Alien

Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul.

1 Peter 2:11

Lately I have just felt strongly that I am alien to this world and that my home is with my Savior. Everywhere I go I just seem to feel like I don't belong in this world. For instance, at work all of the people I work with are extremely shocked at my lifestyle choices. They just don't understand why I don't got partying or "chase tail". The pleasures of this Earth are not eternal. It saddens me to think that that is the only life they know and have not experienced life as God intended it.

I'm constantly reminded how people are trying to fill the spiritual void in their lives with superficial things like sex, alcohol, and drugs. I believe we all deep down know that it isn't fulfilling and is not what life should look like. These things do not make people happy or give joy. Joy comes from God. Its that need for something more which pushes people to sin. I just wish that need pushed people to accept Christ.

I am very glad that I have hope in Christ. I know that I have a purpose to be here, that I am a part of a much larger plan. My life is not my own and I am grateful for that because knowing my life belongs to Christ is much more fulfilling.

Jesus Loves You

No, seriously he really does, and the fact that I have to follow "Jesus Loves You" with that kind of frustrates me.

Jesus' love is unlike anything in this world. It is unconditional, unyielding, eternal. It is AGAPE. Agape love is so outstanding and incredible that it is hard to define in english. It is the most powerful type of love that there is. Some define Agape love as self-sacrificing, selfless, divine. Agape love can only exist from God. We are impure and as such are not even capable of this type of love. When we love someone, we usual have some self-interest or self serving motives behind it. However, God is pure and he does love us without selfishness.

We are comparatively insignificant to His existence. We are mortal, weak, miniscule beings. We are vastly and eternally smaller than Him, yet He loves us. He does not love us for our actions. He does not love us for our devotion. He does not love us for our gifts. He does not love us for our thoughts. He loves us simply because we exist. He loved all of us before we were created knowing exactly what we would do and say how we would fail Him. God's love is very meaningful and significant.

The phrase "Jesus loves you" means so much in very few words and even so, today it has become a cliché. This frustrates me, today when somebody says, "Jesus loves you" it might not mean that much mostly because I feel we don't understand how much He really does love us. The phase has so much power and meaning behind it but yet it is easily dismissed as Christian jargon. But Jesus truly does love you, more than you or I could ever comprehend.

"But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." - Romans 5:8

What Young Life is to me and what it isn't

I believe an important question we must ask ourselves before entering ministry is this: "How am I going to get plugged into a ministry, and what fellowship will I enter? As most of you know, I am a young life leader and most of you and my friends are fellow young life leaders. But there is a certain purpose of it in my life and there are certain things it doesn't serve in my life. I love Young Life, as it is a major part of my life but it has a certain purpose in my life and other parts of my life are not fulfilled by it, which is completely okay because Young Life has one goal- ministry.

Young Life is not a fellowship. This may seem simple enough or you may not agree with me and that is okay but hear me out. This is just my humble opinion based on my own observations and conclusions. I used to believe that Young Life was my fellowship and can see why others would to so I understand the thought behind that assumption. When I first started, I believed a goal of mine in leading and ministry was to grow in Christ. I believe ministry does force us to grow and seeing Christ work in others' lives does help one to grow but it only does so much. It took me awhile to realize that doing ministry is not the same as a fellowship. I hope that anyone that is seeking for fellowship and community to help them grow closer to Christ is not expecting all of this to come from ministering to others. Both are equally important.

Young Life has a mission and that is to reach high school kids and bring Christ to their lives and to help them to advance their personal relationships with Christ. Young life's mission is not to create a fellowship of believers of college-age to post-college adults. Young life can encourage and facilitate us to be a part of a fellowship but I believe ministry thrives from people who are active in church and fellowship.

Please note that I want this to be taken as an encouragement to seek other means of fellowship. However, I do believe Young Life can help you to be introduced to people who believe the same things as you do and have the same morals, values, and beliefs. But, this is not Young Life's responsibility to plug you into a small group or a bible study. It is our responsibility as Christian adults to seek this out. Young Life assumes before you are placed that you have a growing relationship with Christ, and a part of this is to have fellowship of believers.

Young Life is great at what it was intended for: to bring Christ to kids' lives. I believe this is similar in other ministries as well. Ministry is good at exactly that- ministry. In other ministries, a fellowship may grow out of the friends and people you meet in your ministry but this is not the organization's fault if this is not happening. In fact, it could be very draining if one's ministry and fellowship are mixed for one person. If one person has no other group of believers that are pouring encouragement, accountability, and love besides the people that person is ministering to then I believe they could quickly be drained. We all need peers and other people to pour into us and feed us spiritual milk sometimes.

Yes, I thoroughly believe fellowship is extremely important for Christ-followers. That is easily evident from scripture. I just encourage all of us to be accountable for ourselves to seek that out. Young life is not intended for a fellowship and should not be to blame if that part of our life is not fulfilled. Just as I used to believe that Young life was my source for fellowship, I learned not so easily that I need to be searching for more. We are responsible ourselves for it to happen and thrive. Fellowship is vital for ministry. We all need it to continue to drive and outpour our love to others. Also, I and I believe many others need an older adult to mentor me so that I know what I may be missing or what I am doing wrong. So if anyone is willing and able let me know.

"Bear one another's burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ. So then, while we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, and especially to those who are of the household of the faith."
Galatians 6:2,10

Suffering

So I have been thinking a lot lately about the things people have been talking about all this suffering and how we grow so much in our suffering. First, let me say that I agree that we can grow very much in our relationship with Christ in our suffering. The times I have grown the most have been in times when I was going through the hardest of times in my life. I am not gonna disagree that suffering can spur a person on towards a new outlook and greater love for Jesus.

However I worry when people say that they ask for suffering in their lives. I think that this can be considered very ungrateful. If things are going good for us, it is only because God is blessing us in our lives at that time. He is the one that is giving us all the blessings and good things in our lives. To ask for suffering is almost saying to God that I don't want your gifts of blessings and good tidings in my life. I just don't think God wants us to completely forget and put to waste what God is blessing in our life.

That being said, when things are going good, we should be reflecting on God and praising and thanking Him and constantly asking us for challenges and things for us to further His kingdom here on Earth. When things are going for us in our lives it is a gift of God. In the good times we should turn to Him and continue to love and fear Him. Our hearts should be more and more thankful for what he has blessed us with. We should not only turn to Christ when we think we really need Him. Because the truth is we always need Him. Without Him we are nothing.

Instead of asking for suffering in our lives, I think we should ask God how to take more risks and to step outside of our comfort zones. Suffering is inevitable, we don't need to ask for it. I think that asking for suffering can be a very unselfish thing if the reason is to know Christ better and to love him more deeply. If we think things are going to well for us, we need to take Christ to places we don't think about and put ourselves into more situations which push us into uncomfortable situations.

11  Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the 
majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours. 
Yours, O LORD, is the kingdom; you are exalted as head over all.

1 Chronicles 29:11