Love Not Damnation

     My family and I are spending 5 days in Seattle for a family vacation currently. We arrived today and have spent most of the day wandering the wonderful city.

     Tonight happens to be a special night in Seattle. Once a year there is a summer parade that goes through 4th Street starting at 7:30 pm. Thousands of people gather from all over the West Coast to see this parade and advertise businesses and sell foods and drinks and socialize. It's a wonderful time. (Personally, I'm no parade guy, so I'd rather sit in my hotel room with my brother and blog). This is also a perfect chance for people to witness to others and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with one another, in the worst way.

     As my family and I walked down 4th Street to see everyone set up in their chairs and blankets waiting for the parade to start, we begin to see these people holding very large, very bright signs with Scriptures and other Christian-like sayings written on them.

"For the wages of sin is death."
"All have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God."
"We will all be judged by God."
"Judgement day is coming, are you ready to be judged?
"Sinners who don't repent go to hell."
"Run from your hell-bent life of sin and come to Jesus."
"God will destroy those who don't repent."

And many, many, many more.

     As I'm looking at these signs I can't help but feel so disappointed. I feel so bad. I feel like those who are reading the signs are being let down. I feel like we're failing.

     Is holding signs that scare people into loving Christ what we are coming to? Is our interpretation of sharing the gospel telling people that if they don't repent God will damn them to hell? Is that really what Christ would have preached? Is that how we are to love others? Is that really how God wants us sharing His Son with others?

     Scaring people into loving Christ doesn't lead them to a faithful relationship with Him, if they even convert. Seeing a sign that says that some God is going to damn them to hell for not loving Him doesn't seem too attractive. Christ went up to people and healed them. Loved them. Made them new. Spoke love into their lives. Shared new teachings with them. Cared about them. He didn't say, "Follow me or be damned, the choice is yours." If we want people to fall in love with Jesus then we need to be reflectors of who He is. We need to act like Him and love others like Him, not preach an aggressive, attacking, and demeaning message that makes them have an altered/incorrect view of Him and a hatred for Him.

     We represent Christ by saying we are believers, and when we reveal Him to be some God that hates people who don't follow Him, we are misrepresenting and ruining His name.

     Live a life that represents who Christ is, and people will love Him for who He is.

On The Road Thoughts

     Here I sit, in the back of a moving truck on my way home from Prescott, Arizona. I've spent two weeks here alongside three other musicians as we played worship music for two camps of youth students.

     The two weeks that are now over were long dreamed of. The four of us couldn't wait to play together everyday on a stage for a whole bunch of kids. It's almost saddening to think that they're over and that our summer band trip is done.

     Though all I thought about was playing and how much fun that would be, I ended up receiving a lot more than what I expected experience-wise. I met so many great people and grew stronger in three friendships. I heard stories and learned about the lives of many students. I already knew these two weeks would be a blessing, but I didn't know how much of a blessing.

     There's so much to appreciate, I've learned. There's so much we don't know about each other, no matter how long we've known one another. There's no story that's been repeated. There's so many hearts that have been beaten and bruised but found their way into the Hands of Love. There's so much more than our home towns; than our home churches; than our friend groups; than our own lives. There's so much love to give and so much love to experience. What I've learned these past two weeks is that love is unending and can always be found, no matter where you are. 

Stress

     Being up at camp the past four days has been quite the experience. There's been great people involved in the flow of the camps, great pastors speaking for the students, and just great times shared with each other. One of the biggest things this week has taught me, though, is about stressing out, and putting your trust in God more than anything.

     I like knowing things. I like knowing when the band loads, what songs are going to be played, what time things will start, and who is going to be there. It's just natural. This week has definitely not helped me with knowing those things though. I never find out when the band loads until 30 seconds before we load. I don't know the songs for the morning session until I hear our worship leader start playing on stage as I wait to listen for the tempo. I don't know when session actually starts until I hear loud music thumping in the chapel. And I don't know who is who or who is doing what ever. As irritating as those things can be for me, I've learned to calm myself and let go of the unnecessary stress that it brings me. If no one else is worried about these things, why should I be? They've worked out in the past 3 days, so what's there to worry about? It's been quite a learning experience, especially two out of the four nights.

     The second evening here at camp there was an attack made by the Enemy. In the middle of our evening speakers sermon, the power in the entire camp went out. Not just one building or just the lights, the entire campus of UCYC was out of power, leaving us with just the lights on our phones. The attitude and actions of what this camp did was so incredible, they all pulled out their phones and flash lights, kept their flashes aimed at the ceiling, leaving enough light to see our speaker, and they all hushed up as the pastor continued with his sermon. It wasn't much longer that the power returned and everything went back to normal.

     Last night there was another attempt at an attack. During the beginning of the evening session at camp the main speakers in the building went out. They were all plugged in, power was working and things were all on, but they were not amplifying anything. This meant there was going to be no worship and that the speaker would, again, have no microphone. To solve this our worship leader stood in the middle of the crowd with his acoustic guitar and let the audience lead worship with just his guitar playing. While that was going on, some camp staff set up temporary speakers so that our speaker would have an amplified voice. After his sermon the worship leader was able to plug his guitar and a microphone into the amps so that he was somewhat amplified, and worship was finished.

     It was last night that students made first time decisions to follow Jesus.

     No matter the issues and the problems or the technical difficulties or all of the planning or orchestrated stage activities, God's plan never fails. What we had in mind was not what was going to happen, there were other plans.