He Restores My Soul

You can stand me up at the gates of Hell,

but I won’t back down.

–Tom Petty

Tomorrow, I turn twenty-five.

Twenty-four was a year that I truly wasn’t sure was ever going to end, or that I was going to make it out alive (maybe a little dramatic, but if you know, you know!). In the past year, there have been so many opportunities for my soul to be chipped down, mangled, and worked to the bone; moreover, that’s exactly what has happened in so many ways. From losing family to sickness/death, to losing relationships and life-long friendships due to various unfortunate reasons, to living with physically and mentally paralyzing depression for a season, to saying what felt like hundreds of goodbyes to people that I love and moving to a new city/new state, to starting a brand new career with no experience or training and living completely paycheck to paycheck for a stint, to simply having to call a new crew of people “HOME” — this past year has been more than a lot. And until recently, there were more days than not when my soul felt the toll that all of those things alone, much less combined, take on a person.

 

As I sit and reflect on what the past year has violently and rudely thrown in my face — all the goodbyes and the hellos, all the death and the life, all the depression and the abundance — what continuously comes to mind is Psalm 23. David, the author, makes this claim that “The Lord is my shepherd”, as he then goes on to make more claims about what exactly his Shepherd is going to do. He talks about the Lord “restoring [his] soul”, and not having to be afraid of any evil because “in the valley of the shadow of death [the Lord] is with [him].”

The reality that David presents here in his analogy is that as a sheep, I’m going to get stuck in thickets, and I’m going to walk through darkness, and there will be terribly frightening things that I encounter. That is simply my reality.

However, an even larger reality is that my Shepherd is with me; and he leads me, guides me, and knows fully what is going on — while I’m quivering beside him, losing my mind and crumbling.

In both of those realities, still the most beautiful thing about this psalm to me is the promise within. David tells me that my Shepherd is going to “restore my soul“. He will restore my soul from the pangs of death, abandonment, break-ups, goodbyes, and every other piece of pain. He will restore every single one of the hollowed out spaces in my soul that have been left from the hard things of everyday life. He’s already started, and I have this deep-seated hope in the day that my joy will be complete and there won’t be any more pain, and every single thing will be made new and restored.

 

So as I sit on this back porch — drinking some incredibly average hazelnut Keurig coffee, and listening to my morning porch playlist — I find myself tearfully thankful; not necessarily for all the hard (yet), but thankful for the promise that I have that my God is and is going to continue restoring my soul. There is no amount of sorrow or pain from this past year that will ever overthrow the joy of a son of The King.

Whatever year twenty-five has in store, I engage it knowing that my God is with me, and believing that the day is coming oh-so-soon when he will fully and completely restore my soul.

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I’m thankful for all of the people that the Lord has put in my path through the valley of the shadow of death that have kept the process of restoration a reality for me, both in Texas and in Colorado. You know who you are.

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If you read this and you resonate with feeling the weight of life and loss and anxiety and depression, I am on your team. I hope so badly that it gets lighter and that you get to come up out of the water for a good, deep, restorative breath. And until the time comes that that happens, I challenge you to fight like hell to believe that your shepherd is with you, and he will restore your soul. You are not alone in the dark. You’re not, you’re not, you’re not.

And So I Go

The Background

About two months ago began one of the heaviest, hardest, and weirdest seasons that I’ve ever done. It’s involved a lot of conflict, confusion, honest communication, anxiety, up ups and down downs. This season thus far has been marked primarily by unbearable weight. And I guess I should say on the front end of this story that I don’t feel like I’m out of the hard season just yet; however, I have been feeling a bit of reprieve in the last few days. So while I have the emotional capacity to share a story, I’d love to do that and hopefully let you partake in the hope of which I’ve been reminded in the last few days.

The Story

I’ve been doing a lot of burden bearing — my own mess of burdens, others’ burdens, some random arbitrary burdens that were never mine to bear. It’s just weight that was driving me into the ground — some more than worth it, some not at all.

A few days ago I woke up feeling lighter, but not necessarily feeling better (that’s probably paradoxical, I get it; just bear with me). I’d gotten to a point in this season where it felt like the Lord had finally taken the burden weight off of my back and shoulders. For the first time in months I felt like I could actually take a deep breath.

I was driving to work that afternoon processing through that idea — that I’m not out of the hard season, but I’m just in a different place in the season. What does that mean? How does that work? Where exactly am I then? You know, all the thoughts you have when you’re just kinda confused and really just want to know what’s going on.

