WeekSix

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This week was legit. It started out with a Mystery Monday learning about nutrition from Marry Willis. This was very insightful. The main thing she taught us was the seven pillars to living healthy. They were Hydration, eating well, sleep and rest, exercise and movement, detoxification: filling in the gaps, and coping with stress-building community.

This week consisted of only two speakers. First, brother Marvin Daniels, who is the vice president of the leadership development program at Kids Across America, came and spoke to us about being Insulated in this world and not Isolated from the world referring to 1 John 4 where it talks about being in this world but not of this world. God wants us to be different as we are his divine representation of Him on Earth. We are to be the salt and the light to this world. He also talked about living above the influence where he references Daniel 3 and the story of Shadrach Meshach and Abednego where three Jews were captured in a Babylonia culture who are worshiping other gods then the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They are now standing in front of the king where he is commanding everyone to bow down and worship him and his image. Shadrach Meshach and Abednego knew that not bowing down to his image would cost them their lives and yet they chose not to. The king dared them by saying what god is going to keep you from my hands? They defined their position and said the God that we serve IS able to deliver us from your hands but even if he chooses not to, we still won’t bow. This transfers over to current day culture! Even if we may be threatened in our culture, or they call us names or talk down on the bible that we will not remove from our position from which God has compelled us and told us to do as His followers and disciples.

That’s deep.

And for our second speaker we were extremely blessed to hear from the one and only Keith Chancy who is the Kanakuk Institute president as well as the director of K7. He blew my mind with what he had to say. But a few things that stood out to me were how he talked about how we were made in the image of God and how this changes our world view because if we don’t understand this we will just keep going back and blaming God for things he hasn’t even done! God allowed man to eat from the fruit from the tree of good and evil, which allowed sin into this world. This did not take God by surprise; He knew it was going to happen because it was part of His plan. He wants man to change his own ways and follow Him so that they can be more like Him and to bring glory to His name.

Both of these guys were phenomenal communicators! I would go so far as to say this might have been the best week of speaking in my opinion.

To see pictures from the Link Year, click here.

Until next time.

Five Week

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​Last week was college visit week so because of that I did not write a blog. But I promise this will make up for it. Last week I visit College of the Ozarks, which was very interesting and informative. Some quick fun facts: C of O has the nick name Hard Work U because of the work ethic that is in the foundation of the school. Each student is required to work 15 hours a week at an on-campus workstations and two 40-hour workweeks during breaks. The neat thing about C of O is that you can graduate debt free. This idea blows my mind and makes me think, “Would I want to live in Branson for another four years?”

The college visit was fun and all but time to get down to business and hear what I learned this week.

And before I tell you what I learned. Mystery Monday! We played bigger or better. If you don’t know what that is the basic gist of it is that you start with something small, we started with a paper clip, and you ask random people to trade something for sometime bigger or better. My group got about four trades in before we ran out of time and we ended up with this sweet dragon. We didn’t win the overall contest but it was still fun!

This week we learned how to manage time, money, and ourselves. All of these talks were very helpful and I can’t wait to see how much more productive I can be. I learned that managing time is very important. What we do with our time has eternal significance and if we don’t manage our time, our time will manage us. (Which we don’t want.) Also, if we want to maximize each day we need to prioritize our schedule. A quote from C.S. Lewis that I enjoyed said this… “The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever they do, whoever they are.” On Wednesday we got to hear from Adam Martin about managing our money. The main thing I took away from it was the program Mint. If you haven’t heard of Mint, it is the best free way to manage your money and it’s all online. It has so many cool features that seem never-ending. There are inward, outward and corporate disciplines that we learned about for managing self. The Inward Disciplines are meditation, fasting, prayer, study, the outward disciplines are simplicity, solitude, submission, service and the corporate disciplines are confession, worship, guidance, celebration. Discipline is the main ingredient to managing self.

Until next time.

I’m (The) Third (Week)

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First I will take you through what we did on our Mystery Monday this week like I will do at the beginning of each of these Link Year posts. On Monday Tim Bohlke came in and talked to us about getting into a rhythm of reflection and solitude. Personally I haven’t intentionally taken the time to unplug from communication and plug into God’s beautiful creation to think about different areas of my life. This is exactly what we did. We went down to the lake in the morning when the thick fog was still alive. Tim directed us to go off on our own and take a few hours to think about certain areas in our life that will help us keep running towards the cross. This time of reflection was very impactful. Needless to say it was a good Mystery Monday.

