I went to church this morning at the Vineyard Church in Cincinnati, and I found inspiration for thinking about my life in the sermon.  The pastor, Joe, talked about why the he's decided to use Square 1 as a theme for his sermons this month.  As part of talking about Square 1, he talked about how, if we mess up the first step, or the most basic part goes missing, no matter how well the other steps are done, nothing will work.  In thinking about this, I found myself reminiscing and discovered that, often when I had failed to succeed part of the reason was a result of looking at the next big step, not the next small one.  When the steps I wanted to take came in periods of months or years aka, the "big picture" I allowed the small details to slip through the cracks, the details that would allow me to move on to the next step.  When I fail to do the little steps, I often miss experiences for the worse, and people who know me will tell you that I've missed a lot of little steps.  When I think about the next step, for example, I think about seminary, followed by a career in the pastorate. But in reality, the next step is going to class and forming relationships with my fellow students, or exercising, or blogging.  Finding the next big steps in our lives is important, just make sure not to miss the little ones.

Hey, so I've been working at camp the past few weeks, so I've not been able to post.  I've decided to make to write the posts and put them up in the following weeks, starting now.

Some of you may know, I find a lot of my inspiration in nature and God's creation, and this post came from that source.  It is a general rule in nature that when something is disturbed, it grows back stronger, whether it be plants being pruned or muscle fibers tearing and rebuilding.  Another, simpler way to describe this phenomena is "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger".  I don't really want to get into why bad things happen or whether God causes bad things to happen, but I do say that when bad things do happen in our lives, we have been given an opportunity to grow spiritually and make positive steps on our walk with Christ.

Reactions to bad things in our lives vary, from blaming somebody else to breaking down, but instead I urge you to look for the ways God is talking to you and find the ways in which God wants you to grow.  I myself have had two brain surgeries and several seizures, but that has led me to a stronger faith in God, a desire to be a pastor and a need to start this blog.  Everyday we have an opportunity to grow, move sideways, stop or move backwards.  I admit that there have been many days where I have made no progress or moved backwards, but since I have started this blog and have begun to actively look for God, those days have become fewer and far between.

This then is my encouragement, look for God daily in the good and the bad and do not be pushed back by the deterrents we all face.

So, I was working in our plot in the church's community garden and I had three ideas for Everyday Sermons come to me quickfire within about a minute or two.  I know I won't get something to share everyday, but I decided I should share things that come to me when they come to me to keep the experience fresh in my mind.  Without further ado, here is sermon #1.

On of the things we did today at the garden was to put the tomatoes in cages to keep them growing straight. As I was doing this, I thought about how we sometimes put ourselves in cages.  This can come in many forms, but I think the most common is defining ourselves by what we do or what we aspire to be.  For example, in high school we may define ourselves as jocks or cheerleaders.  In adult life, we may define ourselves by our career or what we do after work.  Like tomato plants, these definitions can give us room to grow straight, but they also restrain us.

Earlier this week I wrote about how sometimes we resist God when we are told to go places where we are uncomfortable.  In these situations, God is telling us to break free of the restraining definitions we give ourselves.  When we tell ourselves we are only comfortable in a few select situations we are limiting the experiences that can help us grow emotionally and spiritually.  For example, when we tell ourselves we are only comfortable around other Christians and practicing strictly Christian teachings, we can miss out on spiritual practices originated in other religions, like meditation.  To become a well rounded person, we must break out of our cages to avoid growing in only one direction.

This then is my challenge and encouragement.  Break free of your cage and dive into situations where you feel uncomfortable to grow as a person and to grow spiritually.

So, today on the radio I heard the song "Signs Signs, Everywhere a Sign" and looked up the video on Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLm3HMG8IhM . The reason I'm posting this is that I started the blog to look for signs of God in everyday life, and hearing the song today seems to be confirmation to me that I'm doing the right thing.

So here's an Everyday Sermon:

The song speaks about seeing signs everywhere we go, and I think for some Christians it can be hard to see the signs that God wants us to see, and for others it is easy to look too hard for signs and find ones that don't come from God.  It can be hard to tell the difference between messages from God and messages from humans sometimes, but I think the solution lies in asking yourself if this is what you want to do or what God wants you to do.  What we as humans want to do isn't always the right thing, but it the message is from God, that may not be the easy thing, but it probably is the right one.

