Monday, July 2, 2012

Make An Impact

There is a saying in life about not caring what other people think of you. I hate this saying. When you think about it as Christians, shouldn't we care what other think of us? I think about all my years counseling at Bay Shore and all the different kids I have met and had personal relationships with, but what abut the kids that I didn't necessarily talk with or share with? Were these kids still influenced by my leadership at camp?

How about the way we live our life? Are the things we do and the way we live pleasing to God and the people who watch us? I think sometimes we forget that others watch us closely. I know when things in my life have happened people have told me later that how I handled something was a true testimate to my faith and I didn't even know it. As we approach camp, think about how we can impact even when we don't know we are. Kids may leave camp not even having a heart to heart with us, but are deeply impacted by who we are and how we acted. That's powerful, influential, and something we should strive for. I guess I am asking for stories about people who have impacted you. What did the person go through and how did they handle it? What about the situation changed your life?

Countdown........two weeks.

8 comments:

  1. I should be sleeping but needed to post here before I did. A story to come later but after reading Ty's words, one specific line in the film "The Bucket List" came to mind: You measure yourself by the people who measure themselves by you. Words for thought.

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    1. Where is this story to come later Martin?

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  2. First of all, we would be incredibly short staffed for Baseball Softball Camp Counselors. No one would make the cut. Second, there would be no good videos because Brett and I wouldn’t be there. Third I bet fewer kids would be at camp because they would have to scour the country to find enough counselors to work for free at a small Methodist Church Camp in Sebewaing MI. That’s what camp would look like if there was a penalty for not being a true example of Christ outside of the one-week we come to baseball softball camp.

    Many of you may know that in college I was in a fraternity. ‘GHASSP!’ “WHAT? DAN RINKE IS A FRAT GUY?” (Many of you may not have known that.) It’s true, in college I was a fraternity ‘News flash,’ many of my Christian friends were in the same fraternity. Tim Novak, Luis Cadena, Dan Janchke. In our fraternity there was a creed, a motto, if you will, that governed the way we would try and live our lives. In this motto one of the sentences reads...

    “... who speaks with frankness, but also with sincerity and sympathy, whose deed follows his word, who thinks of the rights and feeling of other rather than his own ... AND WHO APPEARS WELL IN ANY COMPANY ...”

    Who appears well in any company, we have come to understand as, though your situation, your attitude, your mannerisms, and overall body language may change or adapt from one situation to another ... one thing remains the same, allegiance to your God, your values, and your morals. HERE’s THE KICKER. In our fraternity there was even a penalty for breaking this code of ethics! We called it “Conduct un-becoming of a True Gentleman.”

    Many of you are right now saying “I wish there was a penalty for Conduct un-becoming of a True Christian!” People need to stop being fake right? Well maybe we should re-think that one. Because as the post started off, we would be in some serious trouble if Bay Shore held us to that same standard. I would love to hear what some of you think we could do to try and hold each other to this standard. Offer some suggestions or silly penalties for “Conduct un-becoming of a Bay Shore Baseball Softball Camp Counselor!

    JESUS SAYS THAT WE ARE SAVED BY GRACE, THROUGH FAITH, AND NOT BY WORKS. And many “So Called Christians” quote that as a way to say being a good person outside of Church is not as important as your personal relationship. But Jesus also talks about the Fruits of the Spirit. So live your life with abundant faith. But also with gifts that bless others in your daily lives. Love, Joy, Peace, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Mercy. This is how we imitate Christ. This is how the Spirit is welcome. And this is the staff that Bay Shore Camp needs.

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    1. I have been blessed with mentors at different times throughout college, but I wanted to speak about someone more recent. Unfortunately, I was having a difficult time thinking of that person. Mainly because I have been longing for a more mature, female mentor in my life for a couple years now.

      Kyle and I were at a friends' wedding this past Saturday and were placed at a table with three other married couples who were all Christians (what a blessing) and were married for a little over a month (that'd be Kyle and I) to 15 years+. During dinner, all of us spoke openly about lessons God was teaching us through current life situations. One couple had just adopted a two year old boy from China, one couple just had their first child, the other couple (who was our previous pastor at CMU and had been there since His House started on our campus) spoke about continuing to adjust to a new place with their four kids, Kyle and I spoke about being newly married and careers and graduate school.

      The couple's story that impacted me the most was Dani and Jody, the couple who had just adopted. They had been going through the adoption process for four years, originally hoping for a healthy baby from China, but after waiting they decided to look for a child with special needs. Five days after turning in paperwork, they received a call about Elijah. The lessons they learned through that time were PATIENCE and OBEDIENCE! God gave them the answers they needed on HIS time. He put it on their hearts to adopt and they started the process. He let them go through the process for four years before He changed Dani's heart in adopting a child with special needs.

      When God wants something from me, I want all the details right away. I want Him to show me my future far past what He is ready to show me. But this is what the Lord tells all of us and this is what He used Dani and Jody to teach me again... " 'For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,' declares the Lord. 'As the heavens are higher that the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.' "

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  4. A woman I have taught next to for the last 3 years has impacted my life more than she probably even knows! She was assigned to be my mentor-teacher, when I was first hired by the public schools. Little did she know she would soon become not just a mentor-teacher, but a teaching-partner, a loyal friend, a mom away from home, and really a life coach!

    She is an amazing woman who has spent 26 years of her life, selflessly teaching and impacting thousands of students', teachers', and parents' lives...All while being an amazing wife and mother to her family!

