My Summer Chapter...

My second year of Academics is over at the Word of Life Bible Institute! But now its time to head back to Florida from New York and begin my summer ministry, where I will be the Rock Wall Supervisor and a Drama Coach for the STC( Summer Training Corp,)! I'm so excited to be apart of this awesome ministry and am even more excited about the discipleship opportunity they have given me for the next two months! I get to work alongside a girl that went to WOL my first year as co-supervisors on the Rock Wall, and then with the Drama side of things I am working with another girl and guy that went to first year the same year as me as well. Discipleship has had such an impact in my life over the past two years and the fact that they have given me five guys specifically to pour into this year(and then even more guys that will be on my drama team) is what I am most excited about!!! Yes, Rock Wall and Drama are my "Ministry Areas" but these guys who I am able to pour into what I have received over the past two years will be my real ministry. That's what these past two years have been for, learning the bible and learning how to apply everything I have learned into real like application! God has been gracious and I am more than excited to move back to Florida!!! Prayer for this summer will be appreciated and I will try to keep everyone updated on what is going on. Oh,and after this summer, I will remain at the Word of Life Bible Institute to be an Intern in the Kitchen as a Chef!

Easier to watch than write...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y32cHihLRAk&context=C4b6d31cADvjVQa1PpcFPyOMZv9cqBrEz2OQKtV5WDTIij4ujvYTo=

My Heartbeat...

9Don’t just pretend to love others. Really love them. Hate what is wrong. Hold tightly to what is good. 10Love each other with genuine affection,e and take delight in honoring each other.11Never be lazy, but work hard and serve the Lord enthusiastically.f 12Rejoice in our confident hope. Be patient in trouble, and keep on praying. 13When God’s people are in need, be ready to help them. Always be eager to practice hospitality--- That's Romans 12:9-13 in the NLT.

This is what I want to be true in my life. This text is commonly referred to as the passage on "Marks of True Christianity". People go by these common denominators for evidence that they are going to heaven. Being good like this scripture is telling to you do is not what is going to get you into heaven. Trusting in Christ as your savior and believing that God sent His son, Jesus, to die on the cross for our sins and rose again three days later, is how you know that you can get into heaven, a personal relationship with Jesus, trusting in Him as your only way into heaven, and nothing that you can do can get you there.... The verses above would be our response to the salvation the Christ offered us on the cross. We are told to LOVE people! GET OVER OURSELVES AND JUST LOVE! Who ever they are! If they're a killer, love them. Gay? love them! Liar? Love them. Two-faced? Love them. They only put up a front, so you'll never know them? Love them. Unlovable? LOVE THEM!!! The second command( NOT SUGGESTION) is to hate their sin! Who cares what they are struggling with, we are not the ones going to save them out of whatever life style they are living in! Love them, don't recant in the faith, and let God do HIS work! Love people for real. Give them credit where credit is due. Then it gets to serving. Don't slack off and be lazy, get over yourself, and JUST SERVE! You have time to spend 2-6 hours a day on Facebook, watching TV, or other messes. Serve Him with joy, HE is using you for a part of His ministry. He loves us enough to take His time and invest into our lives. He loves us SO much and I know I so often have found myself getting caught up in my own life, and thinking about myself, when Christ should be first. in verse 12 it tells us to rejoice in our confident hope! Because of this salvation we have, because of our perfect Savior, we can be SURE of our eternal destination and our permanent residency! This life that we are living is nothing compared to what our eternity is going to look like. We will go through trials, and tribulations, but in light of eternity, count it all joy! Be patient when you're going through it and never stop praying to Him. Pray with a purpose too. Don't pray just to say you prayed. When you are praying, pray like you mean it and pray with those expectations. He offer us so much if we are just asking Him, earnestly. Be ready to help someone out. Reminds me of Matthew 7:9-11. The Lord has been showing me a ton recently, how selfish i really am, my pride, jealousy, and everything else under the sun. Lord teach me your ways,  so I can learn not only how to love you, but how I can love everyone else around me. I am done with pretending. Give me Jesus.

I'm in love...

The grace of God in my life right now is astounding. He's faithful, patient, and He's never stopped pursuing me. Even in my apathy, even in my laziness, and even in my direct disobedience. The past week here has been the hard to say the least. It all started on Tuesday night. We have devotionals in the upper library for our dorm and this week we had a guest speaker. The guy who spoke was by no means an :Incredible" speaker or the nest Piper, but what he shared got through to what I would say would be most of the dorm. But it hit home for me. He was talking about how it is so easy to be a Christian in a place where it is the normal to be one, and how often time we get so accustomed to the ritual of being here and how we grow stagnant and even begin to "Borrow Faith". It was a new concept I don't think I have heard before and it blew my mind. I do that! I borrow the faith of WOL because I just don't care sometimes! Needless to say the majority of us walked soberly back to our dorms. In our room, my roommate and I, James Delay, just began to talk. Talk about things that were going on in our lives, our convictions and it broke me. I have been SO lazy with my faith. but I had come to a stand-still in my walk. I was DOING everything right. I was reading my bible, I was praying, I was doing my quiet time, and nothing was helping me. I didn't see growth in my walk, i didn't see any fruit, and I was just hiding behind my happiness pretending that everything was dandy when I was hurting and didn't know where else to go or what to do next. It took me falling on my face and realizing that I never did any of it to begin with. Christ pulled me from the pits. HE has REDEEMED ME from everything I had done, and even today I am still forgiven. I feel the power and truth behind my prayer now. It's real, it's genuine and i'm craving His word. He's my life.  I'm falling in love with my Savior again. He's exactly what I need and He knows that. Habakkuk 3:17-19 is my life right now. Thank you LORD!!!!!

