What I'm studying...

Lately in my quiet times i have been getting into a couple of different books.  I have been reading Philippians, Job, and Isaiah 53.  I just want to quickly go over a couple of things that God has been revealing to me lately in the Word.  Some things that I have really come to realization about myself lately is that sometimes I....

Don't always understand that God is in control of EVERYTHING.  Sometimes throughout the day I just go throughout the day without really understanding that God of the universe orchestrates everything that I go through and has me at certain places at certain times for certain reasons.  GOD IS SOVEREIGN.  I finally truly started to understand this when reading the book of Job.  At the beginning of the book the angels and even Satan present themselves before the Lord and God asks Satan where he has been.  Satan talks about how he has been going back and forth through the world.  And God asks Satan if he has seen his servant Job who is as blameless and upright as they come.  Satan then tries to deny this because he says that he is only a loyal servant because God has hand his hand in every aspect of his life constantly blessing everything in Job's life.  Satan says "if you take everything away from him he will curse your name." So God says ok then go and take everything from him but do not lay a hand on him and Satan does exactly that following God's orders.  This just showed me that even Satan is on a leash and cant do anything unless God says.  That is one of the greatest examples of how Sovereign our God is.  The rest of the story is amazing so i encourage you to read Job or at least the first couple chapters of Job.

Tend to put confidence in my own flesh and settle for mediocrity.  I will sometimes become content with where I am in my walk and the Bible always smacks me in the face to tell me that I can never stop growing and striving for more Jesus.  In Philippians 3 Paul talks about how, as the body of Christ we cannot put our confidence in the flesh.  He explains that not even he (and he is not boasting he is proving a point) can be content or put his confidence in the flesh.  It hit me hard because Paul was "circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee,".  So basically he is saying that he, his whole life, has lived by the law, doing everything by the book. He has earned all these "titles" and he cant even put his confidence in what he does.  He says "Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith".  The reason this hit me so hard was that I sometimes think that I have done all these things but honestly I've done nothing compared to Paul and even he can't put his confidence in that.  He says that he gives everything up in order to know the Lord.  He says that righteousness does not come from anything that WE can do it only comes from the faith that comes through Christ.
as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless

Don't truly understand what Christ has done for me on the cross because if i did I would not continue to struggle with certain sins or constantly fall to certain desires.  Not that i don't know what Christ did for me its that I dont always live as if I truly understand that what he did is the only way that i have new life now.  My life should always reflect that.  My favorite chapter out of the entire Bible is Isaiah 53, I canPierced for our transgressions.  So what Jesus did for us (and i constantly have to remind myself of this) is he was CRUSHED in order for us to be seen as blameless.

So I learn this... God is sovereign, I cannot put confidence in my doings only in Christ and count everything as lost for the sake of Christ, and that the magnitude of what Jesus did for us can't be dulled down.

Reason for this Blog and an overview of our Mission trip to San Diego

Wow, i've never done a blog and to be honest it's kind of overwhelming and i promise that my next blogs will not be nearly as long as this one is so bear with me.  The main reason for me creating this blog was to share a little bit of my life with you.  I also just went on a mission trip with Campus Outreach to San Diego and wanted to share with my supporters the overview of our trip and just testify to God's goodness.  In this blog i would like to share day-by-day what I go through with what Im studying in the bible and things that God is revealing to me every single day.  I would love to spread this to anybody that wants to hear about maybe what it is like to be a laborer and follower of Christ on a college campus or on an athletics team or just being a Christian in general.  I pray that this blog will impact the lives of many and pray that people could even possibly see a glimpse of Christ through his doings in me.   So without further adieu....

San Diego Trip

I first would love to thank my amazing parents, my Aunt Shirley and Uncle Lou, Uncle David and Aunt Pat, Aunt Audie, Grandma and Popie, the Padgett family, the Blackwell family and my beautiful girlfriend Jacqueline for helping reach my goal of $600 dollars so quickly.  Without their help I would have not been able to go over to San Diego and experience God in another culture.  I praise God for the amazing people that He surrounds me with in my life and I am so blessed.

