This is a verse I seem to just keep coming back to this year as I've wrestled through what it looks like to walk humbly with my God, seeing myself in light of him instead of comparing myself to other people and going through an endless cycle of insecurity and pride. This past week I think this sums up what I've been most struck by about God in ministry, in my quiet times, and as I've observed his creation! I've been reading through the book of Hebrews extremely in depth for my quiet times to go along with the Summit Church's sermon series on the book of Hebrews called "Christ is Better." I remember in one of the first sermons in this series J.D. suggested we continually read through the book while we go through it as a church and I decided to try that since I've never done it before. I've always finished a book and just gone on to another one, it's never crossed my mind to re-read through a book multiple times to really get deep into it. I'm really enjoying it. The book really paints a very clear picture throughout of Christ's glory. I think sometimes we get so caught up in Jesus' humanity, being able to relate with us and in fact dying for us that we forget he is the God who created the universe, glorious and powerful and that he raised from the dead. We forget to deal with Christ with awe. Hebrews really hits home on Christ's superiority. He's higher than the angels, he's the mediator of a covenant that is infinitely better than the old one, he's sitting at God's right hand and interceding on our behalf, hes perfect and blameless in a way that we never could be. Not only have I seen this in Scripture but I've been seeing it firsthand in my life. I've been so overwhelmed from huge waves to the biggest moon I've ever seen reflecting off the ocean to mountains and valleys and 17 foot wide redwood trees and even just looking at the stars which you can see better here than in Raleigh or Apex. I'm so humbled, I'm less than a dot in the span of God's creation why does he choose to love me? Why did he think I was worth dying for? When he looked at all that he said it was good, so why did he look at me and say very good? Why am I the one made in His image? Why does he pay me any attention at all? If that wasn't enough I've just been thoroughly reminded as I always am in ministry that I am completely dependent on God to see any change happen in anyone's life, and I am also completely dependent on him and his strength to get me through the day.
Okay, now for a quick update on what actually happened this week. So, the students arrived on Monday and that basically changed everything. There are now 80 people here instead of 30, lots of relationships to be built! The schedule this week was pretty intense since the students needed to get orientated (I know that's not a word but I like it better) for the summer. Wednesday and Sunday were the days most worth writing about I think. Wednesday we had from 9am-2pm to get with our roommates, who would also be our Bible study for the summer, and share what's called our "soul to souls." It's essentially an extended testimony that's like 20-25 minutes (or at least its supposed to be) and we go through our history, heritage, heroes, hard times, and high points. It's kind of a crash course in each others lives to build some honesty and trust into the group and so for the rest of the summer we can really see where others are coming from as we live with them and deal with conflict. Me and my co-leader JP shared ours Tuesday night to model it, and then on Wednesday we went to the Redwood forest and heard all the guys share theirs. It was definitely a really sweet time of laying a foundation for relationships that will last a lifetime and just encouraging to hear what God had done in all of our lives to bring us to be sitting in the redwoods together. After that we had fun day which involved lots of games and a scavenger hunt and a really good meal to cap it all off. Sunday afternoon was our first outreach. We went downtown and used a tool called Soularium to engage the community in spiritual conversations. For those of you who haven't used it before, it's got 50 pictures that we laid out on the sidewalk and when people stopped to look we asked told them it was a picture survey about life and spirituality and asked if they wanted to take it. The questions associated with it are which 3 pictures best describe your life, which 3 pictures do you wish described your life, and which picture best represents God to you? If you want to see the images, and how other people responded to the survey check out mysoularium.com. It was cool because it was unimposing on the people downtown, they approached us, and that also was a good first place to start for a lot of really nervous summer project students! They got to have some really cool conversations, listening to folks share their stories and what they believe about God and quite a few of them got to share in response what they believed about God! One such person was my man Sam Turkal, he was with me and really stepped up boldly into something he'd never done before and went through the Gospel with Jazz and Christian, two folks we went through the survey with.
Thanks again guys for all that you do for me! I love you all very dearly and you mean the world to me.
Look below for some prayer requests!
Some things you can be praying for are...
- Pray for me to continue to find rest in my Savior, to know him more and better each day and overflow the fruit of the Spirit.
- Pray for God to raise up leaders among the students to take our place when we're gone.
- Pray specifically for Victor, Damon, Branson, Sam, and Greg as these will be the guys in my action group this summer that I'll be focused on pouring my life into. Pray that God rocks their world this summer like he rocked mine when I was a student on this project.
- Pray for those in Santa Cruz who don't know Christ, pray that God would go before us and prepare their hearts to hear the message of his unfailing love for them, what he did for them on the cross, and his desire to have a relationship with them.
- Pray for continued unity among the staff team, and for that to be contagious to the students that they would really work as one for the summer especially once the staff have left.
- Pray for clarity for my really good friend here named Nichole! She says shes real confused about a lot of things and asked me to pray for her not to be confused anymore!
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