The Talk

So last night I had the honor to give the message at College Young Life Club. It was awesome. It went really well and I think I really got what God wanted me to say across. It would have been sweet to get more feedback from students in what they thought and I don't know just build conversation. One of things a definitely saw this week while preparing was the way prayer was working. I really don't know if I have prayed that much about something before. Not only was I praying but I was also asking others to pray for me whenever I got the opportunity. I know that because of bathing my talk in prayer it made it easy for me. God helped me come up with a focus that I was excited about and that would flow from me with ease and that is exactly what happened. I think by me lifting my message up it helped me understand that nothing could go wrong, that God was with me up there and I had nothing to worry about.

Tonight in my small group we focused on Matthew 11. I just want to highlight a part and share with you. "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light" Matthew 11:28-30. First I just want to explain to those of you who don't know what a yoke is.. that thing on those oxen's necks.


It says in that scripture that we must take up His yoke. Now when I first heard this I knew what yoke meant but I didn't realize totally what He meant by it, until tonight. When you are in a yoke, there are usually two so when I read "take up His yoke," I am on one side and God is on the other. If I take up His yoke I will learn from Him because He is right next to me. It says that His yoke is easy, and I think it is easy because He has control of it. He has control of the weight. It isn't on my shoulders but His. You're problems are no longer yours but His. You can see from the picture that these two oxen are stuck together, they can't go opposite ways. This is what God is representing here. If you take up His yoke you will be going in the direction that the Lord wants you to go. He has the lead and all you have to do is follow.

Holy Land

You know that feeling when you leave someplace you love? The empty stomach feeling, like you know you are missing it as soon as you leave? That's exactly what was happening to me today while I scaled my way out of Wildhorse Canyon(aka The Canyon, WaFaRa). I just spent a good 2 days in a place that I will never forget. The canyon will always have a special place in my heart. The best part of the mere 2 days that I was there was that I got to spend it with good friends that I don't get to see very often. These friendships are so special to me because God is the center of them. God intended us to share in relationships with others, sharing in the Love that He shows us everyday. He wants us to reciprocate that Love. I can't explain how these friendships grow so fast except that God is the reason why they happened.

While at the canyon I was able to share it with Andrew, one of my best friends. He had never been to Young Life camp before so while descending into the canyon I couldn't hold back my excitement for him. The first night the camp manager really said something that made sense. He said, "This is Holy ground. It isn't Holy because of the amount of money we have put into it, how cool it is, it's not holy because of the amount of work we do for it. It is Holy because every day during this summer leaders get show Christ's love to high schoolers". When I was leaving, it made me think more of this Holy ground. This ground is what God intended life to be. This is what God wants. There is a reason why I felt so uneasy in leaving. I was leaving a place, a world, in which God intended it to be like. God wanted us to all share our lives together with Him in the middle. That is why it is a Holy ground. You can feel the Love when you are there because it overflows.

This week I get the opportunity to share the message at our College Young Life club. I am so pumped. I am sharing John 8:1-11. My plan is to emphasize the Love that God has for us. I want the students to know that God knows us. He knows everything we do, or don't do and still doesn't condemn us. God's love is always flowing and that it has never stopped for us. God will Love us as much as He did yesterday, and the same as He will tomorrow no matter the circumstances. It is a unconditional love that won't stop. It will always be there. It is just up to us to see it. So hopefully the message and overall club will go well. Pray for me!

The Name

So you are all probably wondering why exactly the name of my blog is the desperate flame.. and to be honest it actually sounds a bit flamboyant. Well it comes from the Phil Wickham song "Desire". In the song, one of the lyrics reads "Jesus if your loves the fuel, than I'm the desperate flame". And that is exactly what I want to happen with my walk. I want it to catch fire. Desire.. it's a funny word. We desire so much. We desire people, places and things, but do we ever really desire God. I believe that we will desire Jesus when it is convenient for us. We desire Him when we want something. Sure, God wants us to come to Him in our most troubled times but he also wants us to come to Him in our happiest times, in our "good" times. We keep God from areas in our lives. We lack that complete Trust in Him in everything we do because we think that we can handle it. God wants to be in every aspect of our lives, He doesn't want to be a fraction. "Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made." John 1:3. If God has created everything that is a part of you then why wouldn't you share it with Him? Why wouldn't you dwell in something that God has made good?

It comes down to the simple fact that we are all selfish beings. It all happened way back when, when Eve decided to be selfish and take a bite of that apple. She had options, she could have had God in every aspect in her life but instead wanted to be selfish and keep something to herself. So naturally we as human beings take on this selfish nature.. it is a nature of sin. The devil wants us to see ourselves as independent. Our society praises and preaches to be independent. But what God really wants is us to be dependent... not in worldly things like Eve once did but on Him. Be dependent on Him, He is the only constant that really exist. This is the desire that I want... I want to desire my God in every aspect of life.

Perfect Family

I spend tonight learning about Kevin and his hidden gifts. Don't you love it when you see someone change overtime for the good? It is a privilege that God has given us fellowship and relationships with others. God has allowed us to bring each other to become "In Christ". Kev and I went ever more deeper tonight. He has been showing me everyday lately how God has been speaking to him. Through hearing Kev, he has given me the insight to realize how much my friends and brothers and sisters in Christ truly mean to me and who I have become.

You have probably heard... It is all about the relationship! Well it is but not only with God our Father but also with those around us. It is said in 1 John 4:12, "No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us." The perfect relationship is the one shared between God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. But this is not all God wanted. He wanted to share this perfect relationship with more than just Himself, so He created us. But it couldn't come that easy for God. He wanted His children to want to love Him. He wanted them to have a choice. So He, God, Yahweh, Elohim, Lord, Father, Daddy came to this Earth to reach out His perfect relationship so that we could experience it with Him. Jesus came to intersect His perfect world with our deeply broken one. He wanted us to share in this incomprehensible relationship. We are far from worthy of such a gift but it is given to us under no conditions. Will we take it? have we?

God is in us all

The on going question

I was sitting in a funeral today and all I could think about was my parents. As far as I know my parents don't know their Savior and therefore they will not be able to walk through the gates of heaven with me. How can I deal with this? How is it, that the hardest people for me to share my faith with is the ones closest to me? One of the coolest things to be a part of is to help bring someone to Christ but yet I shy away from talking to my very own family about it. We are selfish with our priceless Gift that Jesus has given us. I wonder why it is so hard. Jesus says in Matthew 10:35, "For I have come to turn 'a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law' a man's enemies will be the members of his own household." Why must it be this way in so many of our lives? I pray everyday that my parents will see the light, yet the best I can do to show them it is through my actions? There has to be more for us to do, there has to be more that I can do.

After the funeral I was able to go out to dinner with just my parents at Anthony's. It was great food and conversation. Here is a view from where we ate.