Thursday, December 20, 2012

Hello, before break

Hey, it is finally here, the final week of the semester and I must admit is was a very good one. We were blessed with the knowledge and wisdom of D.A. Horton, executive director at Reach Life Ministries, the ministry side of Reach Records, and Darrell Shemwell, a Bible super scholar. D.A spoke to us on heart transformation on Tuesday. We dug into  Romans 12:1,2. D.A. broke Romans into these three points, response to sin and salvation, "I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God,", reporting for sacrificial service, "to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship." and rewed like silver, "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.". When D.A. communicated as much truth as he did through these two passages I was inspired on how much we can extract from God's word if we look close enough. On Wednesday we dug into Ephesians 5:15-21 focussing on the theme, maximizing moments. This was really cool and I learned a lot from this passage and this is how it was broken down, wise and unwise living, verse 15, waste no time, verse 16, work to know God's will, verse 17 and walk spirit filled, verse 18-21. I have been learning a lot about God's will the past few days and this passage really gave me some good wisdom especially with D.A. communicating and extracting a full and detailed points of the passage. This week I was blessed to get this knowledge that these men passed down to me. From these men I learned, a Biblical basis for sacrificial service, a deeper understanding of God's will, how to live wiser and walk closer with the spirit. I am grateful for these points because I can apply these daily. Remember without Jesus there would be no Christmas. Merry Christmas.

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Week One Week Till Christmas Break

It's Thursday and that means another End of the Week Review. This week was a great. This week's mystery Monday was great and we had Brian Wang speak on Tuesday and Thursday and Julie Coxie, head of Kanakuk human resources, spoke on Wednesday. So, mystery Monday was great. January first marks the start of allowed dating at Link Year, so in preparation the guys were given ten dollars and were told you have 30 minutes to plan how you are going to ask one of the fellow Link Year ladies on a "date", plan your date, and figure out what group you and your date would go with. Sparing you the borring details, I asked a lovely lady named Jamie and our date group planned the date poorly but as far as I know Jamie and the other dates had a good time so it was a success. On to the meat of the week. Tuesday, Brian spoke on the verse Luke 9:23, 'And he said to all, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.' He divided the verse into three main subjects, self denial, complete dedication and willing obedience. He explained self denial as this, to get what we've never had we must do what we've never done, and what we've never done is die to self and the result will be something we have never had and doing things we have never done, an intimate relationship with God and doing His will with obedience.  I know it's heavy but trust me, it is a good lifestyle that has an awesome eternal reward. On Thursday, Brian discussed the latter two topics. Complete dedication, he used the analogy of 211 degrees verses 212 degrees. At 211 degrees ferinheight water is hot, an illustration of how we can sometimes be almost completely dedicated thus not effective. At 212 degrees ferinheight water boils and creates steam which powers a locomotive, an illustration of how, if we are completely dedicated, we are effective and can do great things. Willing obedience, this pertains to the part of the verse that says, "follow me." thus meaning that willing obedience is following Christ. Now, I have never heard someone being called obedient for doing the job halfway or doing it when it is easy and not when it is hard. So when Christ commands us to be obedient and follow Him we must do it to the fullest extent of our abilities and when times are good and bad. In conclusion, I have realized that I will not be dating any time soon, I need to be more selfless, and obedient to God's commands 100 percent. 

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Bonjor, or as the french say Bonjour. Glad to be back on the keys in the wold of the blogs. Now lets transition to this Monday in Branson, Mo. This Monday our mystery monday was going to the K-Life party barn in Harrison, Ar, 30 minutes away. Though I was grateful for the giant swing and foam pit, I was even more grateful when we left for Neighbor's Mill, Arkansas' healthiest restaurant. This restaurant is owned and operated by a Christian family and it is delicious, I highly recommend it. So on to the meat of the week. On Tuesday, Kyle Unruh, the president of K-Life, the youth group type ministry of Kanakuk Ministries, came and spoke to us. Kyle is a very blunt man, but I loved it because he challenged us with the truth. The first topic he spoke about is greatness. He feels that my genration get's a bad rap and that we are not set up for greatness. So he gave us tips and challenged us to hold to these tips so that we would be successful and impact the wold for Christ. Next he gave us advice from a viewpoint of a father about dating and marriage. This was fantastic because he showed us his struggles and successes of dating marrage to and gave Biblical and practical solutions to the problems he had in his dating career and has in his marriage life. This was inspiring because I am starting to get the picture that dating, marriage and love, is not just about feelings but about fulfilling God's commandments and applying Christ's love. On Wednesday, we had the director of KAA1, Antoine Mack, come and speak to us. This was a special treat because he took the science of social psychology and applied to time perspective to help us conquer temptation. The issue of time perspective was discovered by one of the world's leading psychologist, Philip Zimbardo. Antoine took this revolutionary, and fairly new, idea and said that temptation is all about time. Temptation is the persuasion of now. This is because if we have realize the consequences of giving in the future then we will not surrender to these consequences. Also, another good point he had was that, Scripture links us to the Truth which is outside of the limits of time. I found this profound because truth will never be affected by time and will be true for eternity and I believe that God and his works are truth, so that means no matter what time or circumstance God is true. Powerful. My God has no limitations and is always true. I am blessed to be a follower of Him. In conclusion, I am thankful for the Godly and powerful leaders that take time to invest in us and challenge me to be great, apply Biblical and practical truths to dating, mariage and love, to take science and apply it to faith so that it may point us closer to God, help us undersand and have greater faith in Him. God is great and he is sovereign (Ephesians 2:10), until next time.