Keep Your Eyes Open.

I remember when I was a kid I was asked if I had to give up one of my five senses what would it be. I thought about it for quite a while and I told everyone that I would rather lose my sense to hear than lose my sense to see.

Even though I told everyone that I wouldn't want to lose my eyesight I have never really been good at keeping my eyes open. It's easier to keep my eyes open because I tend to fear what I might actually see. Plus if I only open them once in a while I don't have to admit to what I see or how I feel about it.

Well I learned my lesson on Saturday.

I went on my first motorcycle ride. I have always been pretty open to new stuff but I have to admit I was pretty nervous. I got up on the back of Waylon's bike and I rode all the way to Assumption with my eyes closed. I couldn't see anything so I really didn't know what was going on. I was just feeling a lot of wind, and praying that Waylon and I wouldn't die.

When we got to assumption Waylon asked me if I had my eyes open I had to admit that I didn't. Well we had a good time hanging with his family and then we got back on the bike. But this time I was more prepared. I wore Waylon's goggles. I might put the picture up some time but it's slightly humiliating.

I kept my eyes open the whole time and saw some pretty awesome stuff.

1. We got to see/ride into the sunset which was beautiful.
2. We got to see a store that had the sign "Church furniture for Sale" Which is just plain funny.
3. We ended up going down a really beautiful road that was surrounded by trees. (which is a big deal since we were in the country)

While sometimes you see some rough stuff when we keep our eyes open I realized that you miss out on all the good stuff to.

Monumental Days.

It was one of those monumental days. Ya know, those days in which wars start and end, heroes get elected and shot down. One of those days where someone finally sits down when everyone else seems to be standing up.

Well yesterday was one of those days, and I seemed to miss it.

I don't know what I am supposed to do now. Simply because I cannot live in my premonumental life anymore. If I try to live in that kind of life in this new time and culture I will surely die.

I could try functioning in this postmonumental life with my premonumental life but I don't know if I could actually continue living. If my life will not be allowed to function then I will soon die in such a lonely place.

If I don't make the conscious decision to shift my life in accordance to that monumental time and culture I will not only die but I will deter and make my brothers and sisters around me sin.

If I am not willing to make the conscious decision to adapt to this new culture and it's realities than I will be left in the dust.

My heart aches for I know that I have missed it. I know that my living tissue must be torn apart and sewn back together to understand what, and where the Kingdom of God is.

I have not been called to change for there is a difference between change and the changed day. Change for changes sake is a waste of time. Ministry for ministries sake is a waste of time. Experience for experiences sake is a waste of time. Mistakes for mistakes sake are a waste of time.

For I am not called to walk around this world and meander about. I am not called just to breath and function. I am not called to just eat, sleep, and experience pleasure. I am called to be transformed.

I can only be transformed by the creator of the great monumental day. I cannot do it on my own. I cannot transform my life in accordance to the time and space, only the Spirit can.

I will make the conscious decision not to get in the way of being transformed.

I'm not a feminist. I am just a realist.

Making a Concious Decision.

Last night I made a decision that I will probably regret in the future.

I have made the decision to become a vulnerable person.

I guess it sounds silly but I think it will be good for me. I so often forget that Christ can be seen in mankind, because I have such a negative and disappointing viewpoint of humanity. Partly because I see all of us as fallen and partly because I secretly have no hope for anything man does.

It sounds weird because I am in love with the church, but I have such a hard time with the people. I guess I have been put in a 'leadership' position so many times that I have gotten so used to keeping things to myself. I view man as an enemy in the mission of the church. But, people are not the enemy, sin is.

I also fail to realize that the Holy Spirit has no desire in a leader who is not willing to be taught. So last night I said out loud that that if I am going to be vulnerable with people it needs to be a conscious decision on my part.

I am putting myself out there for the world to spit on, and throw things at.

But I know that I am not on my own, and that everything I am trying to represent revolves around Christ himself. So, I think this is a good step in the right direction.

Wow, A bit over dramatic?

So I must give in. I was being slightly over dramatic last week when I broke up with you all. I apologize and have come to the silly conclusion that I cannot not stop blogging.

Oh well, what are we to do.

I have been redeemed and will hopefully never give up on you again.

I'm glad the majority either hasn't read my last two posts or just know me well enough to know that I was being silly.

Either way, I'm back.

No, Seriously...

Dear Readers,


This is it. I have thought about this for the last couple of months, and I think we just need to stop.



It's not you it's me. Well it is you. It's both of us.



No, seriously. I need to take a sabbatical from public writing. And here are the reasons why.



1. I am publishing a lot of stuff on my blog, which is good, but some of the stuff I am publishing needs to be written about somewhere else before it is presented to the public.



2. I can't live without my blog. Well I actually can't live without writing. I think this might be turning into a bad habit. I know some of you enjoy reading my stuff, but I think I need a break.



3. I'm tired of being so transparent. haha. I know that sounds selfish but you need to realize that a lot of the stuff that I am writing are private and personal thoughts, and most of the thoughts that I publish are not full thoughts. They are pieces of something much bigger.



4. I'm also tired of being scrutinized. I know that if I am going to be a writer I am going to have to get used to being criticized, but now is not that time. I don't think I can take one more person telling me my stuff is cliche, or boring, or badly written. If I continue to write I will just get so frustrated that my discipline and my attitude will down spiral.



So, I'm ending it. I appreciate the fact that you have been reading for a while and those who have commented thanks.



But don't worry it will only be a six to nine month thing. I am blogging somewhere else so I will still be in practice. Please don't try and find me. It will be better for both of us if we just let it go.



Shhh...please don't say anything else.


It's hard for me to.



Sincerely,



your devoted and yet tired author.

I quit....again.

Dear Readers,

I have come to the short realization that I don't actually agree with the post that I have just previously written. I then came to a greater realization that I don't actually agree with a lot that I have written on my blog, so I apologize. I guess I don't really know what I am apologizing for. I seem to be doing a lot of that latley.

I think that I am just trying to feel my life out. I don't think it has anything to do with immaturity, I think it's just the fact that I am a Junior in College.

Which means that I need to starting making some big deicsions sooner than later. Those decisions don't really scare me because I know that I have been offered some pretty Awesome opportunities when I graduate college. I guess my only concern is my huge desire to follow Jesus. I really want to be wise about how I live. I don't really like making mistakes because I equate mistakes with sin and I loathe sin.

I guess it's weird when all your close friends are/have gotten married and started having kids. Puts a lot of things in perspective.

I guess I'm tired of listening to what other people think I should do. I want to live my own life and I appreciate the concern but I would appreciate it even more if you just let me make the mistakes that I hate to make.

I know I'm not the best writer, I know I'm not the best preacher, I know I'm not the best at really anything. So just let me follow Jesus. Maybe He will create me to be good at something. Maybe He will let me follow him around for a while and learn from him.

Yes, it's been one of those days.

Yes I'm quitting again.

Sincerely,

your lost, frustrated, and mediocre author.

What do you want to do with your life? I want to be poor.

"Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven," Matthew 5:3

I have just recently been in the Beatitudes this morning. I really enjoy them even though I don't understand why Jesus said what he said. However, last spring I attended a concert and the singer was talking about being poor.

Now I must be quite honest; I am not poor. I have never been poor and by the looks of the way my life is turning out I will never be poor. I state this simply to share with you a part of who I am. Growing up being poor was a negative thing. It was not looked upon as something you strive for.

"If you are poor you should work hard to become rich. You should be ashamed of the way you live and you should be ashamed of who you are. You must not have a good work ethic if poverty is a constant companion of yours."

This is the message that I was given growing up. This is the kind of culture that I have always been a part of. Poverty is a negative thing. Being poor is a negative thing. If you are poor you must have done something wrong or you must just be lazy.

