Tough Love Is Still Love

I am sure most of us are familiar with the phrase "tough love", but for those of us who have not been familiarized with this concept, "tough love" is essentially where we give constructive criticism to someone who means a lot to us. It can be by any number of mean, direct conversation, the silent treatment, forcing/encouraging us to do things we don't want to do, but we need to do to better ourselves, etc. Some people take tough love as being a way just to be abrasive or tell the person how wrong they are. In other words, instead of being constructive in their criticism and calling out, they forget the "love" part, and they are just "tough." Tough love though is an essential part of the Christian life, and I will explain what I mean if you are confused how it could possibly be good.

I think this tough love concept is something that we need to hone and perfect in all of our relationships as Christians. We need to be able to show tough love with other believers in our Christian community and also realize, and this is going to startle a few of you I think, that God is going to show us tough love. The thing to keep in mind with that, is that tough LOVE is still LOVE. If you tell me that "oh, Hunter, there is no way you know what you are talking about now. God is only the lovey dovey kind of love with unicorns and butterflies." I would challenge you to show me where it says that in scripture. I am not claiming to know exactly how God works, but to me it should make sense that as we are created in God's image, we can look at how we tend to love, and that is just merely a SMALL glimpse of how his love works.

If we understand that in truly loving someone, we have to call them out when they are hurting themselves or others, I should think that the creator of the universe would notice that too and the difference with his love is that he will actually always step in and help us. God is truly involved in our lives and loves us. In his love, if we are not doing things right or are down a wrong path, he will help us, but he doesn't just pick us up and put us on the right path. God will guide us and lead us back to where he wants us and where we should be. How he does this can be any number of ways, but don't you think that showing a "tough love" to us would be an efficient way to get us where we need to be and also break us of the bad thing we were doing or to help us learn a lesson to stay on the right path? I just want to make sure that we all understand this, me included, that just because God isn't making us feel all warm and fuzzy inside 24/7 does not mean that he isn't showing us the love he has and getting us to become the creatures he intended us to be.

I think I have gotten the point of God's tough love across, but now I think it is also important to make a quick note about our use of tough love with each other. I encourage tough love, but make sure like I mentioned before that you don't forget the "love" part of it. Using it effectively can be very beneficial for those around you, but if you are just plain mean to them, it can make things infinitely worse. An example would be when someone is struggling with some issue, and instead of just coddling them and telling them it's going to be okay and blah blah blah, you are real and honest and just tell them that it's not okay what they are dealing with and they need to do something about it. Explain to them that this thing they are struggling with is hurting their relationship with God and with others and that they need to rely on God to help them get back on the right track. Don't forget to mention to them that although you see their need to fix things, you and the rest of their friends are there to help and to pray for them. A support system isn't worth much if we are only their for each other to tell each other how great we are and not to let each other know when we are slipping down the into places we shouldn't be. In short, it is all in the approach.

I hope and pray that this has somehow helped you guys to better understand how and what tough love works. This is just what I understand of it and how I see it after much prayer and reflection about it. I have wanted to write a post about this for a while and after much prayer and thought, this is what I felt called to write. I hope God has spoken through me so that you feel more comfortable with the concept.

Hearing Problems?

Before I start this post, I want to remind everyone, that in no way are my posts necessarily the official stance of any branch of the church or any denomination or anything like that. They are merely my understanding of God based on experience, scripture, and other theologians.

So this is kind of a continuation of the post about prayer. This is more directed towards the hearing from God aspect of prayer. I am not going to take the usual approach of looking at ways in which we DO hear from God, but instead look at ways in which we hinder ourselves from hearing God speaking to us. Some of these are things that we don't realize are hindering us, but some are things we do because we want to be secure in ourselves and not have to be completely dependent on our Father in Heaven.

First of all, is when we don't take time to stop and listen. This is so obvious, yet we often don't think about this. How are we going to be able to hear from God if we are not stopping to listen for his response and guidance for us? That's like asking a question to an academic adviser, then getting up and walking out of the room before they tell you what classes they feel you should take next semester. Don't ask God to guide you to your perfect spouse, to help you make a financial decision, or to help you pick a college, then not listen for his response. We tend to fill our lives and our schedules to the brim that we have no time for our relationship with God. Make some time in your daily schedule to both pray to God, but to also listen back.

