My New Bible

This Bible is amazing. It’s a study Bible and it has more footnotes than you can imagine. If you’re wanting to study and understand God’s Word, don’t resist in going to the closest Christian book store to purchase one of these Fire Bibles.

The Move Part 3

Over the past weeks I’ve been writing about how God has revealed so much teaching and encouragement through this transition to the United States. Today I want to write about how sustaining the word of God is. Just the other day I read the entire book of Job. I could not put it down. Imagine yourself losing everything you’ve ever had. And when I say everything, I mean everything. This man named Job lost his cattle, farmhands, sheep, shepherds, camels, servants, house, and his entire immediate family. Imagine that. You have it all. You have the best house, car, family and everything you ever wanted. And it all gets destroyed. And you know what Job did? Immediately after everything and everyone was taken away from him, he worshipped God. He demonstrated a strong example of how we shouldn’t worship God based on how much we’re blessed, but for how great God is. God deserves to be worshipped no matter what we have. And when I finished reading the book, I compared my life with Job’s. If Job is worshiping God immediately after he loses everything he ever had, how much more should I worship God who has only brought me out of a country that I desire to be in? I encourage you to read the book of Job and see if you can compare with what he went through. We have no room for complaining or not worshipping God after we see how the great servant, Job, blessed God in the midst of his crisis.

New School

Tomorrow I start my senior year of high school. I was originally attending Evangelical Christian Academy since I was in 8th grade, and now I will be attending Madison Southern in Berea, Kentucky. I am very excited about this new school. Unlike my school in Madrid which had an average of 80 students, this new school averages 1300. It’s a change. It’s not a Christian missionary kid school. It’s a public high school. It’s secular. One thing I do know is that God has me here for a purpose. I don’t want to complain about being in a new school but I want to see the opportunities of leading people to Christ. I want students to see that there’s more to life than just drugs, sex and parties. I want them to see that there’s a purpose for living. That there’s a god who loves and wants to see us follow Him. I would ask that you please pray as I embark on this new journey into this new school. Pray that I will stay strong in Christ. Pray that I may be able to lead people to Christ. I don’t want to be another student. I want to live out the gospel everyday I set foot on that secular campus.

The Move Part 2

Like I said in my previous post, God has been revealing some powerful principles since I’ve experienced transition from Madrid to the U.S. As a missionary many times coming to the States feels like vacation. I sometimes think that the only time I need to preach the Gospel is when I’m in Madrid because that’s where God has called my family to spread the Gospel. That’s pretty selfish thinking. God has been showing me through this transtition that He has put me here for a purpose, to evangelize and preach the gospel to the unsaved. The Gospel is to be preached whether you’re on a mission’s trip or if you’re eating lunch in a cafeteria. In every moment of our lives we are to be ready to spread the Gospel of Christ. I just enrolled in a public school for my senior year. It averages 1,200 students. Even though I’m not on the “mission field,” I am still very eager to see students who are far from God develop a relationship with Jesus.

When the apostle Paul was put into prison for preaching the Gospel, he didn’t stop preaching the Gospel. He preached to the guards that were in the prison. I desire to be like Paul. I want to preach the Gospel whether I’m on the streets of Madrid, on the the soccer field or in the school hallways. Your environment does not determine your ability or passion for preaching the Gospel. If you want to to be a missionary to a foreign country, but aren’t practicing it where you’re at now, then you are not passionate about spreading It.

The Move Part 1

I’m many many miles away from home. It’s been about one month since I’ve left Madrid and I’ve been learning many new things through this transition. Before leaving I was very upset and hurt about the move. I didn’t see any positivity in it. But God did. I’ve always known in my mind that God is the God of comfort, but I never understood it until I experienced His comfort. Getting established in a new continent has been hard but beneficial for me to understand and experience comfort from God. I believe that that is one of the many reasons He placed me here at such a time as this. He wants not only for me to know that He comforts but to understand it through experience.

You might be going through a time of transition as well that you’re not looking forward to. Or you might be hurting from a loss. Whatever the case may be, believe me on this: God can allow us to feel hurt so that we can go from knowing His comfort to understanding and experiencing His comfort.

2 Corinthians 1:3-4 “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.“

Creative Devotions

After coming home from an amazing camp, I’ve been thinking of some creative ways of spending time with God. If you’re in a spiritual low right now, I encourage you to try some of these out:

Go on a walk with God – Just take a few minutes outside of your house and walk down the block. Sometimes changing your enviroment can cause you to focus more on God because you don’t have distractions such as TV and computers in your house.

Write your prayers to God – It’s good to keep a prayer journal so you can see and remember what you’ve asked God. Many times I’ll write my prayers out and then read them a month later and see if what I was asking God for was granted or if I was asking even for the right thing.

Start a Bible reading plan – For a lot of people it’s a lot better if they have a structured plan of how to read the Bible. Click here to get some great reading plans.

Write music to God – David did this all the time. There’s nothing wrong with worshiping God with whatever instrument you have. Use the talent God gave you to worship Him. Don’t abuse it.

Watch a sermon online – This one really helps me. Many times I recieve more from sermons online than I do in an actual church building. Check out Elevation Church.

Update From MO

Fire Die Down

Numbers 11:1-2 “Now the people complained about their hardships in the hearing of the Lord, and when he heard them his anger was aroused. Then fire from the Lord burned among them and consumed some of the outskirts of the camp. When the people cried out to Moses, he prayed to the Lord and the fire died down.”

The Israelites here were experiencing a physical fire and the only way that the fire died down was because of prayer from Moses. I don’t know what type of fire you’re experiencing right now. You’re lonely, hurt or confused. What I do know is this: the only way to get out of that depression is to pray to God like Moses did. I know it’s difficult to pray to God when you’re hurting. Some people tend to only pray on their “good days.” But this shouldn’t be. We must pray and seek after God in the midst of our fire because that is when he will lift us up. Not only doest it uplift us from our fire but it increases our faith in God because we can experience a God who can uplift us from our darkest moments in our life. Pray and seek after God in the midst of your fire and you will see how God removes that fire of depression in your life and how your faith in him will increase.

God’s Gold Scepter

Esther 5:1-2 “On the third day Esther put on her royal robes and stood in the inner court of the palace, in front of the king’s hall. The king was sitting on his royal throne in the hall, facing the entrance. When he saw Queen Esther standing in the court, he was pleased with her and held out to her the gold scepter that was in his hand. So Esther approached and touched the tip of the scepter.”

To give you a little bit of context, if you were to enter king Xeres inner court without being summuned, you were to be put to death. The only exception for you to escape death would be for the king to extend his gold scepter out to you. Queen Esther was not summoned and she deserved to die, but the king held out to her the only way out of death and that was the gold scepter.

We only have one way out of death. God has extended his son Jesus to die for us so that we wouldn’t have to experience death, but life. That is the only exception. We serve a God who has extended out to us grace and we can either approach and touch it, or we can ignore it and die. Have you approached and touched the grace that God is extending to you?

ONE Series

Amplify is in its second week of our series ONE. We have ONE focus this summer and that’s to grasp how wide, how long, how high, and how deep is the love of Christ. Here’s the video we made for this series: