One more thought...

Something I read in an Oswald Chambers devotional a few weeks ago, that has been on my mind constantly, and that I write everywhere these days...

God doesn't always show you what He's going to do, but He always shows you who He is. So as we draw near to Him, and allow Him to reveal Himself to us, we begin to walk with Him, and we begin to see God's will as we learn to see Him.

Don't just ask "God, give me a job to do." Ask, "God, show me what's on Your heart."

How Far Can God Take You?

So often, we go around totally weighed down by the cares and concerns of just getting through life. We worry so much about ourselves, about our reputation, our image, our future, and all the stuff that God tells us to leave up to Him. But we keep taking it back, hording it for ourselves, so afraid to take our eyes off of our worries and fears, lest they become so huge and unmanageable that they just overwhelm us.

Let me tell you something. That is no way to live! I want to live for more than just the day to day. I want to do more than just get by. I believe that God has a divine purpose for me, for you, and for everyone else in this world. If we will just seek Him every day, if we will just lay ourselves down and realize that He is all we really need--realize that the best place to be is in His perfect will--we will begin to live our lives touched by His power and anointing.

One thing you absolutely have to remember, though, is that it's not going to happen when you try to do it on your own. Too many people have sat around waiting for God to tell them what to do, and when He finally shows them a part of His plan, they run off and try to "make it happen." With God, there is no "making it happen." We can't make it happen, because God always calls us to things that are far beyond our natural ability! He does this so that we will completely rely on Him, and to prevent us from thinking that we, in our natural strength, brought all these good things to pass.

It's important to ask God to show you His plan for your life. But let me tell you something that's even more important: asking God to show you Himself. God will always guide you into His perfect will when you will let Him lead you. He will not always show you the big picture right away. Why? Because the "big picture" is way too big for us to handle right now! If you or I had any idea what God wants to do with us down the road, we would either be totally overwhelmed, or we would just laugh and say "that won't happen." And even if we stepped out in faith and trusted God to help us accomplish His will, we would become so far-sighted, so goal oriented, that we'd become consumed with the task at hand and ignore the peace and the joy that only comes from real, genuine fellowship with the Holy Spirit. God has incredible things for us to do, but we won't do any of it if that's what we focus on. We have to focus on Jesus.

"What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all--how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? ... Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? ... No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us." - Romans 8:31-32,35,37

So many times we look at our lives and say "What could God do with me? I'm too weak. I'm to young. I'm too old. I'm too shy. I'm too obnoxious. I'm too unpopular. I'm too sinful. I didn't come from a good family. If He uses me, it will only be for some minor, trivial thing." We've all had thoughts like these. But don't dwell on them! You know why? Because if you are dwelling on thoughts like these, you aren't focusing on who Jesus is, and on what He has done for you. God gave us His Son so that we could live through Him, so that we could be redeemed from all the corruption that seeped into the human condition when man fell in the garden. God's salvation is total and complete, and as we renew our minds to His Word and ask to be transformed into His image, we start to become like Him. We don't do His will by doing it our way. We get close to Jesus, He makes us like Him, and as we become more like Him, we start doing the things that He did.

What did Jesus do? He did everything He saw His Father doing. He walked in the power of the Holy Spirit every day. He was able to reach out and relate to every single person He came in contact with--from wealthy but sinful tax collecters, to ordinary fishermen (they would have probably been your typical, blue-collar working class folks in our time), down to the lepers and the prostitutes--the people that society would tell you were unlovely and unlovable. He "went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil" (Acts 10:38). He changed peoples lives. His presence set people free. His touch brought people healing. His words gave revelation that has shaped the course of history.

The closer we get to Jesus, the closer we get to doing the things that Jesus did. You may not go back to school this fall and walk on water or multiply cafeteria food for all your friends (who would want to do that anyway?), but you can certainly begin to walk in the power of the Holy Spirit just like Jesus did. He's reaching out to you. He's knocking at your heart, asking you to invite Him in, and if you will consecrate yourself to Him, if you will tell Him "Lord, I want to see my friends changed. I want to see people healed, delivered, and set free. Use me however you want to." there's no telling what He will do in and through you.

How far will God take you? He will take you as far as you are willing to go. He's unconcerned with your background. He isn't looking at your weaknesses. Most important to remember, He isn't concerned with your strengths, either, because your strengths are not the tools that He will use to glorify His name. No, He's going to get involved in your life, and He is going to work through you as you yield yourself to Him.

