Jeremiah’s Blog

Well another year has passed in my life, as I will be turning 26 on Thursday. There is so much from this past year that I could write and tell about, but I will save that for the next Christmas letter. There are some thoughts that seem to grip me right now though. In the Bible, in the New Testament is says,

“Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” - Philippians 3:13b-14

When I think of my past my mind goes in a million different directions. I think about how we each deal with situations so differently, and how some of us overcome our past, and how for some our past overcomes us. Os Hillman says in his book Today God is First, “Our past can be a hindrance or a help in moving toward God’s purposes for each of us. For some, the past has meant pain and heartache, and grace is required so that we do not let our past dictate our responses to the future. If we allow our past to make us a victim, then we have not entered into the grace that God has for us. If we live on memories of past successes and fail to raise our vision for new things, we again are victims of our past”. There is so much truth to this. As I think of this past year and the starting of ECC, I am tempted to look back. When times get really hard I am tempted to look back to GA., where Stacy and I have so many good memories. When things are bad I am tempted to look back at the mistakes I have made in this past year in starting ECC, and dwell on the what if’s, but when tempted to look back I remember I am to press forward. I think of verses like Isaiah 43:19,
“See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland” (Is. 43:19).

When I am tempted to live in the past, I remember our God is doing a new thing amongst us here at ECC, that our path is different than that of so many who have gone before us. That we here at ECC are to press on to the goal to win the prize. Which brings about a great question, what is the prize? Here at ECC our mission is very clear, “To Connect people to God and each other”. The prize here on earth will be seeing people’s lives change as they encounter a Holy God, and then seeing people join together in Biblical community to be, “the hand and feet of Jesus”. As we do this, we will be bringing about eternal change. But, the great news is there is an even greater prize on the other side of this life, and that is the reward that awaits all those who have acknowledged Jesus as Lord, and been “His hands and feet”. You see our past should only be viewed for what we can learn from it. We must move forward and avoid viewing the negative or the positive for more than what we can learn. Many have allowed their past to dictate their future. God is always about doing new things in our lives. He gives fresh eye-openers of His purposes in our lives. Do not live in the past. Do not hold onto bitterness that may hinder God from doing new and exciting things in your life. He turns our wastelands into streams of water to give life, not death. I believe God wants to do something great through ECC. That he wants us to be about giving hope to the City of Tucson, but this will take each one of us deciding that we are going to press on, that we are going to dream big, that we begin to see there is nothing in our past, or present, that can separate us from Christ, and that God wants to use each one of us in His master plan. I believe God wants to do something through ECC that is even bigger than of us could imagine. It has been said, “When your memories are bigger than your dreams, you’re headed for the grave” [Author unknown]. So as I celebrate my 26^th birthday I hope each of you will join me in committing to look to the future, to dream big of what ECC can be for God, and that each of will raise our level of commitment, that each of us will begin to press on so that we might be a part of this new thing that God wants to do amongst us here at ECC.

I recently watched the movie “Bridge to Terabithia”. It was a magical movie, about two children, and their journey into inventing a magical world. There, are many directions I could go with this and rant for ever, but I am going to just choose one. I have been going through some “stuff” lately. This “stuff” has tried my faith, made me doubt my calling to Tucson, and overall really taken me for a loop. Bridge to Terabithia affected my “stuff”! As I watched these two young children on the journey of life, with their minds open wide, it reminded me of faith. As a child everything with faith seemed so much simpler, but as an adult the fears and doubts of life grab you. It seems we begin to lose our Terabithia. That magical world where absolutely anything is possible. As an adult how easily we forget the provision of yesterday, and look forward towards the needs of tomorrow. We become hard, and lose the childish behavior that made Terabithia possible in the first place. We turn towards fact and reason, and we forget faith, the faith of a child. We forget what it is like to have a mind wide open to what God can do. We forget that with faith “all things are possible”. We forget that Jesus said “it is with child like faith that you come unto me” (Paraphrase). I fear at times that I will lose my Terabithia, for it seems each time I lose sight of it, it is harder to get back to that place. That place where the world is wide open, and I have big God who has no limitations, and has no bounds. As I look at people of the ”faith” all around me, I see people who have lost so much of the faith part, and it has turned into practical reason, into religion. Many who started out with the child like faith have hardened over the years and all you here out of them is the facts. “America’s in the toilet”, “they are all crooked”, ”the doctor says they don’t have much time, so it’s pretty much over” it’s death. It is the slow dying of our Terabithia. We slowly over the years give way to the pressures of this world, we slowly allow the death talk to infect our minds, and then one day Terabithia is gone. We have fallen into a “death trap”. We have gone to a place where there is no hope, where cynicism reigns, where the “dark lord” death is king! In the movie, something happens to shake one of the young children’s world. He is tempted to lose hope, to lose faith, but an unexpected hero arises in the story, an even younger child. Who had a purer more innocent mind, a purer child like faith that had not been tainted with death, but was wide open to the world and it’s possibilities. I much the same way, as my faith in what I am doing here in Tucson was shaken, a child has reminded me that with a mind wide open, that “with faith like a child”, “as small as the smallest seed” that all thins are possible! I am seeing Terabithia more clearly now. I see a world of possiblities. May I never lose the child like faith, but always be reminded that by the children that Terabithia is right there, that with faith anything is possible.