Following God

I am blessed with a number of friends that are serving overseas in the missions field. Some of my favorite mail and email is the letters that I receive from people abroad. Although they are people, plain and simple, being in the stretching situation of living in a country where everything is foreign to them brings forth some amazing insights.

I got this from a friend overseas (I can’t give name or location because I don’t want to jeopardize any of their ministry efforts). It is a testimony about how amazing God is and how God works when we allow him to lead us:

“I have been challenged to follow Jesus above all ministry demands and rewards. In this process, I have seen more clearly that the One I follow is going before me. He is taking me places that the “Christian crowds� might not initially see. They are quiet places. They are lonely places. They are deep places. They are holy places. As I follow Him, my enjoyment of Him increases, my marriage becomes stronger, my love for my children deeper, my sense of contentment fuller, my response to situations more Christ-filled. Surely, “He is with us always.��

I hope, someday that I will be able to follow God recklessly. Often, I am so comfortable and afraid to venture where God is really working. I am seeing that the places he works aren’t usually filled with smiling, singing people as much as they are filled with people hurting and seeking something new. I am beginning to think that His work doesn’t involve big worship services and well planned technical cues as much as it involves a listening ear and some words of hope.

I think that is why I have been down lately. I am so caught up in silly, busy things that I have forgotten to spend time with people. I have been spending all my energy trying to change a church that doesn’t want to change but have been forgetting that the crowd won’t move in a direction, unless the individuals start moving in a direction.

Well, anyway, it is late and I better get some sleep. Some good things to ponder though…

Mike

Heading to the Great White North!!

It has been very nice being off the last couple of days from work (I had a bunch of vacation to burn that I lose at the end of the year).  Going to bed and getting up late has been very nice (I am really a night owl forced to live among the day people).

Well tomorrow that will not be the case because I’m heading to my parents.  Being one to not want to waste the entire day driving, I have made the resolve to pick up Cari and head out at 6:00 AM.  The hope is that we won’t have to look at Iowa because it will be dark until we get to Wisconsin—or as I like to call it “The Promised Land”.

 

It will be good, though.  To see my family, hills, pine trees and STARS! will be good.  I have been itching to get home for some time.  As much as I believe that living in the city has so many benefits (and that the majority of people on earth should really live compactly in the city for ecological reason) I do miss so many things of living in the country—particularly the ‘north woods’. 

 

It should also be an adventure for Cari as well.  She has not met my family yet and it was decided that she also needs to drive a tractor and shoot a gun while we are thereJ.  It will be fun J.

 

Anyway, I hope that everyone has a great Christmas!

 

Mike

We're Being Watched

The other day I was driving home after work, listening to ‘The World’ a radio news program by BBC and Public Radio.

They had an article on website (www.watchingamerica.com) where news stories about the United States, from news sources around the world, are compiled.

Being someone that is kind of a questioner, particularly of many of the actions we seem to be taking as a country lately, I have been looking for a source of information like this. Now I realize that many of the views that are expressed are probably not true, but they are expressed (and thus felt), nonetheless. It is at least is interesting but at most, a place like this can be a great tool to help critically think about how our actions as a society (that we are either oblivious to, or choose to ignore because looking would be too much of an inconvenience) affect people around the world.

Mike