After hunting through the depths of jungles, crossing oceans, and fighting off wild animals, the Interface shirts have been captured. It took many men and great big nets, but the entire herd has been rounded up and domesticated, so that you may enjoy their beauty and splendor. To the right is a photo of one of the Interface shirts that was captured. The creature that is wearing the shirt is doing a wonderful job displaying the beauty of the shirt. It is a fine (and comfortable) piece of clothing, one that is guarenteed to be worn over and over and over. If you finished Season 3 of Interface (the last fall semester) you will recieve your shirt this Thursday, when we leave for White Noise. If you are not able to join us on White Noise, you can recieve your shirt the following Saturday. If you are staring at the glory of this picture wishing you had this shirt but were not apart of last season's Interface, Fear Not! A new season begins Feb 12th on Monday nights. Registration forms are available and if you sign up, we will personally catch a new breed of Interface shirts and present them to you at the culmination of Season 4!
Well my birthday came a little earlier than expected this year as I got one of the greatest birthday presents ever, A NEW PUPPY. So it is my pleasure to introduce you to Traffic. She is a German Shepherd that we got from a German Shepherd rescue in Los Angeles on January 26th. She is only 3 months old and is so cool. As I type this she is laying by my feet eating her now favorite toy a leopard stuffed animal. She already knows the command Sit, and I have been working with her to learn more commands. She is a bundle of joy and has been behaving very well!
How do we determine wether someone is wealthy or poor. We can look at their bank statement, and whoever has more money is the richer man. But James teaches us that we should look at wealth a different way. In James 1:9-12, we learn that wealth does not determine God's love for us. That whether we have money or are bankrupt, God's love for us doesn't change.
Jame's thought process was also very similar to that of King Solomon. That even if we have all the wealth in the world (which Solomon pretty much had) that we can't do anything with it when we die. This is why we make wills, because when we pass on no matter how much stuff we had, we can't take it with us. Therefore our focus should not be on things of this world, but rather on Heaven. Colossians 3:2 When we are Heaven minded, then our focus is on right things.
Yes that is correct! White Noise is one week from today, seven simple days, only 168 hours, 10,080 minutes, 604,800 seconds. We are so close I can almost taste the snow falling on my tongue and the chill on cold arms and legs as I make snow angels and snowmen. My stomach fills with warth as i sip my hot chocolate. Man, White Noise is going to be a great trip
So in just a little over a week we are leaving on White Noise. Pretty much all planning and preparations are complete. There are the few things e can't do just yet, cause what's the point of buying tons of fresh fruit just to have it go bad before you can use it. But its just so much fun doing all the planning, working on the artwork and booklets, picking room lists and the rest. It is going to be such a great trip. Lots of Hot Chocolate, lots of games, lots of pristine snowboarding. We also have some awesome devotions and messages awaiting, it will be an unforgetable trip. And to top it all off, I just checked the snow report, its supposed to snow lightly twice this week, and then dump (<-good thing) the day before we get there.
Last Saturday we talked about wisdom. How sometimes in life we face a decsion and we don't know what direction to take. In James 1:5, James promises that if we lack wisdom in anything we can ask God, and God will freely give us the wisdom we need. There have been many times in life where I have faced decisions that I didn't know how to respond, but it is reassuring that we have a God who is so loving that He wants to give us direction, He wants the best for our lives. Also sometime this past week, the new podcast went live, so if you click the pull tab you will see a new link to subscribe.
On Saturday night, we looked at the next few verses in our series on James. In James 1:2-4 James talks about making Triumphs out of Troubles. He tells us that we need to look at the bigger picture in life and not be focused on the short term. It makes so much sense but so often we get stuck on the immediate. We have too difficult a time looking beyond our current problem, instead of asking ourselves "How can God use this opportunity?"
Also White Noise is going to be awesome, I just thought I would share that, so grab one of the last 5 spots because the trip might even be full by the time you read this post......
So as the new webpage continues to grow and get better an better, I have just added a new photo section and will continually be uploading pictures to it. My goal is to have photos online as soon as possible after any service or event so check the site whenever you like. Now I have to warn you, the software used to run the photo site is crazy nuts, in a good way. If you see photos you like, you can order them online and have prints mailed to you, you can create DVDs, Pciture CDs, download Hi-Res photos, you can pretty much do anything.
