the.slow.down

lord, i just need your help. God i think of sitting here and needing to share tommorrow on fasting and that isn’t super overwhelming, but how to help unite that group. what to do that can help draw us together and help us connect. Lord i need you to lead me in leading them. I think of tommorrow as a great opportunity, but i don’t want to show up tommorrow with some kind of question in my mind as to what we’re going to do. God i pray that you’d lead me, you’d help me, you’d give me grace to hear your voice in what you’d have for us.

well, it fell through. no huge truck. have you ever heard of buying a vehicle without driving it? not i my friends. i don’t buy vehicles i haven’t ever driven. you can use that little piece of advice yourself too. the search continues…

oh yeah!

so some of my best and geekiest friends and i are going to make up some biodiesel. and not just a couple of gallons at a time, but actual usable stuff. so there’s this diesel truck i’m hoping will work out for me to trade into. it’s not a big rig, but it has a huge ole engine and i mean huge.

FORD F250 XLT 7.5L Diesel (Ben Beuhler, not included)

that’s big my friends, BIG. terrible fuel mileage, but for bummin around muncie and haulin stuff, it’ll rock.

i’ll keep you updated…

well, it looks like i got it to go. finally found out how to get this crazy thing to sort as i wanted it to, so that’s nice. it should be fun to work on getting this baby where i’d like it so that i can have more frequent updates on the state of life here in Muncie, with our family, ministry, and all the rest.

so, we’ll see how it goes!

had a good chat with dan last night. talked about bloomington, and their move and their process and it was really good. good to hear and understand and listen. still hard and hurts that they aren’t coming back, but i understand more and i understand their hearts more with it all. and who knows what the future holds. good to feel like they have a healthy perspective on life and things, not that i’m the clearinghouse for what is healthy, but rather that i feel like i’m learning a lot about what “healthy” is through them.

hard but good. hard for jayne. hard to know how to help her in that too.

here waiting for CW to show up and chat. forgot about the appt honestly, but he was running late too, so i’m okay. God i just pray for grace today. Grace to meet with him and be filled with your spirit and help lead him along with where he’s at. Lord, i pray that you’d help him to minister to me as well and that he could sense he’s doing that.

God i need help today for sure in meeting with Bob and with Grev VanNada, help me to know what to ask and how to ask it with Greg.

God i just confess i need you today to walk with you to hear from you and be led by you, with chris, bob, greg, my wife, child, all of the above.
God speak to me, help me to listen, and be led. God i want to experience you today and want to confess to you that i cannot make it today on my own.

i need you lord today, please help me. here comes chris!

well Lord, still have some prep to do for tommorrow. God i pray that you’d use that somehow, i need it and i believe we need it as a body.

God i pray for your grace tonight. help me to listen to you, listen to you for content. i pray that you’d just have your way through this prep time. help multiply the time and make it what you would desire. God i love you, i’m tired, and i really do need you.

thanks for your grace, love, support, and encouragement. i certainly need it.

well, i’m needing to prep for the teaching this weekend and wanted to get my heart straight before i embarked on all that.

well, man how am i doing, what am i feeling and what is goin on???

i think i’m feeling good, seems like on some level i’m a little overwhelmed not with a bilion things that are pressing on my as critical things right now, but more so overwhelmed with more philisophical, future stuff, relationship stuff.

thinking about the future of our church, thinking about this community center dream/thing, thinking about all the transients in our church, those moving in and out and those that are in tentative places it seems like. Certainly lots to do, ministry wise, we need to get our fundraising stuff really rolling out, and i need to have a bunch of individual talks with people still, but overall things aren’t nuts. But in some ways i’m feeling all that.

I think the stuff with Dan, Craig, Jeff, etc. can be disappointing for me, but at the same time i just don’t understand what they’re thinking exactly. I don’t know their paradigm for making this decision and what all is going into that. i do think i feel a little hurt when i think about them not really pursuing options here in muncie, and maybe a lot of that is due to the fact that i don’t understand where they’re coming from in making their decisions. i really hope that dan can give it to me straight when it comes to how they’ve gone about stuff with their decisionmaking process.

anyways, we’ll see where all that goes.

God give me grace to meet with you now, and grace to get some good prep done here today.

-mark 3-
so jesus calls those to him that “he wanted”. man that seems like a loaded phrase. well what about all the others? didn’t he want them? so weird in our world of PC and hurt feelings, to think about selection and all that stuff. who to include in what? how not to offend, etc., etc. and some of that is good for sure, love is good always, but how does this play out? different world, different culture, selection more acceptable? probably, but regardless, i’m struck with what he selected them for. to be with him, to preach, to cast out demons. that’s good to think about, good to mull over and consider for me. reminds me of acts 6, where the elders were to devote themselves to prayer and the ministry of the word. i see focus, purpose, direction, clarity. i often don’t have that kind of clarity. i’m all bound up in a million different things. all “good”, but scattered.

-mark 2-
nothing profound here, but just struck with the kindness and provision of god in giving the “command” of the sabbath. why did he do that? why is it one of “the big ten”?

then jesus comes along and challenges the common usage of the sabbath in his culture. how do i approach it? do i see the benefit of it? do i see it as a law to avoid or as a blessing to embrace for my own benefit, health and life? good for me to consider.