I am not very good at prayer, I think because I’m too busy doing stuff—stuff that I think is important and necessary and, well, I just don’t have time to stop and pray. How would I ever get things done?
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I’ve been in this season recently where I’ve encountered a potential disconnect between my will and God’s will. I’m hoping and praying for something seemingly impossible. Something that could very well be in God’s plan, but maybe not. I don’t know yet. In this tension God is teaching me some things about my relationship to his will. And one of the ways he’s taught is through Summit’s Gospel Reading Plan.
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What is your response when you encounter Jesus? Not necessarily a conversation, but when something in your life clearly suggests that Jesus is at work, or you read a verse of Scripture and find it striking.
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When I was asked what I would want to record for the Jesus Songs project, my answer was pretty quick. I had written the bulk of a song called “I Call Him Lord” right after completing my first ever worship album release last year. It’s pretty typical (and frustrating) for me that whenever I get done with some big creative project, it’s usually followed by a wave of creativity that makes the project I just finished seem obsolete already.
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I have never been very good at the whole Lent thing—even though I’ve successfully given something up for Lent a number of times. Growing up in the Southern Baptist church, Lent wasn’t something I had any awareness of. So as a freshman in college, newly involved in a church that celebrated the season with the option of fasting from something, I remember being genuinely excited to try it.
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I grew up Catholic, so the Lenten season is very familiar to me. I can recall many years trying to find something to give up, usually landing on chocolate or TV (because being in 2nd grade and not having chocolate is a real hard thing). For the past several years, since becoming a mom, I have tried to focus more on a specific spiritual practice to add into my life that will draw me closer to God rather than giving up something tangible.
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As we have begun our journey through reading the Gospels and discovering who Jesus really was as he walked this earth, I have kept this one verse on a loop in the back of my mind. As I’ve allowed the stories of the Gospel of John to play out in my imagination, I find myself looking for the moments in which Jesus faced all of the struggles I face in my own life today—from the intense and painful moments of my life to the seemingly mundane and innocuous ones.
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Not long after leaving the Summit offices for the last time (I was carrying my goldfish under my arm while the staff gave me hugs—it was all very dramatic), I was invited to go on a trip and experience the work of IJM first-hand. As you may imagine, it was a life-altering journey.
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So maybe you’re thinking about joining a Summit team going to Africa this year. Or maybe you’re thinking about sponsoring a child. Or maybe you just find yourself thinking about Summit’s partnerships in Africa but you’re not exactly sure why.
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A little over three years ago, while traveling with my oldest son Samuel to visit friends in Uganda, I was struck by the thought that not everyone in our world or even in our church has a clear sense of our core identity as a church.
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The first time I prayed a desperate, cry-from-the-heart, kind of prayer was when I was about 8 years old and our cat went missing. I went into my bedroom, kneeled in front of a small statue of Jesus, and begged him to bring Smutty Nose back. While I was still on my knees, I heard my sister yell from the driveway, “Guys! Guys! Smutty Nose is back.”
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One of the highlights for me of the reGROUP calendar is our graduation ceremony. I would highly doubt that there are many people who would put “fun” next to “reGROUP” in a word association game, but that is likely because they’ve never seen graduation. I more often hear words like hard, painful, depressed, addicted, and lost when people talk about reGROUP, though talk to a reGROUP graduate and you may hear a different story—one of transformation.
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It has been just over a month since the In Justice evening on racial reconciliation in March. As we approach niceSERVE week I want to come back to one of the main themes of the evening as well as touch on a major line of questioning that came up during the Q&A following the service. There were a number of questions that fall into the “How?” category
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I find green beans to be gross. You know—those mushy, over-salted blobs of green floating in some sort of mystery juice. Growing up the only way I would eat them was in green bean casserole, and even that was really only for the gravy and the fun little make-believe onions.
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This past Vision Sunday, we celebrated our 14th birthday. It was 14 years ago that we officially opened our doors in order to fully engage with God’s mission in the world through his church. One of our core values as a church is making the most of our place in history. It is this value that has always resonated deeply with me.
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My first time to reGROUP I sat in the dark shadows near the back of the room so that, hopefully, no one else would see the tears in my eyes the entire night. I was clinically depressed, struggling, isolated, and hurting. I wasn’t sure what was wrong with me. I hardly had the energy to show up, let alone talk to someone afterwards.
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August is on the horizon and as we try to keep cool during these dog days of summer, young students and their parents are gearing up to return to school in the next few weeks. The start of the school year is an exciting time filled with possibilities, but for too many families there’s an extra layer of anxiety that comes with the first day of school.
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Why are we doing communion every week this summer? It has been said—and I believe this—that partaking in the sacrament of communion is the most intimate act of worship we will experience this side of eternity. Think about the word: partake. We are ingesting physical elements that at least represent, and at most embody—in some mysterious way—the presence of Christ.
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Micah 6:8 has a nice ring: Do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly. Yet, how is it possible to fight for justice and mercy, when in the jail they seem to be polar opposites? An inmate recently asked, “Would God really sentence me to prison when He knows my heart?”
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There’s a pretty good chance that if you attended the last round of these singles seminars, you’re just slightly unsettled that enough time has passed that we’ve brought them back around and you are still here.
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