Passionately Following Jesus
Francis Chan has set the bar extremely high for all of us men who dream of being the ‘Romeo’ to our wives… (He demonstrates this beginning at 1:16)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q13TJngOVGc]
I admit, hearing Francis Chan sing “Still the One” made me tear up just a little.
Back in June I posted about an opportunity to help a friend of mine with the adoption of her daughter and/or siblings with your purchase of an everyday item, coffee. You can check that post out HERE. Neely and Josh have recently been informed that they are 27th on the list to get a girl and 10th on the list to get siblings.
Today I come to you with a new opportunity to help them out by purchasing another everyday item. Adopting a baby from a foreign country is expensive, but with everyone taking small steps, we can help make it happen and essentially re-write a baby or potentially two babies life stories, as well as a families. Neely and Josh have had some really cool T-shirts made up to help raise money for the expenses of the adoption. I am sporting mine in the picture at the top of the post. The T-shirt reads “Adoption Rocks” in an Africa logo and comes in black with a white logo or White with a red logo. The T-shirts are $15 each, and you should buy one for yourself and everyone in your family (yes they have children’s sizes)!
Click HERE to go to Neely’s page to order your T-shirt. She has an order form on her right hand sidebar or Email her HERE to place your order.
For Coffee lovers or family and friends of Coffee lovers…Click HERE to place your Coffee order. Remember, you must order through the link for them to get credit for your purchase.
Thanks for Re-writing little children’s life stories!
Today I had a pastor point out to me the dangers of blogging, especially when there is little to no context given behind certain posts. He brought to my attention a couple of posts I had written several months back and revealed to me a little bit about the attitude it seems I was portraying, or maybe the underlying messages I was giving off hidden beneath my words. I am fortunate this pastor wants to talk about it in a couple of weeks when I get back from California.
To be honest before I even speak with this pastor, I went back and read two of the posts he referenced to me and I have to say, they were pretty bad. I allowed some things that were happening in my life, along with some discontentment to mold my thinking and corrupt my heart towards God’s most precious creation, people. I also allowed those things to produce a critical attitude of views and practices within the church just because I choose to do differently. I am always promoting the church working together and being ONE, putting aside petty differences to see the lost brought to Christ, and while I was shouting from the roof tops that the church should be acting in this manner, I was being hypocritcal. I personally find this humbling, but in a sad way humerous, since my pastor just asked me to preach on October 19th with a theme of loving the hypocrite. I guess I should be asking how people are able to love me, it may just make the perfect message. On top of the areas where I personally strayed, there were some things that had no context or understanding for the reader and so it was easily misunderstood by the reader. Blogs can be very good and healthy, but when things like this happen, it makes them bad and really ugly in many ways.
To those who have read my blog, if you read this post, I apologize if I wrote some things that were misunderstood, but also some things that were completely wrong from my end. I desire to live a transparent life and in doing so, your going to catch me mess up and sin, but I am thankful for people such as this pastor who will step into my life and point me in a healthier and more productive direction for my life. My desire is to shine Jesus to the world, and if there is anything in my life that dulls that light, I want to get rid of it. I deleted the posts that were brought up to save any additional issues in the future after I am able to grow from this experience. I am very aware of one thing; I am 27 years old and though I would like to think I have some things figured out, I know that I am far from it! I am thankful for men, such as this pastor, who do not mind getting their hands dirty and helping a yound man such as I, because God knows I need it.
So today, I am thankful for grace, people who know how to love a hypocrite, and people who want to see me become all that God wants me to be. Its good to have people in my life who are living Christianity out. I look forward to growing from here in the next several weeks.
Humbly,
Nick
Join the Conversation: Have you ever said or did anything where you looked back months later and regreted or changed and thought “How Stupid of Me?”
My friend Hank Murphy sang this song at our CSRA See You At the Pole Event last night.
I like what he told the students…”Just listen to this love letter from God to You…”
I love this song, its called “How He Loves Us.” – I found this video on You Tube with it being performed.
(In my opinion Hank and his band did a better job…just my opinion 🙂 )
Here are some of the words that are my favorite parts of the song:
“He is jealous for me
Love’s like a hurricane, I am a tree
Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy
When all of a sudden, I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory
and I realize just how beautiful You are and how great your affections are for me.”“So we are His portion and He is our prize,
Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes
If grace is an ocean we’re all sinking
So heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss
and my heart turns violently inside of my chest
I don’t have time to maintain these regrets when I think about the way”
That he loves us,”
So sit back and listen to this love letter from God to you…
Join the Conversation: What is God’s Love Letter Telling You?
Here are some pictures from my sisters camera. It shows a pretty good picture of the hospital party that took place after Hailey’s birth. If you are familiar with gypsies, then you will know when one of them have a baby, the whole village floods the hospital…I don’t think we are any better. It feels good to be loved though 🙂
Follow the link to Kelly’s Flickr Account: HERE
For some reason I cannot embed the slidshow into my blog.
Nick
In case the link above does not work:
