I am Pleased with You, My Child

So yesterday was not a great day.  I got home from a two day training session in Denver that was less than relaxing only to know that I had 2 hours to prep for a Bible study and to make fundraising phone calls.  The calls actually went well.  I made a few more bucks and I got prepped for study (which I was super excited for).  Then the first of two studies that night got cancelled.  Great.  Then I go to the study I lead only to have 2 people show up, 1 of them being super late, when expecting 7.  I left there completely heart-broken and crushed.  I had put all this work into growing this study only to have to cancel.

Needless to say, I didn't sleep much last night.  I made a 11:30 PM run to the chapel to get all my frustrations out just wondering what more I could do, and searching for what more I could give.  I was up all night tossing and turning, racking my brain for the best way to get to these guys without completely killing myself.  I finally did fall asleep around 1, and when I woke up this morning, I still felt totally empty inside, like I had failed so badly to a point where I would never be able to get back up.

Then Jesus played the Jesus card and totally blew me away.  I shouldn't be surprised right?  I mean, Jesus is Jesus.  He can do whatever he wants.  Yeah, that had slipped my mind in the last 12 hours.  For the longest time, trusting in God has always been a roller coaster ride for me.  Some days, weeks, and months are great, but others aren't.  And while, for the most part, I can always look to God to take care of things, I never expected what he was going to do for me this morning.  One of my mission partners gave me this book.  Some of you may have it.  It's called "Jesus Calling" by Sarah Young.  It's a 365 day devotional with a paragraph or two each day to help you have a conversation with God.  Here is the entry from today, November 20th...

"I am pleased with you, my child.  Allow yourself to become fully aware of My pleasure shining upon you.  You don't have to perform well in order to receive My Love.  In fact, a performance focus will put you away from Me, toward some sort of Pharisaism.  This can be a subtle form of idolatry: worshiping your own good works.  It can also be a source of deep discouragement when your works don't measure up to your expectations.  Shift your focus from your performance to My radiant Presence.  The Light of My Love shines on you continually, regardless of your feelings or behavior.  Your responsibility is to be receptive to this unconditional Love.  Thankfulness and trust are your primary receptors.  Thank Me for everything; trusting in Me at all times.  These simple disciplines will keep you open to my loving Presence."

Woof.  I was on the verge of the tears after the first sentence.  I stopped and thought back to a time last year when I was feeling the same way, and Jesus gave me Matthew 3:17 to ponder over. Check it out.  It's pretty good.  But this reflection totally changed my day.  The Holy Spirit put it on my heart to try again with the study.  I sent a text to all my guys telling them that we were going to try again tonight, and the response has been great.

So what's the point of this?  The point is that Jesus is always going to take care of you.  He doesn't care how big your discipleship chain is.  He doesn't care how many people are in your Bible study.  He cares about you and He knows that you're trying.  Jesus knows you are working your tail off trying to reach these men women and when a student chooses something else over study, He sees that.  He loves you anyway and He is so proud of you for working as hard as you can.  Your worth is not in numbers.  Your worth is not in your successes.  Your worth comes from being a son or daughter of God.  Don't forget that.  Jesus certainly doesn't.

In Christ,

Josh

Retreat Weekend

Retreats.  I have a very love/hate relationship with them.  I hate them leading up to the actual weekend, and then when I leave, I am on a high that I haven't experienced since the last retreat that I attended.  Lo and behold it happened again last weekend, and I think this retreat is the beginning of a change in attitude.

Bear Awakening.  UNC holds this retreat once a semester, and was originally slated for early October, but the Colorado floods forced us to postpone it until November.  To be honest, I did not want to staff this retreat.  I was bitter leading up to it, and when it got postponed, I was even more upset with the fact that I didn't get a chance to get it out of the way.  A ton of prep work and time out of an already busy schedule did not make for a happy Josh.

Then the weekend came.  And it was awesome.  I had never been on a retreat like this in all my life, and I was blown away.  The retreat, nicknamed BA, was student led all the way from the coordinators to the staffers.  The students gave the talks.  The students led discussions. The students did skits.  The students prayed their tails off.  I was incredibly impressed (shout out here to Jackson and Katie for coordinating this whole thing).

So why was I so blown away and why is my attitude changing?  One word: God.  God was so present over the weekend and the Holy Spirit, in particular, was dropping some major grace bombs throughout the weekend.  It started off poorly with retreaters getting lost and showing up late to the vast empty space of Wyoming, and some of the guys at my table just did not want to be there and that was very obvious. One guy was super pissed at God and another was just mad at everything.  The other guys in my group...just wouldn't talk.

