This is me, is this you?

Oswald Chambers, whose teachings were compiled into the well-known devotional My Utmost for His Highest, candidly described his departure from the Christian game:






“I was doing Christian work and winning souls for Christ,” he wrote, “but I had no conscious communion with Him.  The Bible was the dullest, most uninteresting book in existence.  I knew that if what I had was all the Christianity there was, the whole thing was a fraud.”  During a Christian gathering, he stood up and admitted before the group that he was in desperate need of a true encounter with the King of all kings.  He finally came to grips with the fact that all of his Christian training, spiritual leadership, and religious activities did not amount to a passionate relationship with Jesus Christ.  He had to come to the end of himself, recognize his own inability to make true Christianity work, and begin his pursuit of something more.  In order to experience a God-scripted life, we, like Oswald Chambers, must put aside our spiritual pretense.  We must come face to face with our desperate need for something more.  We must choose not to settle for the apathy of the Christian game.  Self-built, imitation versions of Christianity cannot replace a passionate relationship with the King. If you are ready to begin your pursuit into God’s endless frontier, take some time to ask yourself these soul-searching questions:  


When it comes to knowing Christ, are there areas where I have pitched my tent?  Have I bought into an imitation version of following God? Have I settled for admitting that I have problems but not believing that God can grant me victory over my problems? Have I been taking sin lightly and letting selfishness, rather than righteousness, rule my life? Have I reduced God’s expectations for my life to a set of reasonable guidelines I can easily accomplish on my own?


Be completely honest as you ask yourself these piercing questions.  Don’t compare your life to Christians around you.  Let Jesus Christ be your only standard.  And as God begins to show you areas of your spiritual life that are off-track, put them in writing and make a commitment to shift from settler to pioneer in those areas.
When we are willing to acknowledge the shallow emptiness of our self-made spiritual lives and ask God to carry us into the endless frontier of knowing Him, we open the door to a journey of discovery beyond anything we have ever dreamed.  And once we embark on the pioneer’s journey, we realize that the adventure has only just begun.








Confession time.  Although I've been doing Christian responsibilities all year long in Jacksonville, there were many times where I was operating under my own strength and not looking to the Lord for his leading and power.  I try too often to control the outcome of my life's situations and don't have a faith big enough to trust God to do some pretty amazing things outside of my power and control.  As I raise support this summer and hopefully reconnect with many people I've neglected, I've noticed that I get worn out super easily and I'm quickly distracted from completing my daily tasks.  I'm convinced that these distractions are the devil's way of keeping me from declaring the many good things God has done this past school year for the kids in Brentwood as well as for myself.  Christian "tasks" do not translate into a relationship with God and I've realized my own spiritually poverty and humanity in my own life.  I hope you took some time to answer Oswald Chambers' questions in bold print.  If you kind of just read over them without reading them, please take the time to seriously consider and pinpoint the areas in your life that distract you, mesmerize you, lie to you into thinking that you are alright when in fact your relationship with God is suffering.  God is so much more perfect and powerful and holy than any of us are so there is always some word/thought/deed that needs sanctifying.  Please pray to God to reveal those things.


Here's the latest 2nd Mile Ministries update video.  New leadership and spring break teamwork are the focus.  Be blessed!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgTu1q_JRas

Great Awakening

Many of you may be familiar with the term "Great Awakening" from history class or the history channel.  Wikipedia claims that there were four such great awakenings in Christianity, where waves of people were revived to "spiritual enthusiasm."  People, essentially, woke up.  This means that they had to be sleeping....or dead.  I've been having many thoughts lately on other ways people are woken up.  Alarm clocks.  Roosters.  Sunrises.  Pouncing dogs and purring cats.

Kids.  They are little beings that imprint and emulate people around them.  Their brains often soak up information told, inferences observed, and incorrect ways of living.  When I look back at the past school year and all that happened at our after school program, I'm amazed at the many things the kids learned.  Even just after one year, academic ability, knowledge capacity, and kickball prowess showed very visible growth in the kids.  They will only learn what is taught them.  Before this school year, I don't think any of them ever heard of Argentina, Antarctica, Turkey, Benin (I didn't know this one) and knew there were other cultures.  How important is it for a kid to know that the national sport of Argentina is called Pato?  Not much, but it opens their minds to learning new things.  It seems that the more I learn, the more I realize how little I know about the world.  When I first experienced poverty up close and personal, I had a "waking up" moment.  When you are dreaming, are you ever confused as to whether or not you are sleeping?  Many times, I only know that I was dreaming after I wake up.  I can imagine that this is the same with when someone comes to put their trust in God and Jesus comes into their heart.

