Community

So as a lot of you all know, I am living in Colorado, and many of you also know the reason why I am out here. The Father sent me on a beautiful journey about a year and a half ago and beautifully orchestrated my being here and guiding backpacking trips!! The Father has blessed me deeply since I have lived here. Time after time He has provided me with jobs and finances to allow me to be here. More than that though, He has thrown me into the greatest community I have ever been a part of.

For the longest time, back in VA, I was wrestling with what community was supposed to look like. As great as my relationships with my friends were, I always felt like there was so much more to a community of believers than just hanging out and enjoying each other company. Community seemed to be spending as much time with people as possible to get to know them.....although that is certainly part of it, there was still something missing. Any sort of deep conversation seemed to carry a weight of shame with it. Advice would be given but it never really helped that much. It seemed so much that everyones pursuit of the Father was our own and nothing more. There was no exchange of heart between anyone (even in deep conversations we hold back the scary things we don't want to share). As good as we thought we knew each other, we really didn't know that much past the "easy hard" things to share.

As I have walked with this community I have been given picture of what my heart was wanting for so long. The Father is showing me that the intimacy that I share with Him needs to pour out into the people He has surrounded me with. That a community brought together in His name, are a group of people who know each other deeply and celebrate often. That praying WITH each other is an invitation to corporately encounter His presence as well as an invitation into the deepest regions of our hearts. As a community we are on the front lines of the battle TOGETHER. Everyone has a specific role and calling them out and learning to walk in that role, that identity. A community does not have to try to push anyone towards intimacy, it is the natural reaction of being with each other in communion with the Father.

Jesus we Love you and we thank you that we are not created to do this alone!

Update

So here is an update on my life thus far......

Living in Colorado is rad. Period. The weather is beautiful and the sun shines literally 90% of the year. I get to see Pikes Peak every morning when I drive to work, and yesterday morning, there was snow on the peak. It was absolutely gorgeous. Snowboarding season is coming soon and you can feel the anticipation in the air among the city. Honestly I never thought that I would live in a place like this, in downtown Colorado Springs.

Fall is setting in and it's a bit of a bummer because fall is by far my favorite season.........in Virginia. The other weekend there was a cool breeze in the air and the Hokies were getting ready to play and all I could think about was being back in VA among the colors of fall and watchin football with all my friends and family. I miss Virginia dearly.

With that being said, Papa has given me more than I could ever ask or imagine! I live at a house with two really cool dudes. I have a room with a queen size bed to sleep in (most times I don't know what to do with all that extra space) and a dresser........for free!!!! The Father totally answered my prayers about needing a job and after a week and a half of looking, not only did He get me a job, He gave me options!!!! I could have been a roof salesman (super lame), or landscaping.

I went in and got the landscaping job on the spot and within that week, my boss named me the supervisor over landscaping and maintenance. WHAAAAT! I have been so blessed with this job mainly because of the interactions I have had with my co-workers. The Father has called me to be a MESSENGER and I have been pressing in to Him to see what exactly that looks like here in this place. Well He has put this guy Bob, who I work with, on a wild journey for well....his entire life. His background is crazy and full of partying, violence, and broken relationships. He is a great dude with a fantastic heart and felt like he needed to get out of the life he was leading in Chicago.

He and I have grown close through conversations on the job and I honestly feel like this is part of my journey as a messenger. To deliver the gospel to him and to show Him the GLORY OF THE FATHER. Papa has been proving His love for me so much in this past month or so through encounters and community. The community that Papa has placed me in has loved me very well and I could never have asked for a better group of people to do life with.

Water park

Have you ever been to a water park? They are fantastic! Looking back on my life, I realized that I have actually been to a lot of them in my life time, and every one of them uniquely different. I have been to ones at Kings Dominion, Myrtle Beach, and most recently Dollywood! (disclaimer: Dollywood in itself is a fun place to visit and the water park is on point........working at the park is a different story. Worst job ever.)