God is not always blatant, jumping around trying to get our attention, instead the signs are often much more subtle.  They can be ideas that come into our heads, a sentence in a book or a conversation with a homeless man or woman.  We often miss these subtleties, but, fortunately for us, God is insistent, making sure that we get the message.  Even when we do get the message without God it's easy for us to fail.

So here's the encouragement, look for where God is speaking to you, and know that God will not give up on you when you can't find the sign or have a hard time following through with God's will.  All you have to do is ask for help.

I don't know if I made myself perfectly clear in the introduction, but the posts aren't things that I write out beforehand to see what they look like.  I take something(s) in the day that I see, touch, taste or hear and I think about what I'm going to write and then I write it.  Basically what I'm trying to do is get as close to my first impression of a particular thing as I can and still be coherent.

As to the timetable between posts, I would ideally like to be one or more every day, but at the very least I will try to post every other day or at least three times a week.  Please leave any comments and give that +1 button some love.

One of the things I enjoy about summer is the opportunity to grow a garden and care for it and finally harvest it.  As I was gardening a few days ago I saw a tomato growing and was reminded of the parable of the sower in Mark 5.  In this parable Jesus describes a farmer sowing seed; some lands on the hardened dirt path, some among rocks, some among thorns and others in good soil.  The seeds on the path never start growing, the seeds in the rocks start but wither away quickly the seeds in the weeds are choked out by the weeds, but the seed in the good soil multiplies 30,60, 100 fold.  The different types of soils are us and the seed is the word of God.  If we are the good soil, we can multiply and bear fruit for others it hear the word.

Before I started gardening I used to think that multiplying 100 fold was simple hyperbole, but looking at that tomato, I realized I was very wrong.  A medium tomato probably has 50 seeds in it and a tomato plant should produce at least 25 tomatoes.  Think about that, every year the one seed is multiplying one thousand two hundred and fifty fold at minimum.  As the soil we can produce 1250 times what we started with every year, and we have a lot of years.

That doesn't come easily, that soil has to be tended, the plant has to get enough water and enough sunshine.  In our lives that water and sunshine comes from devotions, prayer, and reading God's word.  If we maintain our soil and live in Gods word, we can make a larger difference than we realize through our actions and words.  Think about this, we meet hundreds of thousands of people in our lifetime, if a percentage walk away wondering whats different about us and why Christ has changed us for the better, we can make all the difference in the world.

So, I've been putting off starting the blog for awhile so I have a few everyday sermons today.  I went to a youth event where the accommodations were dorm rooms without A/C.  To some this qualified as "roughing it" which inspired this diatribe.

In the United States Christianity is too easy for our own good.  The worst many in the USA suffer as Christians is a little teasing from their non-Christian friends.  I have been to Nigeria and Haiti, two places where God can be hard to see through natural disasters, poverty and violence.  In my time in those countries I have noticed that personal adversity and faith in God are inversely proportionate meaning the stronger the adversity the more people rely on God.  In the United States when disasters happen, we often wonder why God would do these things.  In third world countries the reaction is "Thank you God for carrying me through".  

We can see this kind of faith in the disciples and Paul after the ascension of Jesus.  Although Peter and Paul were jailed and persecuted they continued to persist, thanking God for their relative safety.  I would also like to set up Peter and Paul as examples of doing the things that God calls us to do. In the case of those two it was traveling the known world, starting churches, converting non-believers and generally encouraging all Christians.  Today, God still calls us to go to places that are uncomfortable, to do things that we are unfamiliar with, but just like the disciples, we must place our faith in God and know that God is with us and knows what is best.

There are modern day examples of this kind of faith and of God pulling those people through.  Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr spent nights in prison, but they led their respective countries and people to a nonviolent solution to the problem.  We can use these men as our examples.  Although they went through hardships, God worked with them and through them to lead them to the mountaintop.

Just as the disciples roughed it out, just as Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela did, so shall we do.  We as Christians in North America need to get down and dirty, spreading the word of the gospel through our words and our actions.  If this results in persecution or hardships take heart in knowing that there is trail of Christians who were treated the same way going back 2000 years and that Jesus tells us that when we are persecuted for his names sake we are the inheritors of the kingdom of heaven.  

So this then is my encouragement, know that just as God helped the disciples, so shall he help us and just as the disciples did the dirty work, so should we.