Now as I put photos online, I get asked one question (cough only by girls cough) "Please take that photo down, I look terrible in that photo, please, please, please take it off" Well I am proud to say there is a no photo removal policy. Once it goes online it stays online, it has been engraved in stone on the interwebs and cannot be removed, except for a GIANT plate of brownies or something. Old photos are still at the old site and if you navigate to the Events page you can find the link. Also if you have any troubles with the "Pull" sign (just click it, unless you use Safari, then you should stop using Safari) there in an additional navigation menu at the very bottom of the page.
I have to admit, I like Saturday morning cartoons. I grew up watching them and still love them. Growing up watching these beloved shows I always remembered watching "The More You Know" Commericals. NBC would get celebrities from their TV shows and inform the viewing audience about something that people are sometimes afflicted by. The concept was quite simple, if you tell people the truth and if they have as much facts on the situation as possible, then they will make a better informed decisions. This is the same concpet we looked at this past Saturday as we began our study in the book of James. The more we know about the culture, the time period, the audience, the more we will be able to glean from the book. Therefore we took just the first verse, and asked ourselves 3 questions: 1) Who wrote the book? 2)To whom did they write the book to? 3) Why did they write it. So we spent the evening looking at those questions, 
so that we we get deeper and deeper in to the book, we will have a better understanding of what is going on.
This series that we are doing through the book of James is called "Life in Motion". James calls us to an active belief in Christ. If we truely believe in what Jesus said and what Jesus did then our lives should demonstrate that. So we shouldn't live stagnant lives, but live in motion, to be in action and doing things. So this is what we will be looking at for the next while, how do we live our beliefs, how do we transform Christianity from a noun to a verb?
update: A new order has been placed for interface shirts and they will be coming soon!
Frequency will begin a new leadership team starting this Wednesday night at 6pm. We are meeting at the top of the stairs where flight crew used to meet. Currently the leadership team is available to everyone, so make sure to come Wednesday, check it out and take a larger role in the minsitry. The leadership will be critical in helping to think of events and ideas, planning things, serving thier peers, and being on the pulse of all things frequency. As you might have noticed, there is a question mark here, that is because there is no name for the leadership team just yet, this will be one of the topics of discusion this Wednesday night. Also some might question what is happening to flight crew? Well flight crew is merging into the new leadership team, so one of the ministries of serving on the Frequency leadership team is helping with flight crew. Oh and yes we will be getting new shirts. And they wont be brown, or dickies, or be large enough to fit two people into them. So make sure to come, you will love it, I just know it.
So the new website has been up for a little while and i spoke to a few people tonight they were a tad confused on the new layout. So i figure I would share with all the secrets to the new website. If you gaze up into the top right corner you may notice a string with a sign attached that reads "Pull". Simply click on this sign and a menu will drop down and reveal a bunch of navigation and links for the site. Heres the trick though, the pull string currently doesnt work in Safari, so if you are using apple's default browser, no matter how many times you click it, it won't open. Rumor has it that apple will fix this glitch very soon, but a problem exists, how does one get to the other parts of the website without that navigation? Well if you scroll all the way to the very very bottom of the site, there are some links way down there for photos, messages, staff, and the calendar. So hopefully that should help everyone out. If anyone still has problems, send me an email or tell me next time you see me!
It was such a privledge to have Brandon share a wonderful New Year's themed message this past Saturday night. Often times as the New Year comes we forget what is important and we set our eyes on things other than God. It was a wonderful refresher to have have Brandon finish off 2006 with a great message and get us to start looking toward 2007.
For me its kinda of weird thinking that it is 2007. I hope you all had a great New Year's Eve, I was in Utah of all places. But I had a really great trip in Utah, I had 3 days of snowboarding in some amazing weather. I had hoped the snow conditions were a little better, but it was still a very fun time. I went on a sweet run that I had never attempted before, but that is a story for another time. See you guys this Saturday as we start the New Year with a new series.