So, it’s my last year here and after I get back from the Arizona mission trip, I will be heading back home and from there, I hope to find a job. It’s a little scary, not really knowing what’s going on after spending 7 years at Eastern (5 for undergrad then 2 for the internship) and knowing what will be coming up next with classes and the internship. From that fear of the unknown future, I’ve had thoughts of, what does God want me to do? How will I know? In the past, I’ve had the idea that if pray hard enough that God would show me which way to go. That he would guide me to which ever path he wants me to go on. So I would pray for his guidance to show me which way to go, which path he wanted me to go, and also pray for my eyes to be open so that I could see his leading. BUT! It never showed up. I never saw “the way” that God wanted me to go. There never was this guarantee that I got.

I’ve been reading a book called, Decision Making and the Will of God by Garry Friesen. And one of the main points that he talks about is the difference of the traditional view of the will of God and the wisdom view. In the traditional view, imagine the will of God being a bulls-eye and you are the archer. In order for you to be in God’s will, you must hit it directly and if you miss the mark, then you are not in God’s will. How does this translate into my life? If I was deciding on what college or job to choose, then according to the traditional view, there is only one right decision and any other choice is wrong.

In the wisdom view he, Garry Friesen, advocates, there is no bulls-eye that we need to hit in order to be in God’s will. Instead, God has given us freedom to make these decisions ourselves with the wisdom that is given to us through the Bible. So, if there were choices to be made about choosing a college or job, there is no one right choice. There can be multiple decisions that line up with God’s will but we are given the wisdom to weigh each choice and then the freedom to choose while knowing that each choice is within God’s will.

Reading this book has given me new insight into the way I make decisions, especially such important ones regarding what I will be doing after I am done here. No longer do I pray for God to guide me or show me the “right” decision, but now I pray for his wisdom and guidance as I make decisions. And as I make these decisions, I won't be gripped with the fear that I have made a wrong decision somewhere and missed the bullseye.

This weekend I was spending some time thinking about my life and I started to think about something that had been on my mind since the beginning of the semester. The thinking began in the form of a question, what is my focus? Since the beginning of the semester, I had noticed something in me that wasn’t quite right. And so I took some time to think through the things I had done and tried to figure out what that thing that wasn’t right was. As I went through that list, I began to notice that the focus of my life had shifted from serving God to serving myself. I hadn’t become this super worldly hedonist, but I realized that the motivation to do things had changed. it went from how can I serve God by doing this thing or what can I do to serve God where I’m at to trying to see how I can do things that I would enjoy or want or “needed” to get done.

There was a gradual change of my focus last semester from serving God to serving my own interests. The change is rarely quick and radical. It is usually a gradual change. It starts with little things that you do in your daily life. I know that it was a gradual change with me. I slowly began to skip reading the Bible or postponing my time to pray, justifying it by saying to myself, “I’ll do that later tonight when I have more time.” I skipped those things in favor of watching more TV or trying to beat the next level on Halo Reach on Heroic.

So, in light of my own discovery of my misguided focus, I would like to urge all readers of this blog to think about what your focus is on and make sure that focus is on God not on yourself.

I am writing this blog this week about something I have noticed within our ministry. This thing that I have noticed is the feeling that students don’t own it. I’m not sure why it is, but I want to let all of you students know that it is your ministry. The success of this ministry depends, first and foremost, on God and secondly it depends on students who are willing to work to make ministry happen on campus or here in the campus house.

We, the staff including interns, are here at the Campus House to help students in their faiths. We are here to help equip, challenge, encourage, and teach students to become disciples of Christ and to go make disciples (Matthew 28:19-20).

I encourage all students that read this blog that are maybe discouraged at what is not being done at Campus House to get involved and do something to fix it. You have the power to do that! Because it is your ministry guys! Join one of the action groups and start feeding in ideas and then work to make those ideas turn into action!

How is your day going today? Is it going swell? Do you feel like you’re on top of the world? Everything is going your way. Maybe it’s been an ok day. Some things have been blah, but mostly they are all ok. Or has it been a crappy day. You’re stressed out, nothing is going right, even the day is grey and there’s no sunshine. Just dull, dreary clouds that make you want to stay in bed the entire day.

Unfortunately, I’ve gone through a lot of those feelings a couple of weeks ago. Things have gone wrong, things have broken, and nothing was going right. Then a day or two would be just blah, nothing was really bad, but nothing was really good. And I had one day of feeling like I was on top of the world.

I’ve talked with some people and they have also had a week like mine. It stinks, you wish that you could just stay with the feeling that you’re on top of the world, but you can’t. I remember back when I was just starting to learn more about being a Christian, that I believed that because I was a christian that everything in life would be super easy, God would always make sure that I was happy. It didn’t take too long before I became discouraged because things weren’t going my way, things in life weren’t easy; they were hard or getting harder. At first, I thought, maybe it’s because I did something wrong so God is punishing me. So I need to think real hard about all the things that I’ve done and just repent as hard as I can and then things will be easier because I’ll have God’s favor again. Well doing all those things didn’t work to make life easier on me. Then as I began to read the bible more, I came across verses that talked about how we should rejoice about being in trials, or that because we follow Jesus that men would hate us. I began to realize that God never said that he would make our life easier if we decided to follow him.

It is harder because the world is against us. But don’t get too discouraged, because God has promised us that he will never leave or forsake us (Hebrews 13:5). He is always there for us to turn to.

This week and last week I was able to spend some time doing some things I enjoy a lot. During some quiet time, I read a couple of chapters from two of Philip Yancey’s books, “Reaching for an Invisible God” and “What’s So Amazing About Grace?” I really enjoy reading his books. He has a certain style with his words and the way that he incorporates stories into the ideas that’s he’s weaving that I like. It also helps that his topics are engaging and keep my interest.

Just today, there was a severe thunderstorm that caused a tornado warning and I enjoyed watching it pour, what seemed like, sheets of water down and lightning so bright it lit up the dark sky and thunder so loud that it shook your body. Watching storms like that brings me into a state of awe of how awesome creation is. Which then brings me to thinking about God, the creator of all these magnificent and awe-inspiring storms. Another thing that I enjoy doing is playing games, video and board games. Two weeks ago, it was my birthday, and for my birthday I received a bit of birthday money. Which I used to get an Xbox and a game. So during the weekend, I woke up in the afternoon and spent some time shooting aliens. And then last Wednesday, Michael Stinson and Tim Aberle came to visit and we played settlers of Catan and later that night we played Risk.

Those are the things that I enjoy doing. What do you enjoy doing?