red sauce

I love it but it doesn’t love me.  or maybe I’ve just been out to eat too much in the last 9 days.  Either way my body is telling me to cool it with the red sauce and anything else that causes my stomach to feel like there is an acid pool inside of me.  Come on Nexium, start working!

going going gone

This week is officially over.  I worked way too many hours, didn’t have enough good conversations and haven’t seen my wife. 

I leave now to go meet her and the in-laws in Columbia for lunch and they will officially hand her over to me for a week.  Yup a week and then she’s back to Mississippi for presumably another week.  Not sure I like that but for now I’m going to focus on seeing her VERY soon and enjoying the time I do have with her.

The week is now over.

friends

Tonight we’re talking about friends with the Fusion group.  Isn’t it funny that I find myself wondering more and more if I’ll make more friends in Cookeville? (For the record I have 2, maybe 3,  people I’d call a friend here in Cookeville)

come home already

Melissa has been gone since Saturday.  she went to Mississippi (I originally typed home but that’s cookeville) to celebrate her dad’s birthday and a few other things.  I’m tired of being a bachelor.  Home is dull when its you and the TV.  Working 12 to 13 hours a day gets rough after 3 days of it (now on day 4).  So Melissa please come home already. (I go pick her up on Friday)

thought

I typed up my thoughts on tonights talk yesterday.  Good thoughts, good questions.  Went to retrieve it and it is gone.  Guess I wasn’t supposed to share those thoughts.

Romans

I have started working through Romans for several reasons.  First, its been a while since I’ve spent time there.  Second, my quiet times have been very scattered lately – while quantity may be generous the quality hasn’t been great due to my mindset; I pray that this will help me work through issues that are keeping me from quality time with God.  Third, Melissa asked to walk through a book together and we’ll talk about what we read and how it applies to us (individually and as a couple).

I’m three chapters in and my head is spinning with the depth of it.  I don’t stand up when its spinning cause I’d fall down but I’m sensing (maybe hoping, definitely praying) that God is going to open my eyes to Him, His heart, His ways and challenge me to put them into effect in my personal life and ministry.

I’m buckling up cause it may get bumpy (especially if my head keeps spinning).

you do it, no you do it…

I think often of writing something here;  I find it to be a good release but I’m finding it harder and harder to either have the time to write something meaningful (full schedules at work and slow dial up at the house make time scarce) or I find I just want to rant on something that I probably should just share with a wall.

One thing I am finding in ministry is there are a lot of people who want you to be the savior of their child.  I use little “s” because they don’t want me to be God for their child but they want me to be the person who brings them back to God.  In the last 2 weeks I have 3 or 4 conversations with parents/grandparents who have a teenager who desires to have nothing to do with religion.  In talking with the adults one thing has consistently come up – they aren’t willing to be the parent.  There are no rules or expectations on the teen, they can do what they want or dictate the terms of them being a “part” of the group.  There is no modeling of a Christ-inspired life, no discussion of how God’s word influences life and the choices of life, no worshipping together, nothing, nada, zip, zilch.

Instead they come to me and ask, “Why doesn’t my child want to come to church?” or “Why is my child rejecting the ways of the Lord?”  It is then followed with ways that my ministry is not responding.  We aren’t doing enough deep Bible study.  We don’t worship as a group.  We don’t help students connect with other students.  I don’t personally call every student (they say their student) and therefore it is communicated that I don’t care for students.

Now I know I don’t have a perfect ministry.  If that were the case I wouldn’t have problems finding leaders, I wouldn’t have students who choose not to come back or come at all, I wouldn’t be worrying about our effectiveness in ministering to student/leaders/parents.  I wouldn’t have worries cause perfect ministries don’t have anything to be worried about.  That isn’t the case here, so I know there are things we can be doing better.  However, and I haven’t had the guts yet to ask this question to the parents who are calling me, what are they doing to help their student connect with God?

I see all over Scripture where God speaks to the parent about being the primary source of a childs introduction, instruction and correction in all matters – ESPECIALLY those concerning their relationship with God.  I can’t help but wonder what would happen if all parents would take seriously their responsibility to be the tool God uses to lead a child to God and continue that through the teenage years of modeling and discussing what it means to belong to God.  I think we’d see things radically change.