For the remainder of the week we got to listen to the author of Is God Just a Human Invention?: And Seventeen Other Questions Raised by the New Atheists (With Sean McDowell), Welcome to College: A Christ-follower’s Guide for the Journey, Think Christianly: Looking at the Intersection of Faith and Culture. This guy was legit. Too legit. Too legit to quit! (quote from a movie). Over the past three days we learned how to prove that God does exist with a few arguments as well as proving the resurrection of Jesus without reading any verses from the Bible! On top of speaking all three days this week, Jonathan also spoke on Proverbs 4 at the Fort on Wednesday night, which you can hear here. I don’t want to spoil it for you but he talked about how we make and break habits; very interesting stuff. I highly encourage you to take a listen. One last thing that I enjoyed hearing from Jonathan was his encouragement to get ready for battle, a.k.a. college, by learning these arguments for our beliefs.

Until next time.

Link Year Week Two

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In my post from last week I had mentioned that I was attending a concert of the band The Head and the Heart in Columbia, MO. It was awesome.

First I will start off with what this weeks Mystery Monday held for us. We got into our groups of four and were given a Disney movie with some kind of twist. My group received Peter Pan and the Lost Ducks. We had two hours to come up with 15 pictures in five different locations. We then had to narrate a story line using those 15 pictures in front of the whole group. We were all graded on a ten point scale and my team received a nine. Unfortunately there was a group that received a ten out of ten but we had a fun time in the process.

This week we had the distinct privilege to be able to hear from to hear from Mike Aleckson (blog) for the past three days. Mike is the Director of Information Technology Strategy for Compassion International, a worldwide ministry to over 1.3 million young people dedicated to delivering them from poverty in Jesus’ name. Mike taught us the Big Picture of the Bible. His goal was for us to see where we fit into God’s Big Picture. The first day he went through the history of the Bible for example, the times of Moses, Abraham, David, the Exile, etc. The second day we talked about God’s covenants; Adamic, Noahic, Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic, and the New Covenant. The last day was how we fit into this Big Picture. What we can personally do in our selected vocation to glorify God. In Matthew 5:48 it says “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” This scared me at first because there is no way I can be perfect. I am a sinful man with flaws. But the Greek translation for perfect in this verse is teleios, which means to fulfill your purpose. In whatever career we choose we should make sure it is pleasing to God. Knowing this, I will carefully pick what college, major, etc. so that I can be glorifying God in everything I do.  

Last week I forgot to mention that on Wednesday nights we have a singles ministry called the Fort that meets in the K-1 Chapel. This year we are going through Proverbs and this was the third week we’ve met. Unfortunately the website is not up yet but you can follow them on twitter @fortworship.

Until next time.​

The Kanakuk Link Year - It's here

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(The title rhymes.)

Man! This first real week of the Kanakuk Link Year has been so awesome! The community alone has already been impactful in my life. I know that some of the friends I am making here will be with me 20 years from now.

Our weekly schedule goes a little like this…

Monday – Monday’s are what we call Mystery Monday. We all meet in front of the lounge and get into groups to carpool to our mysterious destination. This week we went to Skate World for a little fun. I had a blast skating around with everyone. This lasted until lunch time and we had the rest of the day free.

Tuesday – On Tuesday the one and only Don Ford taught our class. This guy is awesome. Don talked to us about the importance of goals.

Goals must be: God centered, Written out, Attainable / God-sized, Measurable, Time sensitive, Clear (two sentences or less), Concise / specify (should fit on the back of a business card), Shared with others.

Following this template will make sure your goals will be met. I can’t wait to see the outcome of using this method.

Wednesday – On Wednesday Jay Holden (@jayholden) , who is the Executive Director of Marketing at Kanakuk Kamps, spoke to us about our strengths. He helped us analyze what are strengths are and how to best use them. I’m excited to use my strengths the way God intended them to be used.

Thursday – Thursday was a true blessing because we got to hear from Darrell Shemwell who is one true man of God. His knowledge of God’s word and his drive to study it blows my mind. Just to get a glimpse of how to study the bible on our own was awesome. I can’t wait to hear him speak again in December.

Friday – Friday. Men’s bible study, Jonathan groups which is our small groups, and then accountability groups. Then we’re done for the day. Friday's are always awesome.

Weekends are free and with some other students I will be driving to Columbia Missouri to attend The Head and the Heart concert. I’m kind of (really) excited.

Recap on a few things I’ve learned: Community is very important. To not let the devil put his finger prints all over me. Goals are important to set and to set them correctly. God gave us strengths to utilize for His glory. To check the original language the bible was written in to get the best translation. 

This was a great start to the year and it’s only going to get better from here. For more information on the Kanakuk Link Year, click here. And to see photos so far, click here.

Until next time.​