::one::
As I grew up I struggled deeply with depression. Throughout high school this was particularly hard. Towards the end of my senior year of high school as I was driving home alone I flat out asked God why I was so depressed. It suddenly occurred to me that the reason I was always so depressed was because I was putting my hope in the wrong things. I was always putting my hope in whatever person, event or thing that was the focus of my life and without fail these things always left me disappointed. Somehow that day God adjusted my focus and I began to realize that my hope needed to be in Him alone. That if I found life in Christ I could be satisfied and that any other good thing that came my way was a blessing. This truth seems so simple, but for me that concept was life altering.
::two::
My first couple years of ministry were less than encouraging. I remember constantly feeling like a failure and wondering if I was really cut out to do ministry. During a darker period, when I was really questioning my call to ministry, I attended a conference at Willow Creek where Rob Bell spoke. The main idea of his talk was “why aren’t you more you in the ministry that you do?” If God has created me, redeemed me, gifted me, called me, and placed me in the ministry that I am in then I need to realize that God wants me and no one else. I had constantly fallen into the trap of trying to be someone else as opposed to embracing who I was in my ministry context. As I embraced this idea it gave me the confidence to embrace the ministry that God had called me to.
::three::
About four years ago God allowed me to be a part of some of the richest community that I have ever experienced. Through “circumstances” my wife and I became great friends with about five other young adults in our area. We all attended the same church, lived, worked, and shopped in the same area. It gave us multiple opportunities throughout the week to connect and know each other. We naturally started to spend time together talking about the things that we were most passionate about and at the center of it all was God. It was very easy to be intentional with these friends about studying scripture, praying for each other, encouraging each other, calling each other out, serving each other and serving along side each other. I experienced some of the strongest growth in my Christian walk during the time that we all were in community together and in that time I became convinced that we really were made for community and that God uses the body of Christ both to shape each other as individuals and to make impacts on the world around us. This community also taught me the value of experiencing community on an organic level. I had been and have been a part of programmed community and have experienced some of what was found with these friends but the depth that comes from discovering and developing this kind of community is worth working for and pushes me to pursue this wherever I am.
