"Just Stop It" and other terrible advice.

   

      I spend a lot of time driving, in fact, when traffic is bad, I can spend more than four hours commuting each day. While I am driving, I listen to the radio, I listen to a lot of radio, talk radio, sports radio, christian music, rock music, a little bit of everything. Often, on my drive home, I listen to a Christian call-in program, you know the kind, a caller has some question about faith or the bible, and they call, and then the host gives them his best biblical answer.

Never a Day Off - A Story of Reluctant Service.

      

        I never have liked Mondays, and being a small business owner, Mondays are particularly crazy. This last Monday was no different. Monday is the day that my wife usually joins me at the office and we try to get as much administrative work done as possible. We sat in the truck on the commute and listed off all the things that needed to be accomplished and had nearly twenty items on our to-do-list before we even walked in the door.

A Day of Presence

      This is the first of hopefully many posts wherein we begin to tell individual stories of the lives that we have encountered and continue to encounter through our ministry work here in Colorado Springs. For this initial post, I though I would describe what a typical day of ministry work is like for our family. I do want to say that we are not telling these stories as a way of bragging about the things that we do, but we want our followers to get to know our work, the people we work with, and the lives that are impacted. Anyway, here we go.
 
Saturday

Does "Presence" Make a Difference.

     

      More than a few times during our ministry here in Colorado Springs, we have encountered those who like the idea of our ministry, but are looking for some solid evidence of the impact we are having here before they actually give support to what we are doing. Normally, what they are looking for is some kind of metric or measure of how much impact we are having on the community. Traditionally, ministries keep track of conversions, or decisions for Christ, or baptisms, or any number of things that can show the direct impact of their work.

A Note to My Younger Self (June Synchroblog)

This year marked the 19th year since my graduation from Laramie High School, in the little town of Laramie, Wyoming. This year also marked the graduation of one of our best friends sons and his moving out into the world to find his own place. One of the gifts that Jon's dad and mom gave him for his 18th birthday was letters of advice from some of the adult men in his life. These letters contained words of wisdom that they had gained from their own experience as well as advice for his life going forward. As I wrote my letter, I found myself wishing that I had had the opportunity to read these letters myself 19 years ago. Since this months synchroblog is all about writing a letter to our former self, I decided that I would recreate the letter that I wrote to Jon.


Jon, 
                         
As you grow into adulthood, you will receive advice from a lot of people. Some people will tell you that choosing a career is important. Some will even tell you that finding "God's Will" for your life is the most important thing. You will get a lot of advice and it will be mostly about getting to a goal, or some idea of success, all with the aim of avoiding failure.

My advice to you is going to be a little different. I want to tell you that failure, at least as most people see failure, is nothing to fear, or even avoid. YOU ARE GOING TO FAIL! You will try different jobs, and you will not be successful at all of them. You may go to school, and like a lot of people(myself included) drop out, or end up with a degree that you will never use. You will seek God's Will for your life, and you will not always get it right. my advice, the most important thing I have to tell you is this: YOU WILL FAIL, AND FAILURE IS OK. FAILING DOES NOT MAKE YOU A FAILURE. 

Living your life to avoid failure is the surest way to miss God's best for your life. I am not saying that you should try to fail, but I assure you that failure is no threat to those who embrace their true identity in Christ. So live your life, embrace your passions, be who you were created to be, seek God's will in everything you do, but do not allow fear of failure to prevent you from becoming all that God has planned for you. 

Your Friend, 

Edwin "FedEx" Aldrich




This post is part of the June Synchroblog - "If I could tell myself one thing" Please check out the other posts from these great authors on this topic below.

Justin Steckbauer – What Do You Wish You Knew 10 or 20 years ago?

Michael Donahoe – What I Wish I had Known

Mary – What I Wish I Would Have Known as a Newlywed

Heather Wheat – As a Young Mother, I Wish I Had Known…

Michelle – Ten Years of Wisdom

Michelle – Twenty Years of Wisdom

Wesley Rostoll – If I Could Speak to a Younger Version of Me

Peggy – From Peggy … To Peggy

Glenn Hager – The Reluctant Time Lord

Carol Kuniholm – Life Lessons from Lydia

Edwin Adrich – A Note to My Younger Self

Paul Metler – A Note to my 20 Year Ago Self

Liz Dyer – Dear Me

Kathy Escobar – Never Say Never

Jeremy Myers – A Letter to the “Me” of 15 Years Ago

What the Hell do we really know.

When I heard about the topic for this month's synchroblog, I was immediately a bit apprehensive about writing on the topic of Hell. You see, in my previous faith traditions, Hell was a very serious thing, and when anyone disagreed about or questioned the traditional teachings on Hell, they were quickly labeled as a heretic and either banned from teaching or asked to leave the church.

Heartbreak, Groaning, and The Not-As-ItShould-Be World

Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later.  For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are.  Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.  And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us. Romans 8:18-23 (NLT)

When I think of "suffering with Christ", I tend to think about some third world prison, or perhaps some awful place of exile like Siberia, or even to those few countries left in the world where taking a stand for Christ could cost you your life. Over the last few weeks, as our Sunday school has been going through Romans chapter 8, I have began to develop another view of how we as Christians can "suffer with Christ".