It never fails, seven weeks from now, seminary students will be coming to me, saying that they just can’t continue their studies. They will be tired. They will be discouraged. They will be ready to quit. They will be weary and will have lost heart. Many times I feel the same way. I feel like I just can’t continue.
This morning, I challenged the student body to do the three things that are mentioned in Hebrews 12:1-3 in order to not be weary and to not lose heart. Here they are:
- Remember those who have gone before (vs 1). There are many people praying for us. There are many people who are our biggest fans. There are many people who want us to succeed. Sometimes it’s nice to remember that.
- Throw off everything that hinders AND the sin that entangles us (vs 1). It is not always sin that hinders us. There are many things that are good that hinder us. We must not let the good get in the way of the very best.
- Run the race (vs 1-3). We are to run the race with perseverance. We are to run the race with our eyes fixed on Jesus. We are to run the race considering His sufferings. He will perfect our faith (Philippians 1:6).
I hope that in a few weeks, in the middle of the crisis of seminary work and pressure, the students will remember these thoughts so that the future will be changed.
I got this in my inbox today from Mikeysfunnies. It’s pretty good.
A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor. The conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life.
Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups – porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain-looking, some expensive, and some exquisite – telling them to help themselves to the coffee.
After all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said: “If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is but normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress.
(more…)
I finally translated the survey results fron the National Baptist Youth Conference that took place this year in Puebla.
If you want to know more about the young people in Mexico, please feel free to download the results here (324K, PDF). Please remember that they are released under a Creative Commons License. This means that you can use the information in the survey as long as you attribute the original author (me), don’t make anything commercial out of it, and re-release anything you do with the results, using the same license. It’s pretty simple.
In the next few days, I hope to be writing some more thoughts (see part 1 here) about the results of the survey.
If you have been keeping up with this blog at all, you know that here in Mexico there are very few youth pastors working in local churches. You also know that there are even fewer