She’s joined us for her winter/spring semester to do an internship with us. Angie is pretty much an editing ninja, she’s been doing video productions for her past few semesters in high school and we are loving what she’s bringing to the table.

Shift Loves You Angie!

Keep checking for more, they will challenge, encourage, heal and strengthen.

Enjoy!

God rocked Lindsey’s life this year. This was story that was co-edited with our intern Angie Cantena, She pretty much ROCKS.

Enjoy!

BUT  we are great at dishin’ it out.

Can I suggest to you a lesson that I learned this week, secretly?

Moments like these reveal the true humility of your heart, and they can either open or close a door to reaching your God given potential.

If you think your simply the bomb and don’t want to accept that someone might see something you don’t then you’re in dangerous territory.

God speaks through people, he uses them to correct us, challenge us, encourage us etc. But if we are not willing to listen to these people, then we will only stay where we are at and unfortunately even back track…

Check out what the Bible says –  ”So don’t bother correcting mockers; they will only hate you. But correct the wise, and they will love you.” Proverbs 9:8

The mocker thinks he’s the bomb and isn’t willing to be teachable and grow. He is that person that has an opinion for everything, but usually never does anything.

The wise one maybe has been around long enough to see the mistakes he has made and  also realizes that there’s wisdom in those that have gone before him.

PRACTICAL: If someone comes to you with correction you have a choice to consider the words, and ask God if He’s using this situation to help you grow in maturity, ability, wisdom and love.

This week this happened to me, and my initial reaction was to defend myself, and keep doing what I was doing, but I instead knew that God was using that opportunity to help me grow. It was awesome and that’s why I shared!

- Kyla

Immediately I thought “Are you kidding me? What kind of encouragement is THAT? Almost HALFWAY there?” Not really the words of encouragement I wanted to hear at the time, especially with how I was feeling. I was only ALMOST halfway through my first official half marathon. Maybe only like 8k in and for some reason today I felt like death in running shoes. My husband probably had already, with his natural gift of running and built in determination of steel finished his run.

I on the other hand was scraping the bottom of what was left in me to find strength that would keep me moving forward. I had to decide at that moment to ignore the voices of discouragement and keep putting one foot in front of the other until that finish line was crossed. I thought about everything I could think of that day to keep my mind off of what I was doing. I Prayed a lot, planned a lot, and watched many movies in my head.

That day taught me a lot about pushing through. And the feelings that we go through as we walk through life. Not to make this a super deep moment or anything, but really, there are high times and low times. And discouragement if you let it can kill every dream that’s inside of you.

God has given us all an assignment for our life, whether we know Him or not, that IS the truth. Our decision is to grab a hold of it and walk in it. He will almost never tell us the little details of it. He usually gives us a template, and then fills in the blanks as we go, giving us the grace to handle each challenge, trial and triumph. I’m thankful for that.

We see us at the start line, and He sees us at the finish. But we don’t usually get to see all of the other stuff in between until we run past it.

Never, Ever, Ever give up.

Don’t quit today because your emotions are playing tricks on you. Keep going! The desire to give up right before the end is always the strongest.

¹ The LORD is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
² He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
³ he refreshes my soul.
He guides me along the right paths
for his name’s sake.

Psalm 24:2-3

Life can just become to chaotically busy sometimes. And if there is a free few moments in the day it’s not difficult to find something to fill it with. With a technology filled world it’s also very easy to fill those free minutes with at least 3 things at a time!

It’s easy to get in a groove where you feel like your literally rushing from one commitment to the next. School, Parenting, Jobs, church, family, life, friends, fun, etc. .

And what can happen is the source of Strength we are to be pulling from, is usually last on our list. And then we slip into trucking away on our own strength. Before we know it we feel overwhelmed, or joy is zapped, and we want to quit..something…or everything.

Notice how in the verse at the beginning it says he leads me by QUIET waters? I think of a river, or a super calm lake. Not one with crashing loud waves or a river full of rapids.  Then it says “He refreshes my soul” Our soul is made up of our mind, will and emotions. When we get busy burnt out and tired these things all go out of wack. Reality doesn’t look the same, and things set us off that normally wouldn’t. Why? Because you didn’t make time to feed your spirit man by connecting with God.

Notice how it continues to go on and say “he leads me down right paths…” When we connect with God he gets us thinking right again. Sanely and securely in Him.

We are called sheep for a reason. Sheep stray off so easily. They follow each other without even thinking about it. They are so easily distracted and thrown off course. That’s why sheep NEED shepherds – Every day. They need to be connected every day.

So be connected.

I admit – I am addicted

I love technology. I really do. It’s made things so much easier. Banking at the extension your hand. Carrying on multiple conversations at a time while taking care of work emails. And let’s not forget the ability to capture a memorable moment immediately. But as much as 90% of what I do for a living is media related I also have developed a love-hate relationship with technology. Why? Because I think we’ve become so dependant on it.

The signs of a Tech Addict:
1. While writing out a note you expect the red squiggly line to appear underneath the unsure spelling of a word. – Guilty
2. While in Church you’re asked to go to Hebrews – You can’t find it because usually you go to the main page and type in “Hebrews” and it pops up. – Guilty….
3. While looking for missing paper work in your house you think “I’ll just use the search bar”, immediately after that you remember – “Right…I’m not on a computer….” -Guilty…
4. While reading a book you touch the page with you index and thumb and make the “zoom in” motion… SO GUILTY! Guilty…..
I’ll save myself the embarrassment of the many other moments I’ve had like these!
As much as technology is amazingly convenient it’s important to limit the amount that we use it. Because no email in the world can replace good old fashioned quality time moments with the people we love.