I wish I could explain with words the way this metaphor of waking up makes me feel when I think of things such as Christ dying and raising on the third day.  Awake and asleep.  Alive and adead.  I'm going to use a fourth grader from our program as an example.  I may have mentioned this before but the more I tell people about my year, I tend to share stories about this kid the most.  Diallo began the year barely able to read.  He would recognize the first letter of the word and guess what the word was (almost always wrong guesses).  He did addition by counting on his fingers.  A fourth grader.  He began the year as a wild child, climbing fences, not following directions, not wanting to learn anything.  Who wants to work on things they're not good at?  After only one year, God has graced us 2nd Mile Ministries volunteers, interns, and staff with very visible growth.  Diallo now loves to learn new things, especially on his own.  He is a thinker and is very strategic when it comes to figuring things out.  He can multiply decimals and fractions now.  He is a stickler for following the rules and even helps other students make right choices.  He can read near grade level now, he even reads the Bible during reading time.  His choice, not ours.  God is definitely doing things we can take no credit for.  I feel blessed that God has used us to wake up some gifts and abilities in Diallo that may have otherwise been unseen and unexplored had he not attended the program and gotten personal love and attention from the volunteers.

Our long term dream and vision at 2nd Mile is to come along side people from the community and empower them to lead others in the community forward, not necessarily out of their lower standard of living, but forward and closer to their creator and more like Christ.

Because you are human, I can assume that there are tons of people that you once knew from your past (school, previous jobs) that you haven't seen, heard from, or talked to for years.  Have any of those people ever called you out of nowhere just to see how you were doing or what you've been up to?  How do you feel when that happens?  This past year I've experienced a frustrating and deadening feeling of solitude.  Living in a big house, having an entire floor to myself often sucked the life out of me.  Without fail, every single time I caught up with a friend from home, I felt encouraged, like part of my past woke up, part of me was encouraged and felt more alive than before.  I would just encourage you that if you feel like no one even cares about you or even recognizes your existence, think of someone and wake them up instead.  There are so many scriptures where Paul makes an extra journey just to see some Christians in order to encourage them.  There's something about reconnecting with people that makes me feel alive.  I pray that if I'm able to see you or talk to you at some point this summer that you are encouraged.  I know I'd be encouraged.

This past weekend I went to a wedding in LaCrosse, WI for a friend who I met on the Milwaukee summer project summer of '09.  I got to see him as well as four other project friends.  Reconnecting with friends who went through very life-changing experiences with me was like getting an electrical shock through my in-a-coma self.  Ever go through life doing the same old same old, wondering what the heck life is all about?  Sometimes last year I felt very much like in a dreamlike state of mind.  Please pray that support raising this summer is more than just "fundraising" but an experience that shows mutual encouragement and extreme dependence on God for provision.  Perhaps God will put it on your heart to give, or maybe he has already.

Please be blessed by this song by Leeland called "Great Awakening."  The lyrics describe so much about what I hope and feel for not only Jacksonville, but for all relationships everywhere.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Mj8I1chdB0

Hawkeye

There is a ton of excitement about the movie The Avengers.  I got a chance to see it and it was a ton of fun.  You may think this sad, but one of the biggest things I got out of the movie was a passing quote not five minutes into the movie.  Hawkeye is introduced as a man of moral character, sitting high up and watching.  As he comes down from his perch, he is asked why he was up so high.  "I see better from far away."  A short sentence, probably just a quote to describe his hawk-likeness.  For some reason, I dwelled on that statement for awhile during the movie.  Normally, things get blurry the farther away you get.  There's even a point when an object can be too close to your eyeballs that it gets too difficult to focus.

Working at the after school program and volunteering at North Shore Elementary all year, being there day after day, I admit that sometimes I get lost in it all and my purpose gets out of focus.  I think too small, mostly no further than that day, much less that particular moment of tutoring or disciplining or instructing.  I can too easily lose track of the whole reason for this ministry and my whole purpose, as a Christian, in life.  If you read my blog from March 18th titled Not A Circus, you might recall that 2nd Mile Ministries is going for the cathedral approach in restoring and developing the people in this Brentwood community brick by brick by brick.  This cathedral may take decades to build and focusing on the big picture, or seeing the vision from a distance, will, in a sense, make each moment we interact with the kids and people in the community a little clearer.