People often find the issue that when things are going well for them, and even sometimes when things are just alright, we have the tendency to think we are not in need of anything anymore. "We have everything we need." This is not true at all and will not be until we are in Heaven. We always need God and we always need him to continue providing us with his grace and his blessings. We need to fight against this mindset and always remember our need for him.

Along with the taking time in our schedule to listen to God, we need to take time to rest. I know more than enough people who are burnt out and just physically, emotionally, and spiritually exhausted. We live in a time and society where we feel like we always need to be on-the-go and doing something. What about taking care of ourselves though? Sure, exercise is good and you should do that, but maybe some days of the week, use your exercise time to take a nap. Or go to bed early instead of staying up to watch the ball game. Trust me, that's a hard one for me. Rest is important and vital. Even God rested. Maybe he didn't need to, but in doing so, he showed us that WE need to. If we aren't rested, we can't be the creature God created us to be and can't worship him as he intended.

I am sure that we all can relate to the feeling of wanting God to fit how we need him or want him to be. We want God to fit OUR lives rather than fit our lives to what God has for us. Doing this is essentially telling God that we know better than he does what is best for us. Does that even sound remotely like a good idea to be living your life in that way? Didn't think so. I know we feel like we know ourselves well enough to know what's best for us, but I promise you, God knows you infinitely more intimately better than you will ever understand yourself. Trust him with your life, rather than making him fit your expectations and desires. In this mindset, even if we do somehow let God speak to us, it could upset us and what we ourselves are trying to gain in this world.

The next thing is to be "religious." What I mean by this is like the Pharisees. Religion in this sense is being overly committed to the law and having the mindset and tunnel vision to think that you can find all the answers. We have to realize that we are saved by God through Christ, not the laws and scriptures. We are told about this salvation and father through the scriptures and guidelines, but they themselves are not the source of salvation or grace. When we find ourselves putting our faith in the Bible itself or the laws, or theologies, or philosophies of Christianity rather than Christ, we are missing the point and will never correctly hear or interpret God's guidance or voice.

Spiritual warfare is real and we have to acknowledge it. If we ignore it, it could be fatal. We are told in Ephesians chapter 6, verses 12-13, that we are not fighting wars against flesh or other people, but rather a more vital war against spiritual evil and darkness. We are to suit up with the armor of God and go to battle with that, rather than wage war on Earth with each other. By focusing on our Earthly battles, we are not keeping ourselves open to God's command as our spiritual general.

Lastly, and this may sound silly to you, but we can not tolerate sin in our lives that we have yet to confess or are unwilling to confess. As Christians, I feel we often think that since we believe in Christ and the grace we are given through him is enough and the rest will take care of itself. However, being a Christian is a whole new lifestyle and it is something we must work at and build upon for our whole existence here on Earth. Psalms 66:18 tells us that if we keep sin in our hearts without confession, God will not hear us. Hebrews 10:22 tells us we are to draw near to the Lord with clean and pure hearts free from an evil conscience. How to get rid of that evil in our conscience is to confess.

These were in no particular order, but just different ways that we are hindered from being close to God and hearing him speak to us. I hope and pray that God has made his way into your heart in reading this.

Keep your chin up

So everyone in this world experiences highs and lows in life. Its inevitable and if you think otherwise, you need to stop kidding yourself, or come out from under that rock you have been living under. Life in this world is a roller coaster emotionally, physically, and most importantly spiritually. We go through periods where things are going great in our personal lives like we have a great boyfriend or girlfriend, our job is really great (or we find a job), our grades are good, and our relationships with our families are great. However, there are also periods where we go through crap. Pure crap.We are lonely and feel as though no one will ever love us, we are financially in trouble and unemployed, we have familial struggles, and so on and so on. Those times can feel hopeless. I am here to tell you though that in any situation, bad and good, we can have hope.

