In our busy, crazy, emotional lives we tend to serve two masters and not even know it until you look at it from a different perspective, like a master. It could be an object, money, what we do, or even another person, usually a person we are very close to.
We can go to church, and praise the Lord, but we all know we can feel completely lost without really serving only Him. Sometimes we don't know what the problem is until you look at your life and ask yourself if you are putting more time into a person, thing, or action than you are putting into God and your relationship with Him.
"No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money." Matthew 6:24
Again it does not have to be money, and most of the time it is not.
So not that you have thought about what you spend more time doing rather than giving God that time, that conversation, that anger, that sadness, you stop and start doing so.
This or what. Will one give you more power, pleasure or wealth, or will you find joy and peace in serving the Lord.
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Saturday, June 23, 2012
The Importance of a Community.
I am working at a YMCA camp in San Diego, Imperial Beach, called YMCA Camp Surf. It has been very fun, challenging, learning many things, and coming to understand myself more.
I get to work with 13-16 year old girls who could be very wealthy or very poor. I work with girls who hate themselves and girls who have way too much confidence in themselves. I work with girls who say they can't until I or anther counselor shows them that they can. I work with sand and dirt, water temp that changes every other day sometimes. I work in gloomy mornings hot afternoons and cold nights. I work with men and women from all over the world, mainly Australia and the US. I work with camp food. I work with the sun, a lot, we have become great friends. I work with the unknown. I work with surface talk. I work with fear and the conquering fears. I work with pain, physically and emotionally.
I think one of the scariest things I have worked with so far is not having the support system I have at school and home. This is not a Christian camp, that many people put to YMCA, actually they are not about Jesus at all. They have similar values, but no one talked about it at all. I have had a lot of trouble finding the comfort from the Lord, and being challenged by sisters of Christ. It has been very hard to even see God and all His beauty when no one else really see's it. It has been difficult to find His identity and not the approval from my girls or co-counselors. Not going to church is also very weird, not because it's church but because you have people around you that have the same core. When two or more are gathered He is there.
Without these things I am lost. I am depressed and not all there. My joy is missing. My compassion for others is careless. My mind things of things it shouldn't. I'm distracted. I feel alone. I feel not looked after. My heart has way too much room to run around and I have lost motivation to search for Him.
A community is important. Not having even one other person that you can go to with how your heart is doing and someone to keep you accountable with things is hard. Why do we even need people, He is everywhere and He is watching and can keep us accountable, so why would we need people to help us do these things. We are created to be social and to have a community to cry and laugh with us. The spirit is strong when two or more are gathered. A community is safe. Camp is safe but it is not really a community. A community is open. Camp is really not that open. A community is fun. Camp is fun but it is not joyful.
How do we find these people? When we are unsafe and insecure, well that's when we sometimes feel the Holy Spirit the most, because He is the only one who will keep us safe. So do we go out and ask people or do we slip it into a conversation? Sometimes its harder to find or create these conversations , merely because YMCA Camp Surf can not get too deep, and so everything is surface, and small talk. I think we all like to go deep but when someone or something is telling us how to act and think and speak it is hard to find the inner being of others and we loose own inner being.
A community is important to have real talks, joy, understanding, love, goofiness, selflessness, compassion, support, etc. These are the things we have to create sometimes if we can not find it.
I get to work with 13-16 year old girls who could be very wealthy or very poor. I work with girls who hate themselves and girls who have way too much confidence in themselves. I work with girls who say they can't until I or anther counselor shows them that they can. I work with sand and dirt, water temp that changes every other day sometimes. I work in gloomy mornings hot afternoons and cold nights. I work with men and women from all over the world, mainly Australia and the US. I work with camp food. I work with the sun, a lot, we have become great friends. I work with the unknown. I work with surface talk. I work with fear and the conquering fears. I work with pain, physically and emotionally.
I think one of the scariest things I have worked with so far is not having the support system I have at school and home. This is not a Christian camp, that many people put to YMCA, actually they are not about Jesus at all. They have similar values, but no one talked about it at all. I have had a lot of trouble finding the comfort from the Lord, and being challenged by sisters of Christ. It has been very hard to even see God and all His beauty when no one else really see's it. It has been difficult to find His identity and not the approval from my girls or co-counselors. Not going to church is also very weird, not because it's church but because you have people around you that have the same core. When two or more are gathered He is there.
