My Summer

Hello Friends,

It is summer once again and, as many of you know whom I messaged from last summer, I have decided to focus on a spiritual discipline once again. Every summer we all have large lists of books we want to read and by the end of the summer we maybe make it through half way of the first one. So I have decided to do away with my book list for this year and focus on two items. First I plan to read the Pilgrims Progress all the way through as I have started it many times but can’t seem to finish. The second and most important is to read through the Bible as many times as I can this summer.

I really don’t know what that will look like, maybe once or twice or only a half. Yet I have been thinking that most of what I study at school is much more in depth and down among the trees which is very detailed and yet easy to find yourself lost. I hope to be able to get a better glimpse of the whole forest this summer. 

So I am telling all of you because like last year when I focused on prayer I would ask that you all hold me accountable to this. My summer is looking to be very busy yet I feel this could be the most important thing that I do. So please send me a quick message throughout the summer to make sure I am not falling on my face, also feel free to share what things you have been reading in scripture as encouragement as well. 

And even though I am not “focusing” on prayer this summer it is still something I want to implement more and more into my life. So please also feel free to send me what things I can be in prayer for you this summer. For myself please pray that I would not be discouraged in my efforts, I find more and more just how painfully slow sanctification is when I just want to be changed overnight and it can be very discouraging for me. Also I will be working anywhere from 45-55 hours a week this summer, as well as doing an “unofficial” internship with my church, and also preparing for my senior season on the basketball team. When I look at ahead to this plan for summer I find all I want to do is just lay in bed. So please also be in prayer for my stress and anxiety.

Thank you all so much,

Scott

Galatians 2:20

Thoughts From A Broken Jar

Sometimes it feels as if the whole world is bearing down on me, as if the worlds troubles were in my control to change.

Sometimes I feel that nobody wants me around except for some laughs, as if what other people thought about me was more important than my savior who died and gave his life for me (Gal. 2:20).

Sometimes I feel that there is only darkness, as if I didn't know the light of the world shining forth from me (Matt. 5:14).

Sometimes I feel that I have to be perfect, as if God didn't know that I am broken and has put people around me to help pick up my pieces.

Sometimes I feel as if there's more I need to do, as if what Christ accomplished in his death and resurrection weren't enough and I only do because he did.

Sometimes I feel like God made a mistake choosing me, as if God makes mistakes in extending grace and mercy.

Sometimes I feel like I am the only person who matters, as if others need me to function and God needed me for anything.

Sometimes I feel as if only God would break down my stupid pride so that all that would shine forth from my broken and beaten body is the treasure that God delights to place in broken vessels (2 Cor. 4:7-12).

I am afflicted in every way, but not crushed. I am perplexed, but not driven to despair. I am persecuted, but not forsaken. I am struck down, but not destroyed. Always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, SO THAT the life of Jesus may also be manifested in my body.

Is The World A Sinking Ship?

I have lately been thinking much about this picture above. As we are going through Revelation in Church and hearing Pastor Kevin talk about the new earth, I have been reminded about the common misconception that as Christians our end goal is to get to heaven. Now there are many problems with this idea such as the goal is heaven which is actually a secondary blessing of our saving faith whereas our main focus is God, we get to walk with God like Adam and Eve did, we will worship God without the negative effects of sin, all that we do in eternity will be God glorifying. As great as living forever in paradise may be I'm looking forward to being as near to God as I can. 

The next problem is that we have the "Greek/platonic idea" of eternity that just isn't correct. We will not be wearing diapers, floating in the clouds, playing harps. We think of our lives on earth as the waiting room before we get to eternity, but really heaven is going to be the waiting room until God redeems the earth. 

This is what we are looking forward too, a new earth without the corruption of sin. so the next question is, is this new earth brand new like a cosmic mulligan? Thankfully PK helpfully talked about this word "new" as really meaning "newness of quality" not of kind, so really we are looking forward to a RENEWED heaven and earth. 

Why is this important? because I believe that many of our ideas of the earth and Jesus are just like the cartoon at the top. We see the world as this great ship that is sinking due to Satan's evil and Jesus was able to come and save many off of this sinking ship. But this is a poor view of God's redemptive plan. 

