Re-creation Focus

Re-creation Focus

The start of a new year is often filled with empty resolutions about how this year is going to be better than last year.  That a change we will make this week will carry us throughout the year.  But we cannot do it alone.  We need to recognize that God is with us.

It is true that we all need recreation in our lives.  We need to take time to allow for rest and diversion from the pressures of the daily grind.  We've heard the adage about all work and no play.  We've even heard that in the creation story in Genesis that on the 7^th day God rested.   But I would say to go a step further we don’t need recreation we need re-creation. 

Because God is always at work in you to make you willing and able to obey his own purpose. Philippians 2:13 (GNB).

Re-creation allows God to continue creation’s story in us.  Creation has not stopped it is a continuous process.  Re-creation calls for us to submit to God’s will for our lives.  Re-creation allows us to refocus on God’s plan.

Too many people feel that they can simply rely on themselves for recreation, happiness, and joy.  These people have been caught up in the philosophies that the only one that they can rely on is themselves.  Willpower is not enough to change us.  Focusing in on self-centered ways and ideologies cannot revive us and can be akin to idolatry.  People subscribe to these approaches because God has been moved out of the center space that He should occupy. 

The only way to properly recharge and re-create is to plug into a source greater than yourself.  And that source is God alone.  When God changes you, it's going to hurt. You're going to have to let go of a few things, but it will make you stronger in Him.

Each of us will change. Life will not allow us to stay the same.  God is right, I am wrong, and he has the authority to shape and change me into whomever he wants me to be. 

22You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. (Ephesians 4: 22-24 (NIV)).

We need to take time to allow God to work with us and re-create us.  Sometimes we need to have just a moment of silence and stillness to re-create.  Other ways to allow God to engage you in re-creation is through fasting.  The church my family and I attend has started today with a 21 day period of fasting and prayer.  The title “Awakening” has been given to this period.  Through fasting and prayer we allow God re-create us.  Re-creation challenges spiritual complacency.  “Fasting is a powerful way to let your flesh know that you are a Spirit-dominated person and your flesh must be submitted to God” (Pastor Alvin Thomas, 2014).

Through re-creation we do not settle for the status quo and we allow God’s revival to awaken us.  Creation was never to be a once and done event.  Through Christ we have been redeemed, recreated, renewed, revived, and given a future in a new life.   We need to pray for continued re-creation by God in our lives.  “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”  (2 Corinthians 5:17 (NIV)).

Burn for You -- Toby Mac

Jesus is Life -- Stephen Curtis Chapman

Is it what He wants me to do?

Is it what He wants me to do?

I am rereading a book I read a year or so back by Bill Peel called What God Does When Men Lead: The Power and Potential of Regular Guys.  Peel ends each chapter with several study questions.  I am reflecting on one of those questions this evening.  The question is “How did I come to choose my current work?  Do I think it is what God wants me to do?” 

Ephesians 2:10 (NIV)

10For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

So many men (and people in general) struggle to know what it is that God has planned for them.  In seeking to uncover their vocational calling so many people (including me) try to find this purpose in things, power, money, status, or fame.  Many college students select academic majors based on what their parents want them to be rather than submitting to God’s will and their talents. 

We need to take time to discern what it is God wants us to do as members of the Body of Christ.  We need to consider how our gifts and talents and passions intertwine in terms of vocational direction.  We also have to be okay that it is not a straight line and that we may have to wander in the wilderness and go around the same mountain time and time again before we see our place in the Body of Christ revealed.

As I have posted in an earlier blog post I am currently a college student educator.  I have moved into that stage of my career where we (in the field) say that “I am seasoned”.  Like many colleagues I came into this field from having been involved as an undergraduate student in college.  Some might say that classes got in the way of my co-curricular involvement. 

My story starts like this.  Following high school I enrolled in college as a Speech Communications major.  My hope (found in fame and notoriety) was to become a television news reporter.  I even had an opportunity following my internship to work at a local station as a reporter.  Although I liked the work, I had not been bitten by the journalism bug.  I kept returning to thinking about earlier thoughts of being a teacher.  But something in K-12 was not for me.  Then while serving as a Resident Advisor I came to learn more about student affairs in higher education.  Student affairs college student educators are the ones charged on campuses with developing and coordinating the out of class co-curricular experiences.  This seemed to be the connection I was seeking.

I obtained my first position as a Resident Director and enrolled in graduate school.  I found connection and success by helping college students.  I found that I was also employing many of my strengths and talents.  But my early career was not without its hurdles.  I had a couple of positions that were not good fits but I learned so much at each school.  After leaving one of these early positions I had the opportunity to teach at a community college.  I found another aspect of my calling as an educator. 

Within my career path I experienced two major setbacks with the loss of positions.  In each position loss I saw the face of the enemy at work.  The enemy was clouding from me the vision and calling about what was planned by God.  Bill Peel in his book also talks about the experience that everyone should be let go from a job at least once.  It challenges your resolve, your identity, and your integrity.  I can stand on solid ground that in each instance my integrity was intact and I could walk knowing that I had stood on principles.  But I still had two job losses within two years.  It’s times like these that certainly challenge your resolve, faith, and decisions.  

After the second loss this past summer I challenged God.  Several times I sat up at night asking “Why me again?”  I would question if working with college students was what I was called to do.  Was this really where I should be?  When I started to consider work outside of academe, nothing made sense.  These positions did not have the right “feeling” for lack of a better term.  They were out of alignment for who God has prepared me to be. 

I knew that I could not stay in that space for long.  I set my faith firm that God has a plan for me.  These earlier experiences helped prepare me for my current work with students and in my current position.  I know that working with students (to help them grow) is what God has prepared me to be.  Following my final contract day I had two interviews scheduled.  They were similar positions but at two very different schools. 

I pondered the messages from Romans 8:28 and 2 Corinthians 3:17 - 18 and that before I went on any other interviews I needed His agenda leading me more.  I prayed for clarity about where I needed to be and what did I need to be doing?

Romans 8:28 (NIV)

28And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

2 Corinthians 3: 17 – 18 (NIV)

17Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

I was only a couple of days off contract when I was offered an interview.  The night before the interview I sat in my hotel room and prayed for God’s guidance and wisdom.  If this was His plan for me so let it be.  If this is the right place then all of the pieces will come together.  Well the pieces came together rather quickly.  And because of how these pieces have come together with a great position that is in alignment with what He wants me to do and a new Church family that supports my family and me, I know in my spirit that this is where we need to be.  We are surrounded by good people.  And the students in my new institution are the best I have ever worked with in 20 years in this profession as a college student educator. 

The pieces have all come into alignment.  I know that this is the case because I feel revived and passionate about my work.  It is through this faith that I am certain this is the work that I was prepared to do.  I know that where I am at now I can do the work that is for God’s glory and it is work that expands His kingdom.  And for that I know that I am blessed.