Thanksgiving for God's Favor

Time for a nice Thanksgiving blog. We had a great time on our trip to Bend for Thanksgiving.

When I take time to reflect on all the things I’m thankful for each year I can’t help but be amazed at the favor of God on our lives.

For You, O Lord, will bless the righteous;

With favor You will surround him as with a shield. Psalm 5:12

I’ve been thinking a lot about God’s favor lately. It’s amazing to me that just being in righteous relationship with the Lord brings his favor to your life. Just doing the basics of Christianity, (repenting of sin, keeping a pure heart, meditating in God’s Word, seeking to live a good life, etc) causes God to be so delighted in us that he pours out favor and blessing all over His children. Such simple responses on our part bring such incredible blessing from our Heavenly Father. It’s just amazing to think that anyone would ever want to live life any other way.

Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good;

Blessed is the man who trusts in Him! Psalm 34:8

What does this favor look like in our life?

Like family. We are surrounded by such a great family. Spending time with them, like we did this last week, has got to be our favorite thing to do. You know, we really did a whole lot of nothing. We just hung out for days. And reflecting on this week, that’s exactly how we love to spend every holiday time – just being together.

Like church. Not just Family Life Church but all of the body of Christ here in the Treasure Valley, back in Bend, Portland, Orange County, San Diego, Uganda, all over the world. Most people are thankful for their friends. But who knew relationships could be so meaningful and rich. When your relationships are a result of God’s favor, they surpass anything you can experience otherwise. I absolutely love being a contributing part of my local church. It’s the only place I can grow into the man God has called me to be and feel the deep sense of satisfaction that comes from knowing God is using me to further His eternal purpose.

Like surprises. You ever get that feeling that His favor is just chasing you. As if life is so good and you don’t need anything more but God still just loves to surprise you with blessing? This week while in Bend someone gave me a Taylor guitar!! I couldn’t even believe it. I was pretty sure I’d never own one – my guitar worked just fine. I was amazed by how many people commented this morning after worship on how much better this new guitar sounded. And on top of that – Roger from My Chai in Bend gave me a jug of his chai concentrate for free! Like icing on the cake. Come on over if you want to try some of the best chai tea in the world.

(Not a real picture of the new guitar)

We have so much to be thankful for. Sometimes I feel like I must have more than everyone else, but then it hits me – God has no favorites. His favor is available to all who live this life. It pleases God when we take time to reflect on all that He has blessed us with.

In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. 1 Thess 5:18

Question of the Week:

What does God’s favor currently look like in your life?

What does a youth pastor do all week?

That's a great question. I always wondered how my friends who worked at the church actually spent their time. When I was a banker - I did banking, helping customers 40 hours a week. When I managed the Coldstone - I made and served ice cream full time. But what do the hours during the week look like for a youth pastor, other than holding a youth service? I'll break it down for you...

1) Meeting with staff.

Right now that involves primarily Pastor Steve. But we have other all staff meetings and leaders meetings to get on the same page and head in the same direction. I'm loving these times so much. Sometimes we go over how best to help a certain family in our church, sometimes it's what computer we should buy next, sometimes it's what we really believe about prophecy. You never know what you're going to learn. I'm so blessed to be able to learn so much from our pastor every day I go to work.

2) Doing the little things

Someone has to figure out what prizes we want to give away at our youth events. Or do the research on exactly what video camera we should purchase. Deciding on graphics and event titles, sending lots of emails, getting your announcements in for the bulletin on time, etc. This is the stuff that seems to grab at your time and fill up your week. And it's all so random week to week. It's the stuff that causes you to look back on your week and ask yourself, "What did I get done this week?"



3) Hearing from the Lord

My favorite part of ministry is the hearing from God part. I try to give my mornings to hearing from God and taking down what I'm learning. Lots of that involves preparing messages to speak - I spoke to our youth, our youth pastoral staff and our worship team this week. When I was an intern I was so jealous that there were people who were paid to study the Bible...God has fulfilled the desire of my heart!! This part also involves big vision stuff - we just finished putting together a document that lays out our vision and values for our youth and worship ministries. Now we just need to put that plan into action.

4) Relationships with people

This is what pastoring is all about, eh? We spend time with our leaders, we spend time with students, we spend time with parents, etc. At this stage in the game this involves meeting new people every week and trying to build trust and respect with people that really don't know us. We're feeling out these people and being evaluated by them. It's really an intimidating process and not for the insecure. Thank goodness for the love of God and the call of God. It pushes us past awkwardness and fear and leads us to the most rewarding part of ministry - people's lives being touched and changed by God!

This leads us to our question of the week (we're diving deeper). I had a great little conversation with Corey this week about this and thought I'd throw it out to everyone...

In your opinion, what is the best thing a leader can do to gain trust and respect from the people he/she is leading?

Youth Game Night

We had our Giving game night with the youth this past Friday. We them all bring canned food for the local shelter, hence the name Giving game night. We played some crazy games, shared a little on priorities in life and got to know a lot of young people. The major lesson learned from the night was that we should use prebaked pumpkin pies for our pie eating contest. Otherwise, you have to bake them on site and have scalding hot pies for your contest. Oops!
We chose a name for our upcoming youth ministry this week... The Next. The concept is that these young people will be the next Godly leaders or if they so chose the next dropouts or failures. The choice lies with them on who they will be.

Anyways, it has been crazy working on all of this youth stuff. There are so many elements that go into the foundation of what we are building that it is somewhat overwhelming at times. It is funny that Danny and I have meetings with each other where we take notes, cast vision and discuss strategies. We are learning to lead together at a whole new level!
We have an amazing youth leadership team already that has been willing to give us a night every week to instill in them the qualities we believe are essential to pastoring and leading. Plus we have a group of student leaders who are not only doing videos and graphics for us, but are also really stepping up to the plate to be leaders to their peers. It has really just been amazing to watch the goodness of God being poured out on this venture. Thanks for all of your prayers! I still miss Bend a lot, mostly the people. =) I am excited to visit this week. Hopefully we will get to see a lot of you.

Another New Blog

Let the bloggin' community bear fruit and multiply!! You all know you need another blog to check up on. Here's the deal on this one - life in the ministry is crazier than we thought possible. There's just so many thoughts swirling around in my little mind that I need a way to process and log my thoughts. Blogging is a great way to do that you know. It creates an archive of where God has taken you and should show us, as we look back on it, how much we're growing in Him.

Plus it really is a great way for everyone that loves us or cares about anything we say to keep up with what's going on. My friend Jonathan has a theory that any true life long friends you're going to have will be the ones that keep up with your blog. (No Pressure) This will be a place to really get a look into what we're doing in ministry, what God is teaching us and should also be a place for some interesting discussion.

Here's my plan...
Update the blog regularly and ask a question of the week. Then you all comment and we interact. Some will be harder than others of course...we'll see how it goes. What do you think? The answers will tell us who actually reads these!! Oh yeah, and throw in some crazy pictures to make things interesting. Like this...



Wanted to let everyone in Bend know that we miss you guys like crazy. If anyone has a burning passion for Nampa, ID the market is flashing a strong buy signal. There's a house right across the street from us for sale if you want to be our neighbors!! Love you guys.


Question of the Week:

We'll start light...

Where did your last cup of coffee (or coffee alternative) come from and who did you share it with?