Tangled Kites

This past spring I had the chance to go to Wisconsin with my best friend Dani because she was going to a support raising seminar there. While we were there I had a lot of free time and for the morning of the first day that we were there I drove thirty minutes north and arrived in Milwaukee. The first thing I did was find a cool little coffee shop right on Lake Michigan, and the second thing I did was take a walk by the lake. This piece that I am about to share was inspired during my walk by the lake and it is called "Tangled Kites"

As I walk along the path leading to the lake I see a bright piece of plastic trapped in the branches of a tree. I pause for a moment to look closer and see that this is no ordinary piece of plastic, it is a kite. A kite, which is meant to soar and be free, but is now stuck amidst the branches of a leafless tree. As I see the one, I begin to notice that this kite is not alone, I survey the scene and I see that in many of the trees around where I stand there are kites who have lost their lives to the unforgiving grip of the barren monsters with destructive arms whose grasp is unrelenting.

As I look a little more I begin to imagine being a child again, with my kite in my hands and all the possibilities in the world. Nothing can keep me down because I have my kite! So I let it fly, it launches into the wind as I struggle to hold on; the excitement is building; which way will the wind blow next? Then, as I continue running with my kite, without any warning it stops. It's stuck. What happened? I look up into the sun with devastation in my heart... a tree... And now the joy, the possibility, and the wonder have all gone, stolen by the grip of the tree whose grasp holds the kite still.

I can't help but think that this is what happens all too often in life. As children we believe that anything can happen, that we can be whatever we want to be and we can change the world!!! but somewhere along the way the dream gets lost, something happens or someone says something and just like the tree holds onto the kite, so we allow these things to steal our dreams. We lose hope that anything else is possible and we settle for the world as it is. We begin to see the world through the lenses of doubt, "realism", and cynicism and we submit ourselves to the lie that there is nothing we can do. But I believe that this is a lie, the God that I serve is the God who be=rings hope to the hopeless, faith to the doubter, gives dreams back to the "realist" and a new heart for the one ruined by cynicism. Our God is the God of BIG DREAMS that seem impossible, but with Him nothing is ever truly impossible! He desperately longs to work inside of you and I to bring a change that can be displayed to the watching world, that they might see in us restoration. He desires for us to live out hope and love for the hurting and the broken.

Getting back to the kites for a moment, our God is a loving Father, who doesn't just leave the kite stuck up in the tree, but He is the Father who takes time to climb into the tree and untangle our kites and set them free again. It is His desire that you would allow His dreams to become your dreams and that they would fly freely in the wind, as a kite set free. I ask you now, is your kite stuck? If it is, you need only ask the Father and He will set you free!!! OUR GOD IS THE GOD OF FLYING KITES!!!

Why I am moving to Cambodia (and how I ended up there)

So, I know it has been a while, but I have been a little bit busy with work in preparation to move to Cambodia. Speaking of moving to Cambodia, todays post is about why I am moving, and how I ended up with Cambodia. If you know me, or have known me in my life, you know that I have had many moments where I have been passionate about something and then in a couple weeks, I lose interest and some of you may be saying that this will happen again, or that this is just a random trip that some kid is going on because of wanderlust and neither of those things are true. I just wanted to start right off the bat by saying that it is only by God and His Holy Spirit leading me that I have ever had anything to do with Cambodia and it is only because of Him that I am moving back. So lets begin the tale in 2007...

In June of 2007 I went to Kenya with a group called Adventures in Missions and met a woman named Alli who spoke a lot of truth into my life and who worked for the organization. She had said something about wanting to mobilize young people to make a difference in difficult places and after spending a month in Kenya, I realized that this is what I wanted to do. So, I stayed in contact with Alli, and I went back to CMU and grew in my faith, and grew in my relationship with the Lord, and loosely stayed in contact with Alli.

One afternoon in 2008 I received a call and it was from Alli and she asked me if I was truly interested in being a part of this group of young people who wanted to share the love of God in the Hard Places of the earth. I thought about it and prayed and said yes, I believe in what God is doing and using you to do, and I want to be a part of your organization. So, I signed up to be a part of a group called The Hard Places Community, and I went out to Kansas City, MO to meet some of the team members. After a little more discussion and thought, the Lord gave me an idea to see if I could do my internship with the HPC somewhere overseas for my degree program. Now, I am not sure how many of you are familiar with the Outdoor Recreation department at CMU, but God totally gave me favor with them, and they allowed me to do my internship with this missions organization.

