Cause Conference: Friday

Hello again!

My last post covered Thursday night of the Cause Conference, so if you haven't read that one yet, you should. :)

Anyways, Friday morning started a really great day for me. We had the privilege of listening to a prolific writer, named Tri Robinson, speak. His talk really focused around Nehemiah, a book in the Bible that is a prophecy discussing the resurgence of God's wonderful kingdom on Earth. And Tri brought up a ton of amazing points about vision for God's kingdom. Here are some of the points that I wrote down:

• We can sit around and debate what we think God wants to do, or we can just kneel down and say "Yes, Lord" to whatever He has planned for us. And ultimately, we need to be Jesus' hands and feet on this Earth. The most important step for this is literally to sit down and pray to God, "Lord, show me my part".
• Another thing to consider when doing Jesus' work is that we shouldn't become "addicted to the problem". We shouldn't wallow in despair over the misfortune of a people to the point where that's all we focus on. Our focus should always be directed to God, because He is the solution to every problem. No matter what. Without our focus on Him, we aren't really going to accomplish anything for His kingdom.
• There are a couple ways to identify if a vision (in this talk, Tri's definition of vision was that of a dream that you have for something. Like a vision statement vision, not a vision of prophecy or something like that) you have is really from God. If the vision is overwhelmingly bigger than you, it most certainly is from the Father. He gives you visions that seem impossible to prove that He really can do anything! And that, my friend, is amazing. Also, in Tri's words, "dreams come and go, but visions from God never go away". And may they never go away!
• Lastly, Tri took a very important technical look at making God's vision for you a reality. He said that it is important not to pre-sell a vision before you have developed a plan. And that the most important way to develop this plan is to remember that this idea didn't come from you, it came from God.

This look at God's kingdom and the dreams that He has for each of us was kind of a newer idea to me, and so I think it was really important for me to hear!

On Friday afternoon, I went to Rick's (the speaker from Thursday night) breakout session, entitled "Everyone gets to play". I really enjoyed the encouragement that it provided, especially concerning the fact that we each have our own part in God's kingdom. One of the things that Rick said that really affected me (even though I'm not very sports-oriented) is that we are all on God's varsity team. If we choose to bow out, there is no JV team to step up in our place! God gives us each an equally important spot on His team, and if we choose not to play, we're letting the whole team down. Rick said this in the context of not putting yourself down, or thinking that you are less-something than someone else.

Looking back at this point in the weekend, I know that God was building me up for everything that he had in store for me for the rest of the weekend. And I'm so grateful that He had such a heart for His children, and has such a great plan for all of us.

Friday night, we had the extreme privilege of hearing from David Eubank, a man who lives in Thailand and spends 8 months out of every year in the jungles of Burma, trying to bring supplies to the people who are oppressed by the Burmese government (which is apparently almost the whole population). And in seeing his pictures and some videos that he brought along with him, my heart broke for the people of Burma. And that very night, I decided that I want to sponsor a child through Compassion International. This is an organization that allows you to sponsor a child in poverty-- and with a $38/month donation, you assure that they have food, water and education. Not only do you get to know that they are somewhat released from poverty, you get to be their pen pal, and write letters to the child. So, without further ado, I would like to introduce you all to Sofia, my compassion child!

Miss Sofia is 7 years old and lives in Colombia with her Mom and Dad

And folks, let me tell you, I'm so excited to get my information packet in the mail, so that I can start writing this beautiful little girl letters!! It is so strange, but I already love this girl, and I haven't even heard from her yet! Please pray that I continue to have the resources to support this wonderful little girl for a very long time! Also, if anybody is interested in sponsoring a child, but doesn't think that they can afford the full commitment of $38 per month, I'm almost positive that this organization would fully welcome a dual or split sponsorship. If anyone is interested, please, PLEASE email me, and I will try my hardest to find someone that will be a partner for you! God wants us to love his children in need, no matter whether we are paying the full amount of half the amount.

So that was Friday night. Oh, wait... it's not over!! On Friday night, we were given the opportunity to do a Pub Outreach in downtown Denver where we would be handing out water bottles to people who were bar-hopping in Lodo (Where most of the nightlife in Denver resides). So, we met at the church at 11:30pm and set off for Downtown in pairs or groups of three. Since the conference was for people from all over the country, us folks from Arvada were encouraged to pair up with people who weren't from the area so that we wouldn't get lost. (For me, this was a little pointless, because I don't spend a lot of time in Denver, and therefore am not all that knowledgeable about where things are in comparison to another. However, I would like to point out that my partner and I--although we thought we were lost-- made it out just fine!) Anyway, I got paired up with this awesome guy from Fort Collins named Christian. We immediately connected because he too is going to school for music (piano performance), so we had lots to talk about! Well, when we got to Denver, we just took a bunch of water and started walking around and handing it out. And it was so cool to see the look on different people's faces as we gave them the water. Some people looked at us like we're crazy, some people got really excited, and one guy was so intoxicated that he gave us both hugs. We ended up running out of water really quickly, so after about 30 minutes, the guy that was leading the outreach went and bought 3 more cases of water for us to hand out. I think the part that I enjoyed the most was giving water to two groups that I distinctly remember. Both had one person who had clearly had entirely too much to drink and was leaning heavily on another person. When we asked them if they would like some water, the friends of the extremely drunk person looked so happy and relieved and ecstatic. One of the guys even told us that we were exactly what they needed, and a blessing in disguise. It was just really cool to know that we affected someone's night in the name of Jesus Christ. Cool, right?

And so Friday ended, a thoroughly wonderful day, full of lots of learning and Christ's love! Stay tuned to hear about the Saturday that quite literally changed my life! May God bless each and every one of you!

Cause Conference: Thursday Night

Hey lovelies! I hope you have had a fantastic week so far!

So my church hosted this conference last weekend called the Cause Conference. The purpose of the conference is to come together as followers of Jesus and learn more about Him, grow closer to Him, and establish this beautiful cause worth living/loving/dying for. It started on Thursday night and it continued through Saturday night. And it was incredible. So, we're going to take this a little at a time. On Thursday night, the pastor from the Vineyard Church--Rick Olmstead-- in Fort Collins came and spoke to us. He called his talk "for such a time as this". And it was essentially all relating to what I started this blog for. I want to love God and love other people as he expects and teaches us to. So let's chat about the points about the talk that really hit me.

First, Rick started by introducing us to his growth as a Christian. He told of how he started out not Christian at all, but of the firm conviction that the needy should be helped by the more fortunate. When Rick was around 20, he met Jesus for the first time and pledged his life to His wonderful cause. But as a part of the church Rick joined, he got involved with a team of church members who went from door to door, essentially with a "salvation agenda", and with hopes of being able to report a large number of successes back to the church. While this all sounds like a good idea, Rick started to become disenchanted with the fact that his team's "salvation agenda" was getting in the way of actually connecting with the people they were talking to. Like they were to busy trying to save them to care for them (does that make any sense?). I think this is a really big idea for us Christians. The Bible teaches us to go out and preach the Gospel to the world, but in spite of this, we shouldn't let our desire to bring people to Jesus get in the way of really connecting with them and taking time to just stop and talk with them. To take this a little deeper, Rick continued by saying something in passing: "it's hard to listen on an empty stomach". I really, really, REALLY like this. People are so hungry for love and acceptance that it gets in the way of their ability to listen to you-- before you just stop and love them, that is. I don't know, that statement just really hit me.

The next major topic of Rick's talk was Micah 6:8.

He has showed you, O man, what is good.

And what does the Lord require of you?

