Deer Creek

In a couple hours I am leaving for Deer Creek with Leah, Cat and possible a fourth. We are supposed to be stopping on the way up at some outlet malls to get some cheap clothes. Now generally I don't like shopping, however, I need some new clothes and I don't have a lot of money. With that in mind I am somewhat excited about the prospect of some new clothes. In addition to that I am excited about the weekend. The president of Young Life, Denny Rydberg, is the speaker and there are going to be like 700 people there. This thing is nuts. I have never before heard Denny talk, so I am interested to see how he comes across. I am expecting it to sound a little business man-ish, but that's all I have heard about him and only that from one source. I am excited to see how it goes. The other reason I am excited is because for some reason when I go on these weekends, something usually happens. God usually shows up and does something. i don't know if it's that the people speaking are just anointed or its the fellowship, or the time not working, or just that I go with the expectation that God is going to show up. Bottom line though, is that something usually happens and I am excited about that. So I won't be around until late Sunday night, I don't know for sure what time we will be getting back on Sunday, but whatever it is I am sure I will have to go straight to work. I guess most of the people that have a reason to read this have a pretty high chance of actually being ont he weekend too. Maybe I'll see you there...

The Next Generation Leader

A few days ago I finished reading "The Next Generation Leader" by Andy Stanley. It is a book that talks about the different principles involved in becoming a leader. He identifies 5 categories of things that are essential to good leadership, and gives a lot of practical and biblical examples. I would say in general Andy knows what he's talking about and conveys it pretty well, but he's not a fantastic author, he's just good. However, this book was especially good for me because it caused me to take a closer look at myself. My friends say that I have a really low self awareness. I just don't see myself the way that I actually am. This book caused me to stop and really think hard about who I am, and who I want to become. I learned so much about my strengths and weaknesses and how to play towards things I am good at. Older people I know have told me that I am a natural leader, I don't see it. I think people follow natural leaders, and in my opinion, no one is following me. As I get older I hope that I grow into someone who is worthy of following. I thought of a few qualities that I want to be really important to me for the rest of my life. These are my non-negotiables. Things I want to have in spite of the cost...

I want to have great integrity.

I want to be honest and truthful.

I want to be faithful.

I want to be broken.

I want to be full of grace and compassion.

I want to be transparent.

Obviously I have a long way to go towards some of those, and could be much better at all of them. This is just a place to start. I am identifying the direction I want my character to move. I am sure that I cannot get there, however, without some help from the people around me. I need people to tell me when I am not these things. This is not an open invitation to tear me apart when I fail, but I would like constructive criticism. I am interested in growing in Christ. I want to understand the love of Christ better all the time. Lacking self awareness I especially need people to help me see places where I am missing the plank in my own eye.

Critalize

Yeah Critalize, it's not a typo. I know its not a word really, but I invented it when I was in high school and I think it is appropriate for what is currently happening in my life. The best place to start would be with a definition.

Critalize- (v) the action or of both analyzing and criticizing a subject at the same time.

Critalizing is something I am currently doing to myself with some help from some friends. I am trying to carve out my weaknesses. I want to know just what they are. I am learning to play to my strengths, and part of that is learning to avoid my areas of weakness. The more energy I put into this, the more I discover just how profoundly damaged I am. I really try to do things right, I try to grow, I put a ton of effort into growing and becoming more Christ like. Somehow though I manage to miss by an obscene margin. The short list of major problems I have is not good.

1.) I am very self focused, I love making things about me. I want people to think I am better, smarter, faster, more spiritual, basically that I do everything right. Now I know that no one can actually do that, and that none of the people around me are doing that, but for some reason I will not allow myself to be know as bad at something. it's not an option. I have to be good at everything in the eyes of everyone. It's all about me and how great I am. now people that know me well know that I am becoming better at admitting my shortcomings and working towards being ok with those things, but I have a forever long way to go.