Last week Monday, I returned from a conference in Atlanta after missing three days of two:fiftytwo.  It was a cool feeling to be missed by the kids.  They seemed to be behaving extra nice that day (may or may not have had anything to do with my return).  While I was absent the week before, Diallo (whose job is to set up whatever recreation equipment I ask him to) got the chance to pick the games all by himself, a job he enjoyed so much.  Even this small "promotion" is just a glimpse of the kind of leadership development we want the community to take ownership of.  Next week, I hope to share with you the basic premise of the book When Helping Hurts which is a very important read for those who are interested in "helping" the poor.  I will probably miss Diallo the most this summer as I go to Wisconsin to find the support team God's preparing.  At the beginning of the school year, he was still doing addition by counting on his fingers, he could barely read multi-syllabic words, and he often showed no respect.  Now, he multiplies decimals and fractions, can almost read at his grade-level (he's in 4th grade), and he is the biggest stickler to the rules and structure of the program.  He even started to read the Bible during reading time on his own, something I would've never done at his age.  God is working through us but on his agenda.  There are now a handful of kids that read the Bible just for fun.  For fun!!  Kids!!  Who am I to tell them that its too hard for them to read and understand?  I pray for discernment in when I should step in and when I should just back off and let God do His thing.

If I get the opportunity to meet with you this summer, I hope that I can communicate clearly the big picture.  Wisconsin, in national terms, is far away from Jacksonville geographically as well as culturally.  I hope I will be able to see more clearly the vision God has called 2nd Mile Ministries to pursue.  The first year of the after school program, I hope, will be only the first of many many years of fruitful relationships between families and neighbors.  Please pray that in years to come, when a stranger enters Brentwood, they would just sense God's glory through the people and the way people welcome and love their neighbors because Jesus Christ first loved them.  Only Jesus can change people, not me.  I'm blessed to be someone God, by His grace alone, chooses to use.  This is my last blog typed in Jacksonville.  I will be back in Badger-land Thursday night around 11:30pm.  I'm excited to go home but also sad to be leaving.  It is very important to these kids (and me) that I come back and continue to build these relationships so that the kids can have a little consistancy in lives that, so often in poverty, are marked with so many surprises and changes beyond their control.

I'm near-sighted.  I've worn glasses since 3rd grade, contacts since sophomore year of college.  I'm choosing to be far-sighted.  Can you see what I see?

Starfish

Let me tell you a story that has been on my mind the past couple of weeks.  When you read it, please be thinking about how poverty around the world seems like such an unsolvable problem.  Enjoy!

One warm summer night, while everyone slept, a great storm thundered over a seaside village. The next day, a little girl awoke to bright sunshine. Her face beamed with a smile of great joy. She couldn’t wait to get to the beach.  Soon she was walking along her favorite shoreline. She liked the feel of the sun on her face and the warm sand beneath her bare feet.  She walked until she came across a starfish wriggling in the dry sand. Washed ashore by the storm, it was stuck. Soon it would die.  The little girl looked up at the hot sun, then down at the struggling starfish, and then out to the blue sea.  “How dare you leave him behind!” she scolded the retreating tide.  If only there were a grown-up around, she thought. A grown-up would know what to do.  “I guess the only one who can save you is me,” she said to the starfish.

She had never picked up a living starfish before, and she wasn’t terribly sure how to do it.  Using two fingers, she gently pinched one of its five points and held the starfish up to her face. “I’m going
to send you home,” she said. The starfish wiggled its points in and out, as if in happy reply.
Slowly she brought her arm back across her body. Then she swung it forward quickly, letting the starfish go with a wide, open hand.  Spinning gently, the starfish sailed through the air and landed in the water with a soft “plop.”  The little girl smiled and continued walking down the beach.  But after just a few steps, she found another starfish wriggling in the sand.  No sooner had she tossed this one back to the sea than she came across another starfish.
And then another one.
And then another one.
And then another one still.
She tossed each one back to the sea.
She reached the top of a high sand dune and came to a sudden stop. What she saw below startled and
amazed her. Stretching out in front of her were hundreds upon hundreds, thousands upon thousands of starfish washed up on the beach. They were all dying in the hot sun.  She looked up and down the beach, and wished that now, more than ever, there were a grown up around. A grown up would surely know what to do.  Suddenly, she exploded into action. One by one, she began to toss starfish furiously back to the sea.  She was so busy tossing starfish that she never noticed that a villager had stopped to watch her. Soon he was joined by another person. And then another one. And then another one still. Soon a whole crowd had gathered to watch the little girl toss starfish back into the sea.
Some people in the crowd began to point and giggle. Soon they were all pointing at the little girl and
laughing. “That little girl’s crazy,” said one.
“I know,” said another, “doesn’t she know that every summer thousands of starfish get washed up on the beach and die? It’s just the way things are.”
“There are so many starfish. She couldn’t possibly make a difference,” said a third.
The crowd of people grew larger and larger, until nearly the whole village had gathered to watch the little girl, and laugh at her folly.  The little girl was still too busy tossing starfish to notice them.
Finally, an older man, considered wise by all the town, decided he had seen enough. He walked over to the little girl. She had just tossed back another starfish, and was smiling with great joy. She was reaching down for another starfish when the older man’s shadow fell over her.
“Little girl,” he said, “there are hundreds of thousands of starfish washed up on the beach, you can’t
possibly hope to make a difference. Why don’t you give up and go play on the beach with the other
children?”  The little girl’s smile vanished. She gazed up at the old man, and then saw the crowd of people for the first time. She suddenly realized that they had all been laughing at her. Now they had fallen silent, awaiting her answer to the older man’s question.  She was hot. She was tired, and close to tears. She began to think that maybe he was right — maybe they were all right. She had been tossing back starfish for what seemed like hours. And a carpet of starfish still covered the beach. How could she have possibly thought she could make a difference? Her arms fell limp at her sides, and she dropped the starfish she was holding in her hand back to the hot sand. She began to walk away.  “That’s right. Go on and play. You cannot possibly hope to make a difference,” the older man said to the retreating girl. The crowd smiled and nodded their heads.