Then Saturday came.  The men started to open up and share their lives with the rest of the table, and the emotions started pouring out.  Tears during talks.  Great discussions with the table.  Then it was time for adoration.  Jesus up there on the altar just pouring out His love for all of us there was incredible.  Watching people cry their eyes out not just in sadness, but in happiness as they rejoiced at the outpouring of love from God and their brothers and sisters with them.  The emotional roller coaster had started and was not ending any time soon.

Sunday was a continuation of the graces.  Jesus was loving on all of us so much and everyone was just so thankful for the time they spent and the sacrifices made to make the weekend amazing.  The retreat was a major success. But why was it so good for me? I wasn't actually on the retreat, just staffing.  I had already heard the talks and knew the questions to ask.  I knew what was coming and there were no surprises.

This is why it was awesome.  I got to spend my time just loving on my brothers.  The five guys in my family needed to be loved and I did that.  I can remember going into adoration trying to pray for some of the things on my mind, but it was very apparent to me that I needed to be spending my time doing something else: praying for my brothers and sisters. I spent the next hour and a half praying over the guys in my family, my teammates, and some of the guys I see on a daily basis.  I cried. They cried.  Amazing.

Retreats.  I'm beginning to love them.  It's a large sacrifice to make, especially when you are working on one, but the reward is so great.  I saw Jesus work through these students in ways that I never expected, and once again, He blew me away.  So my one word of advice if you are reading this is to go on a retreat.  It may be a sacrifice and it may be tough to make it work, but it will be so rewarding if you open your heart to Jesus.  Go.  You won't regret it.

In Christ,

Josh

Getting Distract...Wait What's That Over There???

It's 2013.  Distractions are everywhere.  It could be the latest new phone or tablet, music, sports, or the policies of a president that doesn't know his head from his ass (This reminds me of the scene from "A League of Their Own" when Tom Hanks is chewing out a player in the dugout and asks her where her head is, and then he answers his own question with "It's that lump that's three feet above your ass!"  Makes me laugh every time.  Ah good times).  Anyway, there are a lot of things that can grab our attention and take us away from, or dare I say it, lead us closer to God.  That may seem strange but let me explain.

So first, let's talk about how we let distractions get in our way.  There are millions of things going on around us at all times.  We have jobs, school, families, entertainment, politics, and a bunch of other things that vie for our attention.  And none of these things are in and of themselves bad.  You want to watch a movie or read the paper...great.  But it's when we let these things take away from our prayer and our duties as Christians that hurt us.  If we are not spending quality and quantity time in prayer, and let these other things dictate how we spend our time, then we are doing a disservice to God and to our relationship with Him.

But you know this.  Anybody that has ever tried to put in a holy hour knows all about distractions and the difficulties of  focusing on prayer.  Let's talk about what to do with those distractions.  The first is a distraction that is not of God.  So say you're praying with Scripture and focusing in on the sermon on the mount and all of the sudden you start thinking about lunch in an hour or have this vivid vision of the Stay Puft marshmallow man from Ghostbusters.  Yeah, probably not from God.  What you have to do at this point is ask God for the grace to take away the distraction so that you can turn your attention back to the passage and refocus on prayer.

But what about other distractions?  For example, I was reading this reflection this morning and it had to do with remaining in the presence of God throughout the week and trusting in Him to navigate everything that is going on.  Great!  However, I could not take my mind off Courtney.  See, we are starting to heavily discern our vocations and seeing if we are in the right place for the long haul, and when to get the ball rolling on an engagement and everything else that is involved (WOOF!!!). I had already spent some time praying on this earlier, but it just kept coming up and I was being "distracted."

This is what we call a good distraction.  God was placing this huge thing on my mind for a reason.  I tried fighting it off time and time again, but it kept popping up.  I have been told before that if something comes into your head three times during a holy hour, God probably wants you to pray on it.  In this case, Jesus was seeking out the greater good.  Yes, praying about staying in His presence is great, but Jesus wanted me to focus my attention on another thing, and that was this discernment process. This is just another example of the greatness of God.  I was trying to pray and focus on the relationship with Him, and He would rather have me thinking about Courtney and our relationship so that I could even more give it back to Him.  What a guy!

So to sum up, distractions are everywhere.  Some are good (discerning a vocation) and some are bad (worrying about the incompetence of our lousy president).  The trick is making sure you can distinguish between the two, and then following the greater good.  And don't get discouraged when you feel distracted and find it difficult to focus.  Jesus is allowing this to build you up.  If you can get over this hurdle, then Jesus will trust you with more and that's a great thing.  Trust that God knows what He is doing because you know...He's God.

In Christ,

Josh