Avoiding Evil

I don’t know if anyone else has noticed, but life is passing by faster than I ever had imagined it would. I remember when I was a kid the summer months went by so slow. Time eeked along and it seemed like summer break was an eternity long. Now at the prime age of 26 life is moving so fast that I am just trying to hold on as tight as I can to try and keep everything together. Summer, winter, fall, and spring are all just small segments of time that I have to categorize things into so that I can get everything done that needs to be done. In the summer I am balancing the Youth mission trip, youth activities, seminary summer classes, vacation bible school, Southern Baptist Convention, and weekly church responsibilities with actually getting any type of personal life outside of the hustle and bustle of the summer schedule. Once I squeeze work, school, and a dating life into the mix I have very little time for just me. I have found that this is not just a pattern that I have developed, but adults, teens, and children alike have taken on too much this summer. We are all going and doing too much, too fast. As I pondered this today I realized that things happen so fast that I have very little time to just sit and think and very little time to realize what God is doing in my life. I am too busy to notice the blessings that God has given me. So I have decided to take a moment to think about some of the blessings that God has given me this summer.

First off I believe that the church I am currently serving in is part of God’s greater plan for my life. The people I work with and the people in our church are wonderful, good hearted people who I love dearly. While our church has its issues like any other church it actually deals with fairly little conflict and lots of grace and mercy. Even in the midst of busy schedules and poor attendance the youth program is doing great this summer. We are preparing to leave exactly one week from today on our youth mission trip with 45 people. I believe God is preparing my heart and the hearts of others on this trip to do some pretty awesome things and I look forward to that. I realized this year that our church is very blessed. We have enough money and support each year to send our teenagers on mission trips and there are many churches that can barely scrounge up enough money to send their students to a cheap camp, much less a mission trip out of state. I decided that I would reserve extra space this year, more than I normally get, and then invite other churches that I know don’t send their teens on mission trips. I prayed that God would fill those spaces and as of right now we almost have all 45 spaces filled. About 7 teens from other churches are getting to go on their first mission trip. I believe God gives us blessings and resources so that we are not just helping ourselves, but so that we can bless those around us. I believe God has great things in store and I can’t wait.

Secondly I would have to say that God has really blessed me in my personal relationships. I have strong Christian friends who stand by me and support me and even take large portions of their own time to help me out in ministry at church. Just this evening I had several friends over for a fish fry and we just sat around and talked. It is good to have people to confide in and to have fellowship with, especially Godly people who continue to help build me up. I also have to say that I have a wonderful girlfriend who far surpasses anyone I have dated. I did come to a point in my life that I became fed up with dating and told God I was done with it. I asked God to not let me date anyone else, unless it was someone special and a year later that happened. I’ve never been happier in a relationship and to be honest I have never had a more Godly, Christ-centered relationship than the one I have now. To have Godly friends and a Godly relationship is so beyond me that I believe it is only in the hands of God that I could be where I am today. I look at myself and know that I don’t deserve any of it.

Thirdly I would have to say that God has really blessed me in giving me the ability to do things and to be a part of things that I never would have experienced on my own. This year will be my 10th mission trip since I graduated high school, I’ve got to go to the MoBap convention, the Southern Baptist Convention, I’ve got to travel all over the U.S. and I’ve got to experience and meet some of the greatest minds, theologians, and pastors in our day and I get to be influenced and mentored by my own pastor. By the time I was 19 I had preached sermons, made hospital visits, led worship, and experienced many of the things that take place in ministry and since that time I have had excellent opportunities to do so much. I think I take a lot of that for granted and I shouldn’t. God has really blessed.

I think the fourth and last thing I will share tonight is that God has blessed my life in struggle and pain. Now that may not sound like it is very good because no one really wants to experience strife, persecution, struggles, and painful experiences and yet it is through these trials that I have grown beyond what I once was. My family is far from being what anyone would consider a Christian family and I grew up farther away from the church and Godly things than most people. While I knew very little about church as a kid, it wasn’t until my Jr. year in high school that I really started to go to church and understand anything. My family didn’t and still doesn’t go to church and the influences and friends I have had through the years have never led me down a very spiritual path, at least until I met a couple people in band. They talked me into going to church and from that time on I took a very different path than the rest of my family. God changed my heart and who I was, and yet it wasn’t easy to stand up against everything I had become. I gave up my friends, my job, and the respect of others to follow a path that seemed distant from the rest of the world and yet I never felt so full of life. But I found out that even in the midst of spiritual things, darkness lurks around every corner. Even people who seem to be spiritual and people who seem like they have it all together can actually be living in darkness. Unfortuanly I found that there are those who can hurt you so deeply that you want to give up. Even in ministry, even people you trust so fully can betray you and everything you ever knew for their own perverted, godless paths and leave you stranded and alone and confused. Instead of giving up though I turned to another path and began to read and read and read and the more I read God’s word the more I understood that it is not in man that I place my trust but in God alone. Man fails and will fail, but God will never fail. This of course was not the last painful lesson I learned, but over the years it probably was one of the most painful. Through struggle and pain God shapes us into the people he wants us to be. That is a tough lesson to learn, but it is a blessing none the less.

Think about how God has blessed your life and feel free to share in the comments.

Thank you Lord Jesus for the blessing you give in life and I pray that you would open my eyes to see all those things that you are doing in my life that I miss or ignore.