Want your life to be an adventure? Want to see something beyond the dull day-to-day routine of maintaining the status quo? Then get on your knees and tell Him "only You," and stay that way every single day.

Tonight

What's up guys? Tonight is Decision! I'm just about finished and ready for tonight. It's gonna be great. God's been laying quite a few things on my heart about where he wants to take us. About what He sees you doing and what He is expecting from us as a youth ministry. We are going to get into God's presence tonight and engage our hearts with His. Get ready!

Can't wait to see you all,

Andy

Obedience

OK, so in my devotional this morning I read about obedience and the story of the apostle Paul being converted to Christianity. Read Acts 9 1-22. Saul(Paul) is out persecuting and killing Christians and Jesus appears to Him. Saul is instantly transformed and says, Lord what do you want me to do?"

A lot of times in our relationship with God we get so consumed with trying to please God and work our way to heaven, that we forget He already loves us. We can't do anything to get more love from Him. We get so consumed trying to figure out what God wants us to do, that we miss Him all together.

Listen...Jesus is completely in love with you. You are His. All He's looking for is for someone to stop, ask Him what He wants, and be obedient. He is looking for obedience.

Some of you might say, "But I don't know what His plan for my life is yet." Let me tell you. The first thing He wants you to be obedient to is simply loving Him and His Word. And what does His Word boil down to? Loving people. Truly caring about them.

This is obedience. This is where we start. Obey His Word. As you do He will begin to light the way you should walk and the plan to pursue. It's that easy. So be obedient. Love people. Saul became the Apostle Paul and preached the Gospel around the World. He wrote most of the New Testament, and it was all because He was obedient to loving people!

-Andy

Leave a Comment

What's Up Everybody? Just wanted to let everyone know that if you want to leave a comment you need to create a user name and password on blogger. It's real easy. Just click comment under a post and you'll see the instructions. I know some of you were wondering how to do it.

Talk to ya tomorrow

Lose your weight

Hope everyone had a good day. Just wanted to take a moment and encourage you to stay close to God and keep trusting Him. In our everyday life it's real easy to stop and forget about Him. Sometimes we don't even know we are doing it. We get so busy with things we forget about time and pretty soon it's time for lights out. Then we remember, "O ya...God" At least I know what it's like.

I used to think that sin was the only thing that separated me from God, but there are other things. They are called weights (Heb 12:1) The things that are always on our mind as well as things that aren't necessarily bad, but that take our time and focus. Be careful everyday to not let you hearts and minds be weighed down by these things. We have a good God who loves us and wants to help us overcome in life. If we can keep our focus on Him throughout the day and go to Him when things start getting frustrating or confusing, we will find ourselves in a lot better shape.

God is always good. He has great plans for each of us, but if we let cares and weights burden us down instead of casting them to Him, it can callous our hearts from the things of the Spirit and erode us inside.

So take time each day, throughout the day and talk to God. He will help you because He loves you all the time.

Andy

New Stuff My Friends

Hey Everyone! I hope you are all having a great week. New Videos are now up. There are 5 new ones. Listen to the Tim Hawkins - Dress Barn Vid. It is hilarious.

I also found a new website called, tellyourtestimony.com
It's basically a Christian Myspace. I've just begun my account so go on and create one and be my friend. Mine is still in the works so it's not all cool looking, but it will be. It has pretty much all the same features as myspace. You can put videos and music playlists on it. And the great thing is it doesn't have all the dumb adds on it like Myspace or Facebook.

I will be writing tomorrow. Don't forget to check the online devo!

Andy

Tim Hawkins - The Dress Barn

This is the funniest

Tim Hawkins - Playground Mishaps

Nevertheless - The Real

Check them on music review or on the playlist

Barlow Girl - Never Alone

Baptism by Water Cooler

This is pretty funny. If you want to know how not to tell someone about Jesus, take notes!

"You Can't Find it Here." Why God, Not Other Stuff, is Your Only Answer. (Sorry, I know it's long...)

