Ants and Jesus...??

So, this is gonna be one of those weird posts but looking back at yesterday I had an encounter with some ants and it got me thinking about my relationship with Christ. You are probably wondering, how can you get something out of ants?

Well, here goes. As I woke up, our dog's food bowl was in the kitchen and to my surprise a long line of ants were coming from outside and found their precious way into our home. But what caught my eye was that there was a line leaving and a huge mass in the bowl feasting on the dog food and a massive line leaving. And so my mind started to wonder.....

This is what came about: cool example of how our relationship with God should be, in a three-fold kinda way.

1) God puts himself out there so that all of mankind can come and taste and see that He is good. Kinda like the dog bowl sitting by itself, available to whomever wants to partake of the dog food. God is always ready for us to come to Him, in fact God even pursues us, which would kinda be weird if the dog bowl would have started sliding on the floor but any who....

2) God is our source of food, not dog food, but the only place of nourishment and true fulfillment. He is the person we can approach and feast upon His Word to be filled with of grace and mercy. It's in His presence that we find life and direction. It's the place that leads us to true understanding about who we are and what we have been created to do.

3) God is not only to be sought after and fill our lives with challenges and direction, but He lives within us so that we may take the living Word, the food, the life, hope, ad love back to our social environments and share who He is to others searching for answers, love, forgiveness and true life.

So as the ants are marching to the bowl for food and leaving with what they can carry, it sparked something else. As I said a lot of the ants were coming to and fro from the dog bowl, but some of the ants were just huddled in the bowl, never leaving to return. This caught my eye because I feel that many times I act the same way when it comes to my faith. It's all about me and my relationship with God and I just throw in Matthew 28:19 whenever I can or feel like it.

So what I took away from this is that I am called to run after my Father, come and be filled with nourishment, but also to leave with a mission to take what truly gives me life back to the world, so that steps A and B can happen to those who need a Savior, which then will produce more ants! I told you this would be a weird post!




P.S. I killed the ants.

Aaron

I stand in awe...

It so awesome to get out of the way and let God move through you and through the lives of students. Over the past few weeks the Spirit has really taken hold of some of our students and they are telling their friends about the church and they are coming to hangout with us on Wednesday nights. Last night we ended our series on "unlikely" and I left a challenge to our students to do the "unlikely" thing when it comes to dealing with people who hurt us, cause us pain or just say something about our mommas. What I am referring to is that our natural tendency is to fight back or "an eye for an eye" when it comes to those we encounter on a daily basis. I challenged our students to "give love, not hate" and do the unlikely thing. Its really hard to do this when people spread lies about us, cut us off in traffic, etc. It's not impossible though. It will be interesting to hear some of their stories over the next few weeks and see how they have failed and succeeded in this area. But I leave you with a question: could you show love more than you show hate this week? even to your enemies? your neighbors? your teacher? your boss? Granted, they don't deserve forgiveness and love, but neither do we. Don't just love those who love you, don't hate those who hate you, love everyone with the same love that Christ shows us in the Bible. Go the extra mile if you have to, give the clothes of your back. Stop doing the normal likely reactions and do the unlikely reaction of love! Love covers a multitude of sins.

Try it.

Aaron

And then....

So, it's been awhile since I have posted on this thing. I guess I got the urge to do this today cause I saw my wife's blog page up on the computer. Looking back at my last post alot of things have changed. Let's see, God led us to La Vernia, TX to continue serving students, we moved away from family ( a whole day worth of traveling for Elisabeth's family), new community, new people, new staff, new everything but what is cool about this whole transition thing was that God had our backs. We didn't quite know what to understand, what it would look like, how we would feel, but all in all the move to Texas has been a blessing to both Elisabeth and I.

I will say that I am very grateful for the path that God has led us down. In fact, alot of people would say that they wish their lives could be different but I don't. Elisabeth and I have learned alot about each other, we have learned alot about God, our faith and a whole lot of patience. I will say this about the move out here to Texas; I don't think that God makes mistakes. I will leave it at that.

So here we are in a small town in Texas, in a church that is seeing people come to know Christ almost on every Sunday and it's great to see God's people live out their love for others and do the things necessary to give people the opportunity to encounter Jesus. Last Sunday we had 12 people accept Christ! God is good. God is moving and I want to be alongside of whatever He has planned for Grace Bible Church.

The students here at Grace have been hurt, they have been broken and need a leader that they can trust and build relationships with. I know that God has led us to Grace for this specific reason. It's my prayer that I would allow the Spirit to move through me, speak through me and draw students unto Christ not myself. For sometime now, I was trying to do soo much on my own that I wouldn't leave enough room for the Spirit to work. I quickly got away from the understanding that God draws men unto Himself and that we are vessels to be used in that process. Now, I am not saying that all I am going to do is sit around and pray all day and not prepare lessons. But my focus is on this key understanding: God will build his church, with or without me. So I need to let Him build His church and I need to be so close to Christ that I can be used in amazing ways to reach our to students and their families.

So, basically in my thinking, I am turning over a new leaf. I am not going to worry about the services and lessons and all that logistical stuff and focus more on the leading of the Spirit. God knows the hearts of men, he knows exactly what the students are dealing with and facing at school, home and etc. The question is do I trust Him?

God is up to some big things here at Grace and I am excited to be here serving alongside a family of devoted Christ-followers, a family that sacrifices, a family that loves. May we continue to pursue Christ out of love!

Aaron