    I have learned so many life lessons from this lady and only hope I can one day articulately lead conversations the way she does and speak as eloquently, with such wisdom and grace!

    But the one thing I admire the most about this person in my life is the way she "LOVES SOMEONE UNTIL THEIR HEART SCARS WITH A FACE WELL-LIVED." This is something I am reading and learning about in small group. We live in a mean and cruel world and the only way to fix it or cure it, is to LOVE peoples' faces off. Or like Beth Moore says and what this woman in my life is doing- "LOVE SOMEONE UNTIL THEIR HEART SCARS WITH A FACE WELL-LIVED!

    This is exactly what I have witnessed time and time again with my mentor teacher, she LOVES people and she LOVES people who seem impossible to even LIKE at times. On many occasions she has demonstrated this with fellow staff in our building as she comes alongside individuals with patience, love, a listening ear, a gentle spirit, and a compromising attitude. More times then not these people have been cruel or mean or even a bully. This doesn't stop her, she overcomes meanness, cruelty, a spirit of evil with GOODNESS & LOVE! I have witnessed hard, cold souls be softened and turned.

    Romans 12:17-21
    17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. 18 If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. 19 Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,”[a] says the Lord. 20 On the contrary:

    “If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
    if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
    In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”[b]
    21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

    This has and will continue to change my life in how I LOVE people.

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  5. I will be completely honest with all of you and say that this is approximately the 5th time I've gotten onto this blog and have yet to finally write something. Each and every time I've read previous posts, comments or verses, the Lord has just brought me to tears...I can't explain it. The only thing I do know is that God is using this blog in big ways to break not only walls but also to break people down and just lay life out there for others to pray and help in any way that they can.
    For me, the past few months have been some of the hardest I've ever experienced in my life. I've worked about 55hrs every week since January, finished up college, and moved into a season of life where I'm supposed to be finding my career and getting my life in order because the future is now. Scary, yes. Since February, it's been a constant but hidden battle in my life with my ability to find Christ's presence in my day. While working crazy hours every week, I wore myself completely out, to the point where I had no idea what I was doing or who I was doing it for. And when I had down time, I filled it with every other activity or hangout I could find because that was all that I could control and I was so far away from my own spirit that I didn't know where my heart was so I just kept walls up and hoped it looked good from the outside. My life was so filled with "stuff" that I had absolutely no room for Christ to shine through and use me. The hardest part for me to swallow, as I've just recently come to the conclusion is that I didn't do anything about it for so long. I kept filling and filling my heart with junk. My heart became so hardened to Christ's work in my life, that I couldn't even carry on a serious conversation with anyone because I was afraid they would see me as an empty and struggling Christian (totally not true). To me failure was weakness, but who likes appearing weak? Not this girl. I felt like I couldn't get my head above water and for so long I did nothing about it. Sure there were moments where the Lord dropped me to my knees, but the next couple days later I'd be right back at it, filling my life with everything but the Word and God. I was so consumed with life without Christ that it almost seems like my life was taken over by another being or as if my heart and mind were on auto-pilot, just trying to make it by. It was the scariest and one of the darkest places I have ever been to.

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  6. But the Lord interrupted this season with a ray of hope that would not only help me to see his presence but also to challenge me even further. About a month ago I was apart of a Beth Moore (love her) Bible study called, "When godly people do ungodly things." I went into it thinking, sure I'd like to help others recognize what ungodliness looks like in their life instead of realizing that it was my own heart that was so ungodly (insert pride punch please). I couldn't have been further from the truth. Not only was this the most invasive and intense Bible study I had ever been apart of, but it brought me to my knees constantly because it wasn't the ungodliness of others, it was ungodliness in my own life. It was the recognition of the hardened heart I had developed over the last couple months, when it came to following after Christ.
    Sure I'd read my Bible and pray consistently…but my heart wasn't in it. It was just doing what it's always done because that's the life I've always known. Did I retain any of what I read or prayed? No. I was a girl with a hardened heart. I filled my life with work, school and every other thing imaginable, just so that I didn't have to look inward at my own life as it was miserably walking slowly away from Christ. The hardest part about all of this is that I didn't even see it coming. I had no idea that it was so easy for a disciple of Christ to just up and forget that God, the Creator of all things wants to have daily communion and quiet time with ME. A simple girl falling and needing her savior to come catch her. THANK THE LORD, throughout the course of that study, the Lord broke me. He broke my mind, heart and soul for all the things that I was breaking His heart for. He showed me grace and love by placing His Word in front of me daily through my Bible study sisters and challenged me to jump out of the car I was riding auto-pilot in. This hasn't been an easy journey and daily I have to confess my heart and allow Him to soften it and show me how I can be more like Him. I love Him. We argue, I yell, and fight with Him thinking I know better. He still loves me. His Grace is enough. Don't fight Him off any longer. Stop what you're doing and just tell Him you want more of His presence in your life….but don't just tell Him, give your heart and believe that He is right there and is going to give you His presence. It's a blessed thing to experience. I love you all dearly and I know camp and all who will be there or won't be, will be amazing if we can die to ourselves and give it ALL up for the glory of Christ.
    "But the Word of God is not bound! Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. The saying is trustworthy, for: If we have died with Him, we will also live with Him; if we endure, we will also reign with Him; if we deny Him, He also will deny us; if we are faithless, He remains faithful—for He cannot deny Himself."
    Praise God. He's faithful, even when we aren't.

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