Me a writer?

Last night I had small group that I lead with the wonderful Chris Ramsey, and we've been going through 2 Corinthians chapter by chapter. It's really been a pretty cool thing, and very challenging for both Chris and myself, as well as obviously and hopefully the younger leaders who are a part of it. This week I was supposed to be leading on the 8th chapter, and after looking it over for a while and reading and re-reading it many times I just didn't feel inspired to try and teach on it at all. It's even just challenging to me in preparing to lead this group because I want to make sure what I present is something that will really challenge these guys to think and pray outside their normal realm of thinking and considering Christ in their lives and the lives of others. With that being said, I just didn't think that chapter 8 was going to do that through me this week. 

Instead I gave somewhat of a sermon, or at least it felt that way when I finished. Kinda felt like I should make an altar call and see if my guys wanted to accept Christ, although if any of them came forward that would be a little disconcerting to say the least. But let's get back on topic ourselves here, shall we? Usually when I lead I'll have a series of significant questions and analogies that help whoever my audience is understand the concepts better and relate it easier to their lives. Last night though, I just spoke; lost my train of thought a couple times, but God shifted me right back on course and it was great. I spoke about how well we know God, as that was the first question that Scott Hamilton posed to us over this past weekend. That night he then wrapped up by asking us what we thought God was trying to tell us in our own lives. If you don't know Him, then you're not going to be able to discern what He is trying to tell you or how He is trying to guide you. 

It just so happened that during our Lenten study with Heritage, it also revolved around knowing God and the study asked us about how well we knew one of our best friends or our spouse if married, which clearly I am not. However in describing three of my closest friends, Andrew Pierce, Kevin McIntyre, and John Slemmer, I realized that in comparison my relationship with Christ wasn't nearly as deep as those, but that I had known Christ almost as long as McIntyre, and longer than Pierce or Slemmer. Convicting stuff I tell ya. Think about it in your own life...

After touching on that I moved into talking about when Elijah was waiting on the Lord and how the Lord didn't come in the mighty wind, the earthquake, or the fire but rather in the whisper. That's when the Lord comes and yet, for Elijah to know that he would have to know Him by spending enough time with Him to recognize His voice well. That's how we all need to be.

When I finished all of this, Ramsey asked me if I had taken the time to write any of what I just said down. To be honest, I really hadn't because it was just a bunch of notes scrapped together and pieced together from all over the place; some of which I've already blogged about, but really that just makes it more all over the place. However it made me pause, and consider how much I've actually enjoyed writing over the years. I have always loved writing and I was always decently successful at it, however I never considered it for a serious career or that I would do anything with it. This was different though, and while I'm not entirely sure how or why, I'm definitely going to look into it. I would love any thoughts that anyone out there has...thanks party people.

NaTuRaL DiSaStErS? No. WhIsPeRs? YeS.

I really hate when people write letters like I did in the title...for instance there's a person I know who does it non-stop with their facebook status and it drives me insane. What's the appeal? No one can read it. Just thought I would try it out though...takes awhile to really write anything like that too. Just silly.

Well again I was at Rockbridge this past weekend with the wonderful Commonwealth Region, and it really was a fantastic time. One of the things that I started to realize after I got back from summer staff at Lake Champion, then forgot during the fall, then have started to realize again...is the powerful God that we serve. On multiple occasions in talking with friends and teammates and even leading Campaigners I have gotten feisty for Jesus and really spoken passionately and from the heart, an ever growing heart of gratitude for the Lord and what He has done. And when I mean passionately, I mean like this guy; because that's MY King too.

On Friday night Scott Hamilton opened up with challenging us all with the question of: How well do you know Him? He then asked us during the meat of the talk what it would take for us to carve out the time necessary to get to know Him. To be honest, looking back at my notes, I feel like the talk was disjointed but I know 100% that it wasn't at all and that I really just didn't do my usual thorough job of taking copious and all-encompassing notes. The one thing I want to focus on though, was then the opening question paired with the closing question: What's He telling me to do, what's He asking of me?