After a few more months of prayer and excitement about this new chapter of life, I received a call from Alli about the possibility of moving to Cambodia for the entirety of my internship which was six months. I had previously thought that I would be leading a one month trip and then be in Kansas City doing a program that the others had done, so I was really unprepared for this conversation. But, in all things God works for the good of those who believe, so, I prayed and asked the Lord to guide me in this decision. After a couple of days, I felt that the Lord had confirmed that this was what I needed to do, so I called Alli and I told her that I would love to come to Cambodia and work with the team there for my internship. She was ecstatic and got me set up to get ready to move.

This was one of the most difficult things that I have done in my entire life. I had to say goodbye to my friends, my family, and my girlfriend at the time, and it hurt me so badly. There were some times that I would hurt and I would begin to question if I had made the right decision, but God, used those times to be a way of drawing me closer to Him, and not relying on others so much. At the start of June 2009 I hopped on a plane and began my journey. I worked in Cambodia in a village where many of the children are sexually exploited by their families and it hurt me many times to see that, but through all of it, God used it to draw me closer to Him. He taught me that in pain, we must learn to seek Him, just like we do when everything is going our way.

In November of 2009, I came home and things were different, it is amazing to see how much can change in just a short 5 months. I was different too, I had seen things that I had never thought that I would see, and I had been in situations that I never thought that I would be in, and knew God in a way that I never knew I could. While I was in Cambodia I made plans to begin an internship with my college ministry when I came back and I started that in January of 2010. I moved back to Mt Pleasant to a dynamic that was strange and a little foreign to me. I was on staff, and not just a member of the congregation. It was great to have a chance to serve a church that had meant so much to me, and His House will always hold a special place in my heart and I will always have a love for the people of Mt Pleasant, but starting in August 2010, God began to stir things in my heart again. I would be in church, and I would hear a great sermon about following God with your whole heart, and I would have visions of Cambodia. I would sing a song about the love of God and He would bring images of the children that I had worked with to my mind. These were things I could not ignore, so I decided I would ask my friend and mentor Josh Chaffin to pray for me and with me about what I should do.

After a month or so of praying and seeking the Lord and His will for my life I decided that He was very clearly calling me back to the Kingdom of Cambodia. So, the next step was to talk to my mom and dad about this. I am not sure that I have ever cried in public as much as I did in making those phone calls to my parents to ask them to join me in prayer. They were not as excited as I had hoped, but they also weren't trying to tear me down, they simply cared about me and wanted (and still want) me to stay close to home. After about another month I decided that this was definitely the direction I was headed and started living with it in mind.

For the past eleven months I have been mentally preparing to make the big move. I will be moving to Cambodia January 24 and I will be there for at least the next 2 years. It is the craziest thing that I have ever done, and it is the biggest leap of faith that I have ever taken, but I have also never been more sure about anything that I have done in my entire life. I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that this is what God has called me to do, that this is where I need to be, and this what I was made to do. If you have made it this far in this post, I thank you for taking the time to read my story. I would like to end by one last time giving praise to God. Without Him, I could do nothing, and without Him, I would not be doing what I am doing. He is the author of life and the perfecter of faith and in Him, all of our needs are met and all of the problems of life seem to just fade away. HE IS ALL WE NEED!!!! Peace and love to you all!!!

What God Taught Me About Love Today

SO, today has just been an AMAZING day!!! As the title implies this post is going to be about what I have learned about love today, and you may be thinking that you can't really learn that much about love in just a day, well, I am here to challenge that notion.

So, today as I started my day, I read from a book called A Kingdom Called Desire by Rick McKinley, and in my chapter that I was reading he talks about the Old Testament preheats and how they would use imagery of prostitutes leaving their lover and says "The image is harsh, but we are both of those: orphaned and whores. We are desperate and needy without God. We are unfaithful and easily persuaded to love a myriad of things other than God. That is what makes grace all the more attractive. Grace: God's love for us, the orphaned whore whom he makes His bride." As I finished reading that I thought, what an amazing picture of redemption, that God would take us for His bride even with all of the unfaithfulness that we display on a daily basis... I was wonderstruck at the implications of this truth. To know that I am found in the saving love of Jesus Christ is a beautiful reality that I get to live in. To know that the only Lover that I could ever need has lavished His love on me in such a way, is mind blowing.