Then I graduated high school and I moved to central Illinois. Even living in this culture I have come to the short realization that I have been blessed with a wealth that many people don't have. I have also been caught up in the theological debate that wealthy people can't be Christians. If this is true than I am up a creek without a paddle.

So I have once again stumbled into this paradox of Jesus. This singer that I mentioned earlier had something to say about this verse that I had never grasped before. She was speaking of a country she had visited that was covered in poverty. And she had read this Beatitude and discovered that she is called to be poor.

Christians of all kind are called to give up everything so that they may crave and hunger the only thing they need; Christ. To be spiritually poor so that I am constantly in need to Christ. I am constantly thinking about when I can get more Christ. So I must now choose my poverty, so that I may choose my desire to be with Christ.

I think that when we give everything, in this effort to be like Christ, we are left with only one reality ; we are here to be poor.

If this were Faith, Robert Luis Stevenson

God, if this were enough,
That I see things bare to the buff
And up to the buttocks in mire;
That I ask nor hope nor hire,
Nut in the husk,
Nor dawn beyond the dusk,
Nor life beyond death:
God, if this were faith?

Having felt thy wind in my face
Spit sorrow and disgrace,
Having seen thine evil doom
In Golgotha and Khartoum,
And the brutes, the work of thine hands,
Fill with injustice lands
And stain with blood the sea:
If still in my veins the glee
Of the black night and the sun
And the lost battle, run:

If, an adept,
The iniquitous lists I sill accept
With joy, and joy to endure and be withstood,
And still to battle and perish for a dream of good:
God, if that were enough?

If to feel, in the ink of the slough,
And the sink of the mire,
Veins of glory and fire
Run through and transpierce and transpire,
And a secret purpose of glory in every part,
And the answering glory of battle fill my heart;
To thrill with the joy of girded men
To go on for ever and fail and go on again,
And be mauled to the earth and arise,
And contend for the shade of a word and a thing not seen with the eyes:

With the half of a broken hope for a pillow at night
That somehow the right is the right
And the smooth shall bloom from the rough:
Lord, if that were enough?

In a theater, it happened that a fire started offstage. The clown came out to tell the audience. They thought it was a joke and applauded. He told them again, and they became still more hilarious. This is the way, I suppose, that the world will be destroyed----amid the universal hilarity of wits and wags who think it is all a joke.-A (I love me some Kierkegaard.)

There once was a road. This road was not a grandious road, but it had seen it's days of wonder. This road had been trampled on by many different kind of people. Majestic souls and sorrowful beings.

One day a women came to stand upon this road. She was beautiful beyond comparison. She had long dark hair and fair skin. Her eyes would peirce your soul if she looked into you face and her lips where cherry blossom red. She held to her close a flask of water which she was supposed to use in later events.

She stood at the very edge of the road waiting for something. She was surpassed by many men and women who were doing there daily activities. Carrying water, delivering mail, having light conversations. No one addressed her and she addressed no one. In her heart she knew what she was waiting for. Someone told her of a very magnificant prince. She was told to go and wait for this man whom she was called to meet. She was told that the man that was this prince would ask for a drink.

She had imagined this man to be tall in stature and blessed in purple clothe. Someone worth spending time with. Many men walked by and she looked at all of them, none seemed to fit her image.

This beautiful woman stood there for days waiting for her prince. She looked into every man's eyes and even got to the point of giving her water away. She so desperatly wanted to be loved that she couldn't wait any longer.

"When will this man come and save me?" She thought this idea every day and so longed to be rescued from the turmoil of this road.

Months went by and she stood there when suddenly a man rode on a horse.

"Ma'm may I have some water?" This women was so excited that she reached for the flask that she had once held so close. She hurridly gave it to the man and he put it up to his lips, but nothing came out.

She had wasted her water on men of less importance. The man on the horse looked at her in disgust and threw the flask at her feet, he rode off without speaking a word.

She sat there and wept. She was in such disgrace. Suddenly another man came along.

"Daughter why must you weep so?" He asked, inquring about her disgraceful state.

"Wouldn't you like some of my water?"

Never Give all the Heart

Never give all the heart for love
will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certian and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that lovely is
But a breif dreamy, kind delight.
O never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost.

W.B. Yeats

Speelin Erors.

So I have been approached by a couple of different people, and have been told that I need to clean up my grammar.

From this point on I am going to really work on it so don't expect anything less!

Keep my on my toes, if I am slacking let me know. I won't be offended, at least not all of the time.

God has given me the opportunity to mentor a couple of different young women who live on my floor. I love spending time with these women and really investing in their lives. Yesterday, one of these women took me to her home town to meet her family. All the way she told me stories of each building we passed.

"That's the hospital where my mom used to work at and where I was born, and where my dad died."

"My aunt lives down that road,"

"This is the restaurant that my family and I always eat at when we are in town,"

"This is the yard where my dad, my uncles, and my cousins used play whiffle ball,"

"This is where I went to church my whole life,"

All these places, and memories have made this young women who she is.

We started in the cemetery where half of her family is buried, including her father. We then moved onto the first street that she got her fist accident on, and the first house she lived in. We then went to her grandparent's house and I saw all of the embarrassing pictures that you have to take when you are younger. All and all we had a great time and some great conversation.

It was a great experience and you cannot truly understand where someone comes from unless you put yourself in their shoes at one point. Atticus Finch could grasp this idea. I wonder why it's so hard for us to grasp?

Stop believing in the Church?

I went into a pet store last weekend with my friend Cindy. She was there to buy some fish and I was there to look at puppies. It's always dangerous for me to go into a pet store because I fall in love with these little guys. They are so adorable!

Anyways I wanted to play with a beagle and I was told by the fish man to go wait by the wall of encased dogs for someone to come and help me. I was standing there for a least ten minutes and was purposley making eye contact with the PetLand people. I'm sure they thought that I was a weirdo as I intentionally tried getting their attention. I even asked someone to help and he rushed by and said, "Yea one second..." Five minutes later I was standing at the same spot eyeing people down.

All I wanted to was be apart of the culture. I was searching for someone to help me out but everyone was just to busy. They were all caught up in their own situations. Now ovbiously this was a place of business and they were busy at the time so I am sure if I waited around long enough I would have been helped but I didn't have time. I have my own life I can't just wait thirty minutes for these people to help me.

I have reflected on that situation and I have realized that as pastors, small group leaders, coaches we tend to live in this busyness. Someone will try to get our attention by leaving us intentional clues but we are so busy meeting needs, or thinking about the next weekend that we miss them. A lot of people that I grew up were interested in Jesus but weren't really into the church because no one had time for anyone else. I even notice this here at Bible College. I have tried to invest and encourage multiple people and when they are done with me they try to cut me out of their life. They have used me for what they want and they are done with me. I am just a hassle that asks to many questions. The problem is that I am so stubborn that I will hold on for dear life I have to.

There are so many people that want to be connected to Jesus, but they feel like the church is asking them to be Christians before they come on Sunday. People want to be apart of the culture of the church the problem is that the culture of the church is either twenty years behind or is to obsessed with the latest fads to realize that they are missing people.

We need to stop expecting people to walk through the doors of the church and we need to start bringing Jesus EVERYWHERE we go. We need to stop thinking of church as a Sunday morning, Wednesday night event and we need to go and bring church to people.

What would happen if we didn't meet every Sunday and only met once a month for public worship? What would happen if on those Sundays that we didn't meet, we were connecting with people who would never walk into any kind of church? What would happen if we actually lived our lives hidden in Christ and actually trusted Him to change things. What would happen if we stopped spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on marketing and used that money to help families in the community and to invest it in a more effective way of doing ministry? What would happen if we weren't so concerned with bringing people into the church building because the discipline of disciplining was so ingrained in us that the church building was just ineffective?