On the drive I begin to think about the fact that we’ve been called to run the race set before us. And that’s when the disappointment began to brew; that’s when I realized where I am in this season. Under all the weight, my soul feels like it’s been crippled into a bad limp and back deformation. So I as I thought through that “run the race” concept and discovered that I feel like I can’t physically run, I started to be disappointed at the fact that I can’t accomplish the action to which I’m called: run. Because how can I possibly run if I can barely stand up in general? And in that moment, clear as ever, the LORD inserted his voice into my monologue and said,

“Hey bubba, I know. I know you have a limp and that you hurt, and I’m right here with you. Just keep coming this way.”

And I just started crying.

Just like that.

Because the way my soul received that was,

“Hey bubba. I see you and I’m with you always. And there are gonna be points where you’re gonna have to stop and you might even fall over onto the side of the road for a little bit because of your limp, but I’m not disappointed in you. I’m right there with you and I’m going to get you to the end. You’re gonna have a limp and some deformed limbs from the weight, because part of love is burden bearing. But that’s what I want from you, because I’m going to give you a new body when you get here that won’t have a limp or have a messed up back.”

And so I hobble on; not for the sake of proving to myself that I really can run the race before me, that’s not gonna keep me motivated. I hobble on because I’m not home yet.

So if running the race means that I fall over and have to crawl through the end, then for the joy set before me I crawl. And I’ll fight like hell to remember the hope that I have in the one who for the joy set before him, endured a suffocating and torturous death on a tree to give my orphaned heart a home.

And so I go; to that home I hobble and crawl until I once again can run, or until he gives me my new body. And so I go, may it be in tears and pain, down the road until I make it Home.

Violent Silence: Jesus Would’ve Gone to The Tap

I was walking around on campus at Texas A&M today and it’s obviously no secret that the Christian bubble reigns supreme in these parts, with the t-shirts and the cafeteria cliques and the screaming preachers that post up on campus. The reality is, the Bible belt is still on nice and tight in east Texas.

As I walked around the Memorial Student Center, I couldn’t help but overhear a conversation as I walked past a group of girls in the hallway.

“I just don’t want to lose my witness by inviting them to Breakaway [an on-campus Bible study] on Tuesday and then saying, ‘Hey come to The Tap [a local bar/grill] with us on Wednesday for piano bar!'”

What have we done?

Now don’t get me wrong, I have friends on staff at Breakaway and I love much of what they do. This isn’t a post about Breakaway.

Somewhere along the line in the rise of white evangelicalism in America, we’ve forgotten that the invitation we are commanded to give lost people isn’t first an invitation to church or Bible study. If that winds up happening then fantastic! But it’s not T.A’s job to share the gospel with your lost friends. It’s not Matt Chandler’s job to invite your lost friends into the Kingdom of God. It’s not your local pastor’s job to know which parts of the gospel your friends don’t believe.

It’s your job.

And somewhere along the way the Church has greatly cheapened the buy-in of following Jesus to “Hey just invite them to church and God might save them without you having to share the gospel with them”. And trust me, I’m well aware that the Lord has saved probably tens of thousands of lost people in spite of Christians copping out of their commission. But the Lord has also probably saved thousands of people who hear a false gospel every week at Lakewood Church in Houston, so does that make it acceptable to preach the prosperity gospel? By no means!

So I write this piece to the Church, specifically the Bible-belted American Church — and let me be clear, I greatly include myself in the audience for this piece.

Why don’t we stop avoiding spending time with lost people in their spaces? Let’s not forget that Jesus was called a glutton and a drunkard by church people for a reason.

Why don’t we lay off inviting people to church before we invite them into the Kingdom? The goal of the early church wasn’t to save people to church; it was to save people to life.

Why don’t we put more focus on lost people intimately knowing the love of God instead of hiding behind superficial and hyper-comfortable non-conversations? At some point demonstrating the Gospel is not going to suffice. You’ve gotta use words, too.

Instead of having an internal “moral” crisis about whether to invite someone to Breakaway or The Tap, why don’t we skip Breakaway and go buy a drink at The Tap and sit and figure out what holes are in our friend’s gospel that we can engage and fill in?

If you’re a believer, then you’re more than equipped just as you are to share the Gospel. You don’t need to “know more” about the Bible before you do anything. You don’t need to get the “lingo” down before you do anything.

 

The Kingdom of God is advancing with or without you. So Church, let’s get back to work and see lost people become sons and daughters of the Creator of the universe. It’s gonna be worth it, I can 100% promise.