I have always enjoyed water and I love massive slides and wave pools and lets be honest, Lazy Rivers are the greatest invention since the water gun. The one section of water parks that I regularly overlook is the big massive jungle gym looking structures that have water spraying in every little corner and crevice possible. Water is being poured into bucket after bucket until finally the top one (which is massive by the way) is completely full and poured a metric ass ton of water on all the willing bystanders. These massive aquatic playgrounds are normally filled with small children running around, sucking every second out of their short lived experience.

I know that this is a pretty random topic to bring up, so I'll tell you what brought me to think about it. For the past couple of weeks The Father has really been laying the concept of "real community" on my heart. So much so that sermons at church and bible studies have been on that topic either directly or indirectly for some time now. During this past bible study we had a discussion about Philippians 1 and how it talks about living in one spirit. This spirit is one of intimacy and deep rooted friendship among the body; a oneness among the community for the same purpose, pushing and penetrating each others lives for the gospel.

Our discussion progressed into what that looks like or should look like in our own lives and we started talking about being spiritually poured into, whether that is our individual walks with Christ or the overflow of that, or splashed onto our friends, our community. The more we talked the more I had a vision of a bunch of childlike figures playing in a water park; everyone is completely soaked and completely poured into. I like the imagine the big bucket being The Father pouring His Love on us, and the smaller buckets are each one of us pouring into each other because of the overflow of Christ in us. No one is left out. Everyone is splashing around and pure JOY is the result. If you think about it....there is really no sadness at a water park; just joy, laughter, play, friendship, and happiness.

May our communities be like water parks. May we be drenched by the overflow of The Spirit, and may we fill each other up with encouragement, love, and deep rooted friendships.

OH GLORY!

Ok so I have had a blog account for about two weeks now and I am finally writing on it! Woohoo!

I want to tell you about my experiences in Colorado. The Father has blown my mind with His presence in this season of my life. For anyone who doesn't know, I am guiding backpacking trips in Colorado this summer and next, with RMR Backcountry. I recently had the opportunity of going to

Colorado for the weekend on two separate occasions for training and OH GLORY, is all I can say about it.

The first trip has literally changed my life! The training was called "heart of a guide" and focused on us as new guides and the community that we will get to be a part of. The themes of the weekend were those of posture, honor, royalty, and brideship. Gimme some a that!

Posture: we must have a posture of receiving! In my own experience I have had a posture of wanting but not receiving. I have wanted to know the fullness of His Love but never actually allowed Him in to show me. For me it is a physical posture like this:

try it out! it totally puts you in that mind set of receiving Him!

Honor: I am still learning so much about this. About how that looks in my life, towards others, and for Him. The way we honor Him is worship.....oh worship. This was definitely the highlight of my weekend. When we worshiped, there was no holding back. Total FREEDOM! In this community there was everything from dancing to sitting in a corner and receiving. No holding back. Glory. On the second night of the training, after our devotional Joey (director of RMR) said that he felt that there were people in the room that wanted a "new name" that wanted to know what Christ thought of them. I literally felt the Father pulling on my chest saying "Yeah thats what you want!" so Joey and I started praying.

It didn't happen right away. I was kind of hoping for a kind of download process you....pray and BAM! identity process complete. That's not what happened and I'm so glad it happened this way. Papa made me wait, and here is why. So many times my relationship with Papa has been experience to experience and there was not much sincerity. By waiting, I realized that I REALLY wanted this. So "the courage of Caleb and compassionate" kept repeating in my head. I asked Joey what that meant and he asked if I knew the story of Caleb. No was my answer and so he told me the story of Caleb in the book of Numbers 30. Read it! It fires me up! Papa sees me as the same endurance of faith as Caleb. Caleb is the man dude, I cannot believe that this is what The Father thinks of me! OH GLORY!

there is so much more for me to tell and I would love to finish it but I am in class and getting mean stares. I will talk more about it later! hopefully not in two weeks though!