Satan has some measure of victory in this picture, he was able to sink the good ship God created and only by luck was Jesus able to save some of Satan's victims. Satan may be destroyed in the end but he sank the ship. 

If we were to believe that this world is too far gone and we just need to believe in Jesus to get onto safety then we believe that Satan is victorious in this world in a way. But this is not true. The world is not a sinking ship, God's redemptive plan is not only for humanity but for all of the universe. He is redeeming a people for himself to place on a renewed earth that sin in not only not present but not even longed after.

I cannot wait for the day when sin will lose all appeal, that I will have no attraction to sin whatsoever.

That is the glorious vision of God's work not the cartoon above. He is so utterly victorious that it only looked as though Satan would have a small victory but in the end "one little word shall fell him!" 

A Time In Africa

Getting back in the groove of school and life has been crazy for me so please forgive the lateness of this post. I was so blessed to have been able to go to Africa over spring break, specifically Ethiopia. I currently am having a little Africa withdraw, I want to be back there with the Ethiopian people so much. But I am back in the states now and will be using my experience from this trip to hopefully further my ministry.

First: Thank you everyone who prayed and supported me financially on this trip, none of this happens without you!

Cultural Context: They spoke the language Amharic. The people are very poor or very rich I didn't see a middle class. Traffic is crazy. I could not get over that they made there scaffolding from sticks. People are very friendly and easy to talk to, though a lot of them hoped to get something from you. People's day's started early in the morning because it got dark around 7:30pm.

What did we do?

Day 1: Flying into Ethiopia was crazy. Our travels and time zone changes meant that we skipped a day getting there. We arrived Tuesday (3am) went to bed then woke up on Tuesday (7am). Once that happened there was no hope for me knowing what day it was. The first thing I noticed about Ethiopia is that the sun is very bright at 6 in the morning. That first day was really cool because I was able to walk in the city a little bit, we were driven around the city a little bit and we got to speak to the whole nation. i.e. we had a news conference to talk about the tournament we were playing in and got to explain a bit of why we were really there in Addis Ababa the capitol of Ethiopia. In summary, culture shock and spoke to a nation.

Days 2-5: From Wednesday through Saturday we got this awesome opportunity to play Ethiopian professional basketball teams at the YMCA in Addis Ababa each day. Before we played these games we had awesome opportunities to go to local schools and play there teams and talk with the students at each of these schools. It was neat to see all the people that we were able to reach an talk to through the language of basketball. I feel like there are some that do not believe in using sports as a ministry but our team was able to go places and have immediate common ground with people that we maybe would not have been able to talk with or go to without using the sport of Basketball as our common language. The last day of the tournament we had a cool opportunity to go out to eat with the some of the players from the Ethiopian "dream team" and just get to know them and speak with them.

Day 6: Sunday morning we traveled from the Capitol, Addis Ababa, to Axum a very religious city. We were able to tour around Axum a bit before leaving to Shire (pronounced Shee-reh) an hour or so away. Axum is the city that has a temple which claims to contain the Arc of the Covenant. Also we visited the ruins of the Queen of Sheba's palace and some tombs. When we arrived in Shire we immediately went over to their outdoor court to play the local team there in Shire and were able to very quickly make relationships with kids and the people there in Shire. I was blown away by God's creation on this day.

Days 7-8: This day we went out to see a school that was run by two women who help orphans, abandoned, refugee children, and lone women. Our team fell in love with the kids of this school that we decided to help them out by splitting our group into a small build group to build a basketball court for them. While the rest of the group was able to put on a basketball clinic for the people in Shire. Another thing we did on these days was to visit a local church where our chaplain for the trip did some pastor training, some of the team did Sunday school teacher training, and we were able to worship with the church in one of their services.

Day 9: We took about 10 hours of our day to travel to and from a refugee camp for the Eritrean people. I wish we could have spent more time actually in the camp but due to the nature of the roads we had to leave rather soon after we got there. We were able to eat a meal there with a local missionary pastor in the refugee camps and then we were able to worship with the Christian refugees there and some from our team were able to share some encouraging words to the church there.

Day 10: Thursday we finished up the basketball court for Abraham's Oasis on this day. We ran into a lot of snags and setbacks in the process of building these hoops but God was in it and we finally were able to have a court for the kids.