 

 

Violent Silence: The Church and Social Injustice

Let’s not beat around the bush: I’m trying to be part of a church youth ministry that will talk about the hard stuff and be confused about it together, and I hate that I feel like I’m in the minority of church leadership in the U.S. when it comes to wanting to engage hard topics from the stage. (pardon my cynicism)

Maybe I’m wrong, but I feel like many of my friends grew up in youth ministries that were more concerned with their students having fun than they were about their students knowing how the Gospel gives full hope in the midst of what was going on in the culture around them. Many of my friends were sheltered from the realities of racism, sexism, abortion, sex trafficking, porn, and homosexuality by glaring into bright lights and big production and games on games on games; OR they were taught to ignore it by doing yet another book study with their vastly homogenous friend group.

(I don’t blame them, just so we’re clear. They were just doing what those before them had done. They didn’t know any different. I don’t think it was malicious, but that doesn’t change the reality of the current situation.)

I don’t think that’s all bad. I don’t think middle schoolers need to be as caught up on all the politics that adults have to deal with on a daily basis. That would be a detestable thing to do to students — to strip away their emotional adolescence. However, I think it’s yet another social injustice to force our students into ignorance and to send them off into adulthood having no earthly idea what the world around them looks like.

(Let’s be honest, if my parents hadn’t been straight up with me about the culture in which we live, I think when I got to college, I would’ve given a rude finger and some harsh words to church-people for living in augmented reality and never stepping out of their prim-and-proper Christian bubble.)

But there lies the challenge: how do you protect the emotional innocence of students while still equipping them and sending them into the culture?

Grace. Grace and patience. And I’m bad at those things.

Personally, I think in such a black-and-white manner and my natural expectation for people is to get concepts objectively and be able to think critically about them immediately. But that’s not even how most people work, much less middle schoolers and high schoolers. So it takes being able to take a deep breath and chip away slowly at pre-conceived notions. It takes chronic honesty and a willingness to not know the answers. It takes a willingness to hurt when their hearts begin to hurt for someone who faces injustice. It takes a whole lot of patience and it takes a whole lot of empathy.

We are talking about the Sanctity of Human Life in youth this week, and specifically in that conversation is a dialogue on abortion. My hope for our students is not that they would learn all the stats and have a cold, hard opinion on the policies and legislation that our country has on the matter.

My hope is so much more for our students!

I want them have a deeper valuation of all human life.

When they hear their friends quoting our president about other cultures, I want our students to know that all humans have inherent value apart from their economic states.

When their friends devalue movements such as Black Lives Matter, I want our students to confidently know that Black lives DO matter, because our African-American brothers and sisters are also made in the image of God.

When they hear arguments back and forth about whether it’s okay to kill an unborn baby, I want our students to think about the inherent value of that unborn child and for their hearts to break that it would even be a question to kill the child. Because contrary to what the Left thinks, the child has more value than any human could attribute.

But I don’t want another generation that is baby rights vs. momma rights. I want their hearts to shatter at the injustices that have been done to women for centuries. I want them to raise their voices for the voices of unheard women. I want them to value, protect, and fight on the front lines for women. Because contrary to what Right thinks, the momma has more value than any human could ever attribute.

Jesus valued the economically impoverished (the “shithole countries” if you will) by first inviting the shepherds to his birth scene before anyone else in Luke 2.

Jesus valued the invalids who couldn’t perform and make themselves look all prettied up and perfect before they came to him by healing the paralyzed man in Mark 2.

Jesus valued women by protecting the woman caught in adultery in John 8 (who, for you classic conservatives out there, had “already made her choice” to sleep with the man), and by raising the little girl back to life in Mark 5, and by letting the women be the first to see him after he raised himself from the dead in Mark 16.

Jesus valued other cultures by going out of his way and giving up his time and emotional energy to sit and converse with the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4.

Jesus values sinners. He valued us before the world began when the Father chose us in Christ to be set holy and blameless before him (Ephesians 1). He valued us when we were DEAD IN OUR SIN, unable to perform and earn the right to be valued (Ephesians 2).

We like to play this game of valuation as if we are all a bunch of estimators for a contractor. But the valuation of human life is not up to us! Our value is solely in the fact that we are made in the image of God (Genesis 1-2). Humans never lose their value because they did nothing to earn it in the first place.

You are loved and you are valued.

Finally Getting Baptized

I got saved almost seven years ago, now. After getting saved, most people immediately get baptized in their local church context; however, I chose to busy myself instead of being obedient! Last week I finally decided to be bold and enter into a space that was really terrifying to me. I stood in front of 500+ people and told everyone that I had missed a step and that I’ve been putting it off because I didn’t want to admit that I hadn’t done the process perfectly.

The following is my story that I shared last week. I’m praying that it gives you hope as you read it that the Lord loves you as much as he possibly can right now without you doing anything to earn it. All of his love. Right now.

