Revolutionaries: Matt Brown

One of the hardest things to do in life is to take action against something you see that needs to happen, and in doing so you know it will not be a popular decision. Yet a decision you know God is telling you to act upon, even if it is against His Church.
In Matt Brown’s new book, Revolutionaries, you can be reminded of such people through out Church history who followed in the footsteps of Jesus and His radical band of disciples in not being willing to conform to a religion that had grown stagnate, stale, and inward focused. Some were praised from the start of their ministries while others were branded a heretic and were excommunicated from The Church.
The book is a great read that motivates you to be willing to do great things for God, even if it means you will be hated for doing so. As it covered every century since the beginning of the Church, I couldn’t wait to get to the next chapter to see what revolutionary would be mentioned next. Some names were famous and obvious (Martin Luther) while I was baffled by the fact I hadn’t heard of some of the work others had done (St. Vincent).
After reading this book, I was anxious to seek out and listen for the voice of God, hoping and praying that I could be as bold and radical as the revolutionaries mentioned in this book.
Great read done in plain language. Highly encourage you to pick it up.

Order your copy of Revolutionaries at RevolutionariesBook.com or get the Stocking Stuffer Special (2 books for price of 1) through midnight Christmas Day. You can also buy the book on Amazon.com and download a free chapter or the whole book for the Amazon Kindle or through the free Kindle app on the iPod Touch and iPhone. This book was provided for review by Skyline Book Publishers.

GETTING YOUTH ANGRY

There are messy games, group games, up-front games, circle games, relay games, etc…. When you’re involved with youth ministries, there is no limit to what kind of game you can play. Just Google “youth group games” and you can find millions of games to play in your program. It’s pretty sweet to be able to have a budget with the church you work at that allows you to purchase whatever materials you need to make a night of chaos (a gang of teenagers in one big room) into a night to remember because of crazy, awesome, fun games.

I put my neck out there the other day at youth group when I gave the kids a disclaimer. Before the night got started, I gathered all the youth, old faces as well as a handful of new, and I told them how awesome the other youth programs in our community are. In these other programs, they can get an insightful bible teaching AFTER they had a tremendous amount of fun. I told them that if it’s fun games they want, I could point them to the church program they should go to. Just talk to me after. I then informed them that the reason I promoted other programs so tenaciously was because I don’t know if we will be playing games for the next 6 or 7 weeks. The reason is because we are going through a series of teachings that are focused on different injustices in the world and I want to make the night as serious as possible. It’s hard to discuss child trafficking, and get the full scope of the teaching if we start or end the night playing Sardines (a sweet game that involves the leaders doing nothing or buying anything). I told them my heart on this series and how I desire to get these kids angry about what is happening in this world and how I dream of seeing a generation rise up and make Christianity about serving “the least of these”. After my tremendously awesome and powerful speech, I knew exactly what William Wallace (or at least Mel Gibson) felt like riling up his freedom fighters before they went into battle. I saw the passion and determination in the eyes of the youth. I new I just helped create a band of radicals that were determined to buck the system of a stagnant Christianity because they’ve finally got it: faith without works is truly dead.


After a great night of dialogue, one particular youth approached me. He told me his heart on some of these issues. He looked hungry for Righteousness and Justice. After talking to him for about 5 minutes, he closes his conversation with me by saying, “Oh yeah, Jo-Jo? From what it sounds like to me, you just lost half of your kids because they want to have fun and you’re not gonna provide that for them.” In an instant, I went from William Wallace to Seymour Krelborn (Rick Moranis on Little Shop of Horrors).

Ultimately, we will see who decides to come or not come. I’ve learned to be excited about seeing ANY youth being willing to take on injustices that surround us daily. I’m praying we have the whole band of (potential) radicals come back in the weeks that follow. Time will tell.

The point is this; what will it take to get kids angry instead of complacent on issues that clearly break the heart of God? If I’m to teach the kids the heart of God, or at least guide them into His direction to have them experience His Love and Compassion, what will it take on my behalf to get them to rebel against the systems we’ve all taken part in without even knowing there had always been a steep cost of injustice? How can we raise up a generation that is willing to set aside fun for the sake of righteousness?