2.) I am arrogant. Now its not all that harmful tot the people around you to be arrogant at most things. It may be damaging to relationships, and annoying, but really its not all that harmful for me to gloat about being good at something to people. Where it is very dangerous and potentially harmful is when I am arrogant about my knowledge in Christ, especially when i don't really know what I am talking about. It's just another instance of me wanting people to think that I know more than I do. The truth is that I know scripture, at least the words, well enough to make a lot of people think I actually understand a great deal of it. Looking at my relationships and different instances where I go to scripture to make a point, I am ashamed at the number of times I have used scripture to prove something when I may not have actually known the right answer. That's not healthy, in fact that's just sinful. I need to work on being more humble in things and more ok with my brokenness, especially when it comes to sharing the words of God.

3.) I am dishonest. Any of my close friends will tell you that most of what I say is not to be taken seriously, and a great deal of my friends will just call me a liar. Most of the not true things come from me trying to inflate other peoples opinions of myself. I will say that I have gotten much better about this, but at the same time I will say that I have a long way to go.

Here's the big deal though. I really want to change. I don't want to be those things anymore. I want to be done with it. I need Christ to come fix me. I can't do it by myself. I realize that all of the things I mentioned above all point to the same major cause, I am insecure. I am just not confidant that the regular un-inflated me will be enough for people. I doubt myself. I know all the reasons why not to be like this. I've had Galations 1:10 memorized for like 4 years, I know that it's insulting to God to say that I am not enough the way He made me, I know that no one's perfect and that I don't need to be all the things I try to be or try to make people think I am. I am just not ok with myself. I feel like there are all these things I need to fix before I can let people in. I want to have "mature struggles" before I can share the immature struggles that I am fighting with now.

So I am working on letting Christ come and fix me. I don't exactly know how to do that except praying and trying, but I want to change. Maybe its wrong to even want all the stuff to go away, maybe I just need to embrace my own brokenness and live like that. I don't know how all this is supposed to work, but I want something to happen. I am done living in this cycle that doesn't have an end.

Freedom Writers

This past Friday was an awesome day...First all the new leaders got placed across the city. It's so exciting for me to watch all of them, especially the ones I've gotten to know, as they prepare to go. Its such a sharp learning curve during the first year of leading that they will learn to see Christ in a whole new light. After placement a bunch of us went out to eat and then to a movie. When we got to the theater we decided on Freedom Writers. It was so good. It's the best movie I've seen in theaters in a long time. It's made even more incredible because it's a true story. So I highly recommend it to anyone interested in going to see a movie.

Baptism

In my small group last Wednesday night we where going through Acts 1 & 2. The whole topic of Baptism and its importance came up, and I learned that I am pretty unsure of what I actually think about a pretty major biblical idea. Turns out there are very few verses about baptism in the New Testament. In one instance Peter commands a group of 3000 new believers to "go, be baptized and receive the Holy Spirit. "(Acts 2:36-37) Another place it says. "I baptize you with water. But one more powerful than I will come, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire." (Luke 3:16) So in one case it looks like a Biblical command that once you accept Christ you need to go get baptized, in the other, it seems like after Christ dies and the Holy Spirit comes we don't have to worry about it anymore. Based on the criminal crucified next to Christ and Christ's statement "Today you will be with me in paradise, (I don't understand this anyways because Christ didn't ascend for 3 days)," (Luke 23:43) it doesn't seem like Baptism is necessary for salvation. Other verses to support that are numerous, but there an example of one. On the flip side Baptism clearly has a major significance. "As Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove." (Mark 1:10) This has two points of note, first that Jesus got baptized. Second, that something big happened because Jesus got baptized. These two thing make baptism seem really important, but it could be the exception because Jesus was God.

So I've read a lot about this and talked to some people and I can't really find anyone willing to take a hard line stance on this. What is the point of Baptism? Is it merely an outward symbol of an internal change, or is it something more than that? I hope some one reads this that can clarify. Maybe this is just one of those things that its better to be safe with and just go ahead and get baptized if you've committed your life to Christ. I certainly don't see a risk in it, except maybe getting excommunicated if you where sprinkled as a baby....