In order to know what Christ is telling me and what He's asking of me, I have to know Him. If we are His sheep we know His voice and listen to it. The way we do that is by spending time with Him for sure; reading His Word, praying, worshiping, serving others. Those are all ridiculous important and crucial in order to get to know God and what He wants in and for our lives. However, we must also LISTEN to what He is saying to us. This scripture has continually been brought up by the Holy Spirit in my pursuit of God's will for my life...

The Lord said (to Elijah), "Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by." Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and he went out and stood at the mouth of the cave. Then a voice said to him, "What are you doing here Elijah?"

So the thing about all that, is that I have been consistently trying to keep myself close enough and then quiet enough to the Lord in order to be able to hear the whisper of how and where He is moving. Sure there will inevitably be a couple wind, earthquake, and fire moments in my life and yours as well of following Christ...but I guarantee that if we don't all learn to listen and lean in to the whisper, we will miss His leadings. I don't want to miss that, so I better learn to shut the crap up and not become enamored with the flashy, the eye-catching, the trendy, or the popular; but rather become enamored with making myself humble like Christ. 

And sorry I didn't work in my answer posed to my earlier question, but since it's basically the same day that I'm posting I count that as a mulligan, and also since this blog belongs to me I get to mulligan all I want. Hah.

Chew on these links...

Wow. Just wow. 

Alright we all know that I love me some Caribou time whenever I can get it. There are many reasons: free internet, the smell of coffee, drinking coffee, people watching, the rustic interior design, randomly running into friends, and the chance to relax. You would be astute to observe that nothing on that list is something that should cause stress or frustration. Today, that was not the case...

I headed over to my favorite one, in Grandview, after I got off work today with the intentions of writing another post (which I'm doing, although not nearly in the form that I envisioned) and reading for my Lent study through Heritage. However we have found ourselves in the unfortunate position of this weird post out of pure frustration. Now should I be frustrated? No way! It's Lent, we have club tonight, it's nearly 60 degrees out in February in Columbus, spring training games start today, and well Go Bucks. The thing is, that whole free internet was about as cool as a cucumber today while at Caribou. It failed at the one in Grandview, so I headed over to one of the Upper Arlington locations, where it proceeded to not work again. So I find myself still there but on some other network that I was able to pick up. 

Alright so I know it's not really that big of a deal but I really thought I should share this with everyone. Thought you would want to know this little piece of my life. I'll be back later with a little more thoughtful postings, but for now I will leave you with this wonderful question posed by my great friend Chris Light: 

Which is a better movie one-two punch: Happy Gilmore/Billy Madison, or Tommy Boy/Black Sheep? Go ahead and discuss amongst yourselves, leave your comments, and generally waste too much time thinking about this. I'll give my answer the next time I post and I'll have another question to pose to the group...

Take heart...

Alright well I didn't really feel like waiting to post again, perhaps as feeling like I needed to make my friend Pierce's accomplishment of two posts in two days less significant than it actually is, or perhaps because I truly want to share some more wonderfulness from this past weekend. 

Regardless of my reasoning, I'm gonna share one of those nuggets right now...

Yesterday was Monday, and for those of you who aren't brain-dead probably are saying: Chad, that's not the weekend. You people would be of course correct. Well I was on my way in to work at Max & Erma's and I realized I just did not feel like working yesterday at all. I wanted to "ease" back into the flow of things after being away for such a great and fun weekend, and really it was just me being selfish and lazy. I think we all tend to get like that from time to time. So it wasn't a truly weird or alien feeling, and there was the other part of me that was annoyed that I was having this thought. This almost lead to a fight between halves since they were both annoyed the other one was there. Crazy I tell you.

Well I'm walking in to work, putting my apron on, and generally thinking about how I would like the day to go: busy so time passes quickly, or slow so I can go home and probably do nothing or maybe write a post. So as I'm about to walk out onto the floor and check my section, God just speaks to me and quotes himself from Jeremiah 29:11-13...

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all of your heart."