If there is one thing that I think most Christians can agree on, its that God is here for us no matter what. That right there SHOULD be all I need to say about this. I should be able to just leave it at that, wish you all a good evening, and let you all look forward to the next time I post something. However, its easy for us to accept that as a good enough reason to cheer up for about 5.38 seconds, then we feel insecure again. We humans are so focused on the tangible things. God is with us always? Oh well that's GREAT! ....Where is he? I don't see him....

However, if you read the Bible, and you might have to go skim through what it says again, it teaches nothing BUT hope for us. There are tons of stories about people who literally went through Hell on Earth. They experienced pain and agony and fear and abandonment. However, they were never left on their own and in the end, God would rescue them. Job I think is a great example of this. He was utterly destroyed. Everything taken away from him. His family, is property, everything he owned was taken from him. HOWEVER, Job remained faithful knowing that God does not back down from his promises and will always bless his people and deliver them. Pretty great example of how we should face the hard times in our life too.

I want to point out though as well that we are to have hope still in the good times as well. "Hunter, its so easy to do that." Sure, you might think that. Hope in God is very closely related to your faith. Our hope is in Christ and by having faith in him, we are to remember him in all things, good and bad. However, I have seen in both my life and others, that when things are going well in our lives, we tend to forget where these blessings come from and even sometimes that they are blessings, not anything we earned by our own doing. When things are going well, we need to understand that God is giving us the blessings and giving us a time of prosperity, and we therefore need to keep hope in God that his promise of giving us infinitely more in Heaven is still true. It may seem like you could be perfectly happy living like that in those times, but comparatively to Heaven, you have no idea what joy even means! So continue to have faith that God's promises of eternal joy are more than just the happiness we can find on Earth.

We are to keep finding our hope in God through Jesus Christ both in the hard times by knowing that God redeems his people and calls them out of the darkness, but also we are to keep seeing the hope in him in the good by knowing that his promise means so much more than temporary earthly joy. As Christians, it is so important not to get complacent in the good times or to feel as though God is not a part of our good times. Everything we have is from him. We have done nothing to earn our blessings or good fortune. Keep the hope that he will stick to his promise of eternal joy in his presence.

My prayer for you is that your hope in God is renewed today and that you recognize your worth. God will never forsake you, and he will never let you settle for the earthly happiness when he has so much more prepared for you in Heaven. I pray that you seem him more and more each day and feel him guiding you more and more along his will.

Having a Rough Time?

Check out these lyrics from Casting Crowns' song Praise You In This Storm...

I was sure by now,God, that You would have reached down
and wiped our tears away,
stepped in and saved the day.
But once again, I say amen
and it's still raining
as the thunder rolls
I barely hear You whisper through the rain,
"I'm with you"
and as Your mercy falls
I raise my hands and praise
the God who gives and takes away.

Chorus:
And I'll praise you in this storm
and I will lift my hands
for You are who You are
no matter where I am
and every tear I've cried
You hold in your hand
You never left my side
and though my heart is torn
I will praise You in this storm

I remember when I stumbled in the wind
You heard my cry to You
and raised me up again
my strength is almost gone how can I carry on
if I can't find You
and as the thunder rolls
I barely hear You whisper through the rain
"I'm with you"
and as Your mercy falls
I raise my hands and praise
the God who gives and takes away

Chorus

I lift my eyes onto the hills
where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth
I lift my eyes onto the hills
where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth 

Prayer

So something I have seen that a lot, if not all Christians struggle with, is prayer. How do I pray? When do I pray? What does praying even mean? Is there a wrong way to pray? All very good questions because prayer is a very personal thing for you and for God. Its not the same for any two people, so thus, we have a lot of differences in what prayer looks like and therefore now set of instructions that tell us EXACTLY how to pray. There is no list of things you have to cover or anything like that.