This summer I was told I was to idealistic about the church. I was told by two people that I loved the church to much. Maybe I am to idealistic about it. Maybe I should just give up on it. I mean it's not being very effective as it is. I see the church as being so obssessed with itself. The small town churches are only concerened with their own communities and the big churches are obssessed with the other big churches that are doing "cool" stuff. I mean what are we really accomplishing in America? People are coming here to be missionaries! Has the church lost the fervor of Christ in such a way?

Or maybe I should believe in the church? My friend Nick blogged about when you believe in someone you invest everything you have in that person. You do it in such a way that you replace yourself. What if I believed in the church so much that I committed my life to believing in it. To believing in the people that make it up?

I wonder what would happen if we believed in the church?

A Cry for Mercy, Henri J.M. Nouwen

"O Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner. I am impressed by my own spiritual insights. I probably know more about prayer, meditation, and contemplation than most Christians do. I have read many books about the Christian life, and have even written a few myself. Still, as impressed as I am, I am more impressed by the enormous abyss between my insights and my life.

It seems as if I am standing on one side of a huge canyon and see how I should grow toward you, live in your presence and serve you, but cannot reach the other side of the canyon where you are. I can speak and write, and preach, and argue about the beauty and goodness of the life I see on the other side, but how, O LORD, can I get there? Sometimes I even have the painful feeling that the clearer the vision, the more aware I am of the depth of the canyon.

Am I doomed to die on the wrong side of the abyss? Am I destined to excite others to reach the promise land while remaining unable to enter there myself? Sometimes I feel imprisoned by my own insights and "spiritual competence." You alone, Lord, can reach out to me and save me. You alone.

I can only keep trying to be faithful, even though I feel faithless most of the time. What else can I do but keep praying to you, even when I feel dark; keep writing about you, even when I feel numb; to keep speaking in your name, even when I feel alone. Come, Lord Jesus, come. Have mercy on me, a sinner. Amen"

I read this morning and I felt like he was speaking out of my heart. I just wanted to share it with the rest of you.

I'm tired of writing.

I quit.

The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer and the Reality that I am a Hypocrit.

"Self can live unrebuked at the very altar. It can watch the bleeding Vitim die and not be in the least affected by what it sees. It can fight for the faith of the reformers and preach eloquently the creed of salvation by grace and gain strength by its efforts. To tell the truth, it seems actually to feed upon orthodoxy and is more at home in a Bible conference that in a tavern. Our very state of longing after God may afford it an excellent condition under which to thrive and grow." pg. 43

"Let us remember that when we talk of the rendering of the veil we are speaking in a figure, and the thought of it is poetical, almost pleasant, but in actuality there is nothing pleasant about it. In human experience that veil is made of living spiritual tissue; it is composed of the sentient, quivering stuff of which our whole beings consist, and to touch it is to touch us where we feel pain. To tear it away is to injure us, to hurt us and make us bleed. To say otherwise is to make the cross no cross and death no death at all. It is never fun to die. To rip through the dear and tender stuff of which life is made can never be anything but deeply painful. Yet that is what the cross did to Jesus and it is what the cross would do to every man to set him free." pg. 44

The first time I read these words I was 15 years old. I was sitting in one of our church conference rooms on the floor and I broke down. I realized that my life was consistently about me. Everything I did, I did for my own gratification. I was selfish and I had a three inch thick veil that was covering my heart. The short realization that I came to do on that day has impacted my life ever since.

But I still come to this reality that I am marked by sin. My nature is sinful and corrupts everything I do. I am completely flawed. The only reason that I am 'good' is because God is good and his love allows me to be good. Without Christ and without the cross I am worthless.

I truly feel the concept of Romans who discusses the idea of so desperately wanting to be good but can never be good enough. I so desperately want to be purely involved in God but my sinful nature wants to be better than God. My sinful nature wants to be 'good' enough to be loved by God. My brain knows that I have been given the free gift of grace. My heart knows that I certainly don't deserve this free gift and so I work. I try to be the best, the smartest, and the hardest working. I am so constantly falling short of the Glory of God because I can never be good enough. I am good because God loves me.

The first time my veil was absolutely ripped out of my being was when I was fifteen years old. And every day I have to ask God to do it again. My sinful nature wants but my created nature that has been blessed by God just is.

Brennan Manning coined the term, "God loves me as I am, not as I should be."

God loves me and so I am good.

God loves me and so I can preach and teach.

God loves me and so I can serve.

God loves me and so then I can love and be loved.

God loves me enough to let me die.

However, I am still a self-contradictory being waiting to be fully redeemed.

"Thus I chose Jesus as my heaven, though at that time I saw him only in pain. I was satisfied by no heaven but Jesus, who will be my bliss when I am there. And it has always been a comfort to me that I chose Jesus for my heaven in all this time of suffering and sorrow. And that has been a lesson to me, that I should do so for evermore, choosing him alone for my heaven in good and bad times." Revelations of Dinice Love-Julian of Norwich.

I read this idea in words before I actually read it from Julian. I was reading my friend Nick's sermon for junior high camp and he had this idea.

I will decide now, while I am in this moment, who I will cling to when I am famished and lost. I will decide now, while I am in this moment, who I will cling to when I have no hope. I will decide now, while I am in this moment, how I will treat other people when I am immersed in sorrow and shame.

Do not ask me to lead or to preach or to teach without my Christ. I cling to the cross that he hung on as a testament to the death I must die everyday and I yearn to live a new life with Him. I have been lost in time and space seeking a new fad to wear when I have been called to be clothed in "compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience..."Colossians 3:12

I get so lost in the violence of my heart that it verbalizes itself as fire from my mouth. I so long for Jesus. I so long for His touch, His voice and His presence.

I have decided that He is my Heaven. That I will see Him in the good and in the bad. My eyes will not be adverted to the falsities around me but to the truth that is captured in the eyes of my Saviour.

The decision has been made. The death has been taken. The life has been gifted, and I have stood in the place where I am marked and will not be shaken. By earth, by air, or by sea my allegiance lies with the King of the World.

What's a picture worth?

So I have heard that a picture is worth a thousand words. I have always wondered if that is true. Jamie Cullum seems to think so. He wrote and sung a song called photograph. It's a great song but is it a true reality? For the past three weeks my roommate and I have been constructing a wall length collage. It started with our dream for what our room could look like last semester and has evolved into a grand art piece. People come into our room to look at all the pictures. They seem entrapped by the sight of different aspects of life captured in a moment.

When I look up at these photo's I see something caught in action. A life caught by light. That's what a picture is. Look at some of the wall that I posted and tell me what you see. This is as far as we have gotten. Tell us what you think. I don't think there is a wrong answer to this one.

Dear readers,

I want to apologize for my lack of posting in the last week. I have had the flu and now I have a cold and I have been detained to do mundane things like sleeping.

I hopefully will have some thoughts sooner than later.

Thanks for keeping up with me.

Sincerely,
the author.

Learnings

Small group is not just a group of people getting together to read scripture, pray or have awkward conversation, but a small group is the ability to enjoy the creation that God orchestrated in human time. The created beings that were first created by God and then inducted into the death of sin.

For a long time I so desperately wanted to be apart of a small group where every personality matched and flowed spiritually together. The reality is that God created human personality and breathes life into people differently. I will probably never be in a small group where our souls match simply because it would become a comfortable place where discipleship would be stagnant and Christ would become a lost icon. An icon that becomes the cross which hangs lonely and desolate in a musty sanctuary.

