Last night was great in H20(high school worship service). Everything went relatively smoothly, except for some technical issues with my gear. Apparently, I have a loose volume knob on my guitar and it's causing my sound to cut off intermittently. Pretty freaky stuff when you're in the middle of a song.

Today is an interesting day. We need to do 6 new activations at work to make our monthly quota. And its 3:24 pm right now. So it will be a miracle if God chooses to bless the next 2.5 hours with 6 activations. Or it might be a late night- I'm determined to get this done. Oh yeah, the real interesting part. I got a speeding ticket today. I don't claim innocence at all. It was a humbling experience, to say the least.

But God is great, no matter what is going on. I don't say that because I feel that way, in fact I feel pretty blah. But I KNOW that God is sovereign over all things and He's working everything out for the good of those who love Him.

I am convinced more and more each day that there are so many Christians that have no real idea what the actual church is all about. It's not about a building, or a preacher, or special effects. It's not about living this pseudo-perfect lifestyle in front of other Christians and saying you're "doing good" when asked. It's this real, raw, incredible thing that can happen in a house or a back alley, or out in the mountains somewhere. It's not composed of perfect citizens with no sins or struggles in their lives. It's composed of people who love Jesus. Not just say it, but live it. People who want to bring God glory. People who have real struggles and real trials and real heartbreaks in their lives. People who are eternally changed because of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and know they are nothing without Him. This is so different from the traditional perception of the church. God's people need to wake up and realize that time's running out and people are dying and going to hell and if no one else is going to do anything about it, then we will. We need to affect our culture instead of embrace it.

God help us all. Pray for the body of Christ. Lift each other up with encouraging words. Hold each other accountable. These are dark days and we have the Light within us.

Today is a strange day. I feel strange, and I'm not sure why. Stress, I guess. Even though serving in church is a joy and a privelege, it is stressful sometimes. I actually have two sunday school lessons to prepare, since I'm covering Todd's 8am discipleship class and teaching my normal 10:45 class. I'm confident that God will show me what He wants me to teach.

And since we're on the subject of God's direction in teaching, let me go ahead and tell you about last week. It's a great example of the benefits of obedience, even though many times my life seems to be about the perils of disobedience. We saw the movie End of the Spear on Saturday night. It was INCREDIBLE. That's all I'll say. If you've seen it, then you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't, then rent it or better yet buy it, because I can almost guarantee that if you love Jesus, then you'll love this movie. But let me catch myself before I give the plot away.

Anyway, we saw the movie and it blew us away. I already had made plans to make my lesson on another topic, but God had other things in mind. I had been having a feeling that day that God wanted me to talk about something besides what I had planned on talking about. Sure enough, I read that day's corresponding proverb and verses were jumping off of the page at me. Different verses than usual. In general, I think that verses that stand out are ones that have a personal application to where we're at at the time. But these verses had to deal with the poor. So God gave me this whole lesson about the two sides of poverty: material and spiritual. It went over great with the kids, and another adult that serves there every week told me that the kids opened up more than she had ever seen them do before. So glory to God for His great lesson! I was so humbled to be used in such a way. And it was yet another confirmation that this is what God has called me to do. I so look forward to being a youth pastor. I'm just waiting on God to pull it all together. I know He has to knock off a lot of rough edges and prepare me for what He has in store for me. Waiting has been a character-building exercise, to say the least.

...and by the way, I thank God for my beautiful wife and my beautiful baby girl. They are the silver lining in any cloudy sky for me.

WOW. It's been almost a whole month since I posted last. This serves as proof of how crazy life can be sometimes.

On August 6th, we flew to Connecticut to spend time with my mom and my stepdad and some family. Connecticut is beautiful. I spent 15 years of my life there, and it still feels like home, even after living elsewhere for 7 years. We had some awesome God-given opportunities to witness to two of my friends while we were there. Many of the people that live in the Bible belt have no idea how secularized life is up there. I mean, the Christian music section in Wal-Mart is half the size! Must not be a lot of demand. People in general keep their "religious views" to themselves. Churches are few and far between. If my research is correct, there's only 2 churches running over 1000 on Sunday morning service in the whole state. What a mission field.

But it was great to go up there. It was so relaxing, sitting out on the screened in porch in my old house, having my quiet time in the morning. It was great to unwind after the recent pressures at work.

I'm not sure if I have talked about this yet, but I have been placed in a position of authority at my job. Not a manager, just in charge. I know, it's complicated. But there might be management opportunities in the future if I do a good job. If not, this is great leadership prep for ministry! It's amazing the things I don't know about leadership. I've had to rely heavily on my dad, who's been in management-type jobs since he was in the army 7 years ago or so. So naturally, he's a huge database of management info (no, I'm not calling him huge. :D )

So getting my feet wet in "pre-management" has been stressful, mostly because I've been stubbornly trying to do it on my own and not doing it God's way as much as I should. But it's improving after only a month, and I have positive expectations for the future.

I also was sick this week, which was partially due to a virus and partially because I stayed up all night Saturday night, which really messes with my immune system. I haven't thanked God for my health in a while, which I should. I thanked Him this week. There's a lesson in everything.

Hopefully I'll be better about posting more regularly. Pray for me.