Fear: An evaluated look, inspired by my Pastor

Fear: The root to the majority of our mistakes. It's the one thing God immediately drives from our hearts. It's
something that causes our faith to not work. It's something (ironically) that we're afraid to admit we have. It pushes us to do extraordinary things. It causes us to make terrible mistakes.

Tonight, Pastor Seth Trenda preached a really relevant message about "Brain Storms". About what happens in our minds when the Truth of God begins to conflict with our fears, our worries, our negative thoughts. He painted a vivid image of a thunderstorm swirling in our minds. The confusion. The worry. The Pain. The Fear that consumes us. I was struck uncommonly by this particular message.

Fear has always been relevant in my life.

When I was 9 years old I remember one of the worst nights of my life. My family was living on twenty acres near that Kalamath Falls area. Just outside of Chiloquin, Oregon. My father was away, dealing with some issues regarding our property. My three siblings and I were with my Grandmother outside. It was just turning dusk. A truck stormed through our property, coming to rest just outside our trailers. When we went outside, we found my father's ex-girlfriend and some older man sitting in the truck. They were clearly quite drunk. When my grandmother confronted them, the woman got out of the car and began screaming at my Grandmother. For whatever reason she didn't like her. In a few minutes my sixty plus grandmother was laying on the ground while a thirty something year old two hundred pound woman beat her to a bloody pulp. I have never been more afraid in all of my life. I remember my oldest sister and my little brother trying to pull her off my grandmother. All I could do was stand there and cry.

I didn't do anything. I was too afraid. To this day, I wish I had been brave enough to do something. Anything to stop her.

When I got older, I developed quite a hate for fear. I despise being afraid. I am too afraid of what might happen if I allow fear to control a situation (another irony). Sometimes I am belligerently aggressive about a situation because of how afraid I am of it. Often times, I make absolutely terribly decisions because I refuse to be afraid. I always see fear as being my enemy. I respond defensively to situations because of the fear that it might produce.

Tonight though, sometime dawned on me. There is a little something to fear that I never realized. I have always been good at "overcoming" my fears. In fact I prefer the "shock and awe" "overkill" kind of attitude towards it. What I have no been good at, is finding hope in my fears. When I think a situation is hopeless, I push through the fear anyway, but I do so hopelessly. I don't expect it to go well. I don't believe I have a possibility of success.

I try. Half heartily. I never invest too much into a situation or a plan because I allow my fears to take the hope. How. Utterly. Terrible. How stupid is that? I make war against fear but allow it to take the spoils. I give up the whole reason to be fighting in the first place. I surrender the prize. HOPE. And with hope goes everything else. Joy. Love. Overcoming.

As I reflected tonight on Pastor Seth's message it really caused me to evaluate my attitude towards fears. How I deal with them. The problem we have is that we allow our fears to define our hope. We have a specific idea about how a situation should turn out. We put our hope in that. Then, we put all our fear into it. When it doesn't come out the way we wanted and exactly what we feared comes on us (Job 3:25), we lose that hope. I think instead, our attitude should be to put our hope in God's goodness manifesting in a situation. Allow our hope to be that He will finish what he starts (Philippians 1:6).

Have hope that despite how you'd like the situation to turn out, or how you think it should turn out, God is doing a GOOD work in your life. Place hope in that.

I'm offended at my Pastor.

I starting interning with my Youth Pastor Seth Trenda back in 2010. Just out of high school, barley knew
Christ. I was a too-smart-for-my-own-good-hungry-like-a-beast-christian. From day one I started to get involved with out media department. I did everything with excitement and with a desire to do it for God. I remember spending sleepless nights with some of my favorite people on the planet. Jordan Shaw and Sean Gleason. It was SO easy for me to follow. So easy for me to do what I was told and work hard to complete a task knowing that I did not have to come up with a strategy or a method to accomplish a ask but I trusted my Pastor knowing he had a plan to help bring youth to Christ. It was easy.

As time went on it wasn't long before I starting raising up as a leader among my peers. Suddenly things got HARD. Suddenly there were expectations of me. Suddenly I couldn't just goof off and let my Pastor handle everything.

