JeremiahOneSeven.com - Behind the Scenes of a Catholic Youth Minister

I’ll be at the Hillsong United Conference, will you?

Not a bad day of adult recruiting. We’ll see what happens with tomorrow’s follow up emails.

Please pray we get the adult team we need for this year’s small group programs.

This weekend we’re recruiting adults for our upcoming semester:

During today’s homily, the deacon made a statement that I found to be rather ridiculous.

In the midst of setting up today’s gospel story (the feeding of the 5,000), He was explaining that Jesus was getting over the death of His cousin and friend John (as in: John the Baptist). An excellent and relevant point.  But then He said the following statement:

John the Baptist was the last great prophet.

What a close-minded view of prophecy!  I am a firm believer that each one of us are called to be prophets.  A prophet, simply put, is someone who speaks the word of God–something we are supposed to be doing (in word and deed) 24/7.  Maybe we aren’t all “great” prophets, but I do believe that there are plenty of “great” prophets in the world, and there are many to come.

So for those of you who heard those words today (or hear those words sometime in your life), take heart: God is still calling prophets–especially from this generation of young people.  A generation that society has struggled to name; a society I believe should be named Generation Prophet.  And I have no doubt that from this generation, God will raise up great prophets: men and women to speak God’s word into a dark and desperate world.  Holla’.

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CHECK IT OUT!

Across the board, I think I come up with cool ideas.  God has blessed me with creativity and idea-creating-ness-ocity.  However my follow-thru sucks.  This whole 21-day-blog-fest is now on that list.

But, to those of you who have been blogging.  WELL DONE!  KEEP IT UP!  I’ll try to post more as well.

Speaking of “trying” . . .

From GraphJam.

For those of you who do not understand the above graph: shame.  But here’s the explanation:

In 1991, Vanilla Ice turned over his autobiography to a ghostwriter because he didn’t “know all the certain words to word it”.  What his ghostwriter (Tommy Quon) wrote was not Vanilla’s lifestory but rather a fairy tale created to give Vanilla some “street cred” (W).

In that glimpse at pop culture we see three things, one admirable and two not-so-admirable.

1. Vanilla Ice has no concept of grammar. Not-so-admirable.

2. People think it’s necessary to be fake to be accepted. Not-so-admirable.

3. Vanilla Ice knows where his talents are* and are not. Admirable.

*OK, maybe he doesn’t know where his talents are, I mean, he thought he was an awesome rapper, but at least he knows his talents don’t extend to writing a book.  He knows his limits.  Sorta.

“There are different kinds of spiritual gifts but the same Spirit; there are different forms of service but the same Lord; there are different workings but the same God who produces all of them in everyone.” (1 Cor 12: 4-6)

We each have different gifts.  We each have different talents.  We were each given these gifts, these forms of service for different reasons.  Sometimes that’s hard to accept.  I often find myself covetting another person’s gifts:  “Man, I wish I could play guitar like her.”  “Wow, I wish I could paint like that.”  “Why can’t I speak 4 languages?”  “Pssh.  I could rap like that if I wanted to.”

It’s easy to see what gifts you don’t have.  It’s much harder to see the gifts we do.

Let’s face it, I will never be able to say that “I rock a mic like a vandal”, but that’s OK, because God has something different in store for me.

God, give me the wisdom to recognize the gifts you have given me, and the strength and humility to use them for Your glory.  Help me to recognize and affirm the gifts of others–praising God for them instead of covetting them.  And help me to see that we are all one body in Christ, and that all gifts given to the members of the body are a blessing to the whole body.  Amen.

“Word to your mother.”

“If it begins to bite, you’re in trouble friend.  Grab a pole.”

Good advice.  And I guess I should stop wrapping Noah up in newspaper before putting him in his crib, and definitely make him cut down on smoking during naptime.

You never know where good advice might come from.  The trick is keeping your ears open, and knowing how to weed out the useless advice without dismissing the good advice.

In the 2 Kings we hear about a man named Naaman: “the army commander of the king of Aram, was highly esteemed and respected by his master, for through him the LORD had brought victory to Aram. But valiant as he was, the man was a leper.” (2 Ki 5:1).  Naaman goes to Elisha, a prophet of God, looking for healing.

Naaman is expecting some miraculous deed or great wisdom from Elisha and is understandably pissed by what Elisha tells him: “Go and wash seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will heal, and you will be clean.” (5:10).

The Jordan river?  Go wash in the Jordan river?  The filthy, nasty Jordan river?  I will not wash in the waters of Israel.  No way!  Advice rejected.

But a wise servant of Naaman pleads with him: “If the prophet had told you to do something extraordinary, would you not have done it? All the more now, since he said to you, ‘Wash and be clean,’ should you do as he said.” (5:13).

Fortunately for Naaman, this time he is wise enough to listen.  And in the waters of the Jordan he is cleansed and healed.

The advice of Elisha was not what Naaman expected and not what he wanted to hear, so he rejected it.  How often do we reject advice we don’t want to hear?  How often to we ignore the advice of others because we think there will be no value in it?

God, help me to be open to advice from all directions.  And, more importantly, help me to discern the good advice from the bad.

You have been told, O man, what is good,
and what the LORD requires of you:
Only to do the right and to love goodness,
and to walk humbly with your God.

(Mi 6:8)

That’s it.  That’s it?  We struggle so much trying to be the best that we forget about the simplicity of God’s calling.

Take a minute and just let those words sink in.  How simple is that?  But how hard is that?

How hard is it to do right?  How hard is it to do right all the time?  How hard is it to just walk humbly with God?  To lay down our pride, our desires, our complaints, and our needs and just walk with God.  Quiet our minds and just BE with God.

It seems that the simple things in life are often the hardest to obtain.