24/7 Prayer

24/7 Prayer at ECU starts Friday at noon and goes through next Friday. This is an attempt to bring people closer to God through spending time in prayer. The event will be held at the BCM beside Wendy's on 10th street. We want to unite our campus in prayer and seeking after God, He is doing big things on our campus, so why not join in and get involved.


24/7 Prayer at ECU from Brad Christian on Vimeo.

Check out the website to sign up www.247ecu.com

Special thanks to Brad Christian for doing an awesome job on the video.

Smile and Enjoy

Check out their website for more details about "playing for change".

I hope you enjoy the video and that it brightens your day like it did mine!

Praying For All People (Politicians Are People Too)

Over the past month, it has really been brought to my attention that the people leading our government really need prayer. When I say they need prayer, I don't mean that we should pray for them to pass this legislation or that legislation, I mean that we should pray for the PEOPLE that are leading our country. This list of PEOPLE includes President Obama, everyone in Congress, your governor and your local government officials. If you dislike our government, a particular politician, or all politicians in general, you don't have an excuse. If you don't believe me, check out 1 Timothy 2:1-5, it says that we are called to pray for ALL people, and even makes direct reference to praying for those in positions of political power (don't take my word for it, click the link). When you pray for our leaders, pray that if they are followers of Christ, that they will seek His guidance and direction in the decisions that they make. If they are not following Christ, pray that they will be impacted by God's influence in their lives. If you are truly interested in seeing God turn our country around, remember that He moves when His people pray. 2 Chronicles 7:14 (Go ahead, click that link too, God's word has more to say about this than I ever can).

If somebody forgot to let you know...

In case you live under a rock, or haven't been around lately, I just wanted to let people know that I have some amazing friends. C.S. Lewis once wrote that "The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are". I totally think this is true and I have been blessed to have the chance to surround myself with people who challenge and encourage me all the time. I enjoy spending time with people as you know if you have spent 30 seconds around me, and I just want to say thanks to all of the amazing friends that I have and to the Creator of the universe that brought each one of them into my life. Y'all are awesome!

Where are your priorities?

I want to take some time and hit on the fact that sometimes, we get busy, we get stressed and we get distracted from what we should be focusing on...right now is a great example of that because I am working my way through a pretty busy week and I have made it a point to not lose focus of what is important in life. I have a lot of assignments and quizzes and even 2 exams the day after my birthday coming up this week, tax season is starting to pick up at work and I know when I get to Washington in the morning, there will be a stack of returns on my desk waiting to be prepared. While all of this is going on, I have made a commitment to stay focused on spending time with God, leading my 2:42 group, and making people a priority in my life. Nothing in life can become more important than God, people, and service. Sometimes, that means choosing to take time away from pursuing good grades or anything else that becomes more important than these three things. That is not to say that good grades are not important, because they are, working hard is important, but in order to approach them properly and bring glory to God through my grades and my career, I have to make sure that He stays top-priority in my life. I challenge you to do the same...regardless of what is important in your life, please take time to make sure that God is the most important person in your life, and that loving and serving Him and His people is your goal in life.

Luke 10:27

And he answered, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself.

Hope

Hope is such a powerful word. President Obama used this word as one of his campaign slogans, it is a keyword in the fight against breast cancer, and 1 Corinthians 13 tells us that it is one of God's most enduring and amazing gifts to us.

Tonight, Kyle and I were watching the news and it was filled with report after depressing report about our failing economy and the huge holes in the stimulus plan that is supposed to fix the dying economy. The next report was about the 58,000 Americans that have lost their jobs in the last two days. Kyle and I just kind of looked at each other and he made the comment that he is so glad that his hope isn't in our government, our President, our economy, or anything else other than Jesus Christ and the love that He has for us. I couldn't agree more, and as I was thinking about all the people that are going through hard times right now and that are stressed because of our economy, or our country's new leadership, or any other multitude of things that people find to worry about, I was heart-broken that not all of those people have the same hope that Kyle and I have.

God can use times like this to draw people closer to Him, and I pray (and I ask you to join with me) that people will realize that regardless of their current economic position, that we all have a God that loves us more than we can possibly imagine and that came to Earth and died for our sins, but was then RESURRECTED, overcoming death and Satan so that we can spend eternity in His presence if we only acknowledge what He has done for us, accept it and turn to Him in repentance. He gives us peace that allows us to look at the current condition of our country and not worry about tomorrow, but to trust that He will provide for us. This is the true meaning of hope, hope that comes from God and allows us the freedom to fully trust in Him.

So I HOPE that you place your hope in the right place when things get rough and when things are going great.

Control

So, last night I went to bed at about 12:30 with the knowledge that in a mere 6 hours I would need to be on my way to Washington so that I could be at work by 7. I've gotten accustomed to having about 6 or 7 hours of sleep (college will do that to you). I'm one of those people that has the wonderful gift that when my head hits the pillow at 12:30, I'm asleep by 12:32. So I'm off to dreamland.

Suddenly my ears are bursting to the sound of a loud chirping (much like that of a giant mutant cricket)! It's WAY too loud to be my alarm telling me that I should be dragging myself out of the bed, but it's so loud that getting out of the bed just kind of happens. Someone in my apartment has pulled the fire alarm. I look out the window and people are standing way too close to the building for it to actually be on fire, so I'm not in a huge rush to grab some clothes and get out, but I start heading that way. Oh, did I mention that it is 4:00 IN THE MORNING!

Taking all of these events into consideration with the sleepy haze over my mind, I decide that the best thing for me to do is get dressed and go ahead to Washington to work really early.

I have taken two naps and I am somewhat normal right now, my sleep schedule is kind of weird, but I was thinking about the events of the pre-dawn morning and I realized that there are some things in life that we cannot control. This really should be no surprise to me, but it makes a wonderful reminder of the truth about control.

So how should I handle a situation like this? During the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus asked the question "which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?" As usual, Jesus was right...lol nothing that I could have done this morning would have changed the fact that someone (I don't really even care who) pulled the fire alarm and worrying about it wasn't going to fix anything, so if I'm not supposed to fret (some of you will say that's a Nash county word, and if so, I'm proud..lol), how am I supposed to handle this situation? That's just it, I can't change it so I can't give it head-space (complements of Bobby Garcia). My job is to get dressed, trust the purpose that God has behind making sure I'm awake at 4, and move through the day with a thankful spirit, blessed that there wasn't an actual fire and no one was hurt.