Life Retreat 2009

There is something about being in the mountains that the Lord uses every time to draw me closer to him. I love it, the view from the YMCA of the Rockies in Estes Park is just Phenomenal. I took these pictures sitting on the porch at the Administration Building. This building was the first building to be built here in 1910, crazy! The YMCA of the Rockies owns over 850 acres up here, just beautiful. God has been working in my heart this week, and i know that He’s been working in the hearts of our students. I’m so thankful and blown away by his creation.

The Cost of Ministry

Sometime last Saturday night someone got my car, Pastor Grants Car, Pastor Adams yard with forks, Pastor Curtis’s car, and Pastor Jeff’s Car with gummy worms. Pretty funny!

Funny Story

This morning I was on my way to work and pulled through the drive through at Taco Johns to get one of their amazing meat and potato breakfast burritos.  I opened my wallet to pay and I realized that someone had stolen all 4 of my card out of my wallet.  My personal debit carts, personal credit card, and the daddy of them all the church credit card.  So I’m freaking out all morning, calling the banks and credit card companies getting everything canceled.  I figured out that someone had stolen it from the fitness center while Aubrey and I were working out last night.  I called fitness one to see if they had video footage of someone stealing my credit cards and they said they had found my cards lying on the ground somewhere.

We were still convinced that someone stole them and maybe just decided to not take them because there were video cameras all around.  So the fitness center instructed me to file a police report, I did all of that and she said she was sure that they would be able to catch whoever did it.  About 20 minutes later I get a call from fitness one.  Here’s how the call went:

“Well we looked at the footage and it looks like when you pulled out your wallet to check in with your fitness card your credit cards fell out onto the ground.  While you were working out someone found them and returned them to the desk.  The cards never made it to the locker”

Man I feel like a dork,

Andy

The Determination of David

This morning while I was reading in my devotions I came across one of my favorite stories in the scripture.  It’s the story of David attempting to bring the Ark of the Covenant back to Jerusalem.  David becomes king and his first order of business was to refocus the nation of Israel.  The Ark of the Covenant is where the presence of the Lord was in the Old Testament but the Philistines stole it some years earlier in a battle with the Israelites.  One piece of advice, never steal the Ark of the Covenant, because when the Philistines stole it everyone in their town broke out in disease.  So the Ark got dropped off at some guys house and just kind of stayed there for about 30 years.

David was determined to go get the Ark of the Covenant but the problem was he put it on a “new cart”.  The problem was David failed to follow the specific instructions that God gave to Moses about how to transport the Ark.  So David didn’t listen, screwed up and a guy died because of his mistake.  David got frustrated with the whole thing and dropped the Ark off at another guys house.  About 3 months later David was told how much blessing that was poured out on this guy’s household that had the Ark left at his house.

What I love about David is that he learned from his mistake.  He screwed up the first time, made a pretty significant mistake.  But he picked himself up, went back to get the Ark and this time followed the instructions God had given Moses hundreds of years earlier.  I think failure is a part of life.  If we never learn from our mistakes, suck it up, and try it again we’ll never go on to the great things that God had for us.

Challenged,

Andy

Unqualified?

I love the story of Elijah and Elisha. It is so good and so much to learn from this story. But you have these two prophets, Elijah is like the experienced Prophet and Elisha is the young guy who will take over some day. The story comes to a head where Elisha realizes that God is going to take Elijah away from him and he’s going to be the prophet everyone looks to. The problem is, Elisha knows that he’s under qualified. He knows it, but what I love about Elisha is that he is seeking God. He basically asks Elijah for a double portion of his spirit when he is taken up to heaven. The scholars (not me) agree that Elisha was not asking for more of God’s spirit because he wants to be more recognized but because he realizes that he is going to take over and doesn’t know how he’s going to do it, he knows that he isn’t qualified to take the job.

Most of us first off need to realize that we are not qualified. Then when we do realize that part of it, we need to start seeking God because other people’s souls are relying on it. We are not qualified, I know I am not. That is exactly why we need to start and continue to seek God, because without his spirit, we will remain unqualified.

Amazing Leadership

Grant and myself just returned from Bear-tooth Mountain Christian Ranch in Montana.  We had to go up there for a Denominational Orientation Week, and I’ll be the first on to admit I was not excited about going.  We met some really cool people and it turned out to be a great refresher for the both of us.  One of the nights we were there I heard one of the best sermons I’ve ever heard from our Conference Superintendent, who’s name is Dale Erbele.  Dale recently lost his wife to brain cancer and has had a rough year, but he spoke to us and there were some things I was just blown away by in his message and the delivery of his message.

