Update

Here is a brief sum of what I have been up to these past 2 months since my last blog. Surprisingly enough, I grew a massive beard and didn't blog about it one time! But alas, it is shaved now. My reasoning for shaving is because I reached a goal weight! Back in mid January I set out to lose weight, but wasn't sure how much I wanted to lose, so in February I started growing a beard and decided I would let it grow out until I hit a certain weight. I hit it for a total of 26lbs lost in the last 3 months. I could have been way more if I had tried a bit harder.  But I am not done. It was just my first goal. Haven't decided on my next one. But After shaving my beard I could see the difference in my face, and its fun hearing my wife call me skinny when she sees me. :)

Disc Golf: The tournament season started back in March and I can't believe I didn't blog about the things that have happened! My first tournament of the season was at my home course and not only did I win 2nd place in my division (out of around 40 guys) I got my first ACE! (a hole in one for those who don't understand the lingo) Hitting my first ace at a tournament was awesome because there was an ace pool that people had put money into so hitting the ace ended up getting me $170!!! Great time to hit one! Since then I played in 3 tournaments, getting 10th, 4th, and finally last weekend I got 2nd place in one of the biggest tournaments in the country. Out of 74 guys in my division I took 2nd and only missed first place by 1 stroke. But now I am moving up to a tougher division since I have accomplished some good finishes and I think I am ready to take on the more skilled competition. Just gotta keep getting better!

Job: I am still at First Pres, still hanging in there, but I just got back from interviewing in Oklahoma for a Resident Director Position at Southern Nazarene University. I will find out around May 9 if I got the job or not. There were 2 other guys who they are interviewing. I really liked it there and I feel like it would be a place where I could really help the guys I would be in charge of. It would be a tough move for Julie and I as we would have to leave family and friends for the first time. What makes it even more difficult is that Julie just got hired at a hospital here for the position she was really wanting. But we are trusting God in this situation and know that He will lead us where He wants us. If I don't get the OK job, then I know He wants us here for whatever reason and I will be happy knowing that. 

Spirituality: I have been wrestling lately with some theology stuff. I stems from interviewing with a church back in early February and some of the questions they had for me that I wasn't sure about. The more I read and research the more I find that there are so many different ideas out there and sets of beliefs and theologies it can make your head spin. When I left that interview I left feeling that I wasn't qualified to be in ministry because I wasn't pledging my allegiance to one set of doctrine and wasn't sure which one I wanted to stake my claim on. So after chewing on this for a while and reading scripture here is what I have decided. I am totally sure and confident that I don't have to know which side I am on. There are so many arguements and divisions in the church because of this stuff and its stupid. Its so far from what Christ would have wanted. How can one side think they are right and the other side think they are right, when in all honesty none of them really know for sure? So I have decided I am confident and secure in not choosing a side and believing that there are good points to each side and that I will never know the real truth until I meet God face to face. I believe Jesus died for me and was raised to life so that I may have a relationship with Him. And I look forward to celebrating that over the next couple days as we celebrate Easter. And I find joy in knowing that i can have a life giving relationship with Him and share that with others without having all the answers or pretending to know what the right set of doctrine is. I know His grace is enough for me and it covers up all my imperfections and shortcomings. Hallelujah! Can I get an amen!?!?! :)

Do I trust God enough to be myself?