The question than becomes what we are going to do with the reality of sinful separateness. When we become intimate with God, when we come near to God He comes near to us. When we enter into the love of God and become hidden in Christ by the guidance of the Holy Spirit we learn to love the person that God created. We learn how to love the person that God willed us to individually be. A person that was created, before sin stabbed us with a poisonous knife. Before this poison that runs through out veins and seeps into our heart was introduced into our life.

When we become complete in the true life we learn how to live life. When we learn how to live life we become lovers of those who are around us. This creates not only the ability, but the command to love the people who might not know what this life is all about. This life also commands us to love the people who might have experienced the life but who might not know how to live this life truly out.

When we realize that God enjoys who we are, where we are, then we can truly enjoy the people who are in our small groups, in our families, in our schools, in our lives. We can enjoy them where they are and how God has created them to be.

If we refuse to do this, to accept the love that God has given us, to accept that God not only loves us but likes us, enjoys us. If we cannot realize this then we do not understand the sacrifice of the life that we enjoy now that was brought upon the cross. We ultimately say no to Jesus, his life, his death, and his Resurrection.

And that is when the cross becomes the lonely icon that hangs in the sanctuary that traps the moderate and mundane 'Christian' reality.

Preaching;a lost reality.

Preaching is an interesting animal. I am reading this book for class called The Heart of a Great Pastor. I'm in the first chapter and the author lists seven resources that every church/congregation needs. His fourth resource is Every Church Needs Biblical Preaching. The author goes on to describe that "one anointed person speaking a fresh word from God amid the people of God-is one of the Father's favorite ways of communicating His will to believers"

Now I am bias of course because I am a preaching major. But I am not bias enough to believe that statement. I do not believe that God has a favorite way of communicating his will to His believers, simply because the people who He created are wired differently. They hear Him differently. It's like having three children. Every child hears and communicates differently because they were all made different.

The author continues to describe this idea of preaching that solidifies the reality of the modern preacher. The preacher who preaches behind a pulpit on Sunday mornings and then becomes a mongrel at home, or who cheats on his wife. A preacher who is made to look like a star and not a human. Someone who is above the cut when in reality they are rotting internally.

You can edify the truth on the weekends all you want but true preaching starts when you step off the stage and into your community.

When you live your life day in and day out.

Preaching becomes not just what you say but how you say it. Not just what you think but how you think. Not just how you act towards scripture but how you interact with scripture through humanity.

A preacher is someone who uses words and stories to demonstrate the reality of God.

Preachers are not special. They are not the only ones gifted in the congregation. They are apart of the body and they are sinners as well.

Sinners that need to be affirmed by a community. Sinners that need to be forgiven and given grace.

Preachers have a gift that has been given by the Holy Spirit. Don't make that out to be a celebrity situation. Don't take a preacher and make him the star of the show because in all reality he is just and extra. She is an important extra, to God of course, but she is not the main character. She is not even a supporting character.

So the next time you get caught up on who said this or who believes that, like I do, realize that the only one who matters is Christ. If you get lost in the details you have missed the point.

I apologize ahead of time for the crappy posting.

I live in a world of constant transitions right now, simply because I am a college student. I have transitioned back into the world of school after a great summer up north.

3 things I'm looking forward to:
1. Preaching in November.
2. Rooming with my closest friend at school.
3. Making funny Bible College jokes that no one can understand unless you are a Bible College Student.

3 Things I'm not looking forward to:
1. Convocation.
2. Small town life/church.
3. Making funny Bible College jokes that no one can understand unless you are a Bible College Student.

All is well in Lincoln IL. I have already frequented the 24 hour Walmart and the newly established Culver's and I am ready to begin the school year. I have my notebooks and my pens and I just went to get going.

Most years I have a specific feeling about. My freshman year I knew was going to be a fresh start. My sophomore year I knew would be extremely transitional and pretty hard. This year will be the year of mistakes. That is how I feel.

Well until next time...This portion of the Alison Higgins life has been brought to you by Starbucks Frappuccino Coffee Drink. Don't be awake without it.

How are you to know?

So I have always loved quotes. You know the things famous or brilliant people say that are written down just to be inspiring. I have always loved reading different quotes from different people.

What I do on a daily basis is I hop from facebook page to facebook page just to read the quotes section. I actually was doing it one day and I saw that someone I knew and loved actually quoted me, like in a serious way. I thought this to be funny because I know that I'm not truly quotable.

However, most of the time these famous and brilliant people are talking about doing things, like following your heart or starting a revolution. Don't waste time, live your life, don't do the things you don't want to do.

This is what came to my mind. If you don't go through hard times, if you don't become marginalized, if you don't work the terrible jobs, if you don't understand hardship, if you don't read the great minds of history, if you don't know what's truly going on in your world, how in the world are you supposed to do anything great? How are you supposed to be something great or start a revolution if all you do is sit around and laugh, and get drunk, and 'live' life?

The reality is that the people who we often quote, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Theresa, or John F. Kennedy all went through hardship. They all were in stressful situations with stressful people. They all dealt with death and destruction. They saw something though, something different. They saw hope, and this hope is something that we seem to miss.

We see our world in shambles and we pick up a shovel and plant a tree, or a twenty dollar bill and go to the gap store and by a red shirt. We are to busy living our lives to actually make any impact on the world. And we want to be revolutionaries?

Revolutionaries were smart, they were people who understood their world and saw something missing, hence the revolution. And by their world I mean their immediate world.

I was talking to a friend in the car yesterday and I told her I didn't want to change the world, I just wanted to live my life. She replied "But that's how you'll change the world, by living your life."

I realized that I can't change the world unless I start loving the people around me and helping them live their life. I must become aware of my world to know how to change it. I must be aware of my community to see what needs to be changed.

How else am I to become anything or impact anyone?

What happens when our true selves truly come out.

When the liar is unmasked.

When the fake is made true.

When the selfish loses.

When the religious leader has to admit that he is wrong.

The fear is that we will be discovered but what happens when we become so self aware of ourselves that we become honest ourselves.

I'm tired of writing these thoughts out.

So I am bowing out for a period of time. The curtain is closing for now but I'm sure the production will reopen and when it does it will be better and more polished.

Good night and Good luck.

New Love

I was sitting in service last weekend and I had this thought. We are still going through the series, Words I Wish Jesus Never Said, and this last week was Making Disciples.

We discussed the difference between the Roman way and the Celtic way of making disciples. As I was sitting there listening to Tim teach I came to this short realization.

For centuries the Christian church has preached the Gospel of Hell. They have preached a Gospel that is meant to prepare the soul in the last breaths of a life. This preaching has influenced the lifestyle of what a Christian has been for years. This reality is a mundane and immature stalk of Jesus. The one great thing that came out of this was an urgency to spread this kind of Gospel. The church became urgent because it so desperately wanted to save the souls of those whom she loved.

Then the church went through a tolerant stage. We started loving everyone. Now this is a great thing, but not at the expense of the Kingdom of God. Our love was not overflowing from God it was a worldly love. A love that has shattered the church in a million different ways. A destructive and selfish love. A love that is far to afraid to speak the name of Jesus. And the urgency of the Gospel slowed down. It was no longer needed to talk about Jesus as long as we were loving people. Don't dare speak the name of Jesus because, God forbid, we truly might offend someone. Jesus never did this while he was alive.

Now we are preaching the Kingdom of God. The church has slowly, and I mean slowly, realized that the Kingdom of God is something that Jesus was inherently all about. This Kingdom living, learning, and loving was something that he truly envisioned the church to be. This involved love that the church wanted to, so desperately give out, but it was a different kind of love. It was a love that met a person where they were at but loved them to much to let them stay there. This love is no longer afraid to speak the name of Jesus because that is where this love was born.