NO STRINGS ATTACHED

When I was in high school, I don’t recall ever being asked to attend a youth group. I don’t think I even knew they existed. Whether I was too intimidating, too nerdy, or too cool (I would think it’s that one ;) ), no one ever invited me to attend their church. I find that peculiar because I lived in a pretty small town with several churches.
I did have two friends though that weren’t anything like the rest of my friends. I knew they attended church. I knew they had Christian activities in their lives. I knew one of my friend’s dad was a Pastor at a local church. These two friends were the closest thing I had to Jesus in my teenage years. But they never invited me to go to their church, which in part, I’m thankful for. They did except me for who I was. They would try influencing me in the opposite direction that I was being influence. If ever I had a question about God, they would try and break it down for me. They truly taught me that as individuals, they wanted to show me they loved me by being a friend rather than leaving me at the doorstep of the church to be a project while they fled away from the opportunity to partake in the Great Commission.
How beautiful could it be if the Christian youth of our communities could learn how to be friends rather than project managers? How effective would their lives be if they learned to make friends with no strings attached? How great would it feel to see them loving the person, sins and all?
The youths of our communities are in a daily battle of influence. And I think it’s a battle that the Church is losing. I think the kids that don’t know their identity in God’s eyes will have nothing to do with a friendship that has strings attached. I’ve heard church kids get upset because their non-Christian friends won’t give church a try because they think it’s boring. I had to bite my lip to not tell them that I’ve been to some churches that I didn’t even bother trying to stay awake because it was so boring.
If we can teach the youth that understand the beauty of God that a loving friendship is about THEM showing their friends God’s love by THEIR actions and THEIR words rather then trying to uproot them from their life and having them partake in a church culture they are totally unfamiliar with and most of the time is complete nonsense to them. I think the influence of today’s youth could potentially swing towards the Church if we can learn to love unconditionally, rather than with strings attached.

INFLUENCE OF CULTURE

I was sitting in my living room this morning with my 3 year-old daughter. She was in one of those goofy, yet hilarious moods where everything she says is comical. I was soaking it all in and thinking how much I love these times I have with her. My wife was in the bedroom and says something (can’t remember what….I think it was “Jo-Jo, you are super hot) that made us laugh, and I called her a nerd. So my daughter, in her goofy-mode, says “yeah momma, you’re a nerd.”. I was hoping my wife didn’t hear her. But my daughter was dead set on letting her see how funny she was. So she gets up to walk to the bedroom to say it again. It was like slow motion as I reached for her to stop her but she was too quick. Then she says it again. My wife just looks at her and says, “That’s okay if you say that to mom and dad, but don’t ever say that outside of this house about other people.” I was shocked……….how dare my wife allow my daughter to call me a nerd. 
The beautiful stress of raising children. My wife and I spend plenty of time with parents who tell us their struggles of raising teenagers and how they really couldn’t prepare for it. It’s become so difficult. We try to teach our child to see life as beautiful yet tell them to keep their ears and eyes closed. Today’s culture is such a mega shift away from children raised in the 70’s. The biggest influence: media.
In a recent survey by Teen People magazine, 27% of the girls felt that the media pressures them to have a perfect body.
By the time a young person is 17 years old, they have received over 250,000 commercial messages through the media. Eating disorders have grown 400% since 1970. And this isn’t just with females. Many males are becoming insecure about their physical appearance as advertising and other media images raise the standard and idealize well-built men.
What can be done about this? I don’t want to be the parent that has their child wear a helmet wherever they go. I don’t want to have my kids watch the Princess Bride 10,000 times and tell everyone that it’s the greatest movie ever because that’s the only movie they’ve ever seen. How can we have our kids see culture as beautiful and be able to participate in it and learn from it without having them turn into blood-sucking monsters (please notice the sarcasm….they really won’t suck blood)? The youth really need to see beauty and learn to walk in it. They need to understand how beautiful life is when they understand who they are in the eyes of God. They miss out on so much when we isolate them from God’s gift to man to be able to create culture.
So how can you raise a child to understand that our image in God and to God is where our value comes from, yet not have them walk through life isolated from experiencing the art of created culture because we don’t want them to turn into blood sucking monsters?
When you find out, please let the Church know,because Lord knows, we don’t have the answer.

