Snowboarding

I went snowboading for the fist time on our winter retreat last weekend and let me say that I am not going to take home any gold medals anytime soon. But I did have a great experience and I learned something valuable by being introduced to the sowboarding community. First of all I learned that I am a poser. I was walking around in my Sun Pac pants and my North Face beanie, but I was a poser. I was trying to fit into a world in which I clearly did not belong. I was thinking that this must be how a church newcomer feels. Wearing the right clothes, but definatly not part of the community. I want to reach out and help people in this environment feel more comfortable.

I alos learned about commitment from this boarding community. The guys and gals were willing to spend every hour of life working toward the goal of boarding more. They would work in the kitchen, cleaning crew or man the lift in the freezing cold just to be in the snowboarding world. I was confronted with their committment. They are more committed to a leisure activity than I am to Christ. I want to be envelped by Jesus in everything I do. I want to be always on the mountain of God and live and work in His presence.

Surrender

I have not been able post lately due to some things I needed to get done for our Winter retreat. Hopefully I will be more consistant in the future. God has been teaching me a lot lately about surrender. The past several months I have been really praying over what God wants to do in and through my story in life. I know that God created me for more than what I am doing now, but I have been struggling to find what that is. The past few weeks however I feel I have begun to see more clearly what God wants to do and the key was surrender. I struggled with surrender because I always put boundries in my mind. For instance I would surrender my will to God, but wanted Him to use me in a location I determined was his will. What I discovered was that surrender has no conditions, and I am taken completely captive by Jesus. Jesus can take me as a captive anywhere and at anytime for anything he chooses. I am His, even if I think I know where he is going, as my captor, He can chnage that at any time without notice or my permission. So I am surrendered to Jesus and will lose eveything for His sake and will decrease so the He might increase.

Church without walls

What would a church with no walls actually look like. A community of believers that live out the love of Christ and assemble together in true authenticity out of a mutual love and faith in Christ. I want to be a part of this community that interacts with businesses for the purpose of making Christ known. Worked in the school district to allow people to see that the church is more concerned about giving than getting. I really want to help chruched discover the missilogical roots of our faith and take the meassage fo Christ to a dying world.