Intimacy With God

This week we had the privilege of hearing from Shay Robbins who is a director of one of the Kanakuk Kamps. I loved listening to him because he is so passionate about the topic he spoke on, which was intimacy with God. We started by talking about seeking God, because if we are going to have intimacy with Him we need to seek Him. After that, we talked about how God speaks to us and the avenues He uses to do so. That was really convicting because it became clear why I haven’t heard from God a lot. It is because I haven’t been taking time to do things like really study His word or seek out Godly people to pour into me. If I want God to speak to me, I have to be willing to listen and make sure that  my heart is in a state where I can hear Him.  That leads right into the next thing Shay talked about, which is spiritual disciplines. The six that he talked about are:

1.     Study

2.     Solitude

3.     Meditation

4.     Fasting

5.     Prayer

6.     Simplicity

It was pretty convicting to see these and realize how poor of a job I am doing at practicing them. However, it was encouraging to hear how these things didn’t come easy for Shay either at first. For example, I am really bad at waking up early to have a quiet time. When my alarm goes off, the last thing I want to do is get out of bed. When Shay first started having his quiet time in the morning, he struggled with the same thing. In fact, it took him six months of pure discipline before waking up early became a passion. Now he says there are days where he can’t wait to wake up and spend time with God. It is nice to know that I am not the only one who struggles at that discipline. Sometimes it seems that everything comes easy for older wiser people, but Shay had six months of not wanting to wake up early before it became easy. It is also encouraging that if we are disciplines and really focus on getting better at something, it will become easier.

 Hearing that right before Christmas break was great timing because during breaks is when it is the hardest to manage those spiritual disciplines.

That ends my first semester at Link Year. Thanks for those of you who have been following this blog throughout the year. I really appreciate it!

Make Today Count

One thing that I have really been working on while at Link Year is managing my time and getting the most out of every day. I’m so tired of letting day after day go by without any growth because I waste my time on things that have no value. After talking through this with my mentor, he gave me a book to read that completely changed how I view each day. The book is called Make Today Count by John C. Maxwell. If you struggle at all with managing your days and getting the most out of them I highly suggest reading it. In it he goes through what he calls his daily dozen. They are the 12 things that he makes sure he focuses on every day. They are:

Attitude

Priorities

Health

Family

Thinking

Commitment

Finances

Faith

Relationships

Generosity

Values

Growth

For each one of those he goes through a few points on how to make the decision to improve in all those areas daily. However, he doesn’t stop there, because he knows that making the decision to improve is only a small part. He also goes into how to manage the discipline of improving. I love how he focuses on that because I’m so bad at managing the disciplines necessary to improve. One of my favorite things that he said in his book was, “Neglect enough todays and you will experience the “someday” you’ve wanted to avoid.” That is so true and it is why I really want to take advantage of every day. If I continue to go through my days without a purpose, then before I know it my life will be wasted and I will have hardly accomplished anything. My goal by the end of Link year is to incorporate these twelve things into my daily routine. I obviously won’t have them mastered by then, but my hope is that I will at least have a good start.

Another cool thing about this week is that we did something called Link Year Gives Back. Throughout the week we served at different places around Branson. One of the places that I went was the local food pantry. It was neat because we were able to help them out a lot and accomplish tasks that they simply didn’t have time to do. I loved seeing how grateful they were for the few hours of work we put in. While serving there, one thing that I realized was it doesn’t take much to have a big impact on those around me. All it took was sacrificing a few hours out of my week. I hope to go back in the weeks to come and continue having an impact on that organization.

That is all I have for this week! 

Thanks for reading! 

Do We Need to Rethink How We do Mission Trips?

Here I am, the week after Thanksgiving with only 2 weeks left before Christmas break... and then my year here at Link is half over. Looking back it is crazy how far I have come already in past few months. My understanding of the Bible, the Gospel, and my faith is so much greater than it was in September. However, there is still so much to learn and I am looking forward not only to the remainder of Link Year but also the years to come because my learning will not stop when I leave.

One of the things that has challenged me a lot while being at Link Year was Urban Entry, which took place the week before Thanksgiving break. For one week we went into a poor community in Kansas City and did mission work at a place called the Hope Center. What really challenged me was actually not seeing a poor community because I have gone on multiple mission trips to poor areas, including one to Africa. It was how the trip was set up that really made me think of my heart behind going. In every mission trip I had been on up to this point, it seemed as though the organization we went to serve ended up serving us in many ways. Now that sounds crazy, but the more I think about it the more I am convinced that is how it was. For example, I've been on three mission trips to Peoria, Illinois where we worked at an inner city mission and also out at a summer camp. Every year I went our hosts at the camp made sure we had a comfortable place to sleep, plenty of snacks to eat and Gatorade to drink, and big meals to eat. The result of this is each year I would go back, I was looking forward to those things often times more than actually serving. I went thinking about how much fun I would have and how I would enjoy all the things provided for me. In essence, the trip became about me and the experience that I would have. Not that it is bad to have fun on a mission trip or to enjoy the things provided for us, but if that is the sole reason why we enjoy going, there is a problem. And maybe the mission trips you have been on were not like the experiences that I had, and that is great because you probably figured this out a lot sooner than I did.
It was not until a little over a week ago that the way I approached mission trips was revolutionized for a couple reasons. First of all, we slept (all 30 guys) in a small basement on a cement floor. So it was crowded, uncomfortable, and did not smell all that great. Secondly, at the beginning of the week we were given tickets with which we would "buy" our meals and showers. As I'm sure you can imagine, we were not given enough tickets that we could spend them on everything we wanted. We had to budget them well all week or the last couple days we would have been broke. Because of this system I never felt full all week. Now don't get me wrong, I had plenty to eat by the standards of most of the world, it just wasn't what I was used to, especially since one of the meals I ate was a bowl of rice and beans. So what do all these things have to do with changing how I think about mission trips? It's simply this: I would honestly never say if I went back that I would be looking forward to the hard floors to sleep on or the smaller portions of food to eat than I was used to. Be careful not to misunderstand me here. I definitely would still look forward to going. I just would not look forward to the conditions. That is how I wish more missions trips were set up. Why? Because every time I was tempted to complain or think negative thoughts about sleeping on a cement floor or being hungry, I had to check my heart about why I was there. Was I there just so I could be comfortable and have a fun experience or so I could serve others? It also made me rely on God's power to have a good attitude and be able to serve others with all my energy. You see, in all the mission trips I had been on earlier, it was so easy to make them about me. I did not need God's power to have a good time because I was always comfortable. If I had made Urban Entry about me and not about serving, it honestly would have been one of the worst weeks of my life. I would have been tired, hungry, and pretty grumpy. Thankfully, I was able to get over having it be about me and loved serving.
Please don't think that I have this all figured out. It will always be a struggle to take the focus off myself in whatever I do. I simply now have a goal for how I want to approach every mission trip I participate in from now on.

Hope that challenges your heart behind mission trips as much as it did mine.

Thanks for reading!