It'll be Alright.

So yeah, it’s official.  It’s been one year since I began staffing at YWAM San Francisco.  October 31st, 2010 I arrived in SFO and San Francisco to seek out the task God had for me in the City by the Bay.  It’s been one of the most stretching experiences of my life this past year.  I’ve been tested in my faith, in my ability to live as an adult, in my ability to manage time, in my ability as a leader, in getting closer to God amid ministry and activity, it goes on and on.  

Truthfully, this year has been the roughest of my life.  There’ve been times where I felt like cursing God for calling me to San Francisco.  There have been times where I’ve felt like going back to Ohio and just staying there.  Times where I felt like I have no idea what I’m doing, times where I felt hardened against the very people I’m here to minister to, times where I feel gripped by depression.  

But it has also been one of the best years of my life.  There have been times, looking out on the San Francisco Bay, that I felt more real than ever that God loves us all and is holding us in His hand.  I’ve grown so much to see the importance of putting in the effort in the Kingdom, even if you won’t see the fruit of it for years.  I’ve felt closer to God this entire year than ever, in spite of the fact that I’ve been horrible on my conventional ways of approaching Him.  I’ve been put into intense situations of faith understanding that teaches you things about God’s nature that you can’t really learn from a teacher.  

In all, I’d have to say, this year’s been like music if my whole life has been words.  You can speak endlessly on something, or to someone, but there are things you can’t express or learn from words alone.  Music carries through pretense and verbiage, and into the heart, teaching subconsciously the intention of its melody, translating into the listener even in ways the writer hadn’t known.  So as this year.  The experiences in ministry in San Francisco, and life here in general, has been music, teaching and shaping in ways beyond words.  

Is this my 20’s?  Is this God?  Or my intense ministry-life?  Either way, I realize now, there is more to life than words.  This is a song that we live, or above that.  A speaker can speak many words.  A worker can be taught many tasks.  But none of this dictates the intricate in between of their life.  From minutia to anthem, only God is in it all.  If there is any proof on this world for a Creator, to me it is this:  There is no force in human experience, man made or man outside, which has ability to enact itself in infinitely all realms of man’s existence, and even when I am poor in Spirit, I communicate to the Creator, and realize my soul has been speaking with him all this time.  I feel God in the in betweens.  I feel God speaking to me through the actions of others, through sunbeams on the sidewalk, through injustice to justice.  Even when I’ve neglected conventional intentional methods of contacting Christ, though I don’t endorse the abandonment of them, I realize He has been with me all this time, somehow talking to me, guiding me, feeling like a friend I’ve spent every day with.  I truly say, that if for no other reason, ministry is worth it because of this.

If my every world is falling down;  If I don’t feel like anything is aligned, and it feels like it never will be; if I don’t feel like I can have any triumph in ministry; If it seems the community we’ve built is crumbling beneath my feet; if it seems it’ll take 5, 10, 20 years to see God more truly in the way we want to see in San Francisco.  None of this, I believe, could ever get through this new way I’ve learned to experience Christ.  And even in light of all these things, it makes ever day, every second, every experience, worth it.  

It’s been an insane year.  I’m back in Ohio December 14th-January 3rd.  I’ve got my plane tickets already, through the grace of my dad, but he did so so I could pay him back.  If anyone wants to give towards my flight, it’s greatly appreciated.  I arrive the 14th;  It’s weird to imagine I’ll be back in Ohio for about half a month.  I’m kind of nervous about it.  That’s a long time.  And in Ohio, I feel would feel like a longer time.  But I’m really looking forward to it, because I’ve really been missing Ohio.  I’m kind of worried about being in a place where I’m not in my ministry environment like San Francisco.  I feel like I won’t but be thinking to make every situation strategically Christ driven, but something in the back of me fears it won’t be that way, and like San Francisco will feel like a dream.  I don’t want that.  I want this to be the rest of my life.

Pray for me, my friends, if anyone reads this.  Pray for me to encounter God more, and see Him seen to others.  Thank you all for everything on the way.