To act justly and to love mercy

and to walk humbly with your God. (NIV)

As Rick sees it, there are three major things that we should focus on about this verse. (1)to act justly (to do the right thing), (2) to love mercy, and (3) to walk humbly. He then went into detail about each:

1. To do the right thing: The major thing that Rick had to say about this was that our Lord would never ask us to do something for someone else that wouldn't benefit us to. He isn't going to send us on some journey for someone else that will pain us or make us miserable. Our Father is far to kind for that. He always has us in mind, even when he asks us to do something for someone else. In this, Rick also referenced Proverbs 31:8. This verse specifically instructs us to speak out for the people who can't speak out for themselves, and Rick made it clear to point it out that in saying this, God doesn't want us to ask or judge how someone got into the place that they did. He just wants us to reach out to them and help them. I firmly believe that His heart aches for every single one of His children that is in need and isn't helped by those of us that have the means.
2. To love mercy: Rick made a really big deal about how this doesn't say show mercy. It says to LOVE mercy. To long for it. To wake up every morning and go to bed each night completely thankful for the mercy that you have been shown, and completely eager to show people the same mercy that you have been shown. After all, we deserve so much worse that God gives us. He never has and never will give us what we deserve.
3. To walk humbly: We could be the poor. We could be in their place. But God has blessed us with numerous, numerous things that some people will never have. So we should turn right around with what God has given each of us and make it count. We should love other people with what God has given us.

Then, Rick began to talk about love. And the fact that love has a name. Love's name is Jesus. Love's name is also my name, Mackenzie. Love's name is also your name. Love's name is everybody's name. He talked very passionately about how we can't write people off as "the homeless" or "the poor". They are very much human and have names and stories, and that we should make lots of effort to learn people's names and stories. And that no, we can't help everyone. But for the people that we help, it will mean the world to them. Have you heard the starfish story? Rick referenced this story, and in the process, pointed out that the only difference between the little boy and the old man is how much each of them expected to be possible. What if we expected that every single starfish to be saved? After all,

"with man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." Matthew 19:26 NIV

According to Rick, all it takes is a little bit of faith the size of a mustard seed (Matthew 17:20) and things could change radically. Rick said over and over that you don't have to be all put together and have this immense amount of faith for God to take the reigns and move mountains through you. In fact, Rick's exact words were: "You don't have to have great faith to do great things". Wow. And then to top it all off, Rick had brought tiny little baggies for each of us, each with a tiny mustard seed inside-- to remind us that our faith can be the size of that seed, and still God will do amazing things through us. And then that seed (one of the smallest seeds) will turn into a huge mustard plant (which grows to be a bush, and sometimes even as big as a small tree!).

Needless to say, Thursday night was the start of something big... and it only escalated from there! Stay tuned for more posts on Cause Conference.

Also, I would like to apologize for the delay of these posts. I could tell you all about how so much happened at the Cause Conference that I really just needed some reflection time, and I could also explain how much I've been working this week. But I'll save you the details and just apologize.

Have a wonderful day, and may God bless each and every one of you!

Hey, guys! I want to apologize for the lack of posts for awhile. This past week, I was blessed enough to have my lovely Godmother and her beautiful daughter Stephanie fly up from Texas and stay at my house for a week. Since we only see them once or twice a year, I wanted to really cherish the time I had with them... so no posts. But they're back in Texas, so I'm back in blog mode! :)

Well, in the past week, I've been experiencing a lot of things with God and I have a LOT to write about, so I'm going to split it up into several different posts so it's not too overwhelming. The first thing is this: We're now onto the second leg of our 1 Corinthians project. This week is all about kindness (but remember patience, too!). It's all about asking God to transform us and make us kind, so that we could learn a little more about learning to love other people the way that He does. If you have any cool stories about how God is helping you learn, we would love to hear them! It's really important to have a sense of community with other people when you're growing closer to God, because then you not only have Him to talk to, you can also talk to other people who are going through some of the same things as you. Also, it is SO encouraging to hear other people's stories of transformation. For me, it really reassures me beyond a shadow of a doubt that God's spirit is out there and moving among us.

Another thing that came out of this past week was my quest to read an entire gospel in one sitting. I actually have a funny story about how that happened: I picked an afternoon with lots of time, and just as I sat down to read, my dad came upstairs and told me that we needed to weed the yard. Let me first say that weeding and I aren't exactly friends. In other words, weeding sucks. But then I remembered that I have a Bible app on my iPod, and that it has a feature where you can listen to it like an audio book. Let me just put it this way, weeding gets a whole lot better while you're having the Gospel of Mark read to you by a guy with a really deep voice; not to mention the fact that there was some awesome background music going on. All joking aside, I think I found the solution to doing mindless work that I really don't want to do.