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I grew up with incredible and supportive parents who love Jesus and love me. But I also grew up in the church enslaved to my own morality and performance believing that “of course God would love me. I’m a great kid and I deserve it.” You see, I was that kid at my private Baptist high school that saw myself as so far superior over all the drinkers and smokers and partiers that I would probably feel offended if one of them talked to me.

Call me a Pharisee; because at best, that’s exactly what I was.

And because of this, despite growing up in the church, my salvation wouldn’t happen until I was 16 when the Lord started taking things – and people – from me. And there weren’t very many people that the Lord could’ve taken from me that would hurt. But there was one man in particular who never stopped treating me like his own son; who never wavered in his love and grace towards me. And this man was my youth small group leader.

It was on a May night in 2011 that I would sit across the street from my small group leader’s house and weep at his sudden, unexpected death in a freak motorcycle accident. It was that night of feeling some of the deepest pain and sorrow that I have ever felt in my entire life that the Lord would show me my need and call me to himself. It was on that night at 16 years old that the Lord totally shattered the idea that I could ever be good enough to earn his love. It was on that night that I would begin to realize that the love God has for me is far greater than I could ever imagine and that he had already lavished ALL of it on me in the person and work of Jesus.

 

You see, the Lord doesn’t just arbitrarily take. He took from me so that he could give me more of himself. And what the Lord took from my friends and I that night wasn’t just the friendship and discipleship of a man who deeply loved Jesus. What the Lord took from me that night through pain and suffering was the shackles of my slavery to legalism and perfection. He took those shackles off of my wrists and he replaced it with the faith to believe that Jesus’ death on the cross was ENOUGH. I no longer was a slave to proving my worth to the Lord, because Jesus took ALL of my sins and ALL of my messes and paid my debt on the cross and rose back to life three days later in complete and utter victory. And because of that victory, I’m no longer a slave to sin, but a son.

I’m an adopted son of the King of the universe.

 

And I would love to stand up here and confidently proclaim that I’ve never picked up my old self and tried to force it back on since that day.

I would love to stand up here and say that the broken shackles of perfection and self-righteousness don’t sit on my bedside table fighting for a chance to enslave me again.

I’d love to stand up here and tell you that I functionally believe that my performance has nothing to do with how the Lord feels about me.

But over the course of the past six years, I’ve mostly failed to put on my new self. To be super honest, every minute of every day is a battle to trust the Lord more than I trust my competency. I still need Jesus just like I did that night after my friend died. I still regularly forget that Jesus is ENOUGH and his performance in my place satisfied the Lord’s demand for perfection. I struggle so hard to receive grace.

There’s a song I’ve found that explains my current season almost to a “t”. It says this,

“…but the list goes on forever of all the ways I could be better, in my mind; as if I could earn God’s favor given time, or at least “congratulations”…I’ve spent my whole life searching desperately to find out that grace requires nothing of me”

And that’s been really hard for me to come to terms with. This fact that I’m probably never going to figure out how to perfectly leave behind my old self and put on the new. (At least until Jesus comes back to take me home!!) I’m probably never going to figure it out because if I were to figure it out, then I wouldn’t need Jesus anymore. I’ve spent most of my life thinking that I’m supposed to grow out of needing Jesus for everything (as if the Lord gets tired of meeting my needs and caring for me in ways that I can’t and don’t care for myself). It hasn’t been until the past couple months that I’ve begun to realize that I’m actually supposed to need Jesus for everything.

It’s just now starting to functionally click that there’s NOTHING that I can do that could separate me from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.

 

So I stand before you today, a beaten, broken sinner trying to learn to admit to myself and my community that I constantly need Jesus. But I ALSO stand before you as a son that has been justified with the blood of Jesus and is absolutely being sanctified by the Holy Spirit. Jen Wilkin says it like this, “…we were not created to be self-sufficient. Nor were we re-created in Christ to be so. Sanctification is the process of learning increasing dependence, not autonomy.”

And today I boast in our God who is faithfully self-sufficient. And I proclaim to you my constant need for the grace and love of God. And I do this now, almost 7 years after being saved, because I need to confess to this church – my community – that I don’t have everything together. I’ve lived under the belief that I could never admit a missed step along the way. I’ve been afraid to admit to my church family that I am not perfect because I love getting credit. But I can’t live in that lie anymore. I don’t stand here today because of how good of a job I’ve done. I stand here today because of how PERFECT of a job that Jesus has done. I’m here as the older son that’s constantly having to choose the party inside over my self-righteousness and competency.

 

So here I am before you, boasting in my weakness that I chose fear over obedience for 6 years and passed up this opportunity to proclaim the gospel; because I want you to see the faithfulness of the Lord in my brokenness and depravity. While I’m embarrassed to admit that it took me 16 years to understand that I’m not God; the Lord has looked at me since before he spoke the earth into motion and has called me “son”. And just like he looked at Jesus in Mark 1 before he “did” anything in his ministry, the Father looks at me and says, “Hey. You’re my son. And I love you so much. And boy am I proud of you. Not because you earned it, but because I made you.”

The Father loves me because he loves me, and there’s absolutely nothing I could ever do to make him love me any more or any less.

More Super Minnies Please!

The image above features my unbelievably adorable niece, Zoey, playing what used to be one of her favorite alter-egos: “Super Minnie”. As soon as she got into character, Zoey knew that she had just taken some sips of “Mike’s Magic Stuff” and instantly became even more confident than she already is (scary thought, I know).

Natural segue: I’ve been thinking a lot recently about women.

Now, I know that sounds odd, but it’s not what you think. What I mean is that I’ve been thinking a lot about the silencing/smothering of women’s voices in our world. I’ve known that there are cultures in the world that literally don’t let their women speak in certain places, but a couple weeks ago I realized that America really isn’t much different.

Just because we let our women speak wherever they want, doesn’t mean we listen to them. And if we aren’t listening to them, then what are we non-verbally saying? Here’s a hint: maybe we still view women as lesser than.

Now, for my reader that gets really pissy about feminism and women’s rights and blah and blah and blah, bear with me. My hope isn’t for this to be some stock post about civil rights and gender equality. My hope is to verbalize the heart of the issue at hand. My hope is for women to feel like their thoughts and voices matter, because they do. A lot.

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I grew up around some incredibly strong women. Was it always a healthy kind of strong? Maybe not, but nonetheless they knew their voice mattered.

My mom, for instance, got married young and had my sister. Then she left that husband because he refused to even be seen with them in public upon a multitude of other reasons that really just stemmed from the fact that he didn’t care about the girls in his life. Then my mom went back to school to get her degree. Life in Austin, Texas isn’t really necessarily easy when you’re trying to be a college student (nursing school for a while and then education) at the University of Texas, raising a daughter, working to pay the bills, and still somehow managing to have friends outside of all of those things.

For the first seven years of my sister’s life, this was my mom’s reality. And she doesn’t hate the world or think God is against her because of her circumstances. She just knew that if she didn’t fight for herself and my sister, then there might not be somebody who will.

So this is the strength around which I grew up. Once I was done growing up when I turned sixteen (it’s a joke, calm down), I had two more women put into my life that are strong. These are two of my best friends and their husbands were the first guys to ever mentor me in any shape or form. These women teach what it is to stand confidently in who we are made to be. I learned that while the enemy is going to heap shame and insecurity and fear into our souls, that we already have victory claimed for us and that is the rock on which we stand. And their husbands continue to teach me that both husband and wife can and should be strong. Both should stand confidently in who they are made to be. These men are not passive, they actively pursue, engage, and lead their families while supporting and hearing their wives.

I vividly remember a Sunday after church during tear down when I saw one of these women folding and stacking chairs while her husband and I were on stage tearing down instruments and I told him, “Hey, tell her the guys will get it. She don’t have to tear down.” And my friend looks at me and says, “I’ll never tell her to not serve.” And that was the moment that my view of women really changed. I realized at that point the benevolent sexism in which I had functioned my entire life. And it had to stop.

*here’s an old pic of the five of us plus ¾ of the kids that exist

Benevolent sexism is the idea that you don’t need to talk down to/about a woman to be sexist or prejudiced against her. It’s the idea that asks “Why?” about your motives behind giving up your seat for a woman or opening a door for a woman or offering to take the heavier box to give her the lighter box when you’re helping her move in. For many of us, we just like to serve other people. We would probably do the same for our boys. But for many of us we do this because we view women as weaker/more feeble/in need of our assistance. It’s time to start asking ourselves honest questions.

So where is all this coming from?

A friend and I were chatting the other day about what it means for me to be on her team. Earlier in the day she was explaining to me a situation in which she was hurt by something that one of her friends had said/different unhealthy patterns of the friendship- so I started asking questions (like I always do…) to figure out the root issue. And while I do understand that I came off as not being a good listener but just wanting to fix the problem; I really wanted to get the ball rolling past the surface level feelings and get to the deep seated feelings.

In the conversation, we both figured out that for me to be on her team is so much more than me simply agreeing with and fighting for her. Me being on her team means me fighting for her to think and fight for herself. If I’m the one always fighting for her, then I’m essentially the biggest inhibitor of her being strong. (ex. it’s as though she were trying to get physically stronger and I went with her to the gym and picked up every single weight for her. I simply want to be the spotter. Me picking up all the weight all the time isn’t going to make her any stronger.) And I think we should all be strong. I think we were all made to be strong. So that is the end to which I am going to fight.

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Our world has done a really great job — from the very beginning, I might add — of treating women as lesser than. Sure it’s no longer like it was when women couldn’t speak up or vote or own anything or do anything worthwhile/fulfilling; however, I think women are about as equal to men as other ethnicities are to White. Hint: not. Just because the prejudice isn’t blatantly negative and sickening doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. So, as the great philosopher once said,

I think it’s time to kill for our women
Time to heal our women, be real to our women
And if we don’t we’ll have a race of babies
That will hate the ladies that make the babies.

I want so badly for my niece and my (hopeful) future daughter(s) to grow up in a home where their voices are heard and their ideas are pondered. I want to teach them that they were made to be thinkers and that their thoughts matter so much to me. I want for my friends to feel safe speaking their true thoughts around me because they know that my ears will receive their words with all the weight they carry.

Women’s voices carry weight. Women’s thoughts carry weight. So women should speak up more and men should listen more. Every woman and girl has a Super Minnie in them  and I think most of them just don’t realize it. So let me help you realize it right now, please. Don’t wait for someone else to fight for you. Start fighting for yourself NOW, because you. are. worth. fighting for.

And those are all my feelings.

Here We Go Again

It’s official.

I’m in Bryan/College Station for another year!

This post will hopefully give a nice, quick recap of this past year and give some of my hopes for the year to come in my new position as Youth Director overseeing ministry towards 5th-12th grade students.

 

1. I’m finally beginning to be emotionally healthy.

For the past two semesters our staff has been working through Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Pete Scazzero (a pastor in Queens, NY). Basically, EHS is a few dozen counseling sessions in one cohesive book. Scazzero talks a lot about how Christians generally do a really great job at devaluing and disregarding their feelings or emotions and how destructive this pattern is to themselves and all the people around them (family, friends, co-workers, strangers, etc.). We’ve been learning together how to break out of these destructive habits and live in a new way that isn’t slowly deteriorating our souls.

This (along with having a couple really close friends and a fantastic girlfriend) has taught me some things:

• I am a recovering control addict.
• I am a recovering self-abuser.
  • I do want to clarify something here. I do not mean self-abuse. I mean that I am so naturally horrible at showing grace to myself when I sin. I get really down on myself and treat my brokenness in the exact opposite way that Jesus did.
• I am NOT busy.
  • I’m just limited. It’s okay that I can’t regularly do what Jesus did in Mark 1 and heal all the sick people in the town, go spend time with Dad, and then – without sleep – go and continue on with my ministry. And that’s okay.

*above is a picture of our church staff and wives from our trip to NYC for the Emotionally Healthy conference in May. We’re missing a couple people due to differing flights, but I’m sure you’ll see them eventually 🙂

The actual work portion of my job has been really exciting and growing. I wound up working primarily on building out the worship/production ministry and hammering out a lot of the details for our Sunday operations. I’m extremely grateful for the opportunity I was afforded this year, because I fully understand that most twenty-two year olds don’t just get to walk into the position I was so graciously given. So I’m thankful for a staff and a church that believed in me to do my job well.

 

2. I now get to do my best to continue building a youth ministry.

To be completely transparent this is really scary to me. It’s really easy for me to buy into everything that the enemy tries to tell me (i.e. – you’re too young, you’re not prepared enough, you’re gonna mess kids up, blah blah blah). It is. It really is easy for me to buy into that. But my friends and my co-workers have pumped so much empowerment into me and have been so affirming that I’m not stronger than the Lord. I totally might ruin everything, but the joy is that somebody still might get saved. The Lord’s gonna do what the Lord wants to do and however he wants to do it and he has invited me to be part of his story here in B/CS for another year and so I absolutely hopped on it.

Much of the way the I follow Jesus is based in my story with Younglife. I won’t go into details on this post; but if you’re interested, then you can read more about it here. But that is the mindset into which I am praying for our leaders buy. See, DC Youth does not primarily exist for students to show up in our youth room at the church. Our role is to engage students and make them feel noticed, known, loved, cared for, and ultimately to fight for them to know who Jesus is and what he did. That’s why we exist as a ministry. I would love for our team to know the names of every student in the schools that we engage; because how many of those students may have never been known before?

 

3. In order to do all of this, I have again been given the opportunity to raise support.

This past year, I watched the Lord do crazy things by raising my entire salary. He was so faithful in the little things (like finances) and in the big things (like seeing some of my friends know and walk with Jesus for the first time in their lives). So I’m neither offended that I have to support raise again, nor am I scared to support raise again.

