Life update

Well, life, hasn’t changed much. To be honest that is pretty sad. Still working, still going to school. I guess it is exciting to finally see the light at the end of the tunnel with school, after only 5 years. I am just a little worried about what is going to happen after school. I don’t really know a whole lot of jobs that I can get with a leadership/ministry degree, besides the obvious. But I have a feeling that God has a lot of excitement for me in whatever I am supposed to do. I just want to wake up and do something everyday that I know is directly helping other people. But I know that God has only good things in store for me. By good, I do not mean lots of money and comforts, but challenge, adventure and blessings!

On another note, I am pretty excited about my upcoming vacation/journey of awesomeness. My brother (Nick) and I are going on a 9-10 day journey. We have nothing really in mind. All that we know is that first stop is Yellowstone, and second stop is Seattle, after that we turn around and head down the coast until we run out of days and have to come back here. I am really stoked about this! Like I cant even express it in this little blog post here. I know we will see amazing things, have time to talk and get to know each other better, and I know that I will get the chance to take a million amazing pictures. There is just this big world that God put a million awesome things in, and I cant wait to see some of them. But that it is, I hope Aaron Reddin is happy now that I have updated my blog. Here ya go!

Tuesday’s thoughts

So I am still reading through Reimagining Church, by Frank Viola. His book has me thinking. Thinking about the church again. What it is today and what it is supposed to be. I obviously understand that churches are not perfect, and understand that we as believers are part of “the Church” no matter what. But I just can’t help but think of what maybe we could be, are we missing out on something? Something big?

I just finished a section in the book entitled, “Reimaging the Gathering Place”. Viola talks about how the church started in homes, and thats where it should be today. Instead we have moved into these huge buildings. I don’t want to get into the entire thing, because I could go on for a while, plus I think that you all should read it for yourselves and come to your own conclusions and thoughts. There were just two things said in the chapter that got my attention. Here is the first, “most modern church buildings reflect the boastings of this world rather than the meek and lowly Savior whose name we bear”. I think this is pretty true, isn’t kind of strange that there are so many expensive things inside the churches, flat screens everywhere, expensive furniture and art, the sound equipment and lighting are pretty crazy. I admit it is attractive, and draws people in the doors. But what message is it sending?(Again, this is just me questioning, I dont think I have all the answers.) I actually enjoy most of this stuff and have never really questioned it. But just because I enjoy it doesn’t really mean a whole lot. Maybe without even thinking about it, we are sending the message that we should have it all together, we should all be up to date with the latest technology, we should have our houses decorated just as well? Maybe I am rambling, but I just question the way we portray our God in our “church buildings”. Jesus came to this Earth and made himself the lowest of low. The dude was homeless while he was here. I just dont know if that correlates with our “buildings”

The second thing that caught my attention sort of goes along with this first point. But Viola points out a stat that Barna used in his previous book. This stat is, “institutional churches in the U.S. alone own over $230 billion worth of real estate. And much of that money is borrowed (debt). Christians give between $9 to $11 billion a year on church buildings.” That is a lot of money, right? And it all goes into buildings? Is that really how we should be spending our resources? I can only imagine what $11 billion would do to help homeless, hungry, orphans, the needs of the body. It is just all puzzling to me. Perhaps we should reimagine the body of Christ and what our purpose really is. Is it to build buildings and put really cool things inside of them? I do understand that Jesus was relevant to his time and culture. But are we trying to make Jesus too cool? To hip?

Again, I just want to say I do understand that the Church does do good things, and that God will work with what is there. There are plenty of great things happening in Churches all over the world. I am a part of ones of these churches. I just have questions about weather or not all of our focus is in the right place. If all of our resources are going to the will of God, or if they are going to what we want?

Adam’s Manifest Destiny

This summer, I shall journey across the great Northwest of these Americas. I have been looking forward to it a lot lately. I dont really have any plan for the trip. I don’t know if anyone is going to go with me. I just know that I need to go. There is something inside of me that needs to move. That needs to go. My goal for the trip is to meet as many people as I can that are different, from different places, and see the world differently than I. I just want the Lord to guide me on this trip, see things He wants me to see, go places He wants me to to. I feel like this will be like a exercise to make me more sensitive to the voice of God. I feel like there are some amazing things I will learn on this trip. At work, this trip is pretty must all I have been thinking of lately.

How freeing this will be to just go, no certain direction, no place I have to be, Maybe ill stay for a few days somewhere maybe I’ll just drive for days with no stopping. I just can’t wait to see things I have never seen before! I have to go! and I will go!

