winter frost

so the jr high retreat for the cell group that i lead was last weekend and it ooowned. we had tons of fun and our cabin time was great. the guys really opened up and, while they coulda gone and played dodge ball, several chose to stay in the cabin and continue talking about God and their lives more specifically. i hit a realization that all the experiences in my life, good and bad, give me a wealth of knowledge and wisdom to share with others. i simply close my mouth and let God talk. anyway it was fun, it was cool. my little sister was there also and i relish opportunities to lift her up, encourage her, and just have fun with her. i just pray that some of the kids there last weekend become revolutionaries for Christ.

OHHHHHH... YOU KNOW!

zomgz! i woke up at 7, SEVEN am (in the morning) this morning. i decided "i need to start waking up earlier and making more of my days." a night of tossing and turning and a sleeping pill later i woke up at 7.

I had breakfast with my dad, went to the HPER where i ran and worked out some (i felt kinda sick b/c mochas and working out don't mix well), had lunch with one of the UBC youth pastors, checked out guitars at Sigler, worked out the cell lesson to teach to my guys tonight, and started my Perspectives lesson.
i've never accomplished so much before 3 pm!

but then my perspectives books caught on fire, i dropped my cell lesson in a bucket of ink, Sigler music erupted into a volcano, the UBC guy spontaneously combusted, my legs fell off, and my dad evaporated.

FACE.

i made a facebook. really, it's just b/c everyone i know has one (peer pressure!!!!). anyway i don't have any pictures uploaded on it at the moment but i will soon. if you wanna check it out here it is http://arkansas.facebook.com/profile.php?id=20615819


when i insert a link it doesn't work for some reason, so just copy and paste that.

hah! there i put it in my links on the side. (you have to log into facebook to see it)

matthias replaces judas

where do you find the love to offer he who betrays you?
and offer to wash my feet as i offer to disobey you,
your beauty does bereave me, and how my words do fail,
so faithfully and dutifully i award you with betrayal,

the weak and the down trodden fall on broken legs,
as i walk past a smile i cast, fervor in my stead,
but my bones like plastic, do buckle backward now,
i lay in this field by Judas' bowels and anticipate the plow,
i can not be forgiven; my wages will be paid,
for those more lovely and admirable is least among the saved,
and where would i fit Jesus?
what place is left for me?
the price of atonement is more than i've found to offer up as my plea,

Jesus my heart is all i have to give to you, so weak and so unworthy,
this simply will not do, no alabaster jar, no diamond in the rough,
for your body that was broken, how can this be enough?
by me you were abandoned, by me you were betrayed,
yet in your arms and in your heart forever i have stayed

Your glory illuminates my life, and no darkness will descend,
for you have loved me forever, and your love will never end

-showbread

.. and follow me

I've decided to drop out of college.

woah woah andrew wait think about what you're doing, you don't wanna close doors before you've looked inside them. It's ok! All semester i'd been thinking about my dissatisfaction with school and i immediately circumscribed it to me simply being lazy and God wanting me to have more discipline and just get through it. And i believed that. I was being lazy and simply disliking school for selfish reasons. However just because i was disliking it for the wrong reasons doesn't mean it's where God wanted me to be. "It's God's way or not your way." well it wasn't God's way, and it wasn't my way i can say that for sure. I've prayed about it and listened to God and i finally said alright, i won't go to school this semester. Quite honestly i'm scared to not go to school because i have no idea of the future. This is the first time in my life i've been scared about the future, but i'm at peace, content, and even excited about it, because i have to trust in God. The securities of a degree, a job, and money, these things aren't what God wants me to be relying on. "every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots" (matt 15:13). i KNOW that this is where God wants me to be and what he wants to be doing with my life.
so what am i gonna do now? go home (i'm in seattle still), get a job and work until i go to Azerbejian with Mike Compton (friend and missionary), then i don't know. Something that's been floating around in my head is going to the torchbearer's spring school in Japan or Costa Rica, and staying there and working possibly in a church. Or maybe i'll stay in Azerbejian i have no clue, but one thing's for sure, i know i'm letting myself go and letting God take me where he wants.

i'm quite scared shedding my securities like this. but what a principle concept in christianity that "whoever wants to save his life will lose it"

There is surely a future hope for you, and your hope will not be cut off. - Prov 23:18

Divine Goodness

"To experience the love of God in a true, and not an illusory form, is therefore to experience it as our surrender to His demand, our conformity to His desire: to experience it in the opposite way is, as it were, a solecism against the grammar of being."


"When we want to be something other than the thing God wants us to be, we must be wanting what, in fact, will not make us happy. Those Divine demands which sound to our natural ears most like those of a despot and least like those of a lover, in fact marshal us where we should want to go if we knew what we wanted."

- C.S. Lewis