Also, hearing Mark read to me gave me a completely different take on the story. Because that's what it is... a story. When you're reading the Bible yourself, you have time to think, reflect and study what Jesus is saying, or Paul's idea of love, or even that Psalm that always helps you through troubled times. But having the Gospel read to me made it a whole lot more like a really awesome story. Well, after I finished weeding, I went back inside and picked up where my iPod had left off and finished the whole story of Jesus (according to Mark) in one sitting.

Now let's back up and talk about where I got this idea. Last week, I was sitting in church and my pastor started to tell the story about how a seminary student was challenged to read a Gospel cover to cover in one sitting, and about how the man immediately fell back in love with Jesus all over again. He had been so caught up in the study of the Bible and learning how to be a Pastor that Jesus had kind of left the equation. But one small step later, he was back in love. How cool is that? Well, I decided to try it-- which is the reason why I was reading Mark in the first place.

It was amazing. Jesus was so much more real to me than he ever had been, and I realized how genius He really is. I fell in love with the fact that he told parables to really relate to the people he was telling them to, but them left them with no explanation. When his disciples asked him what they meant, he seemed genuinely surprised. "You don't understand?!". It was really charming to me. :) Here are some of the other teachings that really affected me as I was reading.

The first was when Jairus sought Jesus out to ask Him to heal his dying daughter. Now this is cool, because Jairus was one of the head honchos in the synagogue, and he took a complete leap of faith and trusted this guy he had seen perform miracles, but was supposed to hate. Jesus went with Jairus immediately, but got stopped by a crowd. In the midst of the bumping and jostling, He felt a woman touch his cloak out of faith that it would heal her. He stopped te entire crowd and after asking who touched His cloak, told the woman that her faith had healed her. (Which is an amazing story in itself) Well, just after then, some of Jairus's men found him and told him that it was too late-- that his daughter had died, and moreover that he should stop bothering Jesus. To which Jesus simply replied,

"Don't be afraid; just believe" Mark 5:36

Wow, right? That's what I thought. If I could just live by this, I would be so much better off. Don't be afraid, just believe. 5 words and Jesus had left me speechless! The next little snippet was when Jesus was being questioned by the Pharisees, who were desperately trying to prove that Jesus wasn't really the son of God, just off his rocker. They told him if he was really the Son of God, He could provide a sign from heaven to prove it. Then Jesus said,

"Why does this generation ask for a miraculous sign? I tell you the truth, no sign will be given to it." Mark 8:12

This is really hit me. Now that we have Jesus, we don't need God to make it rain for 40 days to prove that He is there. We can just open up our Bibles and see that. Does that make sense? We have the same proof just like they do, it's just written down. So why are there still times that we ask God to move mountains, when all he wants us to do is sit down and read the Bible so that He can move our hearts? The last verse that I really appreciated was Mark 10:15:

"I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will not enter it."

I love this verse. Children are, almost by definition, innocent. They also love stories and fairytales. These fairytales, while magical and whimsical, are untrue--but children adore these stories of fairies and magic and flying. On the same token, they are just as prepared to believe that Peter Pan flew as they are to believe that Jesus rose from the dead. And with their innocence, they believe with a gusto that we as (doubtful and over-analytical) adults should envy. What if we could believe like they do? Without any doubt in our minds that Jesus is real and that He loves us more than we ever know. According to Jesus, if we do this, we will surely go to Heaven. More specifically, if we don't try our hardest to believe with the trusting innocence of a child, we won't have eternal life with our Maker. This convicts me and comforts me at the same time. I don't have to analyze. I don't have to think or reflect or study. I just have to love God like He loves me and give him the absolute, unwavering faith that He deserves and I will get to spend a beautiful eternity with Him. Isn't that awesome?!

What do you think? I'd love to hear from you!

God, watch over your children as we take the next step into learning how to love your sons ans daughters more like you do. Remind us that Jesus's story was real and amazing and that He really, truly gave his LIFE for us. Convict our hearts, God, and help us to love you with our lives. God, make our lives one big showcase for the beauty that is your artistry and love. Father, help us to believe, just believe. You are so amazing, Father. We love you!!

The other night, while I was journaling, I had this realization. This realization that even though I was trying to sit down with my Bible every day, it was becoming an act out of habit and not out of praise. I was just going through the motions, trying to make it. How many of us read our Bible or talk to God, just out of a force of habit? How many of us just go through the motions? (You can't see it, but I'm being a mix of the kid in school who is practically jumping out of his seat, waving his hand, and the kid who is shyly answering a question for the first time and very slowly, almost shamefully raising his hand.)

And then, out of nowhere, that song by Matthew West popped into my head. So, I dropped what I was doing, picked up my computer and bought the song on iTunes. And then I did a quick Google search for the lyrics of that song so that I could read along while I listened.

This might hurt

It's not safe

But I know that I've gotta make a change

I don't care

If I break

At least I'll be feeling something

'Cause just ok

Is not enough

Help me fight through the nothingness of this life

No regrets

Not this time

I'm gonna let my heart defeat my mind

Let your love

Make me whole

I think I'm finally feeling something

'Cause just ok

Is not enough

Help me fight through the nothingness of this life!

I don't wanna go through the motions

I don't wanna go one more day

Without your all-consuming passion inside of me

I don't wanna spend my whole life asking

What if I had given everything

Instead of going through the motions?

(All of these lyrics are the property of Matthew West)

I think I probably listened to this song 10 times that night. And I realized that I haven't been feeling anything. I'm stuck in a rut of apathy, and I'm just going through the motions. Is there anyone else that feels like that?

Will you guys just pray for me, and for anyone else that you know or that you think might be going through this same thing? I just know that God wants infinitely more than people only seeking Him and His word just out of habit. Don't get me wrong, it's about the best habit you could have.... but I know He wants more than that. And more importantly, He deserves more. He created this beautiful, gorgeous, amazing place for us to live. He loves us constantly, and He will never stop. But to his dismay, He sat and watched people turn away from Him every single second of every single day. He wept over them, begging them to turn back to Him, because He knew that He could give them everything they could ever need. But they ignored Him. So he sent his son down to them, to try and make them realize. But they ignored His son too. So His son took all the blame. He saw that He couldn't stop people from sinning, so He took all of the blame. He died the single worst way that anyone could die. It was a long and painful death that Jesus, a man who had lived without any sins, didn't deserve even in the slightest. But He did it. For them.

Now, reread the last paragraph. But instead of reading "them", read "us". Or even harder, read "me".

God deserves our best. As we continue to learn how to be patient, let's not go through the motions. Let's take risks. Let's let God change us radically, from the person we are to the person He wants. He deserves it.

Project 1C134

Hello to all of you lovely people out there!

Happy Fourth (a day late)! It was amazing for me to think yesterday what it really meant for us to be celebrating the 4th of July. Not only is it a reason to hang out with friends and family and to watch fireworks, it's a great excuse to thank God for everything that he provides for us. 235 years ago, God gave a group of men the determination and courage to commit treason (an act punishable by death) to write a declaration of independence, and thus create a nation where people could be free. And to this day, he is (almost unfairly) blessing the people of America with everything they need to survive and much, MUCH more. On my way to work yesterday morning, I was just overwhelmed at how blessed I am to live in the United States of America and I just had an urge to share with you all how much we should be thanking God for. So let's try and keep that in mind the next few days as we go through our days. Let's give God the thanks and praise He deserves for the blessings that He gives us every single day!

Anyways, now on to this new project we have started. We're all learning to love other people and God in a way that would please Him more. Our first week's theme is Patience, a very difficult trait to learn. As my pastor likes to say, "asking God to teach you how to be patient is one of the most dangerous things that you can do. Expect a LOT of traffic in the days after that". All joking aside, this is so true. If you ask God for patience, He won't just make you patient right then and there. He will give you lots of chances to practice being patient, so it becomes a habit.

