him should look like. Caleb did not think twice about his dad being busy playing guitar, Caleb didn't think anything about all of the people who would see him go up on the stage, I don't even think a whole team of mules could have kept him from going to feet of his dad. To Caleb, all he saw was his dad, and he went to him as if to say... "It doesn't matter what my dad is doing, he is my dad and he will always make time for me!". It is just like that for you and I, but the difference is that we have trouble overlooking the things that Caleb didn't give a second thought to. We get concerned about what people will think of us if we run to our heavenly Father. Our God, our heavenly Daddy will always make time for us and we need to run to him without reservation.

When Caleb first went  up on the stage to his dad, it brought a smile to my face, just seeing him go. But when the Lord revealed to me what He wanted me to see, it brought tears to my eyes and choked me up. It did so several time throughout the night as I remembered the lesson. God loves us and wants us to come to Him, not waiting for a proper time, for a convenient time, He wants us to just to come!

Thank you Lord for this beautiful picture, I needed to see it and I guess I was meant to share it.

Dare 2 Share - Phoenix 2009

My wife and I lead a group of 22 youth to the Dare 2 Share conference in Phoenix this weekend and I want to share a little about it.

Highlights:
22 youth from the Vineyard Community Church spent the weekend in downtown Phoenix worshiping our God and learning about ministry and evangelism along side more than 3000 youth throughout the state of Arizona.

God was moving in the hearts of many of our youth!

Many of our youth have already called friends and started sharing the Gospel with them.

All of us have been encouraged to memorize more scripture!

We are all making a list of those we will be praying for.

Fee lead worship and it was amazing! No concert here... Just Spirit filled worship.

The door has been opened for future conversations with our youth.

Lowlights:
Zach got sick on Saturday evening and had to go home. We love you Zach and hope you are feeling better!

We have to wait a whole year for D2S to come back to Phoenix.

My Thoughts:
My desire for unity has been fueled even more by attending Dare2Share. Our youth were encouraged to actively pursue opportunities to share their faith with their friends and if they do this by inviting their friends to attend our youth group, I think their friends would be stuck by the obvious divisions that exist. I think we really need to work on our own unity and work on being "Inviters and Includers", so that we can make visitors feel welcome when they do come. We actually had a couple of new kids today and I put them on the spot and asked them how welcome they felt when they came into our youth meeting... both shared that they were not made to feel welcome and one mentioned that when he walked in, "everyone just stared at me". I am continuing to pray about how to help us improve and I am committing to do my part to help new folks fit in.

It was great to have time to hang out with the kids! I had some great conversations and I think we had a lot of fun. I love these kids and seeing them be encouraged to go deeper means a lot to me.

I'm excited about going next year!!! It was a ton of fun and now that I know what to expect... next year will be even better!!!!

Trusting in the darkness

The world around us is constantly changing  and we are constantly adapting to living in it. We have a choice when it comes to how we do the adapting, we can either adapt gracefully or grudgingly, but either way, we will adapt. I am very thankful that I have a real trust in my Lord that allows me to adapt gracefully for the most part. Because of my faith, I believe that their is a master plan and that these changes will end up for the greater good as they all fit into Gods plan.

I am facing some potential changes right now and I am struggling with how to deal with them. On the one hand I am trusting that God will do what is best and on the other hand I am praying that God will work things out so that I don't have to deal with a bunch of pain. I am facing the prospect of a couple of my good friends having to move away in order to get jobs. I want them to be able to have good jobs and to be able to provide for their families, but on I don't want that to happen at the expense of my having to watch them move away. I love these guys and would be hurt to see them go.

I'm not entirely sure where they are with wanting to stay or wanting to go and so I am struggling with selfishness as I am most concerned with me and my feelings. You see, I really love these guys and their families, having seen their children grow up. So I pray... I pray that God will accomplish in them the things that He wants to accomplish.

So there we are... I'm in the dark. I don't know God's will for my friends, I don't know the desires of their hearts either. I am left looking in from the outside with only my desires for my friends. I don't feel guilty in making my desires known to God and I will will be thankful regardless the outcome as I trust that God knows what's best.

Unity

Why is unity so important? It is important for so many different reasons. The main reason for me is simply that Jesus calls for it in the scriptures. Jesus taught that we should love one another and if we are loving one another then unity will naturally follow. I could spend all day talking about the things that break down unity but I would rather consider the benefits.

You know, I don't think people really stop to consider the people we have all around us, especially in the church. The church in the scriptures is referred to as the body of Christ and each member of the body has a unique purpose. It is interesting that when a part of the body turns against the rest of the body it is generally surgically removed. We don't usually do this in the church, although members turn against one another all the time, usually over stupid things that mean nothing in the view of eternity.

Our churches and communities would be so much stronger if we were united, truly loving one anther from the heart. We simply need to set aside our differences or our perceived differences so that we can concentrate on those things that make us the same. Simply being disciples of Jesus, should be enough to keep us together. I can't see how we can consider ourselves disciples and not do the things He has asked us to do. He simply wants us to love one another. He doesn't ask us to find people who are just like we are, I don't think it has anything to do with us, but has everything to do with us seeing Jesus in each other.

I see this all the time when working with the youth, it is like they constantly are looking for the very things that can keep them apart instead of looking at the very thing that should unite them. It kills me because they do not yet have the eyes to look past the here and now and to look at the future. The things that they are "into" today are not the things that they will be "into" next week. My prayer is that the youth of today will be able to set aside their differences so that they can unite one with another in love with Jesus being the glue.

Lord, bring unity to your church! Cleanse hearts and help us to focus on You. Be the glue that unites us and protect us from the enemy who wants nothing more than to separate us so that he can destroy us. Lord these young ones need you and they need each other, please show them how they can unite to follow You. Give them grace for one another so that they can get beyond the silly things and see the Truth for what it is.

Please join with me in praying for unity!