First off, I feel like the biggest question I hear is "How do I pray?" Or it could be phrased in the statement "I don't know how to pray." Well this is silly. Why is it silly? Well let's first look at what exactly is prayer? Prayer is simply our way of communicating with God. So many times, people look at prayer as our way to just talk AT God rather than to talk WITH God. What I mean is that simply, we talk, but rarely listen. I am sure that we all can relate to this. We pray to God and we tell him our joys and our struggles, we thank him for blessings and ask him for guidance and strength. However, once we say "Amen", that is often the end of it. Prayer is not just when we are talking. Prayer is a conversation, a dialogue, not a monologue. God is not the audience to his creation. He is the director. He is actually like a director AT a dress rehearsal of a play. He watches, but intervenes when necessary and talks to his actors and gives them new direction or tells them about how he likes what they already were doing. Not the best analogy, but I think it works for our understanding of who he is. The point is we can't just talk to him and ask him for things, yet not be listening to his response. Listening for God's response is just as much part of prayer as us talking to him. Prayer then can be just taking time to sit in quiet and just listen for his guidance and his assurance to direct you. Prayer can not be limited anymore to "speaking to God" because prayer ISN'T just when we speak. I can't stress this enough. This I feel is our biggest mistake in prayer as Christians. We complain that we don't feel God's guidance or that he is speaking or calling us, but are we actually even listening??

"Ok, Hunter, I get it! I need to listen. I will work on that, but when I speak to him, how do I do that?" Good question reader. How do you speak to someone you love, lets say your father or a close friend? I will give you a few moments to think about that question first......


OK, speak to God like that. God is your father and he is your close friend. He has your back and he wants to have an ACTUAL relationship with you where you are comfortable with him and you trust him. He doesn't want to be this unapproachable creator and ruler that we feel afraid to talk to. Be respectful, but be friendly and just TALK to him. It doesn't have to be laden with "thee", "thou", "thine/thy", and all of this wordy business that we are conditioned to think. Matthew 6:7 says "And when you pray, do not heap on empty words as the Gentiles do, for they think they will be heard for their many words." Don't be wordy, say what you mean and what you need to say and end it. God doesn't like when we talk in circles any more than other people do.

Well the next issue is when to pray. Always be in a state of prayer. As a Christian, it is important to always be in this "conversation" with our Father. When we are not directly talking to him, we should have an ear open to what he is saying to us and how and where he is guiding us. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 says this: "Rejoice always, PRAY WITHOUT CEASING, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for all of you." Notice the capitalized letters. Pray without ceasing. Always be speaking or listening to God.

Why do we need to pray though? This is the easiest question of them all. We need to pray to build that relationship that I mentioned earlier. God wants a real relationship with us. Unlike the relationships or lack of, between people and the deities of other religions. God loves us and wants to be connected with us and have an actual working relationship with us. How many relationships with other people have you had that worked well without ever talking to each other at all. Romantic, friendship, or familial, none of them work without proper communication, both speaking and listening. Prayer is ESSENTIAL to building and maintaining our relationship with the creator of the universe.

Why would you NOT want to have a relationship with him? Talk to the guy for crying out loud!!! And listen to what he has to say in return, it is probably going to change your life.

The Little Golden Calf

So maybe we don't necessarily have visible or completely tangible things like a golden statue of a baby cow anymore, but idolatry is not any less true in today's times. The old testament is littered with examples of God's people worshiping things or objects other than God. The main example here, as the title refers to, is the golden calf. The new testament though also warns of putting other things apart from God as the main object of our attention. The first of the ten commandments is to not worship any God other than our God. This in some texts includes a detail saying on Heaven or on earth. This implies something very important, and something I intend to stress in this post.

So the very important thing to note here about idolatry is that the things we can make into idols are more complex than what the stereotypical view of idols are. First off, which I think we all already understand is that idols are not simply statues or objects we can hold in our hands or set on our mantles. They are much more than that. They can be things that are important to us such as getting good grades, getting a promotion, being a good parent, winning the tournament, etc. So you might have noticed, those are all good things. They are not necessarily things we should avoid. There is absolutely nothing wrong with striving for ALL of those things. However, its the amount of importance that we put on these things that matters and what contributes to their "idol" status. So now I realize, we need to define what exactly an idol is.

Idol can be defined a few ways, and I want to show them all to you because they all vary a little and yet all have accuracy to the. Dictionary.com provides us with a few of them. Here is the first: "an image or other material object representing a deity to which religious worship is addressed." So what does this saying? It is saying that an idol, simply put, is something that we worship in place of God. God is supposed to be our number one focus in life and who we put at the top of our priorities. Our relationship with him is supposed to be number 1 on our list. Anything that is above him on that totem pole is by definition an idol.

The next definition we look at says: "a material object, esp a carved image, that is worshiped as a god." This definition implies that the idol or deity is not super-natural or divine, but rather formed or created by man or some other thing. Why is that important? If something is created by something else, it can not be treated as a deity. Something worthy of our worship cannot be created by us. If created by us, it is automatically below us and we shouldn't worship something we make. Do you worship the bench you made for your back yard? What about the anklet that you made for your friend? How about that tie-die shirt you wore yesterday? No? You don't worship those things? Just because it is less valuable monetarily than a shiny cow, doesn't make the cow statue any more worthy of worship. It is still man made, and not divine.

The next definition says this: "a mere image or semblance of something, visible but without substance, as a phantom." We can now take the last two definitions and decide to ourselves that this one definitely makes sense. Something that is often inanimate and man-made can't possibly have substance to it in a worshipful way. Sure, it looks cool, and we can admire the objects beauty or cool appearance, but it has no worship value. In a spiritual sense, it truly is a phantom because these things can not hold up.

Back to how I was saying that idols are not always physical objects though. You might ask, how? Well lets look at some examples. I think money is one that many people struggle with nowadays, whether they realize it or not. We have to look at the first definition here. What is more important to you at any given moment in the day, your relationship with God, or how much is in your bank account, how much your bills are, how much you are making on your paycheck, and how much gas prices have risen? I think if we all answer that question honestly, we care more about our financial situation that our relationship with God. We are far more stressed about finances and we are far more overjoyed when something good happens financially. I struggle with this too, don't get the impression I am calling people out.

Another one that I see a lot in college and saw a lot in high school is getting good grades. "Hunter, there is nothing wrong with striving for good grades and being the best you can." I agree completely. However, are your studies getting in the way of God. What I am about to say might hit home with some of you, just know I am pointing out something that ALL of us struggle with. How often do we not go to church/youth group/campus ministry because we "need to study." Sure, the workload for school is big, I get that, but we need to learn to budget our time better so that God, our supposed number 1 priority, gets the time he deserves and that when it is time to give him his time, we do it. Skipping out on church for homework is saying "I value my school more than I value my time worshiping God and studying his word." That may sound a bit harsh, but maybe its because we realize its true. Just food for thought.

Lastly, I want to look at something that is a little deeper, but something that I know I struggle with, and I am sure many of you do as well. It is the idolizing of relationships. I can be a romantic relationship, relationships with friends, or just the interaction with any people. "What does Hunter mean?" Something that often gets in the way of my relationship with God is my desire to find companionship here on Earth. I get very lonely here and although I have friends, many friends, I long for more. I idolize the idea of having a companion to be with. I am of course speaking of a girlfriend or future wife. I just love the idea of having someone in my life to share my life with and love on and give my affection to. Those are all good things. They are all Christian things as well that are promoted in our religion. However, it can get a hold of us and take over our thinking. Do some people only go to church in order to find "the right kind of woman/man"? Of course they do! Do some people think that the kind of love they are missing is the love between humans? Yes, but they are probably actually searching for the love of the Father that they haven't yet fully accepted. The same is true on the friendship level or on the level of general acceptance of others around them. All of this is idolatry. For me, relationships are an idol, as it is with most people.

To wrap things up I want to look at Timothy Keller and what he has to say about the matter. Keller is the pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in NYC and writer of the book The Reason for God. He makes the point that when we have idols, they become our identity because as our deity, they are our reason for being. The point he then makes is this:


"Identity apart from God is inherently unstable. Without God, our sense of worth may seem solid on the surface, but it never is--it can desert you in a moment...If anything threatens your identity you will not just be anxious but paralyzed with fear. If you lose your identity through the failings of someone else you will not just be resentful, but locked into bitterness. If you lose it through your own failings, you will hate or despise yourself as a failure as long as you live. Only if your identity is built on God and his love can you have a self that can venture anything, face anything."