Man, I cannot explain the flood of just relief and love that came over me from that. It completely changed my day and my outlook on things. I really felt like God was speaking to me, "Don't worry Chad, don't be anxious. Like Jeremiah I know the plans I have for you, and they aren't to be working here or some other run of the mill job for the rest of your life. Take heart." Needless to say, that's a pretty powerful feeling when something like that occurs. Both of my shifts yesterday went well, and joy really became evident in me and manifested itself in my outlook and attitude all day yesterday. It has even permeated my day today already, which I need to really get going on. However, is there any coincidence that this verse was the verse of the day on Bible Gateway? 

Virginia is for lovers...

...and count me in love. Yup...although this isn't exactly new information for most of you guys out there that read my musings. However this weekend not only fortified my love of the state of Virginia, it expanded it greatly. 

For those who didn't know, I spent the weekend at Rockbridge hanging out with the Commonwealth Region for their Committee/Leader weekend. It was a really great time, and of course great fun to see a whole bunch of friends and spend time talking about life, Christ, and laughing. It was also amazing to meet a whole slew of new people, many of them from Virginia Tech, and to hear their stories and get to know them. I know the next time I head to Blacksburg it will almost feel like a homecoming or a second home at this point just because of the wonderful people that are down there. It wasn't just the people that made it a great weekend, but the God that we serve and who loves us. He revealed Himself to me in a bunch of great ways, and reminded me of His power, love, and Word. 

Now usually when someone goes on a leader weekend, especially at a YL camp, they come back and the common sentiment is: "That was the best weekend of my life!" This used to be the case pretty much every time I went on one of those, however for the past couple ones I haven't said that. That doesn't mean that they weren't amazing times, but rather I think it means one of two things. Hopefully the more positive one...

1.) My heart has somehow become calloused to the Lord's moving in my life, as well as my attitude towards people has soured and I don't enjoy hanging out with either God or people as much as I used to. (this is 99.9% not what's going on...)

2.) I have fortunately matured enough in my relationship with Christ that it is not dependent upon mountain top moments to get me through. Fortunately I don't think that I anymore have to ensure that they are big enough to get me to the next one. It makes my walk with Christ more constant and consistent, and hopefully gets me to a deeper level with Jesus. 

So in analyzing things I'm gonna go with the second option. Mainly because I feel quite close to Christ today and still, and it's not because of some afterglow of too much worship music. Christ is alive and real to me, moreso than before but not in a cheesy and artificial way that will fade. 

This is the first of a couple posts I'll have on this past weekend, and I'll make sure to let each of them sink in before putting up the next...thanks all. 

That's amore...

To be honest, I've been watching my Blogger Dashboard fill everyday with updates from all these other blogs of friends that I'm following and it really makes me want to write something. However, there hasn't been a ton of crazy revelation-like stuff that I want to post lately happening in my life. Don't get me wrong, I freaking love life right now; between leading, coaching, hanging with friends, God, and other random things it's a good life I live. God has blessed me immensely and for that I am insanely grateful. 

So in lieu of this blessed life I live, I'll just give you a couple anecdotes from it lately...

This past Saturday was Singles Awareness Day, for those of you who were unawares, and me and the guys decided to have some dude time. If you know me, you know I cherish guy fellowship, and this is no slam on the ladies out there...but when it comes down to it you just aren't as cool as guys. So we went to Canes, had heart attacks, then headed down to the Big Bang piano bar again for some crowd watching and great music. We tried getting the one guy to dance with some random girls again, but he was having none of it tonight. So we settled into singing along loudly with the music, and doing the typical crowd watching and commentary-ing. Well one of our friends, Mr. John Slemmer (UAHS class of '03 Most Underrated Hot Guy) was just jiving along to the music when he was approached by two women. You must understand, these women were quite inebriated and took quite a liking to young Mr. Slemmer. The first question that they asked was: "Oh my gosh are you Ashton Kutcher?!?" And to their credit there was absolutely no slurring...but dang they were drunk. Then they inquired of John's age, and apparently there's a huge difference between 24 and 25; them hoping that he was 25 when they were probably mid 30's. This made him more "cute" apparently than "hot", but did nothing to stop their incredible amount of groping of my friend. Of course though, the other guys and I did nothing to stop this encounter and proceeded just to laugh our heads off while it was happening, while quietly hoping the ladies would not repeat their...investigation of the rest of us. So if you see John, go ahead and ask him if he's Ashton Kutcher...then feel free to grab his butt.