But that is all for now, for whoever reads this, God bless, keep loving people and enjoy the rest of this day you have been given! Shalom.

Reimagining the Lord’s Supper…..

So I have recently been reading a couple few books by, Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity and Reimagining Church. They are meant to compliment each other. Pagan Christianity talks about where we took all the practices that we use in todays “Church Services”. I was pretty surprised to see where we got a lot of the things that are done today in Churches. There are a lot of things that are done that are not all that biblical. I would suggest this for reading, it made me think pretty intensely about the way things are done. I have this on audio book if anyone would like to borrow for a listen (aren’t audio books great, all the fun of reading without the reading).  But I am currently reading the book Reimagining Church. It is the follow up to Pagan Christianity. It talks about a multitude of things for us to rethink in the Church, and how it can look. He talks about the Church as an organism, the meeting place, the Lord’s Supper (which is where I am heading with this, so hang in there), the Leadership, etc… But so far the thing that has got my attention is the Lords Supper, or Communion, however you want to think about it.

I have always loved Communion, I think that is why this Chapter in Violas book stood out to me. He explains the “elements” in depth and what they fully represent. He says this about “the Bread”. “The bread- being the most basic and lowly of all foods– points to the humility and availability of our Lord. By taking on our humanity, Jesus Christ became accessible to us all– just as bread is available to us all, just as bread it available to everyone, both rich and poor.” What really stands out to me in this chapter about the Lords Supper is how Viola points out how the early Church views the Lords Supper. They view it as a banquet, an entire meal, with fellow believers, remembering Christ, His death, but most of all His resurrection and the life that it gave us, a celebration of what has happened. Viola calls this a covenant meal, in the fact that we are to remember the new covenant we have with God, through Jesus Christ. I love this statement that Viola makes “the Lords Supper was never meant to be a morbid reminder of Christ’s suffering. Nor was it a somber occasion where Christians mourned over their sins. Instead, the Supper was a cheerful reminder of who Jesus Christ is and what He has done. It was a reminder and a proclamation of His glorious victory at Calvary, which will be comsummated at His future coming.” It is meant to be a celebration. So I say let us celebrate! The celebration of Passover is just around the corner. I think it would be really neat, to get some peeps together, have a meal, a full spread, the works if you will and celebrate what Jesus has done in our lives. To come together and share prayer and thanksgiving, words of encouragment, stories of victory in our lives personally, anything. I just think that would be awesome! I am going to try and see what I can pull off for this, I would like to get some people together, it would be powerful and encouraging. But those are just some thoughts that I have been meaning to post on here. Hope everbody has a great Tuesday!

Please don’t feed the bears….

So I am writing this with my phone, so that’s pretty odd. But I was having a thought that I thought I should share with my following I have here (sarcasm). I was doing some reading earlier today, and I came across something rather intersting. There was a reference to yellowstone park and the bears there. The author was talking about his trip to yellowstone. He says he noticed signs everywhere that said,”please do not feed the bears”. Yet he seen bunches of people feeding the bears. The author later talks of a conversation he had later with a park ranger. The ranger was saying how the signs weren’t up for the peoples protection but rather for the bears. Every year park rangers have to drag out a number of dead bears after winter and fall because they forget how to fend for food because they were so used to getting fed by other people.
I was thinking that this is how we can get and how I had been and maybe still can be spiritually. I think this serves as a pretty good warning as to what will happen if people are not fully discipled. They/we will become dependent on someone else spiritually feeding us and if nobody does then we will slowly die spiritually. Yes we need to have friends and mentors that we learn from. But that should not be the main source of our spiritual feeding. There is no substitue for time with the Father and time in the word.
This is no great revelation of course. but this just reminds me of the condition of the American Church. There are a lot of great programs and groups, people are gaining friends and aren’t cussing and drinking anymore which is great. But are people being discipled and taught how to feed themselves spiritually? I have a strange
feeling that most are not. This makes me feel an urgency and conviction. A urgency for our countries spiritual condition and conviction because I haven’t done anything about it. I currenly pour into nobody’s life, and am living in blatent opposition to the great commission.
This ended up turning into a rant, I apologize for that. And it looks like from looking back over this, that this was written mainly out of disapointment in myself more than anything. Anyways, just needed to write. That’s all.

Top 10 of 2008

Alright, well what sucks is i did this once already and it took me forever, so now its just going to be a quick 1-10 without any breakdowns and amazing insite….i know your totally bummed now. Here goes, top ten albums of 2008. P.S. all of this is based on my opinion so its pretty much solid gold fact.