And their is a definite urgency to this love. The church has realized that this love is the only thing that is worth truly living for. This God is the only thing truly living for, and the ones who do not know and feel this are truly feeling and living in an earthly Hell. There is an urgency because the ones we care about are experiencing a pain greater than should ever be conceived. It's the pain of an unreleased life. A life still chained by sin.

A life that isn't truly free in this new love.

Fascinating

I was listening to a sermon today and the preacher was telling a story of a young Vietnamese teenage girl. He stated that she became a Christian and wanted to be the first Christian Communist Secretary General of Vietnam.

She believes that Communist is closer to Communism than Capitalism. What are your thoughts?

Is big bad Communist more similar to Christianity that Capitalism?

Christians will love again.

Everything has a different feel to it now.

Whereas I only felt the dark things and knew about the light things, I now feel the light things as well.

I have been refreshed and redeemed in this community called the church.

This church looks like a formed and functional identity that is about to burst into a reforming reality.

I can feel something that is to become.

The love of Christ is to be found in Christians again.

Expectations suck.(sorry for the lack of creativity)

I think I have come to a breaking point in my life. A point of confusion. I don't tend to blog out real thoughts about my full life because I know the readers of my blog wouldn't truly appreciate it, but I couldn't help but write out this one.

I guess I have become tired of people's expectations. There are some expectations that I do truly appreciate. There are some however, that I do not.

It's not even about high expectations anymore. It's also about low expectations. People thinking that I need to do it this way or feel this way or act this way. They develop low expectations of me because they don't think that I will truly do anything great or even worth reading.

People make comments on my writing, my living, the way I do small group, the way I interpret the Bible, the way I ask questions, the way I see things, and I have gotten to the edge of frustration.

Stop asking me to be something that you have created. Stop giving me more or less of what you want me to do or be.

Let me be who I was created to be.

Don't create something in your mind about me or the way I will react, because in all reality you probably will be surprised.

People corner me in every aspect, especially in the relational sphere. People think I will react a certain way, or feel a certain way or befriend certain people. I have even come to believe these things myself.

I'm tired of these tiring expectations. These expectations have tied me down to a boat named predictability.

Stop expecting so much.

Stop expecting so little.

Live in the moment with the identity you see and truly feel. I will try to do the same.

The dreams have started again. The dreams that keep me up at night. The ones that lure me to sleep but reveal a graver side of my being.

I can't stop them.

So, I must conclude that it has started again.

I guess I'm just along for the ride.

The pain had lurched into my stomach.

The pain that was an emotional stir suddenly clashed into my physical sense. My body became a wet damp sheet, and my stomach forced my body to rush to a place where I could expel everything. All of the memories, all of the words, and all of the actions.

My body so desperately wanted to release everything that I had experienced in the last 18 years. Everything that I felt, and everything I knew. After my body had expelled the physical sense of those memories I still was in a shock. I couldn’t control the shaking and air couldn’t come fast enough into my lungs. It was like breathing through a straw.

The tears could not heal this. Running seemed the only logical plan.
And so I did.

I displaced myself. I became a shell, a shell of the emptiness and darkness that had surrounded me. The tears no longer came and the pain became a numb reminder that I was in complete desperation.

Sitting in that room. It was the reality that I had wanted to be an illusion. Every time that I sat in that room I wanted to run. Every time that I heard that voice I wanted to find an escape. So I created a wall. A wall that was higher and thicker than any other man made object.

After I created that wall I entered that room and was hidden behind my wall.
Every time he grabbed my neck, I wasn’t there.
Every time he poked me, I wasn’t there.
Every time he cornered me, I wasn’t there.

I perfected this life of hiding. I learned how to control my relationships and how to leave my emotions at the door step.

After learning how to hide I actually left. I moved away. I moved to Chicago. Being on the west coast had taught me to love the softness of the ocean and the beauty of the sun. Now the skyscrapers took the sun away. Everything that I knew, had become a distant fantasy of things yet to come. The faces of city goers in Millennium Park had softened the city that I had decided to find my place in.

But the reality of this place was something that could not allude me. I knew how to hide, and I continued to hide until I was only a body. A body that wandered around the busy streets of this windy city and was lost in it’s depth and structure.

I got a job at a small business answering phones. This riveting job introduced new characters into my realm.

There was Steve, the sandwich guy. Now I still don’t know exactly what Steve did for the business that I worked for but I did know this. When I walked into the door in the morning and when I left at 5 Steve always seemed to have a sandwich. I never knew if it was the same sandwich all day or if he ate multiple sandwiches during the nine hour work day. I also wondered if that was all he ate.

Then there was Mary, who was a nice girl but had the tendency to always be chewing gum. She also came to work consistently 15 minutes late and had a small tick that effected her only when she was nervous or excited. I still remember when we made her sing happy birthday to herself in front of everyone in the office. Her eye twitched in such away that I thought it actually lived and breathed on it’s own.

Joe was the funny jerk in the office. I think that everyone knows someone like Joe. He is funny as long as he is not making fun of you.

And then there was my boss, Victoria. Her closest friends called her Tory, a name I never uttered from my lips. Victoria was a narcissist. I don’t feel like there is any more to say about her.

There were a plethora of other co-workers but none of much importance. These were the three people that I worked with on a daily basis. These were the people that thought they knew something about me.

Unfortunately they never had the chance.

It’s not that they never knew me. I was truthful in some of what I told them but if they were to look at the big picture now they would have been baffled.

All they knew was that I was a sweet girl whose life was gone to fast. Who left to soon. Lucky for them, they still have a chance. I never did.

I will never forget how it happened.

I was just sitting there, and he came in. I thought I had gotten away, but he found me. In one moment it was all over. My facade was ripped away in an instant.

"If I can’t have you know one can," he screeched, just to get his point across. Then he pulled out a gun and I was gone. It wasn’t really painful, and my life didn’t flash before my eyes.
It just happened. The idea that death had occupied now became the reality of my identity. And in an instant he was gone. How I wished he had lived. How I wish he had lived out his days in the miserable state in where he sent me.

But he’s here with me. And we are in that same room. However, he is no longer in control and I am no longer the victim.

There is something different here. Something unknown. Something hidden. I guess I never had a picture of what the ‘afterlife’ would be like. I would never had expected it to look like this.
It was the same room that we had both lived in for the entirety of our relationship. This room had the memories of our broken marriage, and our broken souls. The blood stain was still on the wall.

That night was the night that I decided to run, and yet I am still in the same place. I ran away from the memories and from the darkness and yet I still am wrapped in them.
Is this Hell? Or just a state of being?

He is wondering around the room like he never left. Like he never came and found me and ended both of us. Eventually he just ends up flopping on the bed. The sheets raveled around him like he was still physically existent.

I wanted to scream. To scream at him and tell him that he ended it for both of us. To throw my pain at him. If I could only open my mouth and let my angry petitions out. Then I would feel the healing of this emptiness in my soul. I went over but I felt a black tar cover my mouth. I could no longer speak my thoughts. I stood over him in a way that felt like forever, and tried to get to him, but nothing came of it. So I sat down in our old rocking chair.

And the memories that I had thrown up had re-entered into my mind. The memory of holding my child in this rocking chair. That warm small body that was an interrupting event in my life. I had never loved someone the way I loved that body.

I remember giving that body away.

Secretly, before I ran.

35 days.

I have a bad habit of counting down. I do it with my birthday right after Christmas. I have always done it in school.

I was one of those kids in high school that had the small numbers in her assignment book to show how many days are left.

It's not that I am trying to get out of the situation that I am in. I really enjoy what I am doing this summer and I really enjoy who I get to work with everyday but their is something in me that counts down.