I spent two semesters studying Homiletics, or in understandable terms, preaching class.  Dale broke about every rule there is when delivering a sermon, but everybody in the room hung on every word he said.

1.  People listen to you when they respect you: An easy trap to fall into is to demand peoples respect, Dale didn’t have to demand anything, he has earned people’s respect.  What a good lesson for us, may we serve people to a point where they respect us for who we are and what we stand for.

2.  Old age is no excuse for being irrelevant: Dale is probably in his 70’s, and most of the 70 year old people I’ve heard speak are completely irrelevant and have no concept of our current culture.  Not Dale, he’s a man that loves the Lord and is more passionate than ever about reaching people.  He may be retiring from his “job”, but he hasn’t stopped being passionate about serving the Lord.  Regardless of how old we are, we better never stop serving the Lord.

3.  Speaking from the heart is more important than following the “rules”: I understand the importance of speaking in a certain way as to hold my audiences attention.  That’s why I only preached 22 minutes in church a few weeks ago.  But if we want people to hear us and respect us for that matter, we’ve got to be real with them.  Dale was so transparent about his frustration about loosing his wife.

What really hit home with me more than anything in his message was this:

“Dig your well, and dig deep”. While life is going good now, while we have the time.  Grow in the Lord and ask the Lord to fill you with his spirit as much as possible.  Because the day is coming where we wont want to wake up, when we’ll have trials and troubles in our lives.  When those days come, we’ll be glad that we dug deep.

Challenged,

Andy

16 kids got saved tonight!

Wow, tonight was so cool.  It’s always amazing to be able to see the Holy Spirit move, and tonight was definately one of those nights.  At JV Fusion we typically do worship together, play a game together, watch a short video together, then break up into small groups for a lesson.  Well tonight after worship and the video that we were watching for the night I just felt led to speak from my heart and give our students an opportunity to come up front and pray to recieve Jesus as their Lord and Savior.  Totally wan’t me tonight, the convicting power of the Holy Spirit was heavy tonight and I was super honored to see students make decisions for the Lord tonight, awesome!

Amazed,

Andy

Why do we make Jesus look boring?

One of the things that breaks my heart about ministry is how we typically present the Gospel.  Now when I use the word “Gospel”, I do not simply mean the message that Jesus saves, but I mean Jesus.  I don’t know about you, but the last time I read the gospels I read about a man named Jesus that was exciting.  Not just funny and humorous, but definitely not boring.  The 12 apostles that followed Jesus more than anyone led exciting lives, dangerous lives, fun lives.  They put their whole lives on the line but I guarantee you that if Peter was here today writing a blog he would tell you that he wouldn’t give up that dangerous life for anything.

As I lead Fusion Student ministries one of my goals is to “introduce” Jesus to our students in an exciting way, not a boring way.  And honestly, when we have fun in youth and are able to talk about Jesus in a way that is exciting and different, the students learn more and want to know Jesus more.  I serve a God that is living and active and real, not boring.

Attitude

Youth was awesome this week, it really was.  Aubrey and I were at a pastors and wives retreat at the beginning of the week so I missed Varsity Fusion on Tuesday night, we got back in time for JV Fusion last night.  But last week, on Wednesday night, I had a terrible attitude.  It wasn’t anything really specific, there were just a couple frustrating things that happened that day and it just put me in a bad mood and so after youth was over that night I was just frustrated with myself because I knew that my bad attitude rubbed off on the students.  Last night though, I had a great attitude and youth was awesome, we had an awesome night.  We had a blast, my 7th & 8th grade boys small group was really good, everything just flowed well and it was a very postive night.

I realized last night how important the leaders attitude is.  It makes such a huge difference when the leader has a good positive attitude.  Youth is awesome, our students are amazing, feeling blessed to be a part of what the Lord is doing at Element.

Thankful,

Andy

We asked for it!

Why is it that we are always surprised when God answers our prayers.  As a staff we were praying for 1,200 people to be at church on Easter Sunday, and we were also praying for 30 people to accept Jesus into their hearts and lives. Today we had 1,217 people in church, and 35 people came to know Jesus today!  But why were we surprised?

God taught me something about my faith today, He taught me how little faith I have.  When you read about the prophets in scripture they prayed expecting God to do what they prayed for.

Wow, that’s all I can say about today, wow.

Blown away,

Andy