Friday, July 25, 2008

I'll be back. I promise!!!

I promise I haven't forgotten about you.  I thought I'd just a take a couple of days to gather my thoughts and then write about what's happened, but stuff keeps happening!  But good stuff is coming, I promise!

Saturday, July 19, 2008

After the Gauntlet '08

Well, I'm back after a week in Panama city with hundreds of middle schoolers and I'm still wrapping my mind around all that happened there. I can't believe I got to be a part of all that God did this past week. It blows me away how mature our ministry is becoming. We're seeing high schoolers reach out to middle schoolers and teaching them and I'm seeing younger students grasp concepts that there's no reason they should be able to grasp. They're opening up about things that they wouldn't have a year ago and I contribute that greatly to the boldness of the staff to address the hard issues and give the students the platform for big confessions and complete honesty about their lives.

Overall, this year was much more spiritually heavy. The spiritual warfare was crazy. We definitely went beyond surface level Christianity and traveled to the depths of some of these kids' souls. I could see hardened hearts in these kids that were being kept shut. But I also saw these hearts start to be softened by the Spirit. Not every kid accepted Christ that I had prayed for, but I'm trusting God. He's bigger than the Gauntlet.

God taught me so much this past week and I think I'll dedicate some posts later in the week to talk about some of that, but overall, the main issue has been to just do what God wants me to do and trust Him to take care of the rest. Trusting God has definitely been my theme of the week.

In my quiet time this morning I read about the parable of the mustard seed and the leaven. And I want to talk about this for a second to encourage any youth leader that might be reading this. In this parable Jesus explains how the smallest of things can have the biggest results. So if you feel like you didn't accomplish anything with your kids this week, don't get discouraged. I know exactly how you feel. Far too often I feel like there's really no point in even working with them. But just remember that it might take a while to see it, or you might not ever see it, but some small thing you said or did this week stuck with those kids.

I got the privilege of getting to see this when I got to serve my kids on Tuesday in a way God showed me to, and then I saw it demonstrated in the lives of two of them on Thursday. And the things is, those kids didn't even realize that that's what happened. And I know that happened more than just that one time too. It has or will happen in the lives of your kids too. What you did mattered this week. And that'll be true outside of youth camp too. God uses the little things.

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

The Gauntlet is coming!

I leave on Sunday night for the Gauntlet and I'm pretty psyched. In case you don't know, the Gauntlet is the youth camp we hold in Panama City, Florida for church. But here's the thing, last year I didn't do any prep work getting ready for it. I just showed up, left, and led a group of guys. God showed up that week, and He completely rocked me. But I can't help but wonder what it would have been like if I had prepared myself and expected God to do something.

So this year I feel burdened to take some extensive time to pray about what's going to happen and not just show up and be surprised. I'm going expecting great things. And if the crazy stuff God's been doing in my life is any indication, I doubt I can comprehend what He's going to do.

So if you're reading this, please take a couple of minutes and pray for this trip. I want every kid that comes on this trip to be changed in some way. If they don't know Jesus, I want they to meet Him. I want kids to confess sin in their life and ask God to help them conquer it. I don't want a kid to get "saved" for the fifth time, but instead to understand that actions can't break a covenant with God. And I want the Spirit to fill these kids up and have crazy Acts 2 stuff happen.

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Purpose

I'd share a little snippet of wisdom I feel God zapped me with the other day. You see, lately I've been praying a lot about purpose and trying to figure out why God has put me here. It was very me focussed. In the Bible we see a lot of people with great purpose; be it Moses, Joshua, Nehemiah, Peter or Paul. But the thing is about all of these people is that their purpose was focussed all on others. These men lead lives that were apart of something much bigger than they ever could be. Their purpose wasn't about them.