PROTECTIVE CHRISTIAN GHETTO

TAKING FROM: ADVENTURES IN MISSING THE POINT. BRIAN MCLAREN
Despite our sincerity and best motives, preachers like me mess people up. It’s unintentional, believe me; we’re just trying to protect people. But we damage people nonetheless. We want to protect folks from alcoholism and drunkenness, so we tell them to not drink any alcoholic beverages. To protect them from alcohol, we recommend they avoid establishments that serve it. To be on the safe side, we tell them to avoid people who drink alcohol…and to avoid excessive laughter as you’d hear from tipsy people…and, in fact, to avoid parties in general except boring ones.
We want to protect folks from extramarital sex, so we create so much tension around the subject that we make people uncomfortable not only with the opposite sex, but with their own sexuality, too. Okay, we preachers admit, maybe we’ll create a little sexual anxiety, maybe some of our hearers will become a tad nerdy, weird, uptight-but at least they won’t get into overt sexual trouble. We hope.
We want to protect people from following the crowd and succumbing to peer pressure, so we imply-or outright assert-that good Christians don’t go to R rated movies (or any movies at all), don’t listen to rap music (or any popular music at all). We discourage them from making non-Christian friends. We approve of them spending all their time in church services, church meetings, church activities-safe rabbit holes, a protective Christian ghetto.
We want to protect them from losing their faith, so we warn them against reading philosophy, from participating in culture and the arts, from dealing with tough questions and controversial issues. We exhort them to avoid the sciences (they might accept evolution!) avoid the social sciences (they might sympathize with liberals, criminals, and homosexuals!), avoid the arts (they might have to look at the nudes!). We recite pat answers and platitudes, even when it makes us feel dishonest, shallow, trite, tortured. We feel justified, though, convincing ourselves that even a bad faith is better than a lost faith.
In short, wanting to protect our congregations from becoming the world, we preachers tell them, “don’t be in it.” There’s only one problem: in trying to save people from the world, we miss the point. We actually ruin people (and ourselves) as disciples, and probably damage them as human beings, too. What’s amazing is how patient our parishioners are with us, in light of the damage we do to them. It’s amazing how patient the Lord is with us too, in light of the damage we do to His people and his cause.

Father of the fatherless

Whenever I talk to my dad, he seems to bring up how he use to beat me in basketball when I was a kid (which I remember kicking his old butt all the time). Or he always reminds me of how he would out fish me whenever we would go fishing together (I remember him always getting snagged). He boasts about if we were in high school together he would have been able to kick my butt (all 150 pounds of pure stick against 235 pounds of studliness). I don’t know if he’s crazy or if he's just losing his mind more and more as he's getting older. Regardless, I love my father.
With Fathers Day right around the corner, I’m asking myself what kind of dad am I going to be when I reach the very old age of 40 (10 years from now). My oldest daughter will be 13. Someone once told me that they can’t wait for me to face the teenage drama of relationships when my daughter becomes a teenager. Truthfully, I don’t think they’re gonna come. I trust there will be issues. But for some reason, I’m confident in how my wife has been raising her(I mention her and not me so she can be blamed if anything goes wrong, but I’ll take the credit if she turns out awesome). How can we fail? Candy if she’s good, the rod if she’s bad (don’t call social services, I’m joking……..). In all honesty, I don’t have many fears for her.
I can’t help but to think of all the youth I know who are fatherless in our community. Or kids who have a dad, but he’s a drunk and he makes sure to let his child know how worthless they are. I pray that this Fathers Day we are able to show the ones who don’t have a nice image of what a father is that they do have a Father that is so enthralled by who they are. I hope all fathers can find time on Fathers Day to shed some love to someone who is fatherless. Make it an effort to be the love of the Father to a child who doesn’t know they’re true identity from the eyes of their true Father.

DIALOGUE BETWEEN MY MIND AND A TEENAGE GIRL

This morning I went to my favorite local coffee shop. Like every morning, I was greeted with the Cheers-like friendly hellos from the staff. After I ordered my mug of joe, I asked the young teenage gal how things were with her and her boyfriend. She said “We’re great. He’s sleeping in my bed right now.” After she said that, she answered the question that was running through my mind. “My parents are gonna be surprised when they see him there.” So I was thinking, “Oh boy, he’s a dead man.” But after I thought that, she said “But he spends the night often so it won’t be a big deal.” After that dialogue between her and my mind, I went to my table and my mind starting screaming “SINNER! GUILTY! BUSTED! THE WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH! OFF WITH HER HEAD!”
After I caught my breath and was able to compose myself, my mind start to clear and than the first thing that popped in my mind was Judge Judy. I don’t know if you watch that show, but if you haven’t, she is one angry woman. If I were in a bar fight, I would want her on my side. But I think her problem is that she gets so riled up she doesn’t hear the other side of the story. She’s not a fair judge if you ask me.
So it made me think of how I had been so quick to judge this teenage girl because her boyfriend was in her bed. Who knows? Maybe he ran 15 miles this morning and was passing her house at 5:30am and decided to crash at her house after she left for work. Or maybe he forgot about the toast he was cooking this morning and it burned his house down and he needed a place to sleep because he was exhausted from fighting the fire and saving his cat.
Whether he being over there was right or wrong, I don’t really know. And even if I did see it as wrong, if she wasn’t taught the same standards of truth that I live by because her parents, or even myself, haven’t taught them to her, than am I not to be blamed for that as well? I don’t know. But I do know that there was a log in my eye as I was looking at the saw dust in hers.

CLOSE MY EYES TO HIDE FROM REALITY

I was one of those kids that would lie in his bed at night and hear the most subtle noise and get pretty freaked out. I was extremely convinced that there was a monster somewhere in my room. I was always too scared to get up and tell my dad to come in and drop some Rambo on what ever it was that was scaring me. So I only had one solution, and it typically worked: close my eyes and keep my mind on other things until I fell asleep.
I’ve come to realize that I do this more often nowadays than I did when I was a frightened kid. I’m never going to know how I can fix things if I always close my eyes when I don’t want to see the reality of what’s happening around me. WE NEED TO BE AWARE.

HUNGRY? TRY EATING DIRT

He who is dying of hunger must be fed rather than taught. – Saint Thomas Aquinas
I am a sucker for buffets. If you ever want to bless me, take me to a buffet. Some of my buddies make fun of me because I have no problem going to a buffet by myself. They say it’s depressing; I say it’s pretty awesome. Here’s how much I love buffets; I proposed to my wife in a buffet parking lot! (If you ask me, it can’t get any more romantic.)
With that being said, one of my greatest pet peeves is seeing someone take so much food and not eat it. I’ve seen a person get chicken strips at a buffet along with 4 other items and eat everything on the plate but the chicken strips. WHY THE HECK WOULD YOU GET THE CHICKEN STRIPS THEN! I always tell them that I should force feed them and whoop their butt. But instead, I take their chickens strips and eat it for them and secretly wish they would be forced to eat mud for a week. Watch the video to know what I’m talking about.

MUD PIES

Taken from The Hole In Our Gospel by Richard Stearns
• Roughly 1of 4 children in developing countries is underweight
• Some 350 to 400 million children are hungry.
• About 1 in 7 worldwide- 854 million people- do not have enough food to sustain them.
• Approximately 25,000 people die each day of hunger or its related causes- about 9 million per year.