I have.

These are the guys who show up with body paint smeared all over their not so GI-Joe body and with abandonment make there bellies dance like jello in hopes of inspiring their team (or distracting the opposition). They don’t care what you think, and by the 3^rd period, the pile of empty beer cups at their feet suggests that they don’t even know what you look like.

My Point?

We’ve made Jesus the guy wearing a Ralph Lauren suit and freshly polished Birkenstocks to a hockey game…

“He SHOOTS…(anticipation)… HE SCORES!!!!”

You grab your air horn, jump to your feet… look over at Jesus as He straightens His tie and raises his left eyebrow without even a flinch crossing His perfectly pressed together lips… and you sit back down… give an awkward thumbs up and say; “that was a rather aerodynamically flawless shot” as you clear your throat. Embarrassed at your almost outburst of … what’s that word again? Oh yes… passion. (period. No exclamation marks for heavens sake.)

Who wants to be that guy? Not Jesus. That’s for sure. In all of our religious rhetoric and protocol we’ve painted Jesus as a snotty, upper middle class, “safe” guy that nobody would have fun hanging out with and would definitely feel insecure around.

As if!!!

Jesus would be the first to jump to His feet, His foam #1 finger waving proudly in the air as He knocked the shoulder of the guy beside Him over and over again with an expression on His face that showed He was fully alive and fully present in that moment.

Got a problem with me painted Jesus as a jean clad sports fan? Get over it.

We want Jesus to be safe. Tameable. He’s not. He is the originator of passion, The Beginning of every good idea and every good thing. He is. If we’d let Jesus out of our safe little box labeled “religion” and “handle with care”, we would get to know who He really is. He’s the greatest adventurer of all time. Our loudest cheer when we do something that makes Him proud. We foolishly believe that when we repeat the sinners pray that Jesus belongs to us exclusively and therefore is altogether like us.

Wrong.

God is in love with each and every person on earth. Yep. Hard-pill to swallow when you start putting faces to that love. He loves the guy/girl who cut you off in traffic this morning. The person who treated your heart like it was made of stone and threw it in the mud so you allowed your heart to become hard. Jesus is for us. He’s not against us and He is not predictable or ordinary. He’s extraordinary. He is the great orchestrator of our life. He’s original. So why be a clone? Be who God made you to be passionate. Filled with joy. A little weird sometimes. That’s a good thing.

As for those jello-dancing boys, I brought them up to demonstrate how passionate and undignified the world gets about what they love. Can you imagine if we worshipped God like that? If we really and truly didn’t care what the person beside us thought or what we sounded like as we were passionately describing our relationship with The One we’d fallen head over heals for? Revival would break out. Passion compels people towards it, in the right way and directed towards God, passion is the most beautiful thing on earth.

Let Jesus out of His penalty box and go do life with Him. You’ll be surprised at all the chains and burdens you’ve picked up that make you look more like a caged animal then a free bird.

Be blessed!

In Jewish culture, a young boy will have his Bar Mitzvah party at 13 years of age, marking the transition from a child who is not responsible for his actions to a young man with responsibilities and expectations. “Bar” meaning “son” and “Mitzvah” meaning  “of the commandment”, the young man is now considered… well a man, responsible to carry out Jewish traditions and law.  Amazingly, according to Jewish law, at the age of 13 young men are legally able to marry.  The Bible talks about a young man leaving his mom and dad and cleaving to his wife (the transition from the old way of living “under” mom and dad to living as the head “over” a household). Jesus never meant for us to be couch potatoes, He called us to live with excellence and purpose.  Sometimes we tend to use our culture here in North America as an excuse to live like immature kids rather then men and women of God (we are not of this world though we live here after all).
Cultures and religions all have there own way of marking key transitional times in life (sweet 16 anybody?), but what happens when a young man or woman is not expected or required to grow up? Ever hear that phrase that makes any young woman shudder “he’s a mamas boy”… yikes, you immediately know what you’re getting into, a boy in a mans body with no ambition or reason really, to stick his neck out. Or how about this “she’s a princess”, that’s enough to make anybody with good credit run for this hilltops. She’s the kind of girl who wants what she wants when she wants it and will not take no for an answer. God help us! Sadly these descriptions are not the exception, they are trending towards being the norm. Its almost the thing to do, to casually “find your way through life” at no risk to our survival. In our microwave society we’re so use to having everything at our fingertips, that the idea of getting up at rooster crow and building a life from the ground up isn’t reality anymore. We really don’t ever run the risk of starving to death here in the West if we choose laziness over work ethic. So, it’s a lot easier to act like a child when you are babied like one. Why learn that you need to separate your whites from your reds when Mom takes care of it for you? But, what will happen if we, the youth and young adults of this nation, do not man or woman up, decide to grow up and live ambitiously? That’s something I shudder to think about. We can’t all work at McDonalds people! It’s time to grow up. Take the bull by the horns and be real men and women with real character, because mommy and daddy just cannot do that for us.
Katie Carr