What Are We Holding On To?

Mark 6:7-9 -

"And He called unto Him the twelve, and began to send them forth by two and two; and gave them power over unclean spirits; and commanded them that they should take nothing for their journey, save a staff only; no scrip, no bread, no money in their purse; but be shod with sandals; and not put on two coats."

Being followers of Christ, whether it be at home or out in a foreign country, we know that we are all called to die to our selfish needs and be like Christ to others. While this passage speaks to me during my circumstances of being on a small team sent out from a bigger team onto a foreign mission field, this passage also applies to couples, families, kids in highschool; any Christians life really, considering that darkness is all around us, we are called to constantly be lights in this world. Here Chirst sends out His disciples in I guess we can call it, small groups. Before sending them out, He gives them power over the unclean spirits. Here we see that when we are going out into this world we need walk in the power of Chirst. We need to be faithful to recieve His power, that He wants to bestow upon us. If we know the fact that with Chirst all things are possible, then we should understand that without Christ, nothing is possible. While there are "good" people in this world, who love others, who go out and do volunteer work at hospitals and retirement homes, who take care of the homeless and the orphans, if they are not doing it for Christ, it will amount to nothing at the end of their lives. Continueing on in this passage, after He gives them His power, He tells them that they should take nothing with them but a staff and sandals and the clothes on their backs. After I read this, I quickly remembered that our God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. He tells them to keep a staff on them; do we know anyone who has used a staff because the Lord told them to? Here Christ is telling them what they need; shirt, pants sandals, staff and Him. God did amaizing things through men in the Old Testiment, and while I don't want to make extreme assumtions, I feel like most of these men had clothes, a staff, and God. Now I'm not saying that we need to all go out and buy staffs, but the picture here is very clear to me that all we need to serve Christ and to survive in this world is our clothes, our shoes our Lord, and what He has given us to use for His glory. While we all have spiritual gifts, we all have phyiscal gifts that we can use every day to bring glory to our Father, thats why He gave us these gifts in the first place. Like I said before, Our God is the same yesterday, today, and tomrrow, so if He told Joshua that He has given him every place that the sole of his foot will tread upon, and He has told us to not worry about what we will eat or wear because He feeds the foul of the air and He clothes the grass of the field, He will take care of us if we would allow Him to.

I will pray in the mornings that I will use the gifts God has given me to the fullest of my abilities!

The Lord Appoints Posistions In Ministry

Mark 5:19 & 43-           
        

          "Howbeit Jesus suffered him not, but saith unto him, "Go home to thy friends and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee"; And He charged       them straitly that no man should know it..."

As we all probably know, or at least can tell, there are many different roles or aspects that take part in the ministry. One thing that I, personally, have always dealt with, was the issue with asking God, "Why is that person in that posistion," or "Why am I not doing that?" When I was in, I believe, 10th grade, the youth pastor who had been teaching the newly developed middleschool/highschool aged teens, stepped down from his postition. I still have no idea why he stepped down, perhaps because he had been fed up with our immaturity, but when he stepped down, the senor pastors 19 year old son began to take over. Now, while I didn't know him personally, I knew enough about him to know that I didn't like him, and to know that when he and my older brother where in school together, he wasn't exactly the nicest kid around. Now, I am supposed to look up and respect this person who, in my mind, didn't have the best reprutation? wrong. At least thats what I told myself. Honestly, while he was still a student in the youth group I couldn't stand this kid. He was always so prideful in everything we seemed to do. The first year the youth group performed at our Chirstmas program, I couldn't stand how much this kid wanted to do everything up front on stage. He also became the worship leader, and once again I began to see this self centered attitude in the way he performed. One summer, the youth went to California for a Youth Camp. While there, he and I butted heads so much we could've given eachother comas; but it was probably after that year when I felt God tell me, "Jonathan, you know this to be true... that nobody wins with a headbutt." While that may sound a little silly, it made me ask, Why am I continuously butting heads with this guy? Why have I seemed to purposefully set it on my heart to do this? I needed a heart change. So I asked Him for it, and He gave it to me. Now, Nate has been leading our youth group for 3 or 4 years now, is married, and has done amazing things for our Church and our community, because he had listened to God. We don't know why God asks us to do some things. We don't know why He tells some to go and be a witness, and others to stay at home, but the truth is, we don't have to know. It's His plan and we need to obey whatever He tells us to do. He has something planned for everyone, so when He tells you to be a witness, be that witness for Him; and when He tells you to stay at home, you stay because He told you to.

Faith Can Move The Mountains We Need To Overcome

Matthew 21:21-

"And Jesus answered them and said unto them, 'Verily I say unto you, if you have fatih, and doubt not, you shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if you shall say unto this mountain, be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done'."

As this is the start of our first week of our feild time here in Guatemala, I can already see the enemy trying to attack in anyway he can, whether it be from sickness, or just the smallest things like making the decision on which board game to play. Of course the last thing we as a team want is any kind of division among ourselves, however as every team who has gone before has told us, "You are going to get tired, you are going to rub one another wrongly, and there will be times when you do not get along with eachother as a team." Yesterday while out into to town I joking brought up that fact, saying that we should start hating eachother now, that way we can spend the last four months learning to love eachother and end on a high note. However, after making that comment I remembered Philippians 4:12-13- "I know how to be abased and I know how to abound, in everywhere and in all things I haved learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." And then it hit me; I don't know what will come ahead and I don't know exactly what the other teams went through, but I need to know that whatever is going to come my way, that If I trust on my God, Christ, that He will lead me on the straight an narrow path and I will not wander astray, and if we all (Team Guat.) are trusting in Christ, putting 100% of our faith in Him, giving Him our all, we will never fall of the path He has set before us, and the firey darts from Satan will not be an issue. The Bible says that if we have faith the size of a mustard seed, we can tell a mountain to go for a swim and it will. I'm paraphrazing of course, but this is one of the many things that I know the Lord is going to teach me during my time on the field, the concept of having true faith in Him. I believe it starts with this team He has placed me in to be apart of.