My salary for the next year is 50% fundraised and 50% provided by Declaration. What this means is that unless I have a group of people around me that buy in to my vision and/or the vision of Declaration Church, I do not get to work for DC full-time.

As of right now, I currently need $5,000 more in order to meet my goal. (That is $416.67/month if you’d like to think about it that way). If this is something in which you’d like to partner with me (or at least hear more about), I’d love to talk more about it with you.

I’ve attached a link at the bottom of this post that takes you to a page with more information and where you can give if you feel so inclined! Don’t feel pressured, but do know that I would absolutely love to have you on my team going forward.

 

*above is a picture of my friend Alex and myself after he got baptized at the end of our New Mexico hiking trip with some other guys from Declaration. In December he had never heard of Jesus. By April, he was saved. By May, he was baptized.

 

In short, the Lord is continuing to blow up the cities of Bryan and College Station. It’s truly an exciting honor to get to stay for at least another year and befriend (hopefully hundreds of) middle and high schoolers and tell them why the matter so much to me.

If you’d like to hear more about what I’m doing or more about Declaration Church, please don’t hesitate to ask! My email is heyden@declarationchurch.net and I’d love to answer any question that I can. The following link goes to a page that has more information about my Residency Program.

https://www.declarationchurch.net/Heyden.aspx

When in Bryan (Month Seven)

“I have to make a plan. If I can make a plan, I won’t be afraid.”

I’ve been reading a lot lately. My goal for reading this year is to read 25 books of all varieties. I’m currently sitting at 4 completed; but I should be done with two more before May (hopefully). The quote above comes from one of the books that I’m currently reading.  This quote is essentially the summation of what I’ve learned about myself since my last blog post. Hopefully this post isn’t too candid; but what is a blog if it’s not honest, right?

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I’m a total control freak.

As a matter of fact, I learned that it got so bad in January that I chose circumstantial control over people that loved me and wanted to fight for me. Who does that?

 

The past month or so for me has been a lot of failing and a lot of learning; just like your twenties are supposed to be, I’ve heard! So here is an incomprehensive list of the things I’ve learned in the past 50 (or so) days:

1. I am smart; but I do not know everything. (see, @mom, I can finally admit it!)
2. The way I do things is fantastic…for me…a lot of the time; but it’s actually way healthier for people to have their own ways of doing certain things than for people to do things like I do them.
3. People have different life goals than me that influence their actions. (i.e. – My goal is generally to get in-and-out of the grocery store as quick as humanly possible and so I know where the things are that I need and I don’t get anything else. But someone else might have the goal to get everything they need or will need soon and they don’t want to miss anything, so they are not in any big hurry. AND BOTH WAYS ARE PERFECTLY FANTASTIC; they’re just different. And different isn’t just good; different is healthy.)
4. Thankfulness is essential. And people should know that you’re thankful for them.
5. I am not in control. I never have been in control. The Lord does his thing in spite of me most of the time, and for that I am wildly thankful. He sees the big picture that I don’t. He sees the full puzzle; and I’m over in the corner not even able to get past one edge piece (side note: I suck at puzzles in a literal sense AND a metaphorical sense).

 

I’ve gotten to watch grace in action over the past few weeks. There are people that I screwed over because I fought harder for control than I did for them. Yet when I apologized to them for the specific things I did to hurt them, they looked me in the face (or in a letter) and said, “I believe you…I believe in you…and I believe in grace & forgiveness — the kind that gives 2nd & 3rd & 1000s of chances until we can finally stand & proclaim the joy of getting it right.”

 

Grace.

 

I’ve gotten to read the Bible with some new friends of mine, and we talk about grace every time we sit down to read. I get to tell them week-in and week-out that we can’t make sense of grace because our logical minds can’t wrap our heads around the fact that someone could possibly forgive us and gladly move on WITH YOU in pure joy and excitement. Grace doesn’t make sense. If grace made sense, it wouldn’t be amazing. If grace made sense, then it wouldn’t really mean that much that Jesus hanged on a cross taking all of our sins on himself and gave us his righteousness so that we could be sons and daughters of the King of kings and Creator of all things.

So, in the midst of all of the trials, errors, and failures of the past couple months, I’ve seen and learned more about who the Lord is and how badly I need the him. So it makes sense now why Paul talked about boasting in his weaknesses; because it is in Paul’s weakness that he gets to experience the raw majesty, power, and authority of the Lord.

It’s in my weakness that I get to experience the raw majesty, power, and authority of the Lord. 

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In regards to the quote at the very beginning, I’m kinda like the character that said it. We’re both starting to slowly figure out that we don’t plan to be successful; we plan to try and sidestep fear. But to sidestep fear is to be a coward.

