Reckless Abandon

This past Friday night and Saturday morning our church had a retreat at Riverbend Church in South Carolina. Tom Short was leading the retreat and as we all trickled in on Friday we had a night of worship and prayer. While we were singing a worship song someone's little boy was chasing around a balloon, being ADHD like I am I was watching him as we worshiped. At one point the balloon got away from him so of course he had to get it back, as he was chasing the balloon he knocked over a cup of water, stepped right through the water, and ran into the man leading worship. He was so intent on getting that balloon that he didn't notice any of this but in the end he got that balloon.

This lead me to think about our life with God, so often we are afraid to chase after God because well we might knock over something or mess something up. We care more about who is looking at us and how foolish we might look than trying to be with God. As I watched this kid chase the balloon with reckless abandon I thought we as believers need more of this, a passion so great that we don't allow anything to get in the way. This is the point where normally I would talk about how we need to do this but with maturity and wisdom, but actually no Matthew 18:3 - And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. The heart of a child loves fully without permission and restraint and when that love is applied to God, then there needs not be any restraint or slow and careful inquiry. RUN, CHASE, DIVE INTO the heart of God with full intentionality of finding him and living through him. Live a little more reckless for God today.


- Keegan

The Words we Choose to Use.

For those of you who know me really well you know one of the things I enjoy is following/watching/playing Starcraft 2. A while back a player left a team because the team had asked him to restrict the usage of inflammatory words. The team did this not because they just wanted to have control of him and what he said, they did this cause he was representing them and they wanted to be viewed without the taint of those words. He chose to leave because he valued his "right" to do and say what he wanted over the necessity of working with others for a common goal.

This made me think about curse words. Let me define curse words in two different ways, first culturally our society has decided certain words carry a stigma of malintent and as such have been labeled as curse words. Secondly curse words scripturaly, the Word of God describes words used in anger as curse words. These words many times overlap but that is a different topic completely. The question I am looking at today is how as believers should we view these words and actions?

As believers in Christ Jesus we have freedom outside of the law (not the law imposed by government but the law given to Moses by God). So we technically have the freedom to use the words culture has deemed unfit.  Because we have this freedom does it mean that we should use it? What does the use of these words and actions show about our hearts? As in the situation above we represent someone else so, how are we representing them? Are we showing the world that liberty of words is more important than the character of God? Do we prove ourselves fools when we open our mouths or show God's wisdom through restraint?

You have the mic so what do people hear from your words?

-Keegan

Circles Of Life

On Friday night Topher, Chris, Victor, and I stayed up until 6:30 in the morning playing video games, the next morning I went to the football game with Amy, Loren, Jenna, Josh, David, Joannah, Alex, Sommo, Zach, Rob, Caiti, and Tyler. While at the game I saw one of my friends from back home Mark High and we got to talk about the old times and people that I grew up with. Why am I telling you all of this? So one of things I have realized about life is that you are going to have different parts of your life that you share with different people (there is some overlap) and that you need to balance these parts.

Yes another google picture it just happened to be appropriate ;)

I call these different parts circles, some of them are circles within circles ie. HomeGroup is within Grace, these circles require time to maintain which is why over time some shrink and disappear. Throughout my day I am constantly having to choose between circles, do I watch a movie with this group? Do I hang out with this group? I am not perfect at all but I do try my best to spend a equal amount of time in each group.

This is really hard for me because most people don't see this they only see that I am ditching them for someone else. I want to do so much but I only have a set amount of time, as such at different times different circles take priority of others.

As a person I hate it when people are mad at me or disgruntled with me. This makes life really difficult because I am always being pulled in many different directions and having to say no to things constantly. This creates tension and sometimes hurts feelings, I hate it when I have to do that but I can't be in multiple places at one time.

Basically what I am trying to say is I would love to be able to spend as much time with everyone as possible but please understand that I can't. I have different responsibilities as a HG trainer, student, Friend, and family member. I have to balance all of these, so as I try to do this I ask that you be patient with me. I am not perfect nor am I anywhere close.

Popeye: "I yam what I yam, an' tha's all that I yam" 

-Keegan