I think it's my need for consistant change. I have never had the dream of settling down in a house with a white pickett fence. I want to travel and meet people and experience the reality of God in this world through different cultures.

I have a bad habit on counting down.

I was in Holland, MI all of last week. If you know me well you know that I have traveled to Holland in a frequent manner to see my best friend who attends Hope College.

I was actually there with 100 high school students and leaders attending a Christ and Youth conference. It was a great week.

While the week was serious and life changing there were moments of complete hilarity, as there should be when you are surrounded by 100 high school students and leaders.

One of these hilarious moments actually was self inflicted. My best friend was leading about 65 of us to a private beach to go swimming. She was on the phone and was trying to figure out how to get through all the different trails to get to the beach.

My friend Shelley, who also was an adult leader on the trip, thought that we would help Kelly and go on our own to try and find the beach. We headed out on the trail and actually spent a good forty five minutes walking and then running on hot sand looking for the beach. We finally got to a four hundred foot dune and had just seen a couple of young looking guys at the top. We thought, "Well those must be our students, so I guess this is the only way back up".

Now let me pause this moment and let you know that, unfortunately, I am not in the best physical shape in the world. I do not have that going for me. Just think of that while imagining the rest of the story.

So Shelley and I are looking at this dune and I am in shock. "I can't climb this" Is all that was running in my mind. Shelley actually tried to pump me up by telling me a story of how she lost her shoe in the mud but it didn't really help.

So we started up in and five feet up I stood there and said, "Umm...Shelley I can't do this..."

She encouraged me and we took twenty....okay maybe fifteen steps up the hill at a time. While she was encouraging me, I was cussing under my breath.

Every time I got tired I actually sat down, which probably caused me more energy because every time I sat down I had to get up.

We ended up at the top of this massive dune and took a deep breath. The beauty was incredible and I was so glad that I did it, but then I had to figure out how I was going to get down. Normally one would just walk down the dune but the sand that day was hotter than hot tamales. You would take five or six steps and then your feet would start burning.

I actually started walking down the hill, but then the sand was to overbearing. I then put my towel down and stepped on it and was going to slide down the hill that way. Again it didn't really work out.

I finally decided to roll down the dune. That's right. I started rolling down the hill and sad got everywhere. I finally just stood up and rand the rest of the way and into the lake.

All I know is that if I am ever sent to Hell, my punishment will be to climb dunes for eternity bare foot and wearing winter clothes.

I started following Jesus.

I started following Jesus last week.

I would call my life a constant conversion. The reality is that I have never been saved. I can not pin point a moment in my life where I can look back and say,

"This is it, this is the day I have turned my life around."

However, God has given me opportunities to follow him. There have been four or five opportunities where God has brought my life to it's knees.

"It's either me or it's not"

This constant conversion has marked everything in my life and has created a sense of an unknowing reality.

I was sitting in a night service at the Christ in Youth conference that I was helping with last week and the speaker communicated this idea very clearly. He had a clear box with the name Jesus written boldly in black. He was holding a small green ball and had started his message with where he found his identity when he was younger. At first it was his older brother, then it was sports, then it was his girlfriend, then it was being a pastor's kid. His identity was masked in something other than Christ. He came to find his identity in Christ and when he came to that he threw his little green ball in the big bin that had Jesus' name on it.

He paralleled this idea with Simon from the New Testament. The idea that Simon had been following Jesus around for two years. He had been following his principles, his advice, his conversation. Simon had listened to the parables and had seen the miracles performed. He watched Jesus walk on water and sit with the prostitutes at dinner. He watched this man overcome all of humanities natural abilities.

But there was a moment where Simon stopped following Jesus around and started following Jesus, Himself. It was a moment when Jesus asked the disciples "Who do people say the Son of Man is?"

They answered, "Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets,"

Then Jesus asks the question that transforms Simon forever,

"But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?"
Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the son of the living God."

After this answer Jesus gave Peter a new name and a new identity because he had stopped following Jesus around and became hidden in Jesus' identity.

Nothing revolutionary happens when you just follow Jesus' principles or when you just hang around with Christians.
Nothing revolutionary happens when you just hang out at church.
Nothing revolutionary happens when you are a 'good' and 'moral' person.

Something happens when your identity is hidden in Christ. A new identity, a new fresh start, a new name, and a new community are the reality of your new life.

Don't be obsessed with Christ.

Don't replace your flesh addiction with a Christ addiction.

Hide your life in Christ.

If you play hide and seek with the world and you hide in Christ the world will lose the game.

CIY was AWesome....


stories to follow soon.

Theology or Not?

I was having a conversation with one of our leadership residents a couple of days ago and I said something that shocked her. She has just graduated from Seminary and I said something that is potentially heretical according to seminary.

"I truly believe that my theology and my relationship with God needs to be separated."

She looked like I just took my pocket knife and started cutting my own arm off.

I continued the conversation and stated that if my study of God is the overarching reality in my collision with God then I don't really have a relationship with God.

My relationship with God should spur my study of God. This can also go the other way. My study of God can enhance my relationship with God but I do believe that they are very different realities.

Today is one of those days when I want to go home. Not my home in Naperville but home.

It is one of those days that the pain of the world and the overbearing reality that sin is a pollutant in the air that I breathe is to much.

I want to go home and have the opportunity to fall on my knees, and try to tell Jesus that I will never be good enough.

That I will never be smart enough, funny enough or pretty enough.

I want to go home and be held by the King.

I want Him to say my name in a way that makes the blood in my viens rush.

I want to go home and feel the answers to the whys.

I want to go home and feel what home truly feels like.

I'ts one of those days...

I don't want mud on my wedding dress.

"Why does love do this sort of thing? Why does it ruin stuff?" Friend.

For the first time in the last three years I realized there is a really big difference between God's love and the World's love.

"Well, love isn't supposed to hurt people. God's love isn't anyway. God's love doesn't destroy relationships and put people in danger. What we are seeing isn't God's love. I don't really know what to call it. I would have to make up a word for it.....

I guess I would call it worldly love." Me

"It's just sad" Friend.

"I know." Me

I went to Bible college and in the first two weeks I had people tell me openly that the only reason that they were attending was to find a husband or a wife.

There is actually a saying that is tossed around; "Ring by Spring and your tuition's free."

The percentage of couples that get married and divorced in the secular world is the same as it is in the Bible College world. Interesting.

I used to pick up books like :I kissed Dating Goodbye" and "And, The Bride Wore White" and I observed if what these intelligent authors were writing was crucial and being taken seriously in the Christian circles.

I stopped picking those books up.

I listened to couple after couple come into our school and talk about marriage and how it should work.

I only have seen two or three couples in my own life who haven't missed the point and who live it out.

I once heard a metaphor that was stated to the girls on my floor.

"If you are running towards God and you look next to you and there is a man running at the same speed running towards God than it's right and good."

I would disagree, I would say that if you are running towards God and you collide with someone and God all at the same time than it's 'right' and 'good'.

I have started telling people that I have stopped dating and my friend keeps telling me;

"You'll want to start again when you want to get married"

But why get married when all I have seen in my life is destructive relationships?

Why invest my life into something that is so fickle?

Because the way I have always seen it is through the world's love. Most of my friends that I have seen in crappy relationships have been in worldly relationships.

I'm holding out though. I don't want to waste my time or my life on something that is temporary.

God created marriage. I'm not going to let the world pervert it. I refuse to allow the world's love to destroy any more of my friends lives.

I was once in the local magazine for declaring that I was going to be pure until my wedding night. I realize that it's not even about the physical anymore. Purity is an all encompassing thing. It is about the mind and the heart, not just about the body.

I don't want mud on my wedding dress or my wedded life.

This One Need....

Trying to figure out the need of people combined with good stewardship and trust in God's providence.