Projects would be put in my hands to get done and I was expected to do them. Without help. Without a step by step instruction manual to get it done. I had to work harder than I had initially thought this whole church thing was. When things went wrong, it was my fault. I was in charge of the project. If people didn't get called or someone didn't show up. It was my problem. Worse than that, there was 0 appreciation for what I did. If something went awesome, no one noticed. If I helped put a service together and it went off without a hitch... no one said a word to me.

As time passed it only got worse. More and more expectations were placed on me. I couldn't date. I couldn't hang out with girls by myself. I couldn't drink. I couldn't say what I wanted to say on facebook. I couldn't argue. I couldn't get angry. I was restricted. Had to show up to every service. Had to say the right things. Had to read my bible. I had to be an example.

However what was worse than anything was getting to know my Pastor. He wasn't perfect. He wasn't the all-knowing-holy-man-with-huge-biceps that I put on the pedestal in my head. He got angry. He had unfair expectations of some people. He made mistakes. He blamed me for things I didn't do. Didn't appreciate me. He had favorites. He didn't have the answer for my problems. I didn't like his advise. I didn't like his ideas. I hated his sense of humor. For a while... I hated him.

I remember distinctly a period in my life where I just wanted to quit church. I didn't like my youth pastor. He turned out to be just like everyone else. A person. There wasn't anything special about him. There wasn't anything special about what I was doing. No one cared about what I did. It would be way too easy to just go out and do what I wanted. Date the girls I was interested in. Say the things I wanted to say. Be the person I wanted to be.

Then one dark September day our youth lost a really important young man. Gabriel Washuburn. I didn't really know the guy. I knew of him. He at one time was a prodigy in our youth department. I didn't know him. But my Pastor did. I remember driving to the hospital with Jordan Shaw... I remember all the tears... I remember seeing my entire church morn. Most of all I remember what Jordan told me he witnessed in the bedroom of my youth Pastors home. On his knees. Tears in his eyes. Heart BROKEN. My Pastor. Praying. Worshiping. Crying out to Christ.

Then it clicked. He loves us. Every face. Every young person who steps in our church. He loves them. He'd die for them. He has given up his whole life for them. Every time we screw up. It hurts him. Every time we do the wrong thing he hates it! Every time he put expectations on me it was because HE SAW something in me I DIDN'T. All these expectations on me were about leadership. Expectations he put on himself. You see I finally realized something one day. I was offended at my Youth Pastor. For being human. He demanded I shoot for something I would never reach for on my own and I resented him for it. He wanted me to succeed and fought against every thought and every attitude in my life that stood in the way of that success.

More than that I discovered something about leadership later on that year when I started working with a young man named Wright Miller. You see I need Wright. He does something special on our church. The same thing that I once did and still do for my Pastor. Wright Miller has placed himself next to me under the weight of ministry and put his back into lifting just a little bit off my shoulders. Something my Pastor has always needed. Something I have made my mission here at Faith Center Church. I aim to lift the pressure off.

Now days I love my Pastor's sense of humor. I love his attitude. I think what hes doing in Clark county is phenomenal. I ain't offended at him anymore. I thank God every day for putting a man like him in my life.

Giving honor where honor is due

Sometimes in all the hustle and bustle of life we don't stop long enough to really appreciate the blessings and the opportunities that have placed us where we are. We take for granted sometimes in our pride the true humbleness of our very place in life. So, for a moment, I just want to stop and say how blessed I have been by first the evangelism and outreach of Timothy Roy Durr and the ministry Elevate Generation Church that brought me to my Father's house. How blessed I was to walk into the preaching of Pastor's Glen Johnson and Seth Trenda who strengthened my faith the moment I set foot in Faith Center Church. The practical and authentic teaching I have received in the past 3 years of my life has been key in my life choices and my walk with God. The lives, including my own that have been touched by these amazing people are countless, thank you.

If you need a place to call home, or have questions about God. Consider Faith Center Church.
http://www.faith-center.com
http://www.elevategc.com