December 6, 2011

I just finished up my paper for Spirituality and the Transformational Journey a few days ago. The main part of the paper was a Rule of Life to keep my soul healthy in the midst of leadership. I didn't include journaling in my Rule of Life, but thinking about it now I probably should have. This is something that helps me process my feelings, emotions, and gives me time to think about how God is working in my life. I haven't been as faithful writing on here as I would have liked when I started in the beginning, but moving and transitioning in life has a way of sucking the life out of some things that we would like to do. It is my plan to be more rhythmic with my entry posts in the future, once life here in Kansas seems to be a bit more settled. I have finished the Good and Beautiful God for the second time. It is a good read, and as I was talking this morning with my mentor/partner we discussed how freeing it was to read the false narratives and know that we don't have to live our lives under those anymore. One of the biggest ones that stood out to me was that our worth and value doesn't depend on our actions. It is not a productivity gospel.

November 28, 2011

I went for a run this morning in the dark. It was probably about 32 degrees out, but it didn't really feel too cold. When I started the run I thought this might not be so great, I didn't take any music and I just wasn't really feeling too inspired to be out there. After about a mile I said, "Okay God, here I am, what do You want me to do?" This simple question turned into a great time of prayer and conversation with God while I finished out my run. God wanted me to look around and see the beauty of His Creation. It was a great time of worship and renewal.

11/17/11

God is so good. God is so good. God is so good, he's so good to me.
He answers prayer. He answers prayer. He answers prayer, he's so good to me.
I love him so. I love him so. I love him so, he's so good to me.

This might be one of the simplest songs, but it completely fits my life right now. God has been here for me throughout everything that has happened in my life in the past month. I really can't believe how much has happened in such a short period of time.

It almost doesn't seem real.

November 16, 2011

I've just started reading "Strengthening The Soul Of Your Leadership", by Ruth Haley Barton, and I feel like I can connect with just about everything that she is saying. A few of the things that have stuck out to me so far have been:

"During those years I myself experienced in this place times of both great fulfillment and agonizing despair."

"I'm tired of helping others enjoy God. I just want to enjoy God."

"Oftentimes our feelings of isolation increase right along with our success."

"The soul... the part of you that is most real... the part of you that longs for more of God than you have right now."

I know already that this book is going to be really good for me, especially coming out of the place where I have been.

November 13, 2011

Continuing on in unpacking everything that has happened... I guess it has been just about a month ago now that I really felt like things were getting pretty hard in Kemmerer. Our tithing had been down quite drastically in the past few months and it became apparent that it wasn't going to start coming back up. At this point I had the feeling from God and others to stick with the Church, that hard times were bound to happen during a pastorate and that this was one of those hard times. I had been in Colorado for a week and half for the face2face portion of this class that I am journaling for. While I was there God moved in my life in some mighty ways, and showed me some things with what might help for the Church. Long story short, the ways in which I felt God leading me and the Church was not the way that others in the Church wanted to go. It kind of opened the door for most of the problems that people had to be pushed onto me.

November 10, 2011

I haven't written on this journal blog for a while. I believe that the reason has been a good one, Audrey and I have moved from Wyoming to Kansas. I will update this blog/journal in the coming days to reflect on all that has happened, and how God has moved in all of it. Here's my thought for today, we are shipwrecked on God. Amen.

October 22, 2011

As I journaled yesterday God has been bringing different things into my life yet they all point to the same things. If that makes sense. In my Masters Face2Face week we spoke quite a bit about transformation, go figure, and when I got home in the mail was an issue of EFCA Today, a publication put out by the E-Free Church of America. On the cover it says, "Pondering Spiritual Transformation", hmmmm... I've been pondering spiritual transformation quite a bit.

I want to highlight a few things in the articles that stuck out to me, and then I'll link to the full page of articles on their website.

"At the heart of spiritual leadership is discernment - the capacity to recognize and respond to the presence and the activity of God both personally and in community."
"The practice of community discernment, like any other Christian discipline, is a means of creating space for God's activity in our lives."
"The Lord seems content to work in people's lives in terms of decades, and in the church at large in terms of centuries. So, we need slow and steady perseverance to get there."
"Sometimes victory is just resolutely facing forward even if you can't seem to move."

Here is the link to the website: http://www.efcatoday.org/