Switching gears completely, we had CCHS campaigners on Sunday night...for which I was able to prepare about a solid 20 minutes for after discovering that we had completely forgotten to assign someone to this week. So I showed up with some scribbled notes about the topic of God's love and true love and really had no idea where things were going to go. Most of the kids coming to Campaigners regularly are freshmen who don't know Christ personally and so you never quite know what answer you're going to get. However, it turned into one of those amazing moments where God just says "I got you" and then He really comes through. The conversation was organic and just flowed, with most all of the kids there contributing out of the astonishing 14 that came! Last week we had 12 and were just praising Christ for that, but this week we increase with new kids and now my mind is just blown away. Please be praying that this continues, as these kids are genuinely seeking answers to life's questions and aren't afraid to ask or try things out. Most all are excited about camp and the price doesn't seem to daunt any of them, but pray that money isn't an issue with these kids either at any point. 

Last week I had to do a sprint workout with my kids and I hurt like hell. Judge me, but know that I haven't done a sprint workout in at least 6 years and now I only go for 1-2 mile runs and don't care about speed. 

Also I had a chance to go to the USA/Mexico game on Wednesday at Crew Stadium amidst the hurricane. It. was. awesome. 

That's all I probably got for today...hopefully some more tomorrow. 

Bam...roasted.

I gotta call a spade a spade...one of my esteemed colleagues in this blogging world has offered up a cheap ruse in order to get people to roll-over like trained dogs to get a story out of her. Now I must admit, she is a fantastic story-teller; one much better than yours truly. However, I call you out now Mambo for your underhanded attempt at getting comments! 

(although I must say, it's kinda worked...hmph) (and no I don't want to hear the story)

This upcoming weekend is of course Valentine's and so I feel compelled to write something about all that jazz. I could go with the traditional single guy angle of pink hearts and overpriced dates being for sissies. Or we could go with the almost equally as overplayed over-theological thoughts on the whole thing. Really though, I have no idea where this post is gonna go...so let's go!

I once again don't have a date for Valentine's Day, and I'm not sure if one is supposed to endeavor to have one, or if that is viewed as incredible cheesy and cliche. Either way, it's just a weird place to be in at 26 and single and graduated from college, but not really that that is anything terribly out of the ordinary but being in Christian community makes it difficult. So many of my contemporaries are seriously dating, engaged, or now married. The great thing about my position is that I can hopefully break some of the perceptions about Christians getting married too young and too quickly. I know that many of my relatives feel that way and that many people in the world feel that way. 

The exciting thing about the singleness is that there is really almost more opportunity to follow God's will! I know that at this point in my life I wouldn't mind a girl, but also I don't mind not having one. Life would be great, life would also be more complicated. So with all that being said, who really cares about Valentine's except for sissies and Hallmark? 

Well I apologize, but this post really didn't have a whole lot of anything to it. However, it's better than a teaser that really isn't a teaser and is really just a cheap trick to get people to comment. Mambo...

Follow me?

I recently decided to start reading in my time with the Lord at the beginning of John. To be honest, for most of December and January I wasn't doing so hot with God, and my life showed it accordingly. However, one of my great friends Brandon pointed out that even though we may know it and acknowledge our struggles to God in a feeble attempt to straighten things out, there is truly power and help and grace in confession. So I confessed to Brandon that I wasn't consistently getting in God's word and wasn't wholeheartedly spending any real time with Him. Brandon was a great brother and received it with grace and handed back grace to me, along with gentle guidance and the words I needed to hear in love. So a public thank you goes out to my boy holdin' it down at VT. 

