opposition as opportunity.

For father’s day, we had a smoke out. We had a lot of games planned and a short service. We were expecting a fair amount of people to come to it. It started at ten, and when it hit 10:45 with no visitors there, the interns were sent into the neighborhoods to do whatever it takes to get people there. I considered using one of the baseball bats to knock people out and drag them over because love hurts, but I wouldn’t actually do that… We had already left flyers on the doors in this neighborhood a couple days earlier, so I personally did not want to go knock on any doors on a Sunday morning. Jenn thought the same thing but mentioned that we should knock on a few doors as the Spirit led. I had a bad attitude about that, so I cut the conversation off. I started to pray as we were walking and began to think that I wanted to do absolutely nothing but pray for the people in the houses that we passed. I wanted to pray and if people came, it would be all because God was working and by nothing that Jenn or I did. I prayed that and kept walking. I told Jenn what I wanted to do (and hopefully it was what God wanted us to do.) She laughed and said that was what she had just prayed. We continued walking and praying with occasional conversation for the next twenty to thirty minutes. We headed back to help with a free car wash… We had one family show up, but it’s not discouraging. It reminds me that we are not in control and that God is. It leaves room for hope. It leaves room to say in a few months, look at what we started with and now look how far God has brought us.

We’ve been trying to find locations for some of the camps. This may not be the case with all the locations we looked at, but because we are a church, some places have turned us down. The city tells us we can use a building, so we go to hand them a check, and they change their mind. YMCA tells us we can use their gym for a basketball camp, and they change their mind. Whatever the reasons are for doors closing, we continue to seek God and His will and pray for the people of this city.

I read Jon Foreman’s essay about Joan of Arc and her heroism. Though she faced opposition, though odds were against her, she pressed on. Just the fact that she was a woman created opposition for her, but she used it as opportunity, and this opportunity led to her courageous death.

I already know that God is victorious, and I want to live like I know that. Although I am far from it, I want my attitude to become like this:

“Yes, I have my dragons to fight. Yes, I have my fears. But I still have breath in my lungs,I still have blood in my veins. I cannot sit idly by. I refuse to just let the village burn. I'd rather side with the illiterate farm girl who hears things than the cynics who hear nothing. I want to see beauty come from the ashes around me. Even if I fail, I will burn at the stake knowing that my fumes supported a good cause. Far better to fail at building a magnificent world than to succeed in monochromatic survival.

So when the voices tell me to quit, to give in, to give up - - I stand my ground. I refuse to be the cynic. It takes one to know one, you see, and I know cynicism far too well. So I raise my voice above the snickering sarcasm within and without and dare to hope.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-foreman/the-dark-horse- joan-of-ar_b_558967.html

Whether turn outs are high or low, whether buildings are available or not, whether things work out how I think they should or not, I will still try to listen and obey the Spirit guiding me along the way. I will try to look at opposition as opportunity.

.through a different lens.

I’m in Kansas, but I’ll start with a couple thoughts from before I left for Kansas. I wasn’t exactly living an obedient life, so I wasn’t ready to live a summer serving God when I hadn’t been all year long. I wouldn’t say that I failed to surrender to God, but I would say that it was a surrender that needs to happen every single day that I failed to do. I start thinking I’m doing okay and then that pride backfires. Daily surrendering is something I have to constantly work on, and it’s not any easier here. I am missing out on knowing the joy of his redemption, the joy in sharing his love, the joy that comes from suffering when I’m not being obedient. I haven’t even been following his general will for my life because I have been so consumed in what I want, yet God still chose me and allowed me to serve Him and others this summer. Nothing I did got me here this summer. His grace brought me here. Serving Him is something he allows me to do everyday no matter where I am, and I take that for granted. I need to let go of doing everything for myself and in my way and sacrifice what is important to me and let what is important to God become important to me.

I made a list of goals for this summer while I was at the beach…they pretty much lined up with what Brother Phil preached about from Colossians two days before I left.

Goals…

To know God. To know Him better, to know who He is so that I want to serve Him. So that I will want to love, obey, and trust Him. I am having a hard time being passionate about someone I barely know.

To learn how to truly care for others, to put others before myself, to self sacrifice. To be so consumed with the needs of others that I don’t worry about my own. To trust that while serving others, that God has my needs taken care of. To share in the pains and joys of others, to truly listen to them, to build relationships with no hidden motives behind them – not expecting anything in return, not with the agenda of hoping to witness to them, just with the agenda of being the embodiment of Christ’s love to others.

To become fruitful. I was going to say, to be transformed and changed because those must take place in order to become fruitful, but I’d rather not stop at just being changed…or it’s not true change.

Another goal I have is to run a mile in the mornings to wake up…didn’t realize how unreasonable that was. The getting up earlier part is almost impossible.

Skip to something I’ve been thinking about in Kansas… One significant moment for me so far was last Saturday when we had a block party in Park City. Norm had asked me to take some photos, so I was taking pictures of the kids having a good time. I took a shot of the whole bounce house with an adult standing to the side of the jump. That was the last picture I ended up taking that day because I looked at the photo and realized there was a lady standing there with her hand on her hip and I wouldn’t want people to see that picture because I should be talking to her. I put my camera down and went over to talk to Autumn. I talked to her for a few minutes, and I figured out quickly that I didn’t know where to take the conversation. It definitely put me out of my comfort zone, but I would have been more uncomfortable if I had not gone to speak with her. I wasn’t the only one that talked to Autumn…she admitted to Norm that she thought church was boring and that she sends her child to church with her mother. I didn’t find that out because I’m scared of crossing a line and becoming too nosey. It’s an excuse, but I also need to be sensitive to the Spirit’s guidance to know when and what to talk about. I ended up talking to a few other adults throughout the week, and I just don’t know what it’s like to really care for them or how to do that. Hopefully as the summer continues I will learn more about talking to people as well as doing things for people…

I enjoyed the fact that God showed me something that I needed to do through my art, through me doing something that I enjoy. I hide behind my camera at times…but it was easy to put the camera down when I saw the photo differently than just a picture of some kids jumping and having fun.

My hope is that this summer I can draw closer to God and I do think that does entail fulfilling those goals and maybe a way of meeting those goals will be just seeing people with His eyes and heart – through a different lens.