1. Thrice-”The Alchemy Index III & IV”
Amazing!
 

2. City and Colour-”Bring Me Your Love”
Dallas Greens vocals and lyrics are so good

3. TV on The Radio- “Dear Science”
Innovative and Fun

4. The Raconteurs-”Consolers of the Lonley”
Jack White is great, every song it good. My fav. is the last song “Carolina Drama”.

5. Foxy Shazam-”Introducing Foxy”
Fun, plus they have a song about, The Rocketeer, how can it not be good.

6. Underoath-”Lost in The Sounds of Separation”
Classic Underoath, plus produced by Adam. D equals quality album

7. Potugal. The Man-”Censored Colors”
I like a lot, you can just chill and listen the whole way through.

8. Kanye West- “808’s and Heartbreak”
What can you say the man is a musical genius. My only complaint is that he uses the voice changer too much. But most the time you don’t even remember because the beats are so good.

9. Trenches-”The Tide Will Swallow”
Featuring Jimmy Ryan, fomerly of Haste The Day, so you know its good. (playing off Anchorman, “made with real bits of Cougar, so you know its good”)

10. Russian Circles-”Station”
All instumental, has to be good to keep your attention without any vocals.

Honorable Mention: The Killers-”Day and Age”
When I listen to this I feel like I could be wearing an all whit……e (dodgeball) suit with the sleeves on my sport coat rolled up and a v-neck under it and a cigarette in my right ear, hanging out with Hall and Oates and nothing would feel out of place. ….Ok I got a little off track there but my point being, it feels 1980’s ish and I like that.

Well thats it and I am back and ready to blog the new year in. Funmaker…out…

Walking with God…thoughts…

 

 

 

So I am reading the book “Walking with God” by John Eldredge. The book is really cool how it is split up, it doesn’t have chapters it is split into the seasons of the year, you know Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall, all you got to do is call, sorry if anyone knows James Taylor, then you are tracking with me. But that is how the book is split up, and I just finished the Summer part, so I will put it away until the Fall season. But I really enjoyed this section of the book, John is a really great writer and I love the way he views his relationship with God. Here are a few quotes that I liked and I will comment on these.

• “ You can’t possibly master enough principles and disciplines to ensure that your life works out. You weren’t meant to, and God won’t let you. For he knows that if we succeed without him, we will be infinitely further from him. We will come to believe terrible things about the universe- things like “I can make it on my own” and “only if I try harder, I can succeed” 

– For me this is refreshing because I do find myself trying to figure life out and wanting to know, why? and how? to everything. God says relax I have got this life of yours figured out for you, just trust me, you don’t have to know everything. 

•In the prelude section Eldredge writes about this situation where someone has done him wrong, slammed him, and he has the perfect most amazing come back to this person, but gets a check about it before he sends it, its God, telling him that he shouldn’t, and for a moment there is this inner struggle of what he should do, ultimately the urge from God wins out. He uses this to lead into the point that God is always up to something, in every situation of our lives, death, loss of a job, loss of a relationship, money troubles and in every one of these cases God is up to transform us, if we let him. 

– We need to listen to those little urges, those nudges we get, I have found that if it is something that I am scared of, it has been something that I need God to help me do and it is Him wanting to transform me and mold me and possibly mold any other persons involved in the situation. 

• “You do know what he is after in your own life, don’t you? Maybe that’s why we stay so busy–– to avoid knowing, so we can avoid dealing with it.” “ God isn’t just after behavior modification, He is after real and deep and lasting change. If we really want to walk with God, that requires the healing of our souls” 

– Again we all hear that little voice that is telling ups what we need to be doing, we hear it day after day, and we ignore it, yet we complain about life not being the way we want it, about being unsatisfied and unfulfilled, like something is missing. Well deal what that thing God is wanting you to deal with and see what happens, he isn’t wanting you to do this thing, whatever it may be just to torture you, it is for you better and the better of His kingdom. Lets stop ignoring what we know we need to do.  Then there are times where we just change a little something that we normally do, maybe we don’t do it as much, or quit for a little bit, maybe a few weeks we read more or pray more. That is not what God is after, that is not heart change, that is behavior change, God wants inner transformation. That will bring us closer to God and God closer to us. We draw closer, He draws closer. Just think about relationships (guy/girl), and i’ll just use this as an example, your girlfriend/wife/whoever wants you to stop dipping,(i know weird example) so you agree, but really you just stop doing it around her, you modify your behavior, you don’t change what you were asked to change, you are not showing love for your significant other just because you stopped doing it around her, she wants to know that you care about her enough to completely stop, this is doing no better to just not do it around her. If you were to stop like you were asked to, this shows devotion, selflessness and love, all the things that she is wanting, not just behavior modification. Hope you tracked with me. 