Anyways, a thought I had while reading the first chapter of John for what seems like the umpteenth (somehow that's a real word to my Mac...it didn't red underline it like it did with "holdin'") (weird) time, it stuck out to me that somehow most of the disciples that began to follow Christ knew who he was and very confidently proclaimed it. They were excited for the Messiah who was to come and lead their people. Now either the God revealed the mystery to them in an unrecorded way, or they jumped up and followed just about any guy who came along claiming that he fulfilled an ounce of messianic prophecy. I'd really like to think the latter didn't happen but who knows? Well the thing about this that I thought was interesting was how readily they were able to identify their Messiah. 

I had a thought about this whole interesting set of exchanges a while back and asked Erik Hofmann about whether I would be able to just ask a kid to follow me to camp that I didn't know and have it work like it did for Jesus. Obviously I'm not God in the flesh, but he mentioned that he thought it wasn't exactly a cold thing...Jesus had established himself at the very least as an upstanding, trustworthy, and model citizen that people probably liked being around. Well that might be true...but debating history isn't what I've come here for. In now tying things all together, I want to be so sure of who and where Jesus is that it looks like how the disciples did when they started following Him. 

"Chad, follow me." ~ Jesus

Think about it...how well do you know Jesus? Would you drop everything to follow Him if He called you?

Take it to the people...

Hey friends...well here's the thing about this blogging jazz. I really dislike just posting what's been going on in my day or whatever I did recently. Unless that's OSU sports, it just doesn't appeal to me. Here's the thing, there are friends of mine that do that and they are wonderful and much more gifted than I at storytelling, and so what they write is cool. My life recaps I feel aren't. So as much as I hate just writing for anyone's approval we all write for that on some level. It's just a matter of how much it controls our writings. 

So I shall choose the lesser of two evils and tell you about my life lately. I've been pretty busy with all sorts of things that have kept me running around and simultaneously loving life. Track has started up and of course I love it. Concerning Young Life we have Campaigners going and started club back up (not our own but going to other schools). OSU sports is way fun, we win lots of stuff. 

- Track. I love track. We've been over this, but now that it's started and I'm actually coaching kids and getting to see them a lot it's just way over the top incredible. Especially since I don't have to worry about classes and studying anymore in my life...that applies to making everything more awesome but especially track. My relationships with the kids are incredible right now, and new kids are just joining in with the old in having a good time and working hard and forming good relationships with me. I love being more confident after this coaching clinic as well with what I am teaching the kids. It's brought a whole new level of respect from them and confidence for themselves as well. I continue to pray that God will move in some pretty mighty ways within this group this year. A goal of mine is to be able to openly pray with kids before races or meets this year. If whoever is reading this could add that to your prayer list, that would be amazing. 

- God is not just moving in great ways in my track ministry, but with other guys as well. I am blessed to lead with studs like Vivake, Vuck, and Nathan. Trisha and the former Laura weren't too shabby either. However, last night blew me away. We had 12 kids there in total, 3 of the guys were new and 1 girl was new. Most everyone seemed to be learning from what Nathan was throwing down, which could've even been over their heads but they all seemed to be tracking with it. A lot of different kids contributed answers and spoke up to read the scripture passages. It was just great as always, to be able to just join in what God is doing in a place. All of them seemed pretty excited about Campaigner Weekend as well as camp, so please keep Central Crossing Young Life in your prayers as well. I'm sure I'll have more thoughts and updates on this all the time. It's just an exciting time for us as a team. 