"When I was hungry, you fed me" - Jesus

My Daughter for President

I got an email a couple weeks ago suggesting that President Barack Obama was the anti-Christ. A few weeks before that, a fellow Christian told me he will rejoice the day Bush Jr. is dead. I remember as a kid, a popular answer to the age-old question “what do you want to be when you get older” was “I wanna be the President of the United states of America”. Remind me to discipline my children if they ever give that answer. I fear people will get all “Righteous” on them.

Jesus answered, "My kingdom does not belong to this world. If my kingdom belonged to this world, my servants would fight to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But for now my kingdom is not from here."

PROSTITUTES & POTHEADS: JESUS' TYPE OF PEOPLE

> He hung out with a lady who was married five times and was now with a man that was not her husband.
> A woman comes and washes his feet and anoints them. She was publicly known to be a “sinner” which most likely meant she was a promiscuous lady.
> He asked a Tax-collector, one of the most despised people in society, to come and spend time with him. The Tax collector throws a party for him and now he is eating and drinking with other tax-collectors and “sinners”.
> He spent time with a terrorist. A Zealot who wanted nothing more then to see His countries rulers be overthrown through the means of violence so the people of the land can rule as they once did. Jesus wanted to show him a new kind of Revolution. One based off of love.

Jesus, the man who countless of people love and adore. The man who receives praise and worship daily all over the world. The man who so many desire to be like. The man that so many long to be with as they anxiously await his return. The man who longed for his people to see the beauty of God’s love for them and who was willing to go to extreme measures to let them know that truth.

When we see all that Jesus did for us, we fall to our knees in complete admiration and cry out to him because He is beautiful and awesome. But when we see Jesus hanging out with drunkards, we ridicule him. We see him spending time with prostitutes and we are in shock that he would do so. When he asks a terrorist to spend time with him, we can’t believe what we’re seeing.
The person who commits adultery is a threat to our households. The drunkards make our city pathetic. The thieves only deserve jail. The terrorist needs to be killed.
Redrum was a local head-shop business that moved locations because they realized they weren’t going to make it in the town of Cambridge, MN. Inside the store, you would find a wide variety of pipes, bongs and hookahs. The number one clientele were not 50 year-old men who smoke tobacco as they read books at home. It was young pot-heads who wanted the coolest looking bong or glass pipe. When Redrum left our community, I had heard from several people praising their exit. “Praise God! I have been praying from day one that that place would just leave.” “Whenever I’d drive past that place, I would pray that they would go out of business”. When I hear such “Praise Reports”, I am always forced to ask, “Did you ever get a chance to go and spend time with those guys that ran the shop?” The answer has yet to be “yes”.
It is so easy to love Jesus when we see him for who he is; our Beautiful Lord. But it’s so hard to love the people Jesus spent his time with when we see them for who they our: “sinners”.

PRANKS

In 1957, the BBC ran a story about Swiss farmers who were reaping a profit on their farms due to a mild winter. They had never reaped a harvest of this magnitude. The product they were reaping? Spaghetti noodles. After the story ran, they were flooded with calls from anxious and excited people wondering how they could grow their own spaghetti trees. The BBC responded, “place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best.” This has become one of the greatest April Fools Day pranks in history.