Courage isn’t a lack of fear.

Courage is action in the face of fear.

Courage is engaging fear as it comes; not avoiding potential future fear.

I’m learning how to be courageous and not be bound by my fear. I’m still pretty bad at it. But I wouldn’t rather be learning courage around anyone else than those I’m with in life right now.

When In Bryan (Month Five)

Well, it’s been a minute since I made myself sit down and reflect on what life has been lately. Mainly because sitting down and reflecting means processing and processing means time and I’d rather not give myself time out of some pseudo-humble mindset thinking that’s the most selfless and servant-hearted thing to do. It’s funny that I perpetually think this way after so many times of realizing that the most selfish thing I could possibly do is not deal with what’s going on with me and the way I feel and what has been great and what has sucked.

 

Don’t worry, the point of this post isn’t to list out all of those things, just wanted to let you know that’s why I didn’t have a blogpost about December and why this one about January is so late!

 

Some things I learned in December/January:

1. I can’t change who the Lord says that I am. (see this, this, and this)
2. People really can care about you. It’s O.K to believe them.
3. It’s O.K for goodbye’s to be hard. It’s actually really normal. So I shouldn’t act like it’s not hard.
4. “True peacemakers love God, others, and themselves enough to disrupt false peace.” – EHS
5. Everyone is different from me. So let them be different. Different is wonderful.

 

I’ve been chronically bad at praying for myself for the past I don’t even know how long. My most consistent prayer in the past couple weeks is for the Lord to teach me 1) to recognize my need and 2) to humble myself and just ask for help (because it’s not like I stand a fighting chance of satisfying my needs anyways, honestly.)

 

So that’s the quick and easy version of where my mind has been the past couple months.

 

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As for work, my job has been a lot of reading, which I love.

We’ve still been going through “Emotionally Healthy Spirituality” as a staff and it, of course, has continually be kicking me in the gut and making me realize that I am not nearly as put together as I would’ve said in August (or December, honestly). So I highly recommend it for anyone. Find some pals, get the book, be honest with each other, and delve up all of the fun things you didn’t even know you were suppressing! It’ll be fun, I promise, you just may have to wait until the end of the book to see how fun it is…

 

The other book I’ve been reading is specifically for “worship” leadership, and it’s called “Doxology & Theology“. I’ve been going through it with a couple of friends and am about to teach through it with some of our band members at church. It does an incredible job of teaching the whys and the hows of worship leadership, and it’s also incredibly readable.

 

My team is still incredible. We’re excited to have Blake back from Sabbatical tomorrow and to finally be a full team again. I couldn’t have asked for a better team and family in this season of life. (The people’s faces that are covered are like so because I am not about to potentially compromise their ability to get into certain countries because they are linked to a church).

The Devaluation of Life

(an open letter to the upper-middle class white Christian conservative American)

Quit fighting half the battle.

 

Sunday marked forty-four years since America became polarized on yet another front (as if we really needed any help). Now instead of just being polarized racially, culturally, and generationally, America was now polarized on life. And America has remained polarized on life ever since.

Because of this argument of whether the baby’s life or the mother’s life matters more, I believe that very few people are actually pro-life. I think that the vast majority of Americans are pro-choice. I think that the people that are more worried about the baby’s life than the mother’s life are just as guilty of stripping someone’s voice as the opposite side. The devaluation of life is the same whether you fight only for the baby or only for the mom.

On Sunday, we had a guest speaker at church that spoke on the sanctity of human life. One of his big points  was this, “Fight for the voiceless.” But he spent much of the message talking about how pro-mom AND pro-child he and his wife are.

This is the proper view of human life: to be pro-mom AND pro-child; because while the baby is voiceless, there is an astounding chance that the mom has never been given a voice either. Is this always true? No. Absolutely not. But instead of shaming women for getting abortions like the Church has generally been really great at for decades, what if we just befriended? What if we helped the woman instead of just telling her she’s wrong and making a project out of her? What if we fought fear with hope?

Is abortion wrong? Yes. Totally. And that’s not really something on which I’m willing to compromise. Also not the point of this blog, sorry.

Have we been engaging the space in a non-helpful way? Mostly.

Mostly we’ve engaged the space with verbiage like “She chose when she decided to have sex! It’s the baby’s turn now!” or “There are consequences for every action and they need to learn responsibility!”

Hate. So much hate. So much ill-will and hopelessness. When pro-baby people say things or think this way, you strip the voice from the woman just like pro-abortion people strip the voice from the child. The voices have equal value and should be taken equally serious.

 

Humble yourself.

Befriend.

Give hope.

We. Need. Hope.