Day 11-12: Friday we flew back to  Addis Ababa and we visited some more schools in the area. On Saturday we were able to visit a marketplace and rest up most of the day. We went to the airport around 11pm to fly back to Istanbul, Turkey and then home to Chicago.

Day 13: All Sunday we spent flying back to Chicago. We had a long layover in Istanbul so a group went on a mini tour of the city before our flight back to Chicago. We finally arrived back around 8pm Chicago time.

Phew, With all that said I don't even know how to explain everything we did because there is so much more that this but I now want to talk about the impact this trip has had on me.

I am so blessed by all those who prayed and supported me financially on this trip. So I want to say thank you a thousand times over. You made it possible for me to go to Ethiopia this spring break and therefore it is because of you that I have been able to be so blessed encouraged and grow so much by this trip.

First thing that happened from this trip was a great growth between myself and my team in relation to one another. The closeness and experiences shared between us will never be the same, we were sick together, talked together, laughed together, and reached out to the Ethiopian people together. I am so thankful to have been able to know my team members better due to this trip.

Next, it was amazing to see our national missionaries Bekalu and Jordan work along side us, and how patient they were with us. I was blessed by the Christians already in Ethiopia who served us without asking for anything  in return. And I was blessed by the people of Ethiopia even those who tried to get us relentlessly to by their sunglasses, or belts, or maps. They are beautiful images of God and my heart goes out to them.

Bekalu, our missionary who helped us all two weeks, told us that we had been a great encouragement to the Christians and churches where we were ministering. Our goal was to to come serve the people of Ethiopia by the name of Jesus Christ, we were able to do that but I feel like so much more that the people, Christians, and churches of Ethiopia served me so much more than I ever could repay. It was amazing just to see the mountains and the rest of God's creation in Ethiopia that this trip would have been impacted

I have learned so much and am still taking in and processing sights, sounds and other such things from this trip. I praise God for the opportunity I had in Ethiopia, I am finding hard to just write out the impacts it has had on my life.

Thank you all again for your prayer and support feel free to contact me if you would like to know more about what we did in, what I saw and felt, etc.

We Made It

We have arrived to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. We made it to our hotel last night at 4am. It was a long journey, we missed all of Monday due to travel and time zone changes. But all the travels went very smoothly and we are blessed. Thank you to all of you who prayed that my long legs would get an aisle seat, it worked.

Today we had an amazing opportunity to share to all of Ethiopia. We had a nationally televised news conference in order to talk about our upcoming tournament with the national teams. Our coaches and a couple players were able to convey that we are here to serve Ethiopia as Christ washed the feet of his disciples. It was an incredible opportunity to get the name of Christ spread to the whole nation.

Tomorrow we begin playing against national teams and hope to spread the gospel to both players and the crowds.

Ethiopia is incredible, please continue to pray for our team and our impact we may have for Christ. 

The Chase

It has been quite a while since I last really posted, I have had many ideas and topics which have been floating about but just haven't had much time to sit down and write it out. I however am writing now because I can't get an image out of my head and I just want to share it.

I'm not sure where it came from or why, but what I can't seem to get away from and just keep thinking and overwhelming myself with, is this image of chasing after God.

Now everyone has heard all the Bible references about the Christian walk being like a race that we run but for some reason  this image has just become real to me. I am running there is pain and exhaustion when I run it's not easy but the goal at the end of this race is God and that is worth all the side aches and shortness of breathe.

More specifically though I have just had this image of a child chasing his father. A child will do anything to reach his father but sometimes that child falls along the way. A child is not as stable on their feet as an adult it doesn't take much for them to trip. But what happens next is the greatest part. The child is met by his father and picked up and comforted before the chase again resumes.

This is the image I have been seeing in my own life and walk. I am striving so hard to get to the Father, but I trip and fall, I am not yet sure of foot. I still have a long way to grow. But I am not left in my pain and disgrace from having fallen God meets me where I am in the form of Jesus Christ who picks me up and offers comfort and direction. He points me to the Father so I can resume my chase after Him. The joy and prize of my faith.

I can do nothing but marvel at the grace of God.

Hebrews 12:1-2

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

1 Corinthians 9:24

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it.