Poor Broncos

My boys have lost...Eli Manning had to pull some kind of magic and march the Giants up the field in a last minute drive to score with only 5 seconds left on the clock.

I have really been on the up lately. We had a great hayride on Saturday night. We had tons of people there and we had a lot of fun. Here is a picture of all of us before we left. I really don't know how we fit this many people on the trailor. If you know who my parents are, they were here this weekend for a visit and you can see that they rode the hay along with everybody else. We had a wonderful visit and got to play some games, and eat together. My sister and her husband were here also. We had a great time.

God has been working on my heart lately. He has also been speaking to me through His Word and others. He has shown me that it is very good to be humble but being humble does not mean that you always assume others to be right in their criticism. I have always been one to take the criticism of others very seriously. As soon as I am criticized I would often try to change immediately regardless of the source so that the person would have nothing to criticize. I want everybody to like me. However, I have found that people's criticism is often wrong even though it may come from somebody twice my age. I hate to admit that sometimes people that I look up to may be wrong, but it happens. I was taught to respect my elders by my parents. However, while the person is older than me, that does not mean they are more mature than me. There are people who I can trust their criticism to be sound and evidence for a needed change in my life (my parents are a good example for this). There are other people whose criticism holds less weight. They are less in touch with God and their view is somewhat skewed from what God wants it to be. The hard part is judging which type of person is criticizing me.

A Silly Song

The following song is a poem who's beginning came from one of my friends in highschool (Anton, for any of you who might know him). After the beginning, me and several other guys at camp this summer turned it into a silly song that our cabin sang for the talent show this summer.

Back in the days of old
When men were bold
and toilets were not yet invented. -Anton

You found a tree,
And paid the fee,
And it was very well vented

Leaves were a penny,
Pine cones weren't any,
But make sure and wash in the stream.

The girls went south,
The boys went north,
And the animals, they went were they wanted.

Once there was a horse named Newman,
All he wanted was to be human,
He found the tree,
And paid the fee,
And put that tree, out of commission
Oh he put that tree out of commission.

The girls went south,
The boys went north,
And the animals, they went were they wanted.

-Cabin B3 at Quartz Mountain Christian Camp session 10

The Clouds are Clearing

Lately I have been having such a hard time. Though I didn't take the time to sit down and think about why I thought this was a hard time. All I could think about is that I am really upset right now. Yesterday, I finally figured out what was going on (at least I hope so). Whether it was Satan, or just my human nature attacking me, I don't know. The problem was/is things that are completely out of my control. I work hard on my job and I work hard on my school work, but even when I was working hard things seemed to not go according to plan. I have been known to not be a very hard worker in the past and I paid for it. I guess that the problem here was that I was working hard, but I seemed to be paying the price for not working hard. Kids were leaving the youth group, I was not getting all of my homework done, and it seemed very rare indeed that I could formulate a plan in my mind and stick to it. Therefore, everytime things failed to go according to plan, I thought of myself as a failure.

All this came to spilling out yesterday to my preacher, my wife and my God. Once it had all spilled out though, I realized that all of these things are out of my control. If I am doing my best, it is near impossible to improve on that. Sure, other people might be able to do better than me, but I cannot compare myself to them. I must realize my limitations and let God work where I cannot. I am trying to take to heart what Christ said in the Gospel of Matthew, "Don't worry about tomorrow." I am just going to do my best and lot God handle the rest.

I am so thankful to God that he revealed this to me. I just hope that he continues to reveal little jewels of wisdom to me so that I can continue to grow.

A breakthrough

Lately I have been really down on myself for several reasons. Mostly because I just feel so overwhelmed with grad school and working as a youth minister. I love my job and I love these kids here in Cordell. There have just been so many things running through my head when it comes to youth ministry. My original idea was to do a lot of fun things to attract kids and then try to teach them the Bible. But I slowly found out over the past few months that the kids that are attracted by fun stuff are kids that are here for the wrong reason. The most common name for these kids is church-hoppers. They go wherever the most fun is. I admit, I was getting several kids here, but they were not being affected by the Word of God. I tried to set up Bible studies with some of them, but to no avail. They would just come to class once and be a problem and not come back except for the fun stuff.

The problem with fun stuff (like lock-ins, 5th quarters, and anything else fun) they take a lot of time to plan. That time cuts into my teaching preparation. So I was showing the visual Bible on DVD and doing very little preparation because I had events to plan. The kids were bored with class but loved the fun stuff because I prepared diligently for it.

I finally realized that this is kind of backward. I should diligently prepare for teaching God's word and put events second on my planning agenda. This may seem like common sense, but it was not readily apparent to me in the heat of the moment.

So the reason I was overwhelmed is because all of these church-hopping kids brought tons of baggage with them and I felt like I was not getting anywhere with them here. So I started preparing diligently for class and devotionals. I have been doing this for only the past few weeks and I see a difference. Not as many kids are here but the kids that are here want to learn and worship God (for the most part, they still have their moments). The church-hoppers are not here to disrupt the class, and there are actually a couple of them who have continued to come and my hope is that they will be changed by God's Word.

There's always something

Well, I thought I would have it easy this week. I only had about 210 pages of reading to do and a test to study for. Well, yesterday, I came down with a cold and amidst popping vitamins C and B and drinking liquid echinecea (not sure if that's how you spell it), I was blowing my nose and had a splitting headache and could not read all that well. I feel better this morning thanks to the vitamins and echinecea but that does not make me able to study any faster. Oh well...once again, I'll just do my best.