matt

Learning

I haven't written anything on here lately. It's not that I haven't wanted to or haven't had anything on my mind, just that the things that have been consuming my thoughts are not yet public stuff. In a few months, after everything is worked out, I'll post some ex scripts from my journal. I will say now that these past few weeks have been an incredible time of struggle and growth for me. It's almost seems like an axiom of faith that you learn things most readily during times of struggle. I can't really remember many things that I've learned while life was easy for me, but if I look back, there always seems to be a lesson when things are hard, always something God is trying to teach me, a situation He is trying to draw my attention towards. It continues to amaze me how far God is willing to go in pursuit of our undivided attention. I have heard in sermons from many different pastors and church leaders about things like self sacrifice, obedience, prayer, righteousness, ethics, the list goes on, but I think really it comes down to looking at God. If on a daily basis I face God, all the rest of the things sort of fall into place. More than ever I am convicted by my need for grace. I am currently reading the book Calvary Road by Roy Hession, I think I read it first during training for Work Crew in 2004, anyways it has a great passage that sums up how I feel right now.

"Revival is just the life of the Lord Jesus poured into human hearts. Jesus is always victorious. In Heaven they are praising Him all the time for His victory. Whatever may be our experience of failure and barrenness may be, He is never defeated. His power is boundless. And we, on our part, have only to get into a right relationship with Him and we shall see His power being demonstrated in our hearts and lives and service, and His victorious life will fill us and overflow through us to others. And that is revival in its essence."

I recommend the whole book. The point of this is that looking at Christ and being together in a relationship with Him is the only way to do the other stuff. The reason being a checklist Christian doesn't work is because you can't quantify Christ. There is not list of things to do that guarantee a relationship with Him. However, if you daily surrender your heart to Christ, the other things happen naturally. The way we live our lives does not dictate our relationship with Christ, but it is our relationship with Christ that dictates our lives. I think its a good idea to know about the many facets of Christianity, it's a good practice to read books and keep up with what's going on in the faith. Being intellectual about our faith is not a bad thing, but it is essential that knowing things does not get in the way of experiencing grace. I am the first to admit that I try really hard to read lot of things and be smart, but I am beginning to realize that, though it can be beneficial, thinking I know things has in many ways kept me from knowing the love of Christ. I don't want to be that guy anymore. I want to be humble. I want to lift others up with my words and actions instead of tearing people down. For so long I just didn't see the benefit of consistently encouraging the people around me, and I am sorry for that. Living an encouraging lifestyle is something that I wanted to be committed to changing in my life. I have a lot of work to do to become someone like that, but I can no longer continue to discourage. Its just not who I want to be.

In another area I am learning something else about God. God is big....way big. Today I listened to a message by Andy Stanley (I'm not computer savy enough to put in the flash link) from North Point Community Church about asking big things of God and I realized it something I rarely do. It was particularly focused towards young people that haven't yet figured out all the stuff that can easily take up a lot of time (families, careers, ect). Anyways he talked about the idea of having a big dream for life, and how asking big, even impossible things of God is in a way honoring to Him. He said that God is consistent in answering prayers that people repeatedly and continuously prayed for for a long time. Prayers like "give us the city." (the Vineyard) Too often I pray for things that in the long run will just take care of themselves. Not that praying for the minutia is bad, but there has to be big prayers as well. God is big, and he likes being faithful to people who ask big things of Him. God likes revealing His power to people as a witness through our faithfulness, more often we need to be giving Him the opportunity to do that.

The more I think about this Big Prayer thing the more I see it reflected in scripture. Moses prayed in the east for 40 years before God sent him back for His people, Daniel prayed every day for years in oppression before he got the opportunity to talk to the king, Nehemiah prayed for an impossible dream before God engineered the rebuilding of the city walls, Ester and Mordichi prayed for 4 years before she was elected Queen, Habakukk prays for the redemption of his people multiple times before God responds...the list includes many of the prophets in the old testament and almost every instance of a miracle in the new testament. When people pray with all their hearts for impossible things to happen in the name of Christ, more often than not, God is faithful. How many of us Christians are a result of someone who understood this idea and as a result prayed for us when our salvation seemed impossible. I know I am. So I am asking myself now what it is that God has put on my heart to be faithful in prayer for. I am asking God what He is waiting to reveal himself to the world through me in.

I want to say again though that the biggest thing I am learning now is grace. I have been a Christian for almost 5 years now and the most important thing I have learned so far is something I knew in the first few minutes, Grace.