Hit the ground running... Face First.

Being in Pottersville, NY, since September is far from what I had in mind. Coming at all wasn't even in my sights but God... God knew what he was doing. These past six months that I have been here have honestly rocked my world. First semester flew by, and second semester is brutal so far. But not in the sense of academics, more so in the thing we call Snow Camp. Advice I have/had gotten from so many graduates was to "It's like being on a train that is going 80mph and you have to keep up. Just hit the ground running, keep up, and try not to trip." I didn't have the opportunity to trip because when I hit the ground, it was more on a face-plant in the snow. But by the grace of God I was given a manageable job during this snow camp season(Snow camp, by the way, is an intense 44hour weekend where the students at the Bible Institute was workers and councilors to pour into the lives of the teens placed on our campus). I work the Command Center and the job consists of fun time, fun people, and an awesome  opportunity for us working the Command Center to be the first to see the Salvation's take place, people dedicating their lives to Christ, and even just coming for the assurance of their salvation. So the long nights, and long hours put into that job are well worth more then money could buy. He has given me the most Godly friends I would ask for, really encouraging but challenging at the same time. This year without the friends family I have made would have been anything but easy. But even without them, Christ needs to be enough. The Lord has brought a sweet sweet sister into my life who is a constant reminder of how the Lord graces us with friends for a time, and they won't always be right there by our side. But THAT is the Beauty of the Gospel! Christ is with us today, yesterday, and tomorrow! I love my friends, and life would be so hard anywhere without them, but Christ needs to be my all, my everything, and the only place I lay my foundation and put my trust.  I need His grace upon my life because without it..... I'd have no life.

The Transition...

A few weeks back I found out what i'd be doing next year. For a while I thought that after my second year at the Word of Life Bible Institute i'd be done with school and pursue missions full time. So over Christmas break while  I was in Canada I had an offer placed in front of me. There was either acting out on my urge and go into what the world calls "missions" full time or finish my schooling while interning at Word of Life in Florida. All of my being wanted to be done with school and never take another test in my life, but through much thought and prayer, I have decided to take the position in FL and finish my degree with Liberty University online. I'm just asking for prayer right now. I'm going through a bit with being in school and my heart isn't in the right place and I know that. I'm done faking it. I know the answers and how to make it seem like everything is peachy. I am struggling with my attitude, bitterness, and anything that can point to that one problem in my life. Sin. I've needed Christ like crazy and relying on Him for everything has been tough and to be honest, i'm still struggling with my self reliance. My mind it messed up. I can trust God with the huge thing but its like I won't let Him take care of the simple things. Or the big things too! I guess it all point to my lack of faith and my lack of reliance in Him. And my lack of Trust. Not just in trusting Him, but anyone with anything in my life. i don't want it to be like that. I genuinely want to trust people and let them know what is going on in m life whether its going to be beneficial to me or not. I want to stop looking out for myself and just love others. I want to be like Daniel in the bible! A man that loved the Lord with his entire being and didn't care about anything else. To become that man of unrelenting faith and unquenchable thirst for God! That is who I want to be. I want prayer not to be enough, that reading the bible through in a day couldn't even come near to what I need, to be unwavering in any decisions when I already know the answer, and to be able to demolish any thought or action unpleasing to God. I just want to love CHRIST!

My desire...

My desire is to become more like Christ, and less like Dylan. Lately, I have been challenged with many different things and with so many different aspect of my life. Whether it is to grow in my faith, to take my relationships seriously, to find that passions I once had for Christ, to love people genuinely, to edify and encourage people, and sometimes just to sit down and listen. The Lord has been teaching me so many different thing through friendships I have built and what true, biblical friendship is supposed to look like. I've made some of the best friends I could ask for and then some! But I also have made some deep friendships that are friendly, i enjoy their company, but its all surface. Not surface as in a fake friendship, but as in they spiritual depth behind our conversations are as shallow as a kiddy pool(if Christ is even brought). I need to grow in my relationship with Christ, but in order to do that I don't need friends who are going to pray for me and point me to Christ. I need brothers and sisters who are going to pray WITH me and SHOVE me to Christ! When people look at Dylan, what or who do they see? Do they see a young man, growing in his faith and completely in love with the Lord? Or do they see an immature little boy, growing to up to be a little boy dependent on himself and others? I want to be on my knees CRYING out to GOD for my every need and desire. I desire Him to keep me on my knees. I want Christ be be so evident in my life that people don't have to second guess my motives behind anything, but that the Lord would be glorified by my life. That's my desire. Christ is my desire. Until the next time when pen meets paper...