Are we supposed to give everything and trust God enough to provide for us?

When is there ever a point in our lives where instead of giving people our own clothes we buy them brand new clothes?

What is the balance between good stewardship and unconditional giving?

Side walk scolder.

So, I was driving home from the bank the other day and I was on Hobson heading towards Washington St.


I was in a line with a couple of other cars that were turning right and we had a green light. There were two side-walkers to my right. They were the classic suburban moms. Both wearing matching sweat suits and walking with their arms swinging violently. These side walkers saw the walk sign and decided to walk even though we had a green light and were trying to turn right.

The car in front of me actually got the brunt of it. While the second women was walking across the street she was waving her arms wildly towards the walk sign and yelling loudly at the car trying to turn. She did this the whole way while crossing the street. I bet you the driver in that car was learning a profound lesson. It was the same lesson I was learning...

People are crazy.

Not only did I learn that lesson but I learned a different one. The reality that none of us really follow the same rules.

Christians seem to forget this and play the crazy side walk scolder. They look at the world through a fundamental moral reality and they forget that other people are following other rules. These other people are usually following the actual rules of the world. These other people are being told to go, even if they are going to hurt themselves or other people, but these rules are the only ones that seem real to them.

The problem is that Christians don't seem to get it. They don't seem to understand that other people are real and that they come from different backgrounds with a different set of rules. So in the end we become the crazy side walk scolder who, along with our other Christian friends, wear the same outfit, and say the same thing but when it comes down to it, we become fanatical and exclusive. We scream and yell and kick just to get our way in this world because we forget that Jesus didn't call us to live in a "Jesus saves" bumper sticker, ABreadCrumb and Fish t-shirt wearing, plastered smile, lifestyle.

Jesus doesn't want you to yell and scream at other people and then throw your arms up pointing them to Him.

We need to stop being side walk scolders. We need to start realizing that we aren't that special, but we are called to preach the good news.

How can it be good news if we are making people feel so bad about it?

Swimming

My family and I went swimming this last weekend. It was fun reminiscing with my brother about all the times that we enjoyed the pool when we were younger and how it has changed.

change

So I’m just going to be honest because that is what I’m known for. I am nineteen years old and I am a Sophomore in College. I started this writing this project when I was a freshmen in college and I am sure that I won’t finish it until I am out of college and well on my way to becoming whatever God wants me to be. I am naive and I am ignorant and these writings are things that I have seen and experienced in the church. I have no right to be a writer and I have no right to say the things that I do. I am only nineteen and these days nineteen year olds don’t know what they want to do with their lives. In our culture nineteen year olds aren’t really responsible for anything they do. They shouldn’t have to go to work, they shouldn’t have to have any large responsibilities and they shouldn’t have to figure out what is really going on in the world. Well I have a reputation of going against the grain on purpose. I’m the kid who always takes her classes out of order and parked in the teacher’s parking lot. I have never really followed the rules. I figured I would go with the Roman’s mentality. Adopt and Adapt. I’m nineteen years old and I don’t want to be a feather in the wind. I want to do something great. I want to be a legend. I have no time to waste because I could be gone tomorrow.

I am to young to have experienced a lot but I do know one thing for sure. God has a sense of rooting for the underdog. He had a tendency to put people that know one believed in, into leadership and he gave them something to say. I pray that you know the reason I write is solely because I want to share my observations of the church. I pray that you know that all I want to do is share the Gospel. I don’t want to sell the Gospel and I don’t want to defend it. That is not in my job description. All I want to do is share it. The reason is because It was shared with me and it changed my life. Plus sharing seems like a better idea. When you share you allow the other person to partake in something that you thoroughly enjoy.

A story that comes to mind is when my parents first met in college. They were both taking a music theory class at Eastern Illinois University and my mom had brought a bag of Oreo’s. My dad loved Oreo’s and to this day will eat the whole package in one sitting if he’s allowed. My dad mentioned to my mom in class that he loved Oreo’s and so she decided to share with him. That simple act eventually led to my birth. Which I view as highly important.

I have a two year old niece who we are trying to teach to share. It is a household rule in America. You learn how to share in kindergarten. It is something that is essential to growing up. It is essential to community. Something that I have learned in my short life is that I would rather someone share with me that sell me something or force something down my throat. I don’t want you to force food on my if I walk in your house but you can share you dinner with me. I don’t want you to sell me your coffee but if you make some I will probably partake in it. I don’t want you to sell me the Gospel or force it down my throat, but if you live it around me and offer to share it with me I might give it a chance.

Finding Your Desert.

Last night my small group met and we discussed what the desert scene in the Gospels looked like. We are investing our time in the book of Mark chapter 1:1-13, and we discussed and noticed the following.

• The desert is crucial to Jesus' spiritual journey and is represented throughout the rest Mark.
• Jesus' baptism and his being thrown in the desert mirrors the Hebrews when they were delivered from Egypt through the Red Sea and then sent into the desert for forty years.
• Mark is the only gospel that discusses John the Baptist's clothing and what he ate.
• Jesus was tempted directly by Satan in the desert.

The question that we where trying to answer was; What does the desert represent and how does it fit into our lives as Christ followers.

Our conclusion was that the desert was crucial to Jesus' intimate relationship with God. Jesus was connecting with God while he fasted. We also see that Jesus was tempted directly by Satan and equated this with two things.

1. Jesus was purely human and was tempted just like us.
2. While Jesus is trying to connect with God in an intimate way Satan is directly attacking him.

This reality that Jesus sought out in the desert is crucially important to our realities. This holy intimacy marks Christ's strong connection to God the Father. This desert scene needs to be sought out in our lives as well.

The reason I say this is because we can not truly know Jesus unless we know his Word. I know it sounds simple and even slightly dull, but it is the truth. Jesus' life is found in His message to us. His story is important and needs to become apart of us so that we can live it out more fully. If we are not seeking out desert time to become intimately connected in His Word and in conversation with Him how are we going to imitate Him?

If we don't invest in his life on a daily basis imitating him is impossible. Community Christian Church is doing a series called Eat This Book. This last week the message was about fresh is the best. The idea that the Bible is supposed to be fresh to us and become a part of us not only individually but in community as well.

Our relationship with Christ is personal but it's not private and we are called to be apart of God's great story in community. We are in need of scripture, for when we are apart of it, it will become who we are and will become apart of us.

Have you found your desert yet?

The Preachers are coming!

At LCC the title of this blog is a saying that is known well. It is a saying that was part of the foundation of why the school wanted to exist.

I was at a young adult barbeque two weeks ago. In July I will offocially be old enough to actually attend the young adult barbeques...haha.

Anyway I was there and one of the young ladies that attended as well asked me what I went to school for. I told her and then she came and sat next to me.

"Well, who do you preach for?"-young lady attendee.

"I preach for everyone."-me

"I mean, do you preach for young people, men, women, children, old people?"-young lady attendee.

"I preach for everyone, I preach for anyone who will listen."me, thinking the first answer made this clear but just in case she didn't get it I emphasized what I said with a certian preacheresque voice.

"Well what do you want to do when you graduate?"-young lady attendee.

"I want to go and preach to everyone who will listen to the gospel. I want to tell people about Jesus' love for us and his sacrafice"

She then leaned over slightly and looked at me straight in the face. In a low voice she said this,
"I'm a preacher to..."

The preachers are coming, they just look a little different.

Previous Statements.

These are some of the previous statements that people have told me in the last three-four years my life.


"You are going to do great things"


"You could be the next great thinker of our time"


"You are gifted"


"You are great at making people and events successful."


"When you talk people, just seem to listen"


While these are great statements and I am encouraged by them I need to let the world know one thing.


I am a child of God.