He is making the point that idolatry leads to building our worth on Earthly things, and therefore broken things since our world is broken and sinful. In putting our worth and identity in such things, we will inevitably be let down and it will destroy us spiritually and emotionally. However, when we worship the one true thing worthy of our worship, our identity and worth can not be shaken. We can not be moved. The reason then is obvious why God does not allow us to worship anything else. Not because he is some kind of dictator, but because he knows what will happen to us if we don't solely worship him. He knows what kind of destruction that causes in us and in our hearts. He loves us enough to warn us against this so that we know that he is the only thing worthy of our worship and the only thing that can keep us from the destruction our hearts will face.

I hope that you have found this inspired by God and not in a way where it sounds as though I am judging people. I too struggle with idolatry and that is actually why I wrote this post. I felt it on my heart to write about it and share my thoughts with you and what God had put on my heart. I hope that at least one of you got something out of this. I continue to pray for you as you care enough about this blog to read it and search for God speaking to you through it. 

Camp

So this summer, as some of you may know, I spent 8 weeks being a counselor at a Methodist camp where kids would come for a week to hang out, play, have fun, doing crazy crap, and learn about Jesus all at the same time. I came for 8 summers as a camper myself and this was my second summer on team, so it is like a home away from home for me. I just wanted to take my first posting after the summer to just reflect on the experience and share with you guys how good God was and what kind of growth I experienced.

First off, coming into the summer as returning team has a whole new feeling to it than when I came in as a new team member. I had more experience, I knew more what to expect, and I definitely already had a lot more friends than I did just one year ago. This time it was my turn to be the one to help the new people settle in and I was definitely excited to do so. During O-Week (Orientation Week) I feel like I really was able to embrace kind of a big brother role with my buddy and also with a few of the other new guy counselors and kind of help them find their feet here. It was really awesome and created some great friendships over the summer.

I spent the first 4 weeks straight on the high school age level. That is the age I love working with the most, but it is also the most draining in my opinion. Not only are you getting the least amount of sleep each night, but also it is the most active during the day and also the most emotionally and spiritually challenging and draining because at this point in their lives, they are dealing with the toughest issues USUALLY. Some cases you have the occasional middle school or maybe even elementary camper that has rough crap going on too, but the biggest struggles usually show themselves with the high school campers. This summer, we did something on Thursday night that focused on the brokenness of the individual and the societal pressures put on them and this REALLY brought out the sharing of brokenness. Dealing with all of that was tough, but also very cool because I got to see God use me to reach out to the kids and show them love despite their problems which they probably don't get much of back home.

I had multiple campers tell me how great of a counselor I was in those first four weeks, including campers I had last summer who came back and where really excited to see me. That is another thing that was a big change from last summer. I had campers that knew me each and every week and that was cool, but a challenge too. I struggle with pride sometimes and this summer was a real test of that. I like to hear good things about me and praises in my name, but at the same time, I hate that I like to hear it and I wish I wouldn't hear it because I know how quickly it can get to my head. When the campers are saying it, that's one thing, but its another when other counselors started giving me praise too. I was thankful that I was doing a good enough job to get noticed by other team members, but at the same time, I felt bad because I was just trying to do my job and I was getting praise while others were not. It felt weird to me especially during meetings when we would do something called "shout outs" where we just give praise to other team members in front of the whole team of a certain age group. To me, I feel like its good to give praise to people, but maybe do it privately, rather than in front of everyone. Maybe I am just weird about it because it is a struggle of mine, but I think that I grew in my ability to receive praise this summer and not let it get to my head AS MUCH. Just one of many areas I grew.

