"But I am a Worm"

Two nights ago it had rained for many hours and the ground was soaked! Therefore, there were many nightcrawlers out in the parking lot of the church. I decided to go out and collect a bunch of them for the hayride in a month. There's a pond at the place where the hayride is taking place and I know that those fishies will love these juicy worms! I've also been thinking about one of the lesser known Bible verses lately. This is the one where David is in trouble and feels like God has abandoned him. In Psalm 22 he starts out with the same words that Jesus used on the cross "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Then he goes on to say "But I am a worm, not a man." That's feeling pretty low! Worms have no eyes and no one seems to really care about them. They just seem to crawl slowly through the dirt and I guess they just eat dirt. God does not look at us like we are worms! He has great plans for us to know Him and to make our lives count! When I think of worms like the ones I collected yesterday, I think of goin' fishin'. Not just fishin' for fish, but for people! Worms entice fish to bite on the hook, but when they get hooked it could be the end of the line for them. We need to find some bait that will entice people to bite on the gospel (the good news of Jesus). When people take this bait it won't be the end of the line for them. It will be the beginning of a spiritual adventure and their lives will be touched and blessed by God forever!

John & the Marines

In the lower right part of the pyramid kneels John Clark. He's a recent graduate of Marine bootcamp. He came back to our youth group to tell about his experiences and to encourage us.
I don't know what other people's vision of the Marines is like, but I know that my view of what's going on there is very positive. John has matured a lot during that bootcamp and he has grown spiritually too! He described the worship services as awesome! The favorite song there was "I Can Only Imagine". He described the Marines as a group that strives to work together and must work together. I thought about how us Christians only work together some of the time. Many times we insist on having our way or doing it our way. The only way that we need to be doing things is Christ's way! Working together to make sure each person knows they are loved deeply by God and that they were created for a purpose. Like Rick Warren says "It's not about me". It is supposed to be about us, them and most importantly about the Lord. Thanks John (and the marines) for a great lesson and helping, encouraging and serving each other!

Air 1 I'm Lovin' it!

I love it that we have a radio station like Air 1 to listen to some great Christian rock music! I just feel blessed, because I've been into the music they've played on the air lately! In the 80's there was so little of this kind of music, but thankfully many bands have come on the music scene in the last decade or so that have changed that. Christian bands and singers have their music in movies and tv shows a lot these days. Like the McDonalds commercial says "I'm lovin' it". RoCk oN!

We all need fuel!

If you are old enough to drive you've probably become a fuel pump price watcher like me! It was mind boggling to me when gas went up over $3.00 a gallon. Twenty bucks didn't go very far at that price. I went to a conference this summer and the speaker talked about maximizing our performance by giving our body fuel (energy). We do that best by sleeping a good 8 hours or so and by having regular food & water intake. Unfortunately the food intake isn't supposed to be as heavily concentrated in the chocolate food group like I've always thought it should be. Our bodies were also made to use our energy in a big way by exercising. Of course, when you do that, you sleep better and the body functions better. Ok, what am I getting at....? I've been thinking about how we're to be fueled up spiritually. We need to have regular times of energy storing up and then a way to expend that spiritual energy. I think we either don't take in enough spiritual food and rest or we get a lot of it, but rarely use it so the spiritual energy just remains in us unused! For you high school youth at 24/7 you can keep fueling by coming to S.A.L.T. this Wed. at 6:30. For everyone else, we all need to find a way to use the faith & knowledge that is stored up in us! There's more than enough opportunity to exercise our faith and to use the fuel that is stored up inside of us.

Hurricane Relief

It's heartbreaking to see all of the images on TV about the Hurricance. It's hard to believe that it is actually happening in our country. It's also awesome to hear of the stories of people being reunited with loved ones. Just a couple of days before our youth garage sale someone suggested that we donate it all to the hurricane relief. So we did and it was a great blessing to at least be doing something small for people in need. The youth who worked the sale got up early and worked hard! They were more excited about doing something for people rather than for themselves. This generation of youth sometimes gets a bad rap, but I believe that this generation also has a great capacity to show compassion in very deep way. We are going to try to figure out what we can continue to do help out! Praise the Lord we raised over $3,000.