My Spiritual Suitcase

Will you be with God in heaven when you die?  The past few months, i've been going out to the streets of Waterloo, Kitchener, and Guelph periodically with the street outreach team at Harvest Bible Chapel Waterloo Region asking this exact question. This ministry focuses on the fourth pillar that Harvest is founded on - "sharing the good news of Jesus with boldness". At Harvest we believe that the preaching/speaking/sharing of the Gospel is the primary means God uses to save the lost. "and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth and boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak." - Ephesians 6:19-20  "How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heart? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it i

"who can say, "I have kept my heart pure; I am clean and without sin"? - Proverbs 20:9 We have all fallen short of God's glory (Romans 3:23), and being the just and Holy God He is, perfect and set apart - all sin must be punished (Romans 6:23). If someone committed a crime, you would expect them to be punished or that justice would be brought - correct? We have all sinned, from the adulterers and the murderers to the liars and the slanderers. No one can come before God and say that they are righteous (Romans 3:10), at the same time, we cannot work our way to a right standing before God also (Ephesians 2:8-9). God demands perfection, and pretty much from the moment we were born, even in the womb, we were sinful (Psalm 51:5). So, "who can say "I have kept my heart pure; I am clean and without sin"?" This summer, i've been doing the Proverbs challenge - where you read one chapter a day for the month since there are 31 chapters in the b

This weekend we had the opportunity of practicing the spiritual discipline of silence and solitude. I remember trying this out in first year - I remember sitting in my room, in silence, and wrestling with just clearing my mind before I could start meditating and reflecting. And God revealed himself to me through music as a song lyric passed my mind and upon listening to it, it was exactly what I needed to hear. This past weekend, God graciously met me in my silence again. Just earlier that day, I had been sharing with my small group about how sometimes it gets lonely being single - it's hard to be fully content in singleness when the whole world (and even the church sometimes) emphasizes marriage so much. And being the emotional person that God has made me, craving relational and amicable intimacy with others, I find myself easily invested into people and friends. It is something that I wrestle with letting go of and submitting to God. I often catch myself finding my identity i

Sometimes you aren't able to see God at work until later, and sometimes, much later. This morning whilst at work, I got this message you see at the top of this post. The first thing I thought was "who's Ryan?" but after searching through my mind, I realized that he was one of my Sunday school kids from a few years ago. Not only that, but my brother has been his overnight camp counselor, and I once taught him at a different church retreat last summer. Seeing texts like this are incredibly encouraging and they are such a blessing to me. It is so cool to see God at work like this. The "recommendation" he's referring is an exchange that actually happened almost a whole year ago at that church retreat I taught at. Even I had completely forgotten about it - but it's amazing to see how something as simple as that would have led to such a result. As I thought about it more, I realized that there was much more to the story than it seemed. BASIC, refer