Most people would of course say, "Well yea, Alison, everyone is a child of God"


But I need to make this clear so that I know it and so everyone else knows. I am a child of God first. My identity is hidden in Christ and in His story. Everything that you see in me is Him. Everything good that comes from me is from Him.

While it would be great to do great things in the future all I am trying to do is figure out how to live a life hidden in Christ. I'm trying to figure out how to love unconditionally. I'm trying to figure out how to serve unconditionally. I am trying to figure out how to just be in the presence of God without actually trying.

These things are what are important to me. These things make my life what it is.

I had a conversation with a parent of a student that I mentor last weekend. She was asking me what I wanted to do after I graduated college. I knew this parent would expect some long planned out list of where I am going to go and what I am going to do, but I didn't have that.

I don't know where I will be in two years. I don't know where I will be in ten years. I don't know where I will be next week.

For a long time I had dreams to do things in student ministry, to preach at big conferences, and to impact the world hugely for Christ.

I still want to impact the world hugely for Christ but I want to do it behind Him and with Him. I told this parent that I am going to follow Christ and wherever I end up that's where I will end up as long as I have Christ by my side, in front of me, behind me, above me, and below me.

The parent walked away shocked. I could see on her face that she thought I was nuts. Actually my first response was humor. I cracked up. When the humor faded I realized that it is crazy to think that I am planning my whole future on something that many people call foolish.

Call me crazy then.

God does crazy things.

So I know that I have always believed that God is providential but I have never truly experienced it until these last two weeks.

Last week I met a girl named JJ who wanted to get connected into my small group. Knowing her life situation I knew that it would be hard to plug her into a group that is already connected.

Last week I saw an old friend from high school named Ally. She hung around the cafe and asked me if I was starting a small group.

Last week JJ and Ally saw each other in the office and freaked. Apparently they went to college together and were close then. They rekindled there friendship and are excited to be in the same small group living life together.

Kelly knows Ally because she is close friends with her sister.

This week I talked to Bill and he wanted to get another person connected into my small group. I met her today and my best friend, Kelly, who is also co-leading this small group is going to be in her sister in laws wedding in three weeks. She is connected relationally to Kelly and Joy.

Kelly is connected to me, Joy, Jessica, Ally, and Brittny.

I am connected to Ally, Jessica, Joy, JJ, Kelly, and Brittny.

JJ is connected to me and Ally and soon Kelly.

Ally is connected to JJ, Kelly, and me.

Joy is connected to me, Kelly, and Jessica.

Jessica is connected to Kelly and Joy.

Brittny is connected to Me and Kelly.

Every single person in my small group has deep relational mileage to one or more people. God has put us in one place for three months.

I am a victim of providence.

Good bye.

I am disappointed in the lack of creativity in other people. I have recently picked up the habit of going to www.blogger.com and watching the blogs come up that have just been updated.

The key is to pick a blog that looks interesting and hope that you will stumble on to some sort of creative genius. However, my plan has sorely failed seeing that no one tends to truly be creative any more.

I guess it is all about writing about reality. In all honesty most people are boring, and even the most eccentric people in the world are bored.

Alas, creative writing has come to the peak of it's existence. I just mourn for the future generations, for they will be without the great ideals of writing.

But, if the world is going down like it has been writing probably won't even be needed except to read the illusion that appears on our fore arms.

Side effects

Every time I watch a commercial on television that is referring to some sort of medicine it always seem to list the side effects at the very bottom in small print or they say them really, really fast at the end of the two minute blurb.

I have a problem with side effects because I am the kind of person that usually gets them. The whole list of; nausea, headaches, congestion, and loss of short term memory seem to get me every time.

I notice the same thing about our modern day cures for sin. We(as a culture and a church at times) label sin sometimes as temporary virus. We them prescribe this virus with a multitude of things: go to the doctor, start working our, go to a therapist, read your Bible every day, go do this, go do that, go, go, go....

These suggestions are not bad things at all, in fact, they can be a tremendous help to our health, spiritually, emotionally, and physically, but if we are depending on these things to pull us through our sin we are mistaken.

And suddenly we find ourselves with a whole mess of sinful side effects. The sin seems to not only be our first disease but also tends to be our side effects as well. These side effects seep into our relationships, our friendships, or mentality towards work, our emotional balance, and our own view of who we are and who created us. The spiritual immune system is being completely ripped apart because we are chasing after the right medication, or the right therapy for our sinful desires.

We tend to forget to simply repent.

"If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness" 1 John 1:9

When we go to our great physician and repent he forgives us and we become healthy again. We may not feel healthy but God is building our immune system up and we, if we continue to walk with Him and repent when we sin, will become strong and healthy.

We will be able to eat solid food and run with Him. The side effects of our sin will not seep into our lives any longer.

Elijah Thomas Plassman is the most beautiful baby that I have ever seen and I love him!!!!!

There is something that I don't understand.

One thing that keeps me from doing the best.

For some reason I continue to live out a life that is glorified by my mediocrity. I am shamelessly trying to keep my head down, for if someone new the one thing that I am missing, they would start truly believing in me.

At the same time I am completely surrounded on every side. Surrounded by the air that seems to be clogged with the pollution of myself. I surround myself and I pollute my mind and my heart.

I eat the bugs that craw all over my bed at night and deshelve all of my emotions just to throw them on the floor for people to step on. I walk around in a web that is being torn down by the rain from the dark skies that torment me even when the sun is high.

My darkness alludes the light and shatters me from my mirrored self so all I am left with is someone unknown and foreign.

I am a foreigner, an illegal immigrant. I am being thrown out of a land that was once a home. I am searching for a place, a ruler, a country, a home to find my own.

I dare not tarry in this place for long for it might behave badly and prove them all right.

Come find me.

Some who wander are truly lost.

Lost in the facade that seems to live through transparency.

If I am wrong than I will lose most things and find myself at the bottom of a cage. This cage that everyone falls in and everyone so longs to think out of.

Think outside of the box while you still live in it. Think up a new bigger box to put things in.

Don't forget the lid.

I am a fake. A sinner. I find my life lost in rust stained chains that tear at my flesh and splinter my bones. I am chained to not only myself but to the earth. To the pollution, to the perversion, to the abuse. To the tree of choice. I am not a being but a symbol. A symbol of a human trying to represent a true life.

Jesus Christ is the only air, and is the only water, and is the only life that is truly pure.

There certain attributes that every super-hero has in their lives. These attributes are exceedingly important in truly defining the super-hero. While other humans can be defined by a multitude of things super-hero’s have specific requirements that determine their identity and their purpose. These requirements can be found in many of the comic book heroes that we so adhere and adore.


The first of these requirements is an estranged birth.


A super-hero must be born in a weird and unnatural way. This birth happens twice in a person’s life. The first is their physical birth. Usually this birth defines the culture and the atmosphere that will create a sense of true injustice in the super hero’s life. The second birth is when the super-human part of this person starts to form. Sometimes these two births happen at the same time, but there are times when there are singular moments when this super identity is truly formed. This can be seen in many of our own favorite super heroes.


Let’s look at Spider-man. Unfortunately the movies did not necessarily tell the best story of this super-hero, but Spider-man is a super-hero that had two births. Peter Parker was physically born with two parents who die when he is young and then is raised by his aunt and uncle. However, his powers don’t come to him until he is bitten by a radioactive spider during a science demonstration. Peter is a teenager when he inherits these powers and struggles with them for years. He desperately seeks out fame at first and then realizes that power is not something to take lightly. This lesson is taught by the loss of his uncle and his girl friend.


Every Super-hero has two births. One that is purely natural and one that is absolutely super natural. These two births usually conflict with each other and cause a tension between natural inclinations and super natural desires.