If We Seek HIM We Will Find HIM

"The more I seek you, 

The more I find you. 

The more I find you,

The more I love you." 

I honestly cannot express the feeling that I felt when I discovered how true these words to Kari Jobe's song truly are. When you don't seek God, you aren't going to find Him! If you lose your keys and don't look for them, you're 99% less likely to find them. God is the same!! You've probably heard this in a sermon all your life but it's too true to pass up! #1: God isn't gonna show up if you don't invite Him. #2: If you go to church expecting to be out by a certain time like always and expect the message, worship, and everything to be the same, YOU WON'T SEE A MOVE OF GOD! If you want to see glory, GET ON YOUR FACE! The more you spend time with someone, the more you learn about them and the more you fall in love with that person. "The more I seek you, the more I find you." In other words, the more I spend time with you, the more I get to know you. The more I learn the intimate facts and little gold nuggets about your personality. :) THe more I learn about you, the more I learn about your qualities. Which in turn, "the more I love you!" After that, the cycle starts over because when you love someone, you desire to spend time with them! So you "seek, find, and love" over and over and over again!

Let him have it

What does it mean to turn something over to God? Everyone is always saying that! "It's okay sweetie! Just give it to the Lord!" But honestly, what does that really mean? I have claimed in times past that i gave something to God when I really didn't and I didn't realize that I hadn't. When you don't know what something really means, how are you supposed to act on it? If you dont know what love is how are you supposed to act on it? I promise I'm going somewhere with this.

Giving something to God is coming to a point where you can continously pray for His will to be done instead of your own. If you are praying about something and worrying about something constantly and always asking God to move a certain way, you are limiting what he can do. Okay some cases are a little different. Like I've been praying for salvation for some of my family for so long. I get frustrated sometimes and then I realized i was praying with the wrong attitude.
I was praying like this:
"God, i pray for salvation over Bob (random name here). Lord, he needs you. Send someone to break through his barriers. Take down his walls and let him see you for who you are, God."
While that's all good and fine, i wasn't asking God to do whatever it takes to let the person see and recieve true salvation. I wasn't letting God move. In my attitude, I was telling God what to do. I hope this is making sense to y'all cause it's kinda difficult to explain this revelation from the Lord, but I believe that here in America and even all across the globe, we need to start praying "Your kingdom come, Your will be done!" Not our way, but His!:)
So, let Him have it... But the right way with the right attitude.

Model Mayhem

Picture a stereotypical model in your head. Think of how they do certain things to look just right in front of everyone else but they're probably broken at night. Get a good image of this person in your mind because this is you.

We do this to our spiritual lives. We prep and glam up our spiritual selves to make ourselves appear spiritually solid. We work so hard at focusing our attention on what we look like to others verses what we look like to God. It's like a relationship that's all about the popularity. Like a marriage that's all political. We want others to see how well we are doing in our "relationship" with God. But at this point, can we even call it a relationship? If we are only spending time with Him so that others will see and think that we have it all together, is it really what you're claiming it to be? Don't be a model that starves your spirit. Be a real person who spends time with the Father.

Blessed and Stressed

As a YPK, I always had stress, even as a kid. I've dealt with anxiety since.. well, I can't even tell you when. Life just always got complicated and I thought of myself as a crybaby because I cried so much due to stress. Even though God blesses me daily and feels me with overflowing joy that is beyond comprehension, I still lose sight of Him sometimes and I become focused on things around me. I lose sight of what God has given me and focus on what I think I need. That's actually a tactic that the devil uses. John Bevere, in his book "Good or God" addresses this issue. He states that in the Garden of Eden, the devil got Eve's focus off of the things that the Lord had given her and had her focus on the one thing that looked 'good' that was denied to her: the tree of knowledge of good and evil. That's what happens to us as PKs and even youth pastors. We allow the devil room to get our eyes off of the One who really matters. We are really too blessed to be stressed. God has given us so much. He gave His life so that we can be free.
Philippians 4:6-7 says, " Don't worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank Him for all He has done. Then you will experience God's peace, which exceeds anything we understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus."   

Marriage and Whatnot

Something that is crazy weird for me right now as a YPK (youth pastor's kid) is the people I grew up with are all getting married and having children of their own. It's hard to explain how I feel about this because it's honestly one of the strangest feelings that I have ever experienced. I feel like (even though I'm only 18) I should be right along there with them because I grew up with them. It seems that I should be 24 or 26 too, but I'm still in high school and have 5 more years before I'm to the age they are. It's so weird. I wish I could fully explain it but if you're a YPK and roughly my age, you'll understand what I mean. When I was younger I didn't understand the whole age gap thing, I just felt like I was a teenager too. I'm actually starting to notice this same concept with my younger sister as well. She will be turning 3 later this month but she tells me that she's a teenager too! haha like I've clearly expressed.. so weird.
Below is a picture of me when I was younger (probably about 6 or 7).

Intro to Life in Ministry

I cried myself to sleep a lot of nights as a child because I never understood the things going on in my life. While I lived in a good Christian home with both of my parents who did so much for me, I still didn’t see the full picture. I didn’t get to spend a lot of quality time with my parents because they were in the ministry and spent a lot of their time with teenagers and other ministers. I cannot even begin to tell you how many countless hours I spent in meetings and outings. While I may have been there, I wasn’t involved so and based on my age, it was obvious that I couldn’t comprehend the reasoning and importance of youth ministry. I had a lot of resentment for my parents at a point in my life because I thought they cared more about the kids in the youth group than their own children. I felt neglected at times when my mom and dad would leave my brother and I with babysitters while they went on youth trips. There were times when conflicts rose between me and the teenagers who my parents worked so hard to reach. I felt alone. Despite the bad that arose from being a youth pastor's kid, I had tons of good times. I matured more quickly than the other kids and I was more advanced in my learning in school because I was constantly surrounded by people 7+ years older than me.

Always remember as a PK and a pastor or youth pastor that both the parent and the child go through difficulties. Just because you don't see it right now doesn't mean it does not exist.