 

• “Don’t let your experience with God up to this point limit what you might enjoy with him in the coming years.” 

– John is talking about listening for God in your life, having conversation, and asking for guidance in every situation, no matter how big or small. He makes reference to many times where he asks God what to read, he asks God if he should go here or there, if he should go on vacation now or wait. I was and still am blown away about how personal God is to him, I want that to be the way I am with God. Where I can hear Him in situations where we don’t even think to ask His help. This quote stands out to me because we let the way our relationship with God has been in the past shape the way that it will continue to be. If we have held to the belief that God doesn’t speak to me, only to special people, then chance are we will not hear from God on certain things. We need to break those beliefs. 

 

• “My ability to hear Gods voice on any given day does not change my position in Christ one bit”

– Just because you don’t hear from God on any given day does not mean that God is mad you, it doesn’t mean His favor isn’t on you, and it definitely doesn’t mean that He doesn’t love you. 

 

• “God gave us a will. Learning to exercise it is a great part of maturing as a person. …..and there is nothing like spiritual warfare to teach you to exercise your will”

–Take that for what you will, I just thought it was a good quote. Most of the time we fail to recognize the spiritual warfare going on around us, or we ignore it. We need to acknowledge it and face it head on” 

•This is a string of quotes in the same paragraph. “When I choose to avoid whatever it is God has brought up, something in me weakens something feels compromised. it is at least a refusal to mature. But it also feels like a refusal to sept toward God. Thankfully, the opposite is true. When I choose to face the uncertain, admit the neglect, or enter into my fears, something in me grows up a little bit. I feel strengthened, the scales tip toward a closer walk with God. There is never any “getting to it later”, we don’t do it and it just goes away, I wonder how often do we say to ourselves, I’ll get to it later, knowing that it will never happen.”

– I know that is a lot to take in, hopefully it makes sense, but basically it is saying we need to seize the moments, these opportunities to mature, to grow up, to grow closer to God, we miss them everyday, everyday we have chances, take advantage of them. We know that there isn’t a later, that is just an excuse. I feel like this has been something God has been talking about, taking the moments where I feel out of my element and do something with them, do something that timid old Adam wouldn’t normally do. Chances are He has been dealing with you in this area as well. God is always trying to transform us, from the old to the new, to grow on the next block, just think we will always have area to grow, we can never be to devoted, to mature, to knowledgeable, that is crazy so keep challenging yourself. 

• “We can get so locked onto what we don’t have, what we think we want or need, that we miss the gifts God is giving”

– This speaks for its self, when you are frustrated about what you don’t have, stop, think, look around at what God has given, it may not be what you were wanting, be He knows what you need, chances are we just need to look around. 

 

Thats is it for the summer section of this book, I would recommend it to anyone looking for a good read. Probably more a man read though.

Life ….

So for those of you who dont know, I work with 2 handicaped people, that is my job I hang out with them. So today as I am on my way to work I get a call. The person that I worked with passed away over the weekend. I am pretty shocked right now, I spent most of the past 2 months with this guys everday from 8-4. Sometimes he made me mad, sometimes I made him mad, but most of the times he made me smile and laugh especially the times he’d hug me and tell me he loved me and I was his best friend and I think i did the same for him. I quit this job the first week I worked with him, then I thought and prayed on it and felt as if this is something God wanted me to stick with so I did. Why did He? I do not know, I’m sure I will learn one day. You never know what life is going to throw at you, everyday it is something different, something new, something that will break your heart, something that will make you laugh and jump up and down, something that will make you cry. Be ready, dont hold anything back, tell the people you love that you love them, tell your friend the thing that you have been holding back saying to them for whatever reason, you might not get that chance. There are so many things in life that we don’t do that we know we should do, that we are scared to do, at least I know that this is the case for me, there are things that eat at me and eat at me for me to do, and I don’t do them, I can’t do that anymore, because those will all turn into regrets, those will be the things that when I get face to face with God, He will ask me why I didn’t do the things He asked me to do. But that is what is on my mind today, life is so short and precious, people are precious, love them as you love yourself. Later folks

Day 1

How am I supposed to start this thing?  Dear Diary….um, probably not, Mirror Mirror on the wall……negative, Star light start bright…no…man this is tough…Now I lay me down to sleep…nope, okay how about I just say Hi, Hi! I am new to this blogging. I just want to say I think I have a lot to offer the world of blogging and look forward to all the great times we will have in yet another virtual world that will continue to make actual face to face communication extinct. I need everyones help too making this deal look cool like y’alls. That is it for now everybody, may the force be with you.