Over the past months, maybe more like years, I have been on a journey. I didn't realize it at the time, and I am just coming to realize it in part, because I think the process of the journey will never be complete. At least I hope not. But this journey has been shaping me into who I am. Over the past year, my life has been transforming and facing challenges that I never anticipated. I am connecting a lot with this passage in 1 Peter 1:6-8 ⁶ In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. ⁷ These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. ⁸Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy.
I have been learning lately what it means to trust in God. Its something that gets said a lot, and interpreted in lots of different ways. I thought I had been trusting in God all along, but i am finding that I haven't really been trusting Him much at all. Allow me to explain.
There is a outer level of trust, that doesn't allow God to penetrate much beyond the surface. This trust is like when we say we trust God loves us. Its true, He loves us completely with all our faults. But we only trust Him enough to keep our faults between us and Him. Or take for example our plans. We say we trust God will lead us in the direction he wants us to go in. And this is also true. But then we form ideas and goals in our mind. I trust God will land me in a job that pays me this much, or that takes me to this location or keeps me in this one. I trust God will allow me to continue to live with relatively the same means as I am used to. 
But there is a deeper level of trust that mean Christians are afraid to get to. And it is this level of trust that shapes who we are, and how we interact with others and with God. This level of trust is accompanied by supreme honesty about who we are. When we pray we often ask God to allow us to be successful. For instance, God allow me to get this job, pass this test, achieve this goal. And we have trust in Him that he will see those things through. But what happens when it doesn't work out? Do we trust God enough for Him to let us fail? Do we trust Him to bring hardships that will grow our character? We want to trust God for good things to happen in our lives. But that is only trusting God half way. We have to trust that for whatever reason, he allowed something to happen. And trust that he knows better than we do.
Another part of this level of trust is the thing that i have been dealing with the most lately. Do I trust God enough to be honest about who I am? As I mentioned in the last post, for many years I have been faking it. It, encompasses many different areas. My sin, my confidence, my intelligence, my calling, a general sum of what makes me, me. I have wanted so long to be perceived a certain way. I wanted to appear like I knew what I was doing, that I didn't have any serious sin issues, that I had my life together. I wanted this because I was afraid of how people would view me if they could see the real me. That I did have problems. That I wasn't as confident in my beliefs, or knowledge. But this is where trusting God at a deeper level comes in. I am learning that trusting God completely, means being honest about who I am and knowing that He delights in me, and it doesn't matter how I am viewed. It is having God stand by my side, and there in front of us sits all my sin, my shortcomings, my fears, and all the other crap that i never wanted anyone to see, and putting it out there and saying this is part of me. It doesn't matter if you like it or not, because God loves me. I trust Him to take care of me. It may mean that I go through hard times, that i am laughed at, or pushed away. But I have trust that God will see me through.

I could write more, and probably will some other time, as I try and clarify my thoughts. But wanted to just share what was on my mind today, and what God is teaching me. Stay tuned in for more...

P.S. I have started growing my beard out again, so look forward to beard updates as well :)

Faking it.

I haven't blogged in a while. Boo on me. There, thats over.
My "new experiences" thing was a good idea. But a bit hard to keep up with. Especially when I didn't really care about writing. So that that covers that. Maybe I'll try again some other time.
As I thought about this whole blog thing again, I started to question what my motivation is, or what anyone's motivation is for writing a blog. Is it so people hear us? Is it just a diary that we allow people to read? And I writing to help someone, change something, bring about a new revelation to the reader, or maybe just show off a bit? People blog for all sorts of reasons, all of which are valid because its a free country and you can do what you want. But recently my life has been a bit of a whirlwind, and my faith, my beliefs, what I thought I knew but maybe don't, all these things have been challenged lately. Which I think is a good thing, because it is getting me to ask questions of myself. Do a bit of soul searching. So as I said before, blogs are for whatever you want them to be, so instead of what i have done in the past, which would lean more towards the, look at me, this is what I am doing, sort of blog. I am going to start writing about the real stuff that is on my heart. Things that people may or may not what to hear/read. I am tired of faking it. Pretending that I'm happy with things the way they are. I have been challenged lately to start being real. It sounds like a cliche' but the more I thought about it, the more I realized how we all fake it, at least part of the time. How would the world change if we stopped asking and answering the question "how are you?" as a form of hello? What if I decided to express myself when something was happening that I didn't approve of instead of sitting silent? How many of us really honestly speak our mind? We are so scared of how we will be perceived, how people will view us. We keep secrets about our lives because we are scared of what people will think. And in turn we do the world a disservice because we try and look like we have it all together, and those who don't have something wrong with them. This scenario spills over to so many areas in life. Our Jobs, churches, friends, family, society, activities, personal lives... I for one am ready to at least start making steps towards authentic reality. I encourage those of you who read this to examine your own lives and see how real you are being. Are there things you keep hidden, that you try and do, that just aren't very authentic? Can we stop these things or is it part of life we have to deal with. I for one, think that if we start being real about who we are, and doing the things that really matter to us, then we have a chance to at least make the world around us a better place. So this is the start of something real.