Today is the final day of my first year of blogging. Tomorrow we will celebrate the first birthday of I'd Laugh with a slide show that offers a look back (the picture is of me, looking back- almost 28 years ago! Wild, huh?) at my 28 years of student ministry. Join us- I promise it will be memorable. As I have said before, if you were part of my youth groups or active at Quaker Lake when I worked there, you will see people you know and you may well see yourself. There are nearly 150 pictures that will splash before your eyes in just over 7 minutes. Lots and lots of wonderful people...
I have decided to continue blogging past my one year goal because I enjoy it, and because there is still much to tell about my life and ministry. If you had asked me in the summer of 1999 (which is about where we are in my history at this point in the blog) what else I had to learn about life and being a follower of Jesus, I probably would have said, "not much." I thought, having been married for 13 years (with a 4 year old son) and been in ministry for over 20 that I had a pretty firm grip on my life and my faith. As it turns out, not so much! I actually had no grip on much of anything. Fortunately, Jesus still had a grip on me. Going forward, there will still be plenty of stories about the wild, wacky, wonderful world of student ministry. We will follow my professional path from Kissimmee to Chicago, back to Tampa and up to Waycross. I will also give you a deeper look at the struggles of a man of God (me) as he deals with everyday life. It's not always pretty. I started to believe my own press clippings and thought I was doing some amazing things for God. That is not how it works. God was doing some amazing things through me. When you think like that, sometimes Satan gets the upper hand. But no matter the struggles and no matter the failures, Jesus will still be there. Listen to these words of the Apostle Paul from 2 Corinthians 4:7-10 (The Message):
If you only look at us, you might well miss the brightness. We carry this precious Message around in the unadorned clay pots of our ordinary lives. That's to prevent anyone from confusing God's incomparable power with us. As it is, there's not much chance of that. You know for yourselves that we're not much to look at. We've been surrounded and battered by troubles, but we're not demoralized; we're not sure what to do, but we know that God knows what to do; we've been spiritually terrorized, but God hasn't left our side; we've been thrown down, but we haven't broken.
That's me in 2010- sometimes battered and thrown down, but never broken. So keep reading and I promise that more than ever this blog will point to Jesus. I never thought after a year of writing every day that I would still have anything left to say- I was just praying to last the entire year! As it turns out, Jesus is not finished with me yet. I hope that you and all of your friends will be here tomorrow, watching the video and leaving lots of comments. Thanks for sharing in this journey with me.
Because of Jesus,
Looking forward to it!
ReplyDeleteThanks Jamie! Hope the next year is as much fun as this one has been!
ReplyDeleteI cannot wait until tomorrow!
ReplyDeleteI love that scripture, but I prefer hte translations that call us jars of clay. Keep up the good work!
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