Encourage my team in this truth. Let's be a team who keeps Christ first, not just as head knowledge.

I.B.S. #52

Psalm 133:1

- "Behold how good and how pleasant it is for the brethen to dwell together in unity."

This verse, I believe, encapsulates this weeks theme of unity. In the sense that when we as believers, brothers and sisters in Christ dwell, fellowship, reside in uinty, it will be pleasant. This makes me think of heaven and how we will be in constant unity, and life will be pleasant and good. While we will be physically united with God, and there will be no way for sin or anything of the devil to reside with us, we can do the same spiritually here on earth. If every individual in a group of Christians would have their hearts centered on Christ, then there will be perfect unity. Our God never changes, He has shown us that this has happened before, so we know it is possible today. Knowing that we can reach this pleasantness and goodness of being unified with eachother and with Christ, I think we should be purposing it in our hearts to achieve this goal. For each of our teams, as we are all going out in a week or so, to always keep it in our minds that we won't be unified as a group in Christ is not the center of everything that we are doing. The number one thing we need to remind ourselves is to seek Him first, and let Him take control of ourselves. He's going to do wonders in all of us, so let's all take a step back and let Him work, so that we may be a blessing to others.

Appologize to all for being a jerk sometimes, I need to work on stepping back and not trying to grab back onto the wheel. Pray everyday for everyone in Class #6.

I.B.S. #51

Acts 2:46-47

- "And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart. Praising God, and having favour with all the people. And the Lord added to the Church daily as should be saved."

Here we see that when we have Christ as the center, when we fellowship with eachother and keep Him as our conversation or continually love eachother as He did unto us, we will want to remain in fellowship with others. Here we see that after all has passed, they go with one another, together, to the temple to eat yet while they are eating, they are still praising God and being lights to one another. It's funny how sometimes we, at least as guys, can go out together for a Bible study or a night of accountablility, and leave the place with a completely different mindset than we had going in. For example, last thursday we went to McDonald's after dinner for Ice Cream, where Elijah shared his message on... exactly, honestly I don't remember off the top of my head what he shared on exactly. It was a great message and I learned from it, I can tell you that I learned how important it is to give everything up to God, but I'm sure that was just part of his message. The first thing that just came to my mind just now about that night, was the thought, "You know, that McDonalds plays some dope music." They had a little BackStreetBoys, Beyonce, Katy Perry, Adele, and I left with Timbaland stuck in my head. All this confession to say that when we don't keep the conversation around Christ, it's easy to get off track. Now don't get me wrong, Elijah didn't plan for them to play dopesauce music, but when we go to fellowship with others, we need to check our own hearts and make sure that we keep Christ as the center, because I'm sure there was something he taught on, that I heard, but then quickly went out the other ear to make space for I Want It That Way.

Write "Be Alert" on my hand.

I.B.S. #50

Acts 2:44-45

- "And all that believed were together, and had all things in common; and sold their possesions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need."

This is going to sound alot like my last I.B.S. for the reason that here we see that through the power of the Holy Spirit, all the bleievers were brought together. It then says that they all had things in common, and I think the one thing that all believers need to have in common, just one thing, thier love for Christ. First off, if we don't have a true love for Chirst, then we won't ALL be brought together in that love. This of course points back to what I wrote on yesterday in that we need to examine our own hearts and make sure we are doing our role as part of the body of Christ. I do believe it helps for beievers to have some common interests, so that we can grow together in that way, but at the end of it all we need to find the roots in our relationship in Jesus Christ. Now the second verse here is something I found really cool, and is something I see still going on in the Church today. As we are unified in Christ, we see a family type bond take place, and if there's one thing my family does, it's helping others out in their times of need. Meaning, when we as the body of Christ see a brother or sister in need, physical or spirititual, and we know we can help that person, we need to be. It takes us right back to J.O.Y. if the other is in need and you can help them, you should, especially if you feel the Lord telling you that He wants you to do so.

Look for ways to help out my friends and family, even in the little things.

I.B.S. #49

Acts 2:43

- "And fear came upon every soul: and many wonders and signs were done by the apostles."

This verse here is reffering to the Holy Spirit, and the power that the apostles attained by truely fearing the Lord. At first glance of reading this verse, I wasn't sure of how we can see an example of this weeks theme "Unity" clearly. However, I believe that this verse is showing me that when everyone in the ministry has Christ as the center of their hearts, He uses the Holy Spirit to move in amaizing ways we could never expect. We need to remember that the only way that we can have true unity with man, is if our heart with Christ are in alinement. Of course I believe thats a very difficult task for us, but when our hearts with Christ are in check, everyones hearts, there will be a perfect unity and we will all be used by the Spirit. Again, our hearts need to be inline with Chirst, we need to check our own hearts for this, we can't look at someone else and tell them that they need to fix thier hearts. We can only control what we do, lets allow the Spirit to control us.

Encourage my team to continue to die to self daily, and to check our hearts so that there will be perfect Unity in our team now and in the field.