Then, after that I went to church and heard my uncle Steve Collard preach a wonderful sermon about the need for love in the church. I was sincerely convicted but the reality that without love we are truly nothing. I could do a million wonderful things for God, but if I do them with pride in my heart and mind and don't have love, it is all USELESS!!! What a convicting word from the Bible. And I was also just amazed at the truth of what love really is, if you get a chance, go read 1 Corinthians 13 and just sit in awe of the amazing attributes that true love displays.

After church I had the opportunity to go to Frankenmuth, MI to celebrate my Grandparents Beverlee and Dick Collard and their 60 years of marriage that they have shared together. I was reminded of what love between a husband and wife should really look like. To endure 60 years with another person is a great accomplishment. It was such a touching day to just see how they have just grown in love for one another and to see how they still care so deeply for each other. It was such a wonderful sight, and an amazing thing to be a part of and I will never forget the lessons they have taught me about what it means to love.

After leaving Frankenmuth I went to a fellowship group for 20 somethings called Lighthouse Collective and it was amazing the way that God orchestrated it for me to hear an amazing sermon about His persistent love for all humankind, as demonstrated by both Hosea and Jesus, and how Hosea is just a physical representation of the pursuit God has for all of humanity. What a beautiful way to end the day, to be able to come home and rest in the knowledge of a God who would chase me to hell and back to win my heart to Him, and how I could never deserve for Him to woo me half as much as He does. I am so thankful for His unending love and for the way He will never stop pursuing me. Thanks God for an amazing day, I can't wait to see what He teaches me next!!!

FREEDOM!!!

So, I have recently started reading the Bible cover to cover in 90 days and I found myself in the book of Exodus today confronted with an amazing truth. God desires freedom for His people!!! So often we read the Bible and think of it as a collection of old stories, but I believe that those stories hold deep truth about the reality of the world. I was reading, and I was overwhelmed with the idea that God heard the Israelites in Egypt and worked so many different miracles for them to be free!!! He cared for them, and desired to liberate them from their oppressive existence, which makes me wonder why so many people who claim to be "the people of God" are still stuck in captivity...

The God who so desperately longed to free the Israelites, sent His son Jesus Christ that we would know what freedom was, and not just physical freedom, but freedom from sin and death. What a beautiful gift we have been given. We have the opportunity to live freely in relationship with the God of the universe!!! It also excites me and gives me passion for the work that I will have the opportunity to do in Cambodia, when I get to be an active agent for freedom there!!! I praise God that He has given us freedom and I hope that today you find freedom in Him!

"When Death Dies"

So, one of my new favorite bands Gungor has a new song called "When Death Dies" and in the chorus it says "When death dies, all things live" which got me thinking. What if we lived like death was already dead? So often we live in fear of death and the reality of death in this world, but do we really have anything to fear. Jesus says that He is life, so if I have the Holy Spirit of God moving and living inside of me, what is there to fear. He has already killed death and taken the pain so that we may live free of fear.

I think that if we engaged the reality of this truth we would find so much freedom in life that we currently lack. I pray that little by little we become radically transformed followers of Christ who live with the Life inside of us. May we begin to live in a way that demonstrates to the world that DEATH IS DEAD!!!!

It's been a long time....

So, I haven't updated this thing in almost 2 years, but I think I am going to try my hand at blogging one more time. Again, the name of this blog is "Nothing Profound" so, I hope this stuff isn't too earth shaking, but I would like to have a place where I can write and share with all of the people of the world. Tonight is a football game and guess who doesn't care... THIS GUY!!! I am so tired of people putting so much stock in silly games.... People are willing to shed blood over a game, and I just don't get it. I just wish that people would stop dividing and come together... Anyway, I am happy to be sitting in my living room spending time with my family. They are all great, and I just love them all so much. Anyways, this is primarily to say that I am back and I will be blogging fairly regularly so, keep an eye out and I will catch you later.