Manure

Hi Kids, welcome back to my thoughts!! :)

At camp a couple of weeks ago, the analogy was presented that the fruits of the spirit are grown in us not specifically for us, but for the world. As with many messages that week, the message didn't grab our group as much as the discussion enabled by the message did afterwards... In the discussion following that particular message, we talked a bit about the fruit, and had a funny little interlude where Jared mentioned that fruit grows bigger and better when manure is introduced into the equation!!

We joked about how in our lives it's also true: when the crap comes, that's often when we grow most quickly and best!! That's when we trust and rely on God more fully!!

I came home from camp with no idea that I'd be walking into a crappy situation a week later, but I did. For now, I won't really tell you anything about that, but it's stupid... and I've been thinking about that analogy from camp.

I've been realizing how easy it is to say to our friends: "just rely on the promises of God!!" and I've been asking my friends to pray that I'd be able to rely on those promises... God promises that He'll bring good out of any situation if we only trust in Him.

So I'm working on relaxing and trusting. And it sucks and it's hard.

And as I walk through this little valley of the shadow of crap, I realize...

Crap helps the fruit growing in us grow stronger and more tasty.

Crap makes everything around us smell so much sweeter.

So if you'd be so kind, say a little prayer for me: pray that the crap surrounding me helps me grow stronger and more faithful; pray that I'm able to fully trust God's promises; pray that the crap feeds me, and then goes away!!

Right??

love wins.

So my buddy Grant went to a church in Michigan called Mars Hill. There's another one in Seattle, but the one in Grand Rapids is the one I really like!! The pastor is Rob Bell... some of you know who he is. Some don't, and that's OK.

So they have this theme they've been going on: and they put out bumper stickers that say "love wins." That's it... lower case, black bumper sticker, white writing. So Grant picked one up for me, and sent it via mail. (This after we'd talked about both really liking that church and Rob Bell's messages that you can download from their website.)

So I put the thing on my car, and have been driving with it for the last several weeks. It's gotten me thinking about what it means to live like that. What's it mean that 'love wins.'??

So I was driving down Hawthorne tonight, and turned left onto 39th. I had a left turn signal, and this dood totally didn't stop to turn right. He had a red, and he just WENT!! So I flashed my lights at him as he cut me off. And I started thinking: is that loving?? Is it NOT loving?? What is it??

So what say you?? I'm honestly trying to figure out what it means to live in LOVE... like honestly, so many of us have no one in our lives that we can love like God wants us to love people... and the ones with whom we do come into contact are our waitresses and baristas, and how many of us are just jerks to them??

How many of us are jerks to people in our own lives... one of my biggest struggles is how I treat people who've been really close to me in the past and aren't so much now. I tend to close down towards them, and I TRY to be loving, but I suck at faking it. What's more loving?? To fake it and pretend to like them?? Or to be honest and let my feelings show??

So I really think that loving means living honest. I think faking it is so hypocritical. But honestly, if I choose to love, then I accept that I'll be uncomfortable sometimes... I acknowledge that sometimes I'll need to speak strongly to someone... sometimes I'll need to just take strong talk FROM someone.

And honestly, living in LOVE I think means just trying to always love. When you fail.... as I did the other day in a big way... ask forgiveness and try to make it right. Is that cheesy or what?? Am I turning into an old school cliche preacher?? I hope not... but that's where my thoughts have been.

(So yeah, I intentionally started almost every paragraph with a 'So') :)