Now, their job within their purpose was personal. It focussed on the gifts God had given them. But the purpose was public and a collaborative effort. I've seen that that's just how God made us. He wants us to work together. If I continue to seek a purpose that puts me on a lonely road that I hope leads to success, I'll never find any purpose. Instead I need to seek out people and do the little bit I can to incorporate myself into God's greater purpose. Purpose isn't found in me, it's found in what God can do through me with others.

I could probably expand upon this more, and I might someday, but I think I've written enough long posts for now.

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Judging part 3

The Reason for the Process

Following God requires tons of patience. The whole time the point of this lesson Jesus teaches in Matthew 7:1-6 is, I think, how to approach those in sin. We know what the finished product is supposed to be, and that's repentance. We recognize the sin in our own lives, deal with it and then we're able to view people in sin the way God does. The whole purpose of this is to lead someone to Jesus and repentance.

So why do we have to go through this process? Verse six speaks to this. We can't throw pearls before pigs or holy things to dogs. This is pretty brutal imagery here, but it's true. The things that we're able to see as absolutely beautiful as Christians such as Christ's sacrifice on the cross are seen differently to those who don't know Him. In 1 Corinthians 1:18 Paul says that the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. We can't throw those who don't know Christ into the deep end of Christianity. We can't expect them to just come to us where we are. We have to be willing to wade over to them and teach them to swim.

The Apostles demonstrated this in their teachings. When Peter preached to Jews at Pentecost, he used the Old Testament scriptures to tell them about Jesus. He knew their background. The people had been learning the Old Testament their whole life. He knew they were close, they just needed to be shown by what they knew. But when Paul preached at Mars Hill, he knew that these people knew nothing about scripture, so he couldn't start there in teaching them about Christ. So Paul searched their culture for God's truth in their synagogues and poets to get them to Jesus.

This is why all you'll ever get at these stupid Christian protests are angry non-christians who want to trample those Christians. And who could blame them? Instead we need to be willing to approach these people with sight from God and be able to truly love them and come to them where they are to show them Christ.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Judging part 2

Seeing People the Way God Does

Matthew 7:5 is what showed me the second step in the process of showing others their sin. One phrase in particular stands out: Then you will see clearly.

When we keep our own junk in our lives, and remain unrepentant, we make it hard to see clearly. From the age of around 12, until in the last year, I've had a bad problem with porn. I had years of my life where it felt like this chronic sin completely destroyed my ability to be in communion with God. All I was getting was static. This brought about fruitless ministry, fake quiet times and a lot of aggression towards people I love on top of bringing tons of problems to an already struggling relationship. This was all my fault. That's years of my life where I could have been getting closer to my savior that I lost. Years of my life completely wasted. God had even given me amazing opportunities to minister to others. But I felt that my sin was more important and having a crappy relationship with God was a better price to pay than having to fess up to my problem and face my pride head on. There's no one to blame but myself for that loss.

It took years and a lot of hurt to get that log out of my eye. God took me through some really rough and lonely time. But now my relationship with God is better than I ever knew it could be. It's funny because I've actually been having pretty crappy quiet times lately. But I still know that even in this downtime I'm still closer to God than I was in those dark times in my life. So even at my worst now, I'm better than my best in the past.

Now that that log is gone, I'm able to see more clearly in that area of my life. I'm not desensitized to that sin anymore. I'm able to see even the inklings of it in the lives of people in my life. And I'm not looking at them in judgment. I'm looking at them with love. I'm able to see them as Christ does. And I think that Christ views people in sin as slaves that He desires to rescue, not bad children He longs to punish. When I see them as Christ does, I'm able to know how to approach them in love, not in judgment. And I'm able to approach them with a mindset of rescue, not reproach.

And on a side note this is my second draft of this post. I really vagued up my past sin the first time but I just felt convicted to go all in for some reason. So if any of you who read this are struggling with porn, I'd love to talk to you about what you're going through. You can contact me anyway you already have access to me or just e-mail me at dwfishe@gmail.com. I'd love to pray for you and share with you some of the tools I've used to help me get through this stuff.