Then suddenly the little girl stopped, and turned around. She walked back to the starfish she had dropped.  Reaching down, she it picked up and -- swinging her arm as hard as she possibly could -- she let the starfish  go with a wide, open hand.  The crowd of people watched as the starfish soared and spun gently through the air, and then fell far into  the sea with a soft “plop.”  The little girl turned back to the older man, and with a smile of great joy, said:
“I made a difference to that one!”
And then, from the back of the silent crowd of people, a little boy came forward. He walked over to the little girl, picked up a starfish, and sent it soaring gently back to the sea. As it, too, landed with a soft “plop,” the little boy said, “And I made a difference to that one!”
The little boy’s mother and father then joined their son. “I made a difference to that one!” said the mother, smiling. “And I made a difference to that one!” said the father, laughing.  One by one, every member of the crowd joined in tossing starfish back to the sea, calling “I made a difference to that one” each time. Finally, even the older man reached down, picked up a starfish and tossed it gently to the sea. As he heard it land with a soft “plop,” he looked over at the little girl and, catching her eye, said in a voice that everyone could hear, “And even I made a difference to that one!”  Soon, more people who had been walking along the beach stopped to join in. And more people. And more
people still. Soon hundreds — perhaps thousands — of people of all ages, sizes and colors were tossing starfish back to the sea and calling out:
“I made a difference to that one!”
“I made a difference to that one!”
“I made a difference to that one!”
As the little girl gazed upon the beach, she saw nothing but people tossing starfish for as far as her eyes could see.  Soon the voices began to quiet down, and the little girl wondered if people were getting too tired to continue. But what she saw startled and amazed her.  All the starfish were gone. They had all been tossed back to the sea!  “Look,” said the little girl, “we made a difference to all of them!”  Many years later, another little girl was walking down that same beach. She reached the top of a sand dune, and came to a sudden stop. What she saw below startled and amazed her. For as far as her eyes could see, there were people tossing starfish back to the sea.  Curious, she approached an older man. “Could you tell me please, sir, why you are all tossing starfish back into the sea?” Many summer’s ago, the older man had once been that little boy who had been the very first person in the crowd to step forward to help the little girl save the starfish.  “Little girl,” he replied, “don’t you know that each year, when a summer storm washes thousands of starfish onto the beach, the entire town comes out to toss them all back to the sea?”
“Do you think that I could make a difference, too?”
“Of course you can,” he said, “Come join us!”

At the Atlanta conference I went to last week, the seminar leader asked us all a question.
"How big is your God?"
He wanted us to think about our prayer life, if we prayed to have a good day, safe trip home, stuff like that.  As he asked these questions, I thought about the kinds of prayers I pray.  Do I ask God to do big things in my life that go beyond normal circumstances and my own ability to make happen?  Rarely.  I feel our faith and how we pray is directly coorelated to how big our view of God is.  This story makes me want to pray boldly for the people of Jacksonville.  I am only one person.  And our after school program is only 10 kids in a city of over 800,000 people.  I want to be as persistent as the little girl in the story.  I would also pray that God would raise up more and more people, hopefully even in the Brentwood neighborhood, to live completely for Christ, unashamed of the gospel and living for God's kingdom.  Matthew 9:37 says, "The harvest is plenty but the workers are few."  I pray that you would have greater understanding of how holy and big God is so that your faith would increase and you'd grow others as well.  Love a neighbor as yourself.  Take a chance on someone you feel has been neglected or ignored in a while.  You might be the only friendly voice they hear all day.  Blessings!
Andrew