- This week was just a week of sports for me. Not only did track start up on Tuesday, but I also went to the OSU/Purdue game that night with my dad which we won 80-72 in overtime. Purdue has never won a game against us at the Schott and it's great to keep that up...suckers. Then Thursday I got to see my Comets wrestle and kick the snot out of New Albany and Dublin Scioto...my boys are good. Friday night brought a very satisfying win over Kilbourne and their uppity, too vocal parents...in fact all three teams beat Kilbourne: Freshmen, JV, and Varsity. Boo yah. Saturday brought another OSU basketball game, this time against the Fighting Tubby Smiths of Minnesota in a revenge game for us which was horribly officiated and yet we still won. Awesome...2/2 in knocking off ranked teams for the Bucks this week. Speaking of knocking off ranked teams, then we went to the OSU hockey game on Sunday (for free with .25 hotdogs) against the #2 Fighting Irish and we kicked the crap out of them 4-1. Got free fries for that, as well as the Purdue game. Went straight from the OSU cagers to the OSU grapplers against Purdue again and we solidly defeated them. Man I love the Buckeyes. I love sports too. 

Mark Titus did his handshake thing again after the Minnesota game and it was great. I'm not overly sure how to end this post now though. Just thought you all should know what's been happening in my life. I reached into my pocket for some small change, and you just read my 2 cents. 

Mark Titus wants YOU!

To join the Trillion Man March. Keep up the good work Mark. 

Last night, the Buckeyes of The Ohio State University took down red hot Purdue in OT 80-72, to send the Boilermakers to 0-lifetime at the Schott. Love it. Even more so because there were a handful of quite annoying Purdue fans sitting behind my dad and I. (Love my Dad by the way, he's an old alum that cheers and actually cares about the outcomes of games.) The game was ok, but not great from a crowd involvement perspective, as it took them playing Hell Bells aka the Bell of Death, to get people even thinking about getting loud. Heck, I'm pretty sure that people just were cheering to the song and not because the team needed them. Hopefully though this $5 ticket thing will help as it will get more people (theoretically) into the games that care about them (like students). Of course those people will be up in the upper level and not near the court where they can truly make an impact. I could go on and on for days on this but I won't. 

Great win last night. Go Bucks. National Letter of Intent Day is here for football...let's see what happens...

James Laurinaitis likes piano. (And Brian Hartline still sucks.)

Hey hey hey, couple minor things to cover in this installment of my thoughts and ramblings...

1.) I freaking hate the Steelers. There's no if's and's or but's about it, they are pure evil. Hines Ward is the biggest piece of walking feces I have ever seen. James Harrison is just another thug from Kent. Santonio Holmes is hereby stripped of his citizenship in Buckeye Nation for his egregious crimes against the state. And if you haven't seen this already then check it out and you'll know I need not say anymore.

2.) Buckeye basketball, while not close to the level of Buckeye football, is pretty darn great. Heck, we even usually provide the ulcer-like endings that the football junkies are used to. Evan Turner is amazing, William Buford (not quite the same Brandon, but close...) than watching us sweep the regular season series with our two rivals in basketball in back to back games does a pretty good job of bringing a smile to one's face.

3.) Bailey is the worst dog ever. Period. End of story.

4.) My buddy Pierce updated his blog finally with a second entry, and I would like to commend him for it. Way to go dude. It was funny and insightful. Please sir, can I have some more?

5.) The other night some of the guys and Allyse, went out for Berlepsch's birthday celebration. He wanted to go to the new dueling piano bar that opened up a week and a half ago down in the arena district. It's a place called "The Big Bang", and all the workers wear shirts bearing the slogan: "Bang This." Interesting. However the place is amazing, funny because the interior design is almost exactly the same as the one I went to in Nashville in September. It really was a fantastic time, and if you're of age I highly suggest you make a trip down there sometime. If you want to avoid the yuppie fratties and their according harems though, go around 10 in the evening which is right when I think the show starts up. The set up is two baby grand pianos sitting facing each other, with a drumset back and in between the two pianos. There isn't always someone on the kit, and actually it's much better when there isn't, but there's always two amazing players tickling the ivories to any of your favorite tunes over the years. They take requests, know just about every song possible, and if they don't know it then they can learn it. Of course your requests are much more likely to get played and played sooner if you deposit some money with the request and if the amount of that money is much higher. For instance, the dude who slapped down a cool C-note for the quite talented and quite attractive female pianist to play some Janis Joplin. Just one song, that's all he payed for with his $100 but dang it was good. Thanks rich yuppie.