Do you know what it's like to have God transform your life? If you have experienced His life-changing power for even a moment, it's something that you won't ever forget. If you have ever witnessed His glory touch you where you are, if you have ever known what it is like to be in His presence, which is better than anything else by far, the desire to experience more of Him should become a permanent fixture in your life. No matter what happens in your life, you will never totally get away from the memory of that time when God came in and healed, restored, comforted, or forgave you.

So if the memory of what God has done in the past is so permanent, why does it so often feel like, as time goes on, the memory begins to fade and things go back to "normal"? Maybe there was a time when God moved in your life and you responded saying "Lord, I don't ever want to be the same again. After what You have done for me, I want to keep pursuing you. I don't ever want to look back." But now, as you grind through every day life, you begin to see your commitment fade, and you start to feel as though what God did yesterday was just a thing of the past--irrelevant to the trials and temptations that you are facing today.

If you have ever felt this way, you are not alone. But if this describes you, let me ask you an honest question...

How much of you does God have?

There is a certain desire that each one of us experiences very accutely. I don't quite know how to describe it (I don't know that anyone does), but it's a kind of longing that you just can't quench. Many people experience it in different ways. Most of us don't really understand it. But this longing often produces a feeling of emptiness, as if something is missing from our lives, even when, from every natural standpoint, our lives seem like they should be just fine.

Each one of us was created by God, in His image. And each of us was born into a fallen condition--separated from God, alienated from His presence. In the beginning, Adam literally walked with God. They just hung out in the Garden of Eden, and God would just explain stuff to Him! But obviously, things changed a little bit. Adam exchanged a perfect existence for a condition of spiritual death when He bought into Satan's lies. Adam and Eve began to look at the fruit that God forbade them to eat, and "saw that [it] was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom..." (Genesis 3:6). In other words, instead of letting God be their satisfaction, they took the desire that was meant for God alone and began to project it onto the things of this world. They let their hearts be turned from God until they were captivated by something else, and in doing this, they relinquished their authority in the Earth and allowed themselves to fall into a state of sin and rebellion.

It didn't have to be this way, and, because of God's mercy in sending Jesus to pay the price for our sin, it doesn't have to be this way with us, either. We have been redeemed by Jesus' blood, and that work is complete and final. God looks at us not as filthy sinners but as holy, pure, and righteous. But unfortunately, we still inherited all the habits and inclinations of the old self, and these need to be dealt with.

I want to get back to that "longing" that I was describing earlier. This desire, as you can see, is God-given. It is our hearts crying out to be near Him. It is God's way of drawing us to Himself. But how many times do we misunderstand the desire of our own hearts? How many times do we, like Adam and Eve, forget what we really want, and start to chase after all these other things that only lead us away from the One who loves us?

Instead of letting this desire cause us to cry out for more of God, we allow it to eat us up. We try to fill the hole with all kinds of things that will never fit, and when they don't work, we try something else. We'll try anything, and it can be anything from full blown addictions to everything under the sun, to something as trivial (or so we think...) as sports fanaticism (look, I'm getting better about baseball...really), 24/7 X-Box (did I say that!? Nahhhh.), and unhealthy relationships (and don't try to trick yourself about what is healthy and what is unhealthy, you're only going to hurt yourself that way). What I'm getting at is this. There are literally thousands of things that people will pursue--will even give their whole lives to--in order to satisfy this desire, and the whole time, they are missing the point. And we all do this, to some extent, every single day.

C.S. Lewis, one of my favorite writers of all time, puts it this way in Mere Christianity: "If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world...earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing."

Sometimes we think we want something so bad that we feel like we're going to die if we don't get it. Sometimes we go to great lengths and do ridiculous things to satisfy our own desires, not realizing that, no matter how hard or long we look, we are not going to find the answer. Instead, we idolize the things of this world, and we allow Satan to build a stronghold in our lives. We need to recognize this, and let God do something about it.

When we finally see that nothing in this world but God Himself can satisfy the desire that He has put in our heart, we will finally turn to Him to fill us with Himself, and that is exactly what He will do. When we invite the Holy Spirit into our lives, He removes all that isn't His. He will go as far as we let Him, but we need to invite Him - He will never force Himself on us. But when we turn from everything that we've been chasing, and we let go of all the other things that we thought would save us, we can turn to Him and ask Him to fill us completely. When He has all of us, we will have all of Him, because we were created for intimacy with Christ.

