Christianity
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The Actual Reason People are Scared of Changes
because often change means a loss. A ton has changed in the past year. If you’ve read any of my other posts. You know the full story of that. I’ve also learned that I’ve been fortunate to experience some fun changes and that the fact that they’ve been happy changes has been part of what makes them easier to handle. After talking with the rest of the youth group leadership team at my church, I realized why the changes have been relatively easy for me – because there hasn’t been much loss; and I am so grateful for that. Change is tough, especially when it means a loss that you…
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Jesus Saves Me Everyday
I heard one of my coworkers today say this and I thought it was such an important reminder. During our conversation, he mentioned that he doesn’t like to sin as it keeps him farther away from God. I had heard about a similar outlook just a couple of weeks ago that sounded a lot like this. Sometimes sin can be so compelling to us, after all, Satan wants it that way. The thing is though, that it distances us from God and that’s not a fun, good, or healthy place to be. It reminds me that although I mess up, Jesus is still there. We live in a sinful world…
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Avoiding the Lure
I heard a sermon from Francis Chan the other evening. It was all about comparing temptation to God’s plan for us. It was a really compelling message, and it reminded me of some important things about my relationship with God. God loves us so much. Francis, during the sermon, mentioned how we are not only God’s beloved children that he loves, we, as the church are also the bride of Christ. Francis likened sin to cheating on that marriage. I had never heard this comparison, but I thought it was good for the most part. It was a good challenge to think that that’s how poorly sin affects us. It…
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Turbulence
We all face turbulence in our lives, whether we’re experiencing at the moment or not. After all, we live in a sinful world. The question is: do we treat God like white noise until there’s turbulence? I remind myself often that I am who I am, and where I am because of what God’s done in my life so far! It is only because of the challenges, blessings, up, and downs that I am the person I am today. The thing is joy is the inevitable result of living your life with God’s priorities. Joy isn’t about having a perfect life here on earth it’s about having joy in Christ…
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A Small Comunity with Room for Everyone
I got my college internship from being tagged in the comments sections of a Facebook post… and then interviewing and getting the job. It was an awesome summer and I loved nearly every minute. When I was on camp staff I heard that despite being larger than the camp I grew up going to they were still moderately small but the director mentioned that they’ve never turned a kid away over numbers, they’ve always made room, whether by making cabins out of two smaller rooms, or having one or two more campers in a cabin, they’ve made it work. So upon hearing that I got to talking with other senior…
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Fickle or Faithful
Jesus plus anything else is not the gospel. We can’t turn the gospel into some personalized thing, otherwise, it ceases to be God’s word – it turns into our’s instead. This is what my pastor talked about this morning. In addition to mentioning that Jesus demands our unquestioned devotion. This does not mean we will never have doubts; instead it means that we can’t personalize the gospel to allow for our human weaknesses, we have to pick up our cross daily and acknowledge there are things that we may want that we essentially can’t have because of our relationship with Christ, but if we truly want to follow Him we…
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A Year with High School Ministries
Holy moly I just finished up a year volunteering in high school ministries, and goodness did I love it and learn a lot. All the grades of kids who were in senior high this year I had as students in junior high. It was quite an experience seeing kids through these ministries and seeing them grow into young adults. Not only that, but we also had a number of families join the church in the past couple of years, and they’ve students have been great additions to the group. It’s been crazy to put myself back in these students shoes, and deal with very different questions through the years. I’ve…
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Bread Of Life
I picked up some great insights from my pastor’s sermon this morning. Find him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/JaredCarlsonGPC Jesus calls himself the bread of life, often this can seem somewhat odd, even to those of us who call Him our Lord and Savior; it’s just not something you hear otherwise. But it’s so important. You see our life with God means a fulfilled life, not a perfect life. To loosely quote some things that Jared said, “Don’t repackage or adjust God’s revelation, when you do that it ceases to be His.” That and, “Accommodation never produces conviction, and appeasement never produces obedience.” When faith depends on sight it leads to…
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This is the Day that the Lord has Made
let us rejoice and be Glad(er) in it. It’s the last night of youth group tonight for the school year. It’s been a wild ride. 12 leaders 3 retreats 1 youth house countless memories. Praise the Lord.
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Being Mindful
Sometimes in our lives we become convinced we have something right, sometimes we are right but other times we may not be. It comes down mostly to wisdom and having the courage it rely on facts over feelings and focus on the truth. Being mindful is about being a critical thinker, not just in school, not just when you’re working on a project for work, but also when you believe you’ve found the truth, keep looking for proof, it will keep you sharper in your convictions, that and you’ll be better at defending those convictions. Also, though, make sure to listen to others and ask questions, just be nice about…