We did see James Laurinaitis there, and he seemed to be having a good time. Also with him was another OSU linebacking legend, Bobby Carpenter, who loved every song a whooollllleee bunch. Then we also noticed Brian Hartline. Sure glad that guy's leaving the team. My luck though, the Bengals will pick him up. Ugh.

Anyways...it was a pretty fun night, with lots of laughs. The group of guys that went (along with Allyse) is one that I always have a great time with no matter what. Well one of the guys we prodded into trying to meet and dance with some of the attractive females that were present there. This was hilarious. You could tell that he had never done something like this before in his life and was just trying to roll with the punches and see what happened. I'll save the suspense, he struck out. Better luck next time buddy.

While this was occurring though, it got me thinking and observing bar culture and everything and everyone around me. The ones that really got me thinking were this handful of older guys who definitely stuck out in such a younger crowd. I would estimate that they were in their late 30's, and they dressed like it, acted like it, and oozed it. It being a substitute for the word "creepy". They were all trying to dance near packs of younger girls, and really not saying anything to them or trying to do anything. Also, dancing would be a loose description for what these middle aged white guys were doing. So yeah. Sadly enough, if you look at how they were acting, given their surroundings and whatnot, it's pretty easy to surmise that they weren't looking for a relationship with any of these girls, and most of the girls around them were far out of their league. I began to wonder if these guys just tried to pray on the drunkest girl who was desperate in order for them to have a good time, but that the way things were looking these guys were going to go home empty once again. It's a really depressing life that people get sucked in to, and is so prevalent. It only served to heighten my urgency with the sharing of the Gospel with not only friends, but family members, as well as the high schoolers of Central Crossing. People are pouring their lives out into nothingness and death while we have everlasting life welling up in us like a spring! What are we waiting for? We must act boldly, we must act passionately, and we must do anything we can share the Gospel with people we know and people we don't know. 

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart." ~ Hebrews 12:1-3

It's a track thing, you wouldn't understand...

This past weekend was the clinic put on by the Ohio Association of Track & Cross Country Coaches and let me tell you, it was incredible. I actually feel like I know something about track! Ok well I did know things about track before but now it's actually knowing why we do certain things certain ways and whatnot. They talked about all sorts of biomechanics of sprint and running technique, block work, hurdles for both guys and girls and both distances, conditioning, strength training...and those were just the seminars that I attended! There was a whole plethora of other seminars on distance running, all the throws, all the jumps, and some random ones as well. 

(Right about now I'm gonna go get a bowl of cereal, just so you know. Smart Start, thanks to JJ Einsfeld.)

(K, I'm back now. Wanted to share that with you all.)

Like I alluded to in previous posts I just ate up everything this weekend and was probably the coach out of the hundreds who was most excited to be there. I took all sorts of notes, and the whole time was thinking of all my kids and how I really hope that I can help them improve in their track proficiency. Of course though, the hope in that will be to really strengthen the relationships therein and build toward being able to verbally share Christ with them either through Young Life or just an amazing opportunity that God alone would present me with. Unfortunately in my eyes, the fruit that I would have envisioned from kids on the track team hasn't materialized for the two years I've been coaching at CCHS, but with the way that things have been happening this year I'm very hopeful that things will start to blow up. The first step is to remember names of kids I haven't seen since last track season ended...which I know may sound bad from a YL leader's perspective, but seriously I can't see every kid every day although I certainly wish I could. It breaks your heart, but that's the way that it's supposed to be. We just have to trust in God enough and have faith that He is moving and things will move according to His plan. Along those lines, something that I always tell my team that is sometimes hard for me to follow on my own is: God is infinitely more interested in what He is doing in you, than through you. 

So the question then becomes, what is God doing in me through this whole process? What is He doing in my currently, and what does He want to show me? What should I learn, what should I correct, what should I let go of? God is actively pursuing me, and He is actively pursuing you, so what are we going to do...keep running or turn and spend our lives in the presence of the Living God?