So....the trip was absolutely amazing and life changing.  Jesus really did show up in so many ways over in California.  We had an outstanding team of strong believers and followers of Christ that made this trip such a great growing experience.
In the weeks leading up to the trip...
we were in constant prayer and fasting, asking God for a number of things: that we would grow closer to Him as a group and as individuals, that He would go before us and really orchestrate opportunities for us to come in and impact as many people as God set before us, that He would humble us before Him so that we could not take any credit for the work that was going on in San Diego, and to really just experience Him over there.  and WOW God is so great going above and beyond our pleads.  He is so powerful and sovereign it still amazes me.
Saturday, Day 1 (departure day)...
After all of our prayers, preparation for this trip, and 2 hours of driving to the airport the night before, the day finally came we were headin to San Diego, California.  We got up around 7 am and packed  up the GPOMM (great piece of modern machinery, which was a 1980's 15 passenger van that ended up gettin the job done)  and headed to Charlotte International Airport.  There we got our boarding passes and boarded the plane to Washington D.C. for our connector flight which only took about an hour.  Then from D.C. we headed out on our 5 hour 45 minute non-stop flight to San Diego.  Finally, we arrived in Cali. and it was like another world over there with so many diverse people.  When we landed it was 3 hours behind eastern time zone times so it was something we had to try and adjust to quickly.  The trip started off how we had expected... with many unexpecteds lol.  It was actually raining and a bit of hail the first night we were there, the car place that we were renting from added extra fees, and our leader got a $21 ticket because he accidentally ran through an entrance without grabbing a parking slip whoops. But, it soon got better, we ate authentic mexican food from a place called bravos taco's.

Then we headed  to a guy named Bryan's house.  He was a member of a local church that is called Harbor Church and was just an awesome man of God.  He has been to many places on mission trips all over Southeast Asia, Ukraine, Turkey, and so many more.  HE WAS AWESOME.  Then we headed to the house that we would be staying in which was provided to us through an organization called World Impact that was under the leadership of Harbor Church.  It was great, although a little tight squeeze.  The guys actually utilized an office and slept on the ground while the girls shared the beds in the other rooms.

(The Office)



Sunday, Day 2...

We wake up the next morning excited to get our first full day in San Diego.  We all have our quiet time getting in the Word and praying then head off to Harbor Church - midcity campus.  Which was amazing and like nothing that i have been to before.  The vision of Harbor Church is to bridge the gap between opposite social classes and different cultures which many people said could not be done.  The service that we went to was very diverse ranging from people that are hispanic to somalian to american.  The worship band was amazing they sang half of the songs in Spanish and the other half in English which was awesome.  I got to experience Christ in another language and it was just as impactful as when i hear the lyrics in English. 

Once the worship was over we split up into 2 groups for the message, the primary English speaking group and primary Spanish speaking group.  It was a great message that was about how we need Jesus in our helplessness, in our inability, and in our faithlessness.  It was great and we spoke to so many people.  After the church service we went out to the beach to check out what it was like on a California beach.  The sun was shining, skies were blue, and the ocean was clear (but freezing).  We decided as a team to start a beach volleyball game which turned out to be pretty competitive.

Once we got done with the volleyball and hanging out we rushed to the night service at Harbor Church - Uptown campus where we heard a great message about living out the gospel in our everyday lives.  Then we got to experience a great Chili cook off between the church members.  We instantly got networking with the people of the church and started hitting off some really awesome spiritual conversations.  Some interesting things that we learned about the city which we later understood was that it was a station that the UN has designated for refugees coming in from different countries that are driven out by war or they choose to leave because of war, to try and make something of themselves in the states, etc.  So within the city limits there are 80 different languages spoken.  Talk about diversity!

After we worshipped and ate we headed over to San Diego State University's campus to walk around and pray over the campus and for the students that we would encounter.  It was a great way to start the trip especially when we parked in a Church parking lot and the sign that leads to the road said this...

Pretty awesome description of our mission.

Monday, Day 3...
After a well needed night of sleep we all woke up ready to conquer the day and our first true task...Begin evangelizing on the Campus of SDSU.  So to prepare we had a campus outreach staff member come in to give us our morning training.  Giving us more tools on reaching the lost which was awesome for growth among the team. After our training we hit the campus.  It was our first chance to really see what all of our prayer, fasting, and preparation was doing over here in San Diego.  It was a good start to the day when we walked outside to blue skies, palm trees, and 75 degree weather.