We need to come to a place where He is all we are longing for, and nothing in this world can substitute for the total fulfillment that we can only find in Him. We need to let Him synchronize our hearts with His, so that His desires become our desires, and we want only what He wants. When this happens, we will begin to see His glory come into our lives in a way that we have never experienced before. God's power is unlimited, and His goodness is unfathomable, and we can experience all of it to the degree that we surrender ourselves to Him and let Him have His way in us.

I want to end by describing something that has been getting me really, really excited lately. In Matthew 6:10, a passage commonly referred to as "The Lord's Prayer," Jesus instructs His disciples to pray this way: "Your kingdom come, Your will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven." We've all heard this before, but think about what that last line means. "On Earth as it is in Heaven." This is God's will for us. Imagine what that would look like! Just think about how it would be if every moment of your life transpired exactly as if you were in Heaven. Pretty amazing, right? Well that is exactly what this verse is talking about, and Jesus would not have told us to pray for this to happen if it was not His plan for our lives! But look what comes directly before it. "Your kingdom come, Your will be done." We aren't going to experience "On Earth as it is in Heaven" until we are willing to say "Your kingdom come, Your will be done." We aren't going to see the fullness of what God has for us until we are willing to let go and allow Him to have His way in our lives.

Let's start today. When you start to long for something that you don't understand, don't try to fill it up with all the junk of this world. Recognize that this is God's way of drawing you to Him. Turn your heart toward Him and cry out to Him. Ask Him to fill you up to overflowing. Ask Him to do whatever He wants to do in your life, and then let go and watch what He can do. Ask for His will to be done, get to the point where you are completely desperate for Him alone, and you will begin to see "On Earth as it is in Heaven" become a reality in your life.

Updates

Hello All,

Well Decision is back up and running after two weeks off. I've updated our slide show with new pics from our amazing Summer Getaway at Impact 08. I've also added some new bands to our Music Review section and updated the Artist review with two new bands. Keep listening to our playlist as well. There are new songs up. New Videos are coming soon!

In addition we have some new announcements. Check it out

Talk to ya tomorrow:)

Artist Review

Artist: War of Ages

Album: Arise and Conquer

Genre: Metal/Hardcore/Christian

Website: www.myspace.com/warofages

Listen: On our playlist or their site

Description: Hey everyone, this band is amazing. Not just because they are from our home town and church, but because they found their purpose and are using their talents to reach teenagers all around this world, literally. With leads that will make you wish you played guitar and lyrics that will lift you back up, your ears won't want to stop listening. Check our guys out and show them some love. They will have a CD release show soon. Details coming shortly.



Artist: Ivoryline

Album: There Came A Lion

Genre: Rock/Alternative/Indie

Website: http://www.purevolume.com/ivoryline

www.myspace.com/ivoryline

Listen: On our playlist or the links above.

Watch Video: Here

Hangout Night

Wed, July 30th will be a hangout night. Our mission team will be in Mexico, so our main man Kyle Rodney will be leading. This will be a good night to bring a friend and just have some fun!

Decision/Crosswalk Nights

Decision is Serving Crosswalk this summer. On July 16th and Aug 20th we are joining Crosswalk and hanging out with the future of Decision. We were all young children once. This is your chance to connect with some way awesome kids and help shape their world in a fantastic way. Don't miss this.

We will do worship in the Decision room and then take things outside (depending on weather) for a short lesson, games, and smores! Ya I said Smores! MMMMM!

Decision Seawolves Game

On Tuesday, August 5th, 2008 we are going to a Seawolves game for the finale of the Erie City Mission Youth Challenge. Sign up at Decision starting Wed July 9th. Sign ups end Wed, July 23rd.

Cost: $8 - All money due on July 23rd
-covers game and tailgate party

We will meet at the church at 5:00 PM and leave by 5:15PM. Tailgate party starts at 6PM. Game starts at 7:05. We will arrive back at the church approximately 10 - 10:15PM

Hope you can come!

Hey Everyone

Hey Everyone,

Just wanted to let you know I haven't forgot about the blog. Updates are coming soon. We just got back from Summer Getaway on Friday and it was amazing. We'll have pics and things soon. As well as updating our music and announcements

A reminder: Tomorrow there will be no Decision because we are having a church wide 4th of July Picnic. You don't want to miss. There will be dinner too.

Hope to see you all tomorrow.

Andy