Kingdom People!

So it's been a little while since I've blogged because the past few weeks have been super crazy for me! Through my craziness and running around their has been one song that I have been coming back to constantly in my worship. It's called "Kingdom" and it's by one of my all time favorite worship leaders, Kristian Stanfill. If you haven't heard it, or his new cd 'Attention' then I encourage everyone to check it out... but for now here are the lyrics...


Stand up and heed heaven's call
Coming to us one and all
To live love and give love
To those who don't know of
The lavish and true love of God

We are the kingdom of God
We are an army of love
We carry truth to the world
We are the kingdom of God

Now join together as one
The time for rejoicing has come
Evil will tremble When God's saints assemble
Yes, now His salvation is here!

Kristian... WOW, RIGHT ON! I have never heard it put like that before. I have a good buddy of mine who always talks about "living like Kingdom people" (check out his blog ... patrickmitchell.blogspot.com) ... but are we actually doing that?? I have come to this conclusion that we are blessed so that we can be a blessing. You see, that's what it's about, living love to those who don't know love! The truth is, God has planted in us His salvation, and has looked upon us with His love, and it's not enough to keep that bottled up inside! SHARE IT! There are people all across this world that are hurting and dying everyday never knowing that there was HOPE, and that there was a God who is so CRAZY IN LOVE with them! Living like Kingdom People is about loving like God loves! It's about bringing the fame of the glorious one to the nations! It's all about LOVE! We can do this!

BUST A MOVE!

The kid in the red shirt is priceless!

The Facts of the Matter

I have these thoughts that have been jacking my world up lately, so much that I'm having trouble sleeping tonight. It is unbelievable the things that we take for granted daily. For example, water. We have the ability to have a drink of water whenever we want... clean water at that! Did you know that the majority of people in Africa die daily because they don't have clean water?! Every day over 4,000 children die from water or sanitation related diseases. The lack of clean water is one of the key reasons thousands of children throughout the world succumb each day to wholly preventable diseases! WOW!!... and here we are complaining when our favorite Starbucks drink isn't made just the way we want it. When did we adopt this attitude? James 1:27 says: Religion that God our father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. ... That's God's command to us! To look after, take care, and LOVE these people! WE ARE BLESSED SO THAT WE MAY BE A BLESSING! It's also are job to educate ourselves on these issues so here are a few stats:

Health Care and Nutrition
-Measles, malaria and diarrhea are three of the biggest killers of children — yet all are preventable or treatable
-More than 30 million children in the world are not immunized against treatable or preventable diseases

-95% of all the people who get polio are under the age of 5

-HIV/AIDS has created more than 14 million orphans — 92 percent of them live in Africa
-Six million children under five die every year as a result of hunger

Education
-134 million children between the ages of 7 to 18 have never been to school.
-Girls are more likely to go without schooling than boys — in the Middle East and North Africa, girls are three times more likely than boys to be denied education
-For every year of education, wages increase by a worldwide average of 10 percent
-Educated mothers tend to send their children to school, helping to break the cycle of poverty
Exploitation
-In the last decade, more than 2 million children have died as a direct result of armed conflict
-More than 300,000 child soldiers are exploited in armed conflicts in over 30 countries around the world
-2 million children are believed to be exploited through the commercial sex trade
-Approximately 246 million children work
-171 million children work in hazardous conditions

Water

-At any one time, it is estimated that half the world's hospital beds are occupied with patients suffering from waterborne diseases.

-There are 1.6 million deaths per year attributed to dirty water and poor sanitation, well over half in Africa.

-2.5 billion people around the world do not have access to adequate sanitation and 884 million people do not have access to clean water.

Those are just a few of the facts... the list goes on and on!

There are several ways to get involved and make a difference. (http://www.onemillioncan.com/ ... http://www.one.org/ ... http://www.bloodwatermission.org/ ... http://www.thewaterproject.org/ ... http://www.410bridge.com/ ) ... I encourage everyone to check these sites out, and if you can, GIVE!!

Summer Reading!

So... it's summer, and yes school may be out for a lot of us, and some of us squirm at the thought of reading another book! As for me, I ALWAYS hated reading until a few years ago and now I absolutely LOVE to read! So I figured if some of you are struggling with something to pick up and dive into then here is a list of four books that I have read recently and some that I am working on right now. They are all great books so check them out

1.) 7 Practices of Effective Ministry

2.) Jesus Wants to Save Christians: A Manifesto for the Church in Exile

3.) Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God

4.) Chazown

Father's Day

I had an awesome Father's day! Not because I'm a father but because I was able to spend time with mine, and Ridge church rocked today! The afternoon was spent grilling some awesome steaks over at my grandparents house, and chowing down on some baked potatoes and salad. What really topped this father's day off was the evening service at Elevation Church. I was able to hear a life-long hero of mine,Craig Groeschel (for those of you who may not have heard of Craig, he is the pastor of LifeChurch.Tv in Oklahoma City... http://www.lifechurch.tv/ ... and is probably best known for his amazing book Chazown... if you haven't read it then check it out!)speak the first sermon of a series they are doing as a result of the oneprayer 2009 campaign, titled 'God is...' The first of the three part series was called God is... FATHER. After hearing this sermon all I can say is WOW! Craig did an awesome job hitting on some really key points about our Heavenly Father. His unlimited patience, His intimacy, and ulitimately, His desire to see His children live in a day to day pursuit to do absolutely nothing but bring glory to HIS name! I often forget to look at God as a father and sometimes misunderstand His love. Most of us, to some degree, have difficulty understanding, believing, or even accepting God's unlimited and unconditional love for us. The reasons for doing this may vary from one person to another, but for me, it had so much to do with the relationship that I had early on with my earthly father. Early on I had this belief that I needed to do, do, and continue to do in order to please my dad, and maybe now I could relate it to a sense of fear I had of letting him down. Therfore, the impact of that transferred a lot of my feelings over into my relationship with God. I felt like I had to do, do, and continue to do more to please Him, and there was this fear that if I didn't, I would let Him down. Please, don't misunderstand me, I love my earthly father with all of my heart, and he has taught me a lot! It's just that early on, my relationship with him had a negative impact on my early relationship with God. I knew that God loved me, but it was something that I was taught. I never really understood this concept for myself. Thankfully, I no longer feel this way, and my relationship with God did a complete u-turn. After sitting and thinking about this for a while, I believe a lot of people's perceptions of God as a father have resulted as a negative relationship with their earthly father. And for some of us, that hasn't been the case, but regardless, all of us long to feel wanted, or loved, and for some people, you may have never had that from your earthly father. What we need to realize is, we have a Heavenly father who is so CRAZY IN LOVE with us that it ultimately led to the death of His son Jesus in order to have a more initmate relationship with us, his children! IF THAT DOESN'T JACK YOU UP, THEN I DON'T KNOW WHAT DOES! Nothing we can do will make him stay ticked off at you, we will ALWAYS be wanted and loved by Him, and that ROCKS! I don't know where you're at in your relationship with your earthly father, or even your heavenly father, but I want to encourage all of you today who read this... RUN HARD IN PURSUIT OF YOUR HEAVENLY FATHER, His love NEVER fails!