Week 5 I had a buddy. A buddy is a camper that is special needs that needs someone to be with them at all times to just make sure they are ok. They could have special needs for mental or physical disabilities. For privacy purposes, I won't share his name. If you were on team with me this summer, you know his name anyways. I just want to start off by saying that I had always wanted a little brother and getting the opportunity to look after this camper 24/7 for a whole week and just hang out him and I was really cool because I felt like I got to have the little brother I have always wanted to have. He grew so much spiritually and emotionally his week here and I am so proud of the man he is becoming and that he is allowing God to work in him. Being at camp was his first time away from his parents and it was a worry that he might not make it all the way through the week, that he might have to go home early. He made it the entire week though and only cried once at the end of the week because he was going to miss me and being at camp! I was so ecstatic that he had such a good week and he told me he could not wait to get back next year and have me as his counselor again. There are so many special moments I could share with you about this boy, but I will limit it to just one. On Friday night in worship, we do communion with the campers. He had never taken communion before and asked me about it. So I got to explain to him what communion is and why we do it and then I got to serve him his first communion and take it with him. I felt God so much in that moment and felt like the most blessed counselor to ever work at WWW. Then, he asked me to pray with him at the alter which was a huge deal because up to this point, he did not like to pray out loud with other people around at all. It was a huge step for him to have the courage to do that and it just blew me away how much God worked in him that week. I will never forget him or the week we had together and I continually pray that I am able to come back next summer and that I can have him as my buddy again.

One last story I wanted to share was about another camper I had last summer who came back this summer. Last summer, he was kind of less into his faith, for lack of a better phrase. He called himself a Christian, but I don't know that he really understood what that meant or lived it out at all. He was in my small group the week he came last summer and I could kind of see a change in him the week he was here, but it was very small. Then he came back this summer and I could see a huge change in him the minute I saw him at worship on Monday night. He was so into the music and the lyrics and just was full on worshiping God! It was awesome! So I sought him out the next day and just asked him what he had been up to since camp last summer. He told me that he had really changed, that he had gotten more involved at church and had accepted Christ into his life and that he was really convicted by God. He had just spent an entire month out of the country ministering to people of another country. It wasn't a typical mission trip, but they just went and spent time with the people and prayed with them and loved them. I could just hear the passion and the love in his voice when he talked about it. He then told me that myself and the other counselor who taught the small group with him, my good friend Morgan, where a HUGE part in his transformation. He said without us, he would not be where he was today. That blew me away. I cried, hard. I was so touched by the fact that God used me and my good friend to reach out to this young man and bring him into the kingdom and do great things not only in his community, but in another country. I found out later from another counselor from this campers church that the camper had been talking about Morgan and I and how much we impacted him at his church for a long time before he even got back to camp. It really showed me how big of an impact we have as counselors and if we truly love the kids and show them genuine love of God, we can literally change the world through the kids. It is still something that just blows me away and shows me how good our God is. To wrap up the story, on Friday night at worship, he was praying with Morgan at the alter. I played bass guitar in the band so I saw this happening right in front of me, so I put my bass down to go pray with them. After Morgan got done praying for him, I got up and went back to playing alter call music. Then he prayed over her and it really touched me. Much to my surprise, he then looked up at me and told me to come back down and he prayed over me as well and I will never forget the things he said to our Lord about me and the genuine thanks he had for me in his life and what I was doing for the camp and for all the kids. I am so blessed to have been a part of this young man's life and I am beyond excited to see how God uses him to bring God's kingdom to earth.

Outside of the campers, the team experience was fantastic this summer. I got to build more on friendships that I already had started last summer as well as start new ones with new people. I am sure that there are at LEAST a few that will be friendships that last a lifetime. I have never felt such a tight community of believers as I have the past two summers here on team. I know that we will all look out for each other and have each others backs for a long time. I would do a couple shout outs, but I would end up just naming all of team. I made a few friends that were closer than others, but there is no need to name you, you know who you are. If you served on team this summer, know that I love you and pray for you every day.

The summer is over now and I am still at camp working for people who come on retreats and other things of the like. We have a band camp going on right now as well as a football team staying here and I am just lifeguarding, working in the kitchen, or facilitating the ropes course for them as they need it. It is nice to still be here, but weird too as the rest of team is gone and summer camp is not going on anymore. Its almost like a whole new place here now.