Without these things I am lost. I am depressed and not all there. My joy is missing. My compassion for others is careless. My mind things of things it shouldn't. I'm distracted. I feel alone. I feel not looked after. My heart has way too much room to run around and I have lost motivation to search for Him.
A community is important. Not having even one other person that you can go to with how your heart is doing and someone to keep you accountable with things is hard. Why do we even need people, He is everywhere and He is watching and can keep us accountable, so why would we need people to help us do these things. We are created to be social and to have a community to cry and laugh with us. The spirit is strong when two or more are gathered. A community is safe. Camp is safe but it is not really a community. A community is open. Camp is really not that open. A community is fun. Camp is fun but it is not joyful.
How do we find these people? When we are unsafe and insecure, well that's when we sometimes feel the Holy Spirit the most, because He is the only one who will keep us safe. So do we go out and ask people or do we slip it into a conversation? Sometimes its harder to find or create these conversations , merely because YMCA Camp Surf can not get too deep, and so everything is surface, and small talk. I think we all like to go deep but when someone or something is telling us how to act and think and speak it is hard to find the inner being of others and we loose own inner being.
A community is important to have real talks, joy, understanding, love, goofiness, selflessness, compassion, support, etc. These are the things we have to create sometimes if we can not find it.
Sunday, June 3, 2012
You are taken care of!
Sometime we feel over looked, not important, forgotten. When we feel this way we sometimes doubt God, and ask or yell at Him asking Him "Where are you?!" and it seems like he doesn't hear us or answer us.
I just got back from San Francisco. I got to bike across the Golden Gate Bridge. We biked all the way to the Redwood Forest, which is not too far away. After a long bike ride we got to the hugest, oldest, prettiest Redwood forest. You look up and they just tower over you.
The Redwood forest is located on the Pacific Coast from central California to southern Oregon, lives up to 2,000 years, weigh up to 1.6 million pounds (730,000 kilograms), grow up to 367 feet (111.2 meters) tall, diameter up to 22 feet (6.7 meters), bark thickness up to 12 inches (30 centimeters), foliage is single, non-overlapping needles .5 to 1 inch long, reproduction by seed or sprout, tallest tree located in Redwood National and State Park, they are the tallest trees in North America.
Earlier I talked about how we feel small and over looked and even by God we may feel like this. As I looked up to the top of these trees, I thought, we think that we are not taken care of and He takes care of these trees and has taken care of these trees for hundreds of years. Why would we doubt that He is not going to take care of us.
It says in Psalms 139:13-18
For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
How precious to me are your thoughts, God!
How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand —
when I awake, I am still with you.
HE THINKS OF YOU!
It also says...
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life"
“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Matt 6:25-36
He takes care of the birds and the flowers. He loves us more than the birds and the flowers, so
HE WILL TAKE CARE OF YOU.
You will grow tall. You will grow strong. You will grow with roots in the Lord if you take His gift of life. Be a Redwood tree, stand tall and do not worry.
I just got back from San Francisco. I got to bike across the Golden Gate Bridge. We biked all the way to the Redwood Forest, which is not too far away. After a long bike ride we got to the hugest, oldest, prettiest Redwood forest. You look up and they just tower over you.
The Redwood forest is located on the Pacific Coast from central California to southern Oregon, lives up to 2,000 years, weigh up to 1.6 million pounds (730,000 kilograms), grow up to 367 feet (111.2 meters) tall, diameter up to 22 feet (6.7 meters), bark thickness up to 12 inches (30 centimeters), foliage is single, non-overlapping needles .5 to 1 inch long, reproduction by seed or sprout, tallest tree located in Redwood National and State Park, they are the tallest trees in North America.
Earlier I talked about how we feel small and over looked and even by God we may feel like this. As I looked up to the top of these trees, I thought, we think that we are not taken care of and He takes care of these trees and has taken care of these trees for hundreds of years. Why would we doubt that He is not going to take care of us.
It says in Psalms 139:13-18
For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
How precious to me are your thoughts, God!
How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand —
when I awake, I am still with you.
HE THINKS OF YOU!
It also says...
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life"
“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Matt 6:25-36
He takes care of the birds and the flowers. He loves us more than the birds and the flowers, so
HE WILL TAKE CARE OF YOU.
You will grow tall. You will grow strong. You will grow with roots in the Lord if you take His gift of life. Be a Redwood tree, stand tall and do not worry.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)