A Lot has Happened

Wow! A whole lot has happened since the last time I have written. First things first, I went on a mission trip for ten days to Toronto with my youth group a week after I last wrote. It was a lot of fun and I think it helped ground me and helped me realize where my priorities need to be as I go to college. For five days I helped tutor kids from Somalia in math. I thought teaching how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide would be easy - but I was wrong. I realized it's hard to explain something so simple. Usually you use these functions to explain harder math but how do you explain them. Anyway things ended up alright in the end and I think the kid I tutored learned something after all.

After I got back from our mission trip, I went back to work for two weeks. I'm now finished with work, and while it was helpful and a good learning experience for me, it's nice to enjoy the last few weeks of summer without having to work. The first week of August I went on vacation with my family to Destin, Florida, for five days. We went snorkeling, golfing, and hung out on the beach a lot. It was very nice and relaxing.

During the times I've been home we have finished Velvet Elvis. The single best thing I got from this book was that all Truth is God's Truth. No matter where you hear something that is true, it is God who makes that true. I realized this on vacation. While on the beach in Florida, I was able to finish The Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S. Lewis. If you have read the last book in the series, you will know the part I am talking about. I loved how C.S. Lewis phrased his perception of God's judgement. In the last book, he is talking about the end of Narnia, the fictional world in the story, and when everyone comes to the judement of Aslan. There is a man who has been loyal to the god Tash, again a fictional god in the story. He has served this god his whole life and has been loyal to this god his entire life. In the end, he even is willing to die to see this god whom he has served loyally. When he comes before Aslan, he realizes that Aslan is the true God and he is ashamed because he has served the wrong god because Tash is really everything evil in the world. But, this is the part I like, Aslan says that because this man has served his god out of good and not evil the whole time, he was really serving Aslan and being loyal to Aslan. So he got to go to heaven. I find this representation of God's judgement fascinating and intriguing and I liked it. If you haven't read The Chronicles of Narnia, I suggest you read them because they are a good series of stories and are an easy read.

Discipleship has been going really well this summer. And has kept me thinking about my priorities as I get ready to leave for college.

Thanks for all of the comments and support.

-God Bless-
Jeff

Sorrows

This summer has been so much fun, but time has flown by. I apologize for taking so long to get back with you guys. Things have been going great. Summer, as always, is a lot of fun and very relaxing when you don't have to worry about homework. I actually read a book, The DaVinci Code, for fun and not because I had to. I saw the movie first, which I recommend doing if you haven't read the book yet, because it gets you interested in the story without giving away all of the details that are in the book. The book was great and really kept my attention. I finished it in about a week becuase it was so good. In the next No Limits Discipleship EZine, Colton gives a review of the movie, too. So make sure you read what he has to say about all this DaVinci Code stuff.

A couple of weeks ago I went to Orientation at Olivet Nazarene University and enrolled in my classes for this fall semester. I met a ton of people who were all really cool. I met some other engineering majors and decided to room with one of them. He's a pretty cool guy, and we also got our room picked out at Orientation as well. This next school year looks like it's going to be a lot of fun.

Discipleship has been going well, although things have been a little less frequent with the business of summer and people working and going out of town. We are still reading Velvet Elvis and it is helping me look at my faith in a different way. We are also doing a book study in our youth group to help us prepare for our mission trip that we leave on a week from Saturday. The book we have been reading is called Can You Drink the Cup? by Henri Nouwen. In this study we have talked a lot about sorrows and the root of our sorrows influencing who we become. Whether it be issuses such as problems with family, or drugs, or fear of failure, we need to realize them so they don't control our lives. I believe that most of our issues come from insecurities, whether it is thinking I'm not loved, or someone is going to make fun of this trait of mine, or being insecure about failure. A lot of the issues that drive me and sometimes conrol me are these kinds of insecurities. I deal with them by realizing that the sorrow they are causing is only temporary and I have nothing to fear because God loves me and created me to do whatever it is He wants me to do. I am perfect in the eyes of God and as long as I am seeking the will of God, He won't lead me astray.

Thanks for the comments and support over these last couple of years. The finality of moving away to college is starting to sink in as one of my friends leaves tomorrow to go off to college to start volleyball practice, as well as having just gone to orientation recently. It's exciting and a little bit freightening at the same time. If you could pray that the transition between high school and college is smooth not only for me, but for all of the incoming freshman this year. Thanks.

-God Bless-
Jeff

Velvet

I am so incredibly thrilled to be finished with high school. It was fun while it lasted, but I'm ready to move on and experience some new things. This is the first summer in the last four years I haven't had to do any homework for some classes. I actually plan on reading a book this summer for fun, not because I have to. This summer is going to go by really fast. I have this week off, but start back to work next Tuesday, working at the same place I have this last year. I can't wait for those forty hour weeks. Not really. But hey, I gotta start saving up for some of those college expenses. In July, I'm going with my youth group on a mission trip to Toronto. I hear it's a fun city and I'm really looking forward to ministry there.

In youth group lately, our youth pastor has been talking about having fun together as a youth group and building community. One Wednesday night, after worship service, we all went down to the gym and played dodgeball for fun, just because we can. That's not to say that things should never be serious, but especially as kids were getting restless and ready for school to be over, we just needed to relax and have fun together. There are times when things should be serious, but the fun times are just as important.

On a more serious note, in our discipleship group we have been reading and discussing Velvet Elvis, a book by Rob Bell. We have been talking about how there is no final solution to what religion is or what our walk with Jesus is. A person cannot say that they have discovered the absolute truth about God and therefore no one else needs to explore God. That can't happen because we will never fully understand God. But, the great thing is we don't have nor are expected to. That doesn't mean stop exploring. It only means that we don't have to worry about getting to the end because there is no end with God. As God told Moses to tell the Jews when asked why he was there, he should say to them the "I AM" sent him. To go further, Rob Bell talks some about how the Bible is to be interpreted. The Bible was written in a certain context for a certain audience. And despite what some people may think, it is dated in that sense. It was written for certain moments in time and can be hard to understand the original intent without understanding the original context of the Scripture. Don't get me wrong. There are parts of the Bible that are timeless, like John 3:16 for instance. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life." But, as a whole, the books of the Bible were written in a certain time context.

To clarify what I am trying to get across, because I don't think I'm being very clear, here's how I have seen it in my life. When I was deciding where to go to college, I would read the Bible searching for an answer of where to go. Now, looking back, I realize that this was unfair and unrealistic. The Bible wasn't written so many thousands of years ago keeping in mind the answer to my question. While that's not impossible for God to do, that's not why the Bible was written. It was written to provoke discussions and questions to lead us in the direction God wants us to go. The Bible really isn't a finished work, but something that we continue to discuss, interpret and reinterpret and develop to apply to our lives. There is so much to talk about in Rob Bell's Velvet Elvis. I encourage you to get hold of it and read it.

Anyway thanks for all of the comments and support. If I wasn't too clear with this entry, feel free to leave a comment and ask a question. Thanks.

-God Bless-
Jeff