On our journey together, I think that it is important that we stay grounded in scripture, so that we aren't straying from God's actual word. When I was 10 or 11, I got this Bible called "The Student Bible". Inside, it has lots of little "notes" with information pertaining to the scripture that surrounds them, and articles about certain people or subjects that are being addressed. Also, in the back it has an index of topics covered in the Bible, along with exact passages where each topic is mentioned. In an effort to learn more about what God says about patience, I consulted this. The first verse (well, group of verses, really) that it listed was Hebrews 12:1-13. There were three different phrases that really stuck out to me. We're going to talk about the first one today, and the other two in the next couple of days. This is purely because I want to make my posts easy to read, and not too much to handle. Anyways, let's look at verse 1:

"let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us."

First off, this is saying that we need to get rid of sin, but not only do we have to get rid of it, we have to throw it off. This doesn't imply that it's going to be easy, or that we can just shrug the weight of sin off. We have to throw it off, and get it as far away as possible. Next, we look at the last half of this phrase, the part that tells us we have to "run with perseverance the race marked out for us". Two things about this really struck me. Perseverance-- the race isn't going to be easy. Sometimes we're going to want to quit. But if we keep running with everything that we have, even when we don't feel like it, we'll get to the end, and the best prize of all: eternal life with our Heavenly Father! Also, the race is marked out. We're not running blindly in the dark, or in circles around a track. There is a very specific race marked out for us. The way I like to see it is like those video games. There are checkpoints to help you know that you are going in the right direction, but between the checkpoints, you have to have faith in the Maker of the race, and trust that He knows what He's doing, and more importantly, He would never mark a race that he knows you cannot handle. The race will be challenging, but in the end, you always know that there's another checkpoint ahead. All you have to do is keep your heart in it.

What do you think? I'd love to hear from you!

God Bless you all!

God, keep your children under your wings this week, as we look to you to teach us how to be patient. Give us many chances to learn, and let us trust that although it may be hard, our reward is great. You are awesome and amazing and beautiful, and there is nothing that we would like more than to be more like you. Thank you for everything that you ever have done, and for everything that you ever will do for us. We love you!!!

Welcome!

Hello. Bonjour. Hola. Konichiwa.

Welcome to something to LOVE for! This is a blog dedicated to exploring life with Jesus in community with other people. It is for talking about what God is doing in our lives, and for talking about what it would look like to follow Jesus more closely. And most of all, it is about sharing God's incredible love with anyone and everyone.

This blog is the brainchild of a prayer that went a little something like this:

God, I want to be closer to You. I want to feel you right here with me. And I want you to teach me how to love other people in the way that you do.

And then I was thinking about starting a blog. So I dismissed the idea (obviously), because my new thing is reading fashion blogs. And then I continued praying:

God, I just feel so disconnected from you. And I know that you've been telling me in the past few days to really focus on loving people better. So, God, tell me what to do.

And then I was thinking about starting a blog again.

Hey God. So, this blog thing. Is this real, is this You? Because sometimes I get distracted and think about other things while I'm praying.... so I need you to tell me if this is real.

And then I was thinking about starting a blog.

Okay. Okay, I'll try. But God, I'm not some amazing theologian. My relationship with you isn't even very established. What would I even write about.

And then I remembered this sermon that my pastor gave a couple weeks back, where he told the story of this man who was having some trouble getting along with his wife. So he took a close look at 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 and week by week, painstakingly asked God to teach him how to be each one of the qualities in this verse, so that he would learn to love his wife a little bit better. Now for those of us (ME) who can't just summon up random Bible verses from memory, 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 goes a little something like this:

4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. (NIV)

So this man went through each quality-- patient, kind, not envious, not boastful, not proud, etc.-- and slowly but surely, taught himself how to better love his wife. Well this got me thinking: What if I did the same thing, but on a 2 week-per basis, but instead of loving my non-existant spouse better, I just learned to love people. I mean, what better way to get closer to God than to teach myself to obey what Jesus said was the greatest commandment (to love God and love your neighbor)?

So here we go. Project 1 Corinthians 13:4 (1c134). And what I firmly believe God wants me to begin my blog talking about. So who will take the challenge with me? Who will learn to love?