As soon as we entered the campus it just seemed completely different: tank tops, flip flops, skateboards, etc.  It was just different from the south.  We then entered the food court looking for people to begin conversation with.  It was so incredible to see God working it was almost like we didnt have to say a thing people were coming up to us and asking to sit with them and when we sat down even more people came to the table next to us, praise God!  So once we struck up a few conversations getting to know people we were anxious to begin a spiritual conversation, but we had learned that morning that we had to practice patience with the people we encountered and couldn't just bomb them with the Gospel.  So we started with small steps just building the relationships with various people.  Our goal for the first day was not to share the gospel believe it or not.  We really wanted to practice patience and just let them see Christ through our actions and friendliness.  It was amazing to see how much easier people opened up to us.  After this we went to the ARC (Aztec Rec Center) which was state of the art.  People play pic up basketball games in there all day long so we really found our mission field when we saw all the people just hanging out.  Again we practiced patience and just hung out and got to know people praying for them along the way.  We stayed in there for the remainder of the day and set out to go back to the house.  It was a great day and it really boosted the confidence of the group.  And by the way the campus was absolutely gorgeous...

 

So that night we all gathered around in the living room and had "family time."  This is where we would share about what was cool about the day: what we learned, people we met, things we observed etc.  We would then pray for every individual that we met just asking God to open up opportunities to meet with them again.  Couldn't have asked for a better first day on the campus.

Tuesday, Day 4...
Same thing wake up dig into the bible for some daily reading, some training with staff members, and prayer for the day ahead of us.  We were to set out on the campus again with the same schedule: eat then go hoop it up on the courts with some guys.  The difference was today our goal was to engage in spiritual conversations with students.  That was again, so amazing, we really ran into so many different types of people throughout the day with atheists, Buddhists, some former Christians that had been turned off of their beliefs through the military, but there just didnt seem to be many soled out Christians on campus which was shocking compared to the Southern bible belt that i have been living in.  It actually made the day better because it gave the team a chance to really share their heart with people and surprisingly mostly everybody was very receptive to hearing what we believed and why.  We knew going into this trip that it was going to be very challenging.  At the end of the day a lot of people started to ask questions about our faith which was amazing.  So after this we left kind of early so that we could get to the other side of town and work with a group of refugees and tutor them.  They were some of the sweetest kids i have ever met.  Like i said earlier it was a hub for refugees so there was a wide variety of kids from so many different countries.  The tutoring program was ran under the guidance of the Church again so you can see how involved they are in the community.  I really love how willing they are to serve God. Then again we had another "family time" praying for the people we encountered and the campus. Awesome!!!

Wednesday, Day 5...
We woke up the next morning again studying and praying but this was our "rest day." This was our day for team bonding and just gathering our thoughts for the rest of the week.  So as a team we decided to go check out and go hiking at Torrey Pines State Park which was gorgeous.  It was a set of mountains along the ocean so we had the best of both worlds...

Beautiful... then after this we headed to la jolla beach where we played ultimate frisbee.  To show how awesome God is once again, even though we had a day off God gave us an amazing opportunity to share the Gospel with a guy by the name of John.  We really encouraged him to dig for a relationship with Christ because he has strayed off in the past.  So please pray for him to continue searching.  God put us in the right place at the right time.  A great day once again.

Thursday, Day 6...

By far, my favorite day on the trip was this day.  We did the usual morning routine and then headed to the pastor of Harbor Church's house.  Pastor Stephen Phelan was one of the most amazing men of God ive ever met.  He has been so faithful relying on the Lord that you can just tell that God is working in every aspect of his life.  He shared how he ended up in San Diego along and how the church came to be.  Amazing guy that i would love to work under, and if it all works out I will be interning for him the summer of 2012.  So another thing to be praying for!

After this we went to campus building relationships and sharing the gospel.  God really revealed himself to the team when we started to really give us the strength to be confident in our sharing. The day ended up with another great "family time" and some worship...

Friday, Day 7, final day...
Today we did the usual routine of studying and evangelizing on the campus.  It was a sad day knowing that we would be leaving the next day, but we were high in spirit knowing that we had made an impact on the campus and we learned a lot that we could take back to campus.  I really now have a heart for that city and cant wait to go back.
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So again to all of my supporters and followers thank you so much for the prayers and funds you are so amazing and I am blessed to have you in my life.