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Boo! Happy Halloween! If we’re allowed to say that as Christians… seems like a touchy subject out there. This particular Halloween / Reformation Day finds me sitting at Dunkin’ finally finishing a blog post after an incredibly long hiatus. I’ve been reflecting a lot lately on what it means to live an extraordinary life. How do I balance contentment and ambition? Is ambition so bad? Can contentment lead to a lack of growth and transformation? I believe when understood correctly and properly ordered, contentment and ambition are allies rather than enemies. Read more about my sporadic thoughts in the blog post linked below. This weekend I had the opportunity to speak at a youth conference at my church. We had services, worship, games, and snacks yesterday and this morning. It was a great turnout! The theme of the conference was “Enough” from 2 Corinthians 12:9. I spoke from Romans 6:1-14, reminding us that we are not to abuse grace by continuing in the sin from which Christ died to rescue us. We were challenged to declare war on sin in our lives by naming it, not negotiating with it, replacing it with God’s will, and not looking back. Burn the ships; we’re moving forward! John Preston said it so well, “The godly, though he relapses into sin, yet still he gains ground on his sin, and grace gathers strength by it. Whereas, on the other side, an unsound-hearted man, the oftener he falls, the more sin gathers strength and even the goodness he seems to have is lessened more and more until it is abolished. And the ground is this. Any grace, where it is a proper grace, where it is a right grace, let it be wounded by any relapse, by any transgression, I say, it gathers strength, even by that relapse. ... And so Peter, when that grace of courage and boldness for the truth, had once received a wound by his denying of Christ, you see what strength he gathered by it (Mark 14:66-72). He grew afterwards the boldest of all the apostles (Acts 4:8-13). So it is generally with all the saints. ... Peter's cowardice and fearfulness was discovered by the denial, he knew it more, and therefore he was more watchful against it. He gathered more strength against it. This is the nature of relapse in the godly. They empty their hearts more and more of those sins they fell into.” It’s been a busy but good first quarter at school and I am heading into the second with high hopes for the way God will continue to work in the lives of those on campus.
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