Sunday school, UFC style

I had the incredible privelege of teaching Todd's discipleship class yesterday morning. Besides the fact that I was fighting sleep when I got to church, it went really well. One thing I'm discovering more and more about myself is I LOVE to teach. In an environment where kids want to listen. Sometimes my class gets pretty crazy- wait, who am I kidding? It's every week! It's been a frustrating experience because I want to encourage them and show them kindness and compassion they might not receive at home or at school. So up until this week I have kept my cool and just taught as much as I could get in, even if it was only five minutes.

This week was a little different.

I went in there and of course it was chaos- there were soda bottles flying through the air and someone was turning the light on and off, among other things. The first thing I did was clearly state that we had to keep it really orderly in there because there were probably 25+ guys in there, and most of them enjoy farting just so that everyone has to smell it, for example. So after I said that, things stayed the same, and I just knew that I had to let them have it so we could get some order and we could talk about things that would encourage/challenge them spiritually.

There are five or six kids in particular(all from my class) that are the worst of the worst and I wish I had a picture of their faces, because they were pretty surprised. Well after I said my piece about the same kids disrupting every week and how parents were going to be contacted if it didn't stop, 50-75% of the kids became perfect little angels. Of course, the bad group of kids kept at it, and I had to kick one of them out (I HATE doing that because they miss out on the lesson and I don't want them to feel rejected). It was rough going the rest of the way, but we got to have a great conversation about being a Christian and how you need to know what the Bible says about living God's way to be successful. I know that kids their age don't memorize a lot of Scripture, but no one could give me a single verse that gave a practical way to live the Christian life. That says something.

I think that it has something to do with American culture. You need to be 18 to be an adult and responsible for your actions, and not too much is expected of you before then except for going to school and staying out of trouble. I don't think that parents are challenging their kids to dust off their copy of the Bible (if they have one) and really find out what/who God calls us to be as Christ-followers. Maybe some parents are trying and their kids are just stubborn- I don't know. But it's really apparent that regardless of the circumstances, the Bible has yet to become personal to many of these kids. I take some responsibility for that. God just had to wake me up to get me to realize this.

After all was said and done and class was over, there was a kid that came up to me and talked to me for the first time. I had earned his respect for standing up for myself in class.

IT WAS ALL WORTH IT.

I hate missing H20. I had to work yesterday which made me unable to play. It frustrates me to no end. But you know, hearing that 8 people got saved last night encouages me, not only that God is still doing great things in H20 but that everything runs smoothly without me. Jeff Hill is the man when it comes to last minute organization. Well almost.

I have the awesome privelege of teaching Todd's discipleship class Sunday morning. I love that environment because for the most part everyone is excited about learning or at least they let me talk. Sometimes I want to take a nightstick to the head of every one of my guys in my normal class. But I guess you can't blame them when our motto is "Here- have 400 donuts. Now sit still and shut up even though you have ADHD!" I love them anyway. Besides, God uses frustrating situations to grow us.

I'm very tired today. I tend to be a night owl sometimes, and last night was one of those. I've been busy leveling up my Everquest 2 character so that when my Dad gets set up in Italy, we can play internationally. We have played video games together since I was 7 years old. Good ol' 1989. So it's sort of a sentimental thing, you could say.

Control

We live in a society obsessed with control. Remote control, video game controller, climate control, birth control, crowd control, volume control- we control EVERYTHING! It truly takes effort to release control and allow God to do things His way. For many of us, all of our basic needs are provided, and we can easily choose every day to be self-reliant and do things our own way.

What if we gave up?

What if guys let their wives use the remote? (No, the world would not explode!)

What if we spent more time allowing God to change us through prayer and Bible study?


The unknown is terrifying at times. But allowing fear or lack of control to paralyze us is unacceptable. God is a big God- everything exists in His presence. He has BIG plans for each of us. But we accept mediocrity. We accept average. We accept less than God's best.

Personally, I would rather live a life striving to follow Jesus with countless failures than to accept the safe, numbing control that we use to put ourselves in God's place. I don't want to get to the end of my life with the overwhelming regret and questions of "What if?"

The problem sometimes with releasing control is that we instantly move into the realm of faith. We cannot weigh or measure faith with instruments. We cannot put it in a jar or a magic prosperity prayer cloth. We have to actually believe the Bible and live like it's true. Well it is, right?

My narrow escape from death

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I could have taped a particular five-minute segment of my morning routine today and either won money or proved that God has plans for me because I didn't die.

Okay, here's what happened. Today was kind of a "Murphy's Law" sort of day. I woke up late. Then I had to iron my clothes for work, so that put me even further behind schedule. I had to iron while Bekah's waffle was toasting. Then the chaos hit. I had just finished ironing my clothes, and like a typical ADHD moment, got distracted by a bottle of what I thought was cologne or aftershave. It turned out to be shower gel, and I spilled some of it on my newly-ironed shirt! So then I ran to the bathroom and tried to get it off of my shirt before it stained (it was red-tinted). So I turned on the faucet and tried to use a damp washcloth to get the gel off my shirt. It worked okay, and I grabbed my wife's hair dryer to finish the job.

Now what happened next I can't 100% remember because it happened so suddenly. I believe I knocked a ceramic mug off of the bathroom counter and it shattered on the tile floor. Apparently my reaction was to drop the hair dryer into the sink with RUNNING WATER!! So then I realized what I had done and yanked that sucker out of the sink as fast as I could and pulled the plug out of the wall so I wouldn't die a fiery electrical death.

To make matters worse, I got to work 10 minutes late, among other consequences.

My life is proof that God has a sense of humor.

3 years

As of yesterday, Brooke and I have been married 3 years. I feel like an old geezer. I can't believe she's put up with me for so long! I can be one of the most hard-headed boneheads on the face of the planet sometimes, and I know that absolutely shocks you if you know me. :D

I am truly blessed to have such a great wife. God's sovereignty allows no room for coincidence, and He has given me just what I need in a wife. I am excited to do ministry together for the rest of our lives. Many times, she is a reminder to me of God's mercy and grace.

In other news- studying the Bible can be fun! Jeff Hill let me borrow John MacArthur's commentary and I am learning so much already. The past few days I have studied the first chapter of Romans. I think Jeff might have to fight me to get this thing back. :D

On a sidenote- I did not watch the Super Bowl. However, I did see the highlights later on a sports show, and let me just say, if the Bears played as good as they did in the first quarter, the Colts would have been toast. That kickoff return was insane!!

40th post!!!

Yeah!! Cue the confetti!! ....I guess no one's as excited as I am. Oh well.

Last night was great. Jeff and Carmen came over to hang out last night and we all stayed up talking to like 1:30. One of the reasons Jeff and I get along so well is because we can talk about the Bible for 4 hours and still have more to say. It's interesting because he and I disagree on a lot of things, at least initially, so it fosters a lot of healthy conversation. It was a great situation that God used to increase my desire to study the Bible.

So tonight's going to be good.. My wife is going to be hanging out with a friend of hers, and I'm going to get some quality time with Bekah and some quality time studying. I can't wait until I get to the point where I get paid to study the Bible for hours every day.

Truthfully, I had better fellowship and learned more last night than I usually get/do in church. Just proof it's not about a building or a scheduled program.