Some people love pranks. Whether dishing them out of taking the brunt end of one, some people have such a fun, care-free, (nuts) perspective of it all. Myself, I have to refrain from biting the prankster’s pinky off and telling them it was only a joke. The youth I work with now know not to pull pranks on me when I’m sleeping on retreats (at the cost of a few pinkies). I absolutely despise pranks…….but I do love watching them. On the TV show PUNK’D, Ashton Kutcher sets up celebrities in walking into a well put together prank. The celebrities think it’s just another day, until a series of misfortunate events start to occur. Eventually, the prank is revealed and it all ends in hugs and kisses.
For the past couple of years, I have really notice a drastic change in the youth after they leave mom and dad’s house and start on their journey through adulthood. One trend that is growing more and more every year is how unimportant church is. Not just church, but even following in the footsteps of Jesus. According to a recent seminar I went to, 82% of youth walk away from their church after they leave their parents home. Other studies say 70%, but regardless, both numbers are alarming. I think it's mainly because they have come to see Christianity as one big prank.
We spend years teaching these kids the importance of reading the bible while a non-Christian kid is volunteering at a food shelf. We teach the youth they need to “pray without ceasing” while a non-Christian kid is raising money for AIDS victims in Africa. We emphasize the importance of having other Christians around them while non-Christians are fleeing from them. We tell our youth to tell people about Jesus when lonely kids are just looking for a friend. We've told the youth how to be a Christian, but we haven't helped them walk in the footsteps of their Christ. So when our youth are done with home life and get to be on their own, they have so much Christian knowledge they don’t know what to do with. All that was taught to them becomes nothing of importance. They're confused on why we emphasized reading the Bible; they get along fine without it. Why pray? They believe God hasn’t answered their prayers in a long time, so praying is nonsense. Why tell someone about Jesus? The youth notice that all that’s really needed is love. But not God’s love. They start to see everything that was taught to them by us as irrelevant. They see it as one big prank. In other words, they've come to see Christianity as one big joke.

MORE TEENS LIE, CHEAT, AND STEAL AND DON'T SEE THE WRONG

THIS IS AN INTERESTING NEWS ARTICLE FROM MSNBC.COM.

Kind of makes me wonder if ethics are a overlooked lesson amongst Youth Workers.

If you thought the Bernie Madoffs, those guys from Enron and Worldcom, and the Rod Blagojeviches of the world would eventually dry up and blow away, a new poll says you'd better think otherwise. This survey would suggest they'll just be replaced with another generation of liars, cheaters and stealers.

A new national poll from Junior Achievement and Deloitte shows 80 percent of teenagers feel like they're prepared to make ethical business decisions once they're out in the real world. That same study shows 38 percent of those say you have to break the rules at school, if you want to have any chance at success.

And that group that says it's so ethical? Well, half of them say lying to parents is okay, and more than 60 percent say they have lied to their parents in the past year.

So what's it all mean?

David W. Miller, Ph.D., director of the Princeton University Faith & Work Initiative and professor of business ethics at Princeton University, says "there is a troubling incongruence between the degree to which teens feel ethically prepared to enter the workforce, and the unethical behaviors in which they engage. The survey results do prompt concerns about teens’ future workplace behavior and forecast serious challenges to businesses around how they will need to prepare and train these future leaders."

So even in the 21st century, don't take any wooden nickels.

ATHEIST EVANGELISM

If we drive towards any major city’s downtown or watch T.V. for a half hour, it’s evident that advertising a product HAS to be effective. Why else would companies be willing to spend thousands to millions of dollars to get a minuscule microdot spot in the humongous business-machine world. After some long-term tracking and pretty intense research, big businesses can tell if all their adds payoff.
In London, the American Humanist Association, a group of free-thinking atheist, have put to practice the power of advertising. On over 800 buses, you can find their “product”. The bus ads read, “THERE’S PROBABLY NO GOD. NOW STOP WORRYING AND ENJOY YOUR LIFE.” The media has coined this tactic as Atheist Evangelism.
When I first thought about this attempt to sway people away from a belief in God and to do life without Him, I got kind of frustrated. So I looked into it a little more by checking out their website. Things became a little clearer to me on why they decided to market their belief. This website states, “…the campaign was originally started as a positive counter-response to the Jesus Said ads running on London buses in June 2008. These ads displayed the URL of a website which stated that non-Christians "will be condemned to everlasting separation from God and then you spend all eternity in torment in hell … Jesus spoke about this as a lake of fire prepared for the devil". Our rational slogan will hopefully reassure anyone who has been scared by this kind of evangelism.”
Even though I don’t believe this gives a legit reason to start a campaign of atheist evangelism, I do see how this Christian URL previously advertised can get some atheist frustrated. So what was the reaction of some Christians?
According to a Christian website, JoEllen Murphey, a mother of four from McLean, Va., was one of those who were outraged over the atheist bus campaign. She is part of two Christian groups who have raised $14,000 to run a “pro-God” campaign on the same buses. “After a friend forwarded me an article about the AHA ad campaign, I thought, ‘Enough!’ I am so tired of God and religion being attacked that I decided to start a counter ad campaign,” said Murphey.
This reminds me of a certain time in my life. I remember my sister snatching it from my hands. I in turn, snatched it back. She did it back, and I did it back. This was going on for five minutes while we were screaming and yelling and crying. What was she thinking? How dare she come up to a 4 year old boy and take his G.I. Joe. She was 7 years old. Why would she want it?
Point being: Is bus evangelism really that effective? It seems to be no more then a back-and-forth advertising arm wrestling match. Who’s going to give? Who’s going to win? Who’s going to get the last word?
My question is: WHO’S GOING TO GROW UP?

BE LIKE MIKE

I try
Just need to fly
For just one day if I could
Be that way
I dream I move
I dream I groove
Like Mike
If I could Be Like Mike
I wanna be, I wanna be
Like Mike
Oh, if I could Be Like Mike.
The Great Michael “Air” Jordan. Who didn’t want to be like Mike? The greatest sports figure of all times. In 1991, Gatorade realized the impact M.J. had on the entire sports world and created one of the catchiest commercial jingles of the 90’s. They noticed how people of all ages from every country wanted to be like Mike in one way or another. If you loved sports, Jordan was your inspiration to excel.
Whether Christians notice it or not, those that are younger then us look up to us as well. I remember being in 3rd grade and thinking the 6th graders were grown adults. I couldn’t wait to be as cool as some of those grown men in Mrs. Woods’s class. And there was no way I was going to talk to Samantha during recess. She was too much of a “woman”. SHE WAS IN 6TH GRADE!!!
1 Timothy 4:12 says “Don't let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity.” The youth of today must realize the awesome opportunities they have to be an example of Jesus to those younger then them. “In speech, in life, in love, and in purity.” When we speak, let us speak as Jesus, comforting those that are hurting. As we live, let us live a life like Jesus, walking humbly and respectfully. When we love, let us love like Jesus. Being excepting of ALL people and letting them see and feel the love God has for them through us. As we speak, live, and love, let us be as pure as Jesus, letting all see the definition of Christ in you.
The greatest way of witnessing is by living as an example. When you live as examples of Jesus, those that look up to you will see something different, and in their minds, they’ll be singing that Gatorade song about you.

MLK'S DREAM

When Martin Luther King Jr. had his big dream while he was vacationing on nearby St. Helena Island, I don’t think he had envisioned his dream to come true so soon. 46 years ago he had dreamt that we would be able to live in a country where the color of one’s skin would not matter. That white children would be able to play with black children. Where a man’s character would be all that matters. When he had that dream, he imagined unity amongst Americans. In all honesty, I don’t believe he imagined that in 46 years The United States of America would be united enough to elect our first black President. But that’s beside the point. The point is he had a dream and God has blessed our country with that dream. Segregation was only a couple of generations ago. A young African American woman said, “The only thing Martin Luther King was fighting for was equal rights. It’s eerie that we’re celebrating King’s dream on Monday and that dream comes true on Tuesday.”
Times are tough for many. Jobs are being lost. Gas is on the rise once again. Houses are being foreclosed on. With all things considered, how can we find hope in a conglomeration of despair? We need only to remember that our God is a God who does not sit still. He had heard the prayers of so many that were tired, and can here our prayers when we feel we can’t go on. He had been faithful to those who had been oppressed and wants to uphold us when we are being crushed. When all hope seemed lost, God had shown to be the greatest hope that never dies. He is the one that gives change when change is needed. And He is the one who allows us to dream big and gives us hope through those dreams. HE IS GOD!!!
So praise God for these days of Hope and Change. Praise God for raising up a young man in MLK that had enough reason to throw in the towel and lose all hope, but never forgot that God is a God that does not sit still. He is faithful and He hears the cries of those in need. Let these days of change remind us that God is a God who does not change but helps those that call out to Him.

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love, 1963

GETTING OLD

My 7th grade English teacher Mrs. Wolford seemed old enough to be my mom. She would come to class and drop grammatical knowledge on us daily. She would tell us about her family life and the things that happened at home with her old husband and her child. She would sit in the teacher’s room with all of the other old teachers and talk about old people stuff. After school, she would jump in her car like all the other old people to go home and live the life of an older woman. As a 13 year old, she had me convinced: I never want to be 30 years old like her.

This is a turning point in my life. This month I turn 30. I know some of you parents find it comical that I believe turning 30 is such a big deal. But it’s pretty serious to me. And it’s not turning 30 that scares me. It’s the reality that I’m one year further from being young and one year closer to being old. The reality hit me not to long ago when I said a word that I KNEW was cool, but a kid looked at me with this bratty little smirk and said, “Dude, people don’t say that any more.” I was floored. I had officially became Mrs. Wolford.
That’s the reason I get flattered when 13 year olds call me to hang out with them at Caribou. Or 16 year olds call me to see how my week was. And this has been made possible because of two reasons. The first reason is God’s grace. He has called me to be a missionary to the youth of Isanti County and has opened the door for me to do ministry.
The second reason is fairly simple: they have my ears and my heart. It’s easy as an adult to not be interested in the risqué world of youth and the culture they are immersed in. But it’s not easy to be a teenager in that culture. But one thing I’ve learned is youth love it when they have an “old person” in their life that’s curious about how things work in their world and when we give them a chance to school us on the reality of today’s culture.
One great opportunity adults have and need to take advantage of is sitting down with the youth and studying the “whys” and the “hows” of their world. This gives us the chance to understand why they do the things they do and act the way they act. Too often we criticize this generation and expect them to handle the situations the way we did when we were their age. When we can understand this generation, then we can understand how and what needs to be communicated in order to see kids practicing being in the world, but not of it.
“I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it.”

– John 17:14-16

NEW YEARS RESOLUTION OR NEW CREATION?

Take your pick:
Lose Weight, Manage Debt, Save Money, Get a Better Job, Get Fit, Eat Right, Get a Better Education, Drink Less Alcohol, Quit Smoking Now, Reduce Stress Overall, Reduce Stress at Work, Take a Trip, Volunteer to Help Others.

According to USA.gov, these are the most common New Year’s resolutions every year. Looking at that list, I’ve tried a few of those in past years. The key word is “tried”. Whenever I make a New Year’s resolution, I get pretty excited. It means a new start. A chance to become a “better me”. The opportunity to create freshness in life that is much needed. But what it turns out to be is a chance to fail miserably in my attempt of a new beginning. It’s become such a standard to fail my New Year’s resolution, I’m starting to feel as if a New Year’s resolution is just as beneficial to make as having a Noodle Eater’s Hair Guard (see picture). WHAT’S THE POINT!!

“Whoever is a believer in Christ is a new creation. The old way of living has disappeared. A new way of living has come into existence.”- 2 Cor. 5:17

I realized that we need not wait for the beginning of the year to “start fresh”. We’ve been giving an opportunity today. The chance to wake up, take a step back and evaluate what our life looks like and start again. We’ve been made anew in Christ and we need to see what we’ve been made into and continuously align ourselves according to this “new creation” we’ve become. One of the dangers of being a new creation in Christ is we figure the work in us has been done and we leave it as is. Like an algae-filled lake in the late summer, we become stagnate due to lack of change. And the lack of change comes only because we don’t see what it means to be a new creation. We start to add onto this new creation all of the drama, stress, sin, anger, laziness, addiction, irresponsibility and so forth and figure that this is part of the “new creation package”. But if we are able wake up, take a step back and evaluate what our lives look like according to God’s plan of redemption and restoration, then we have begun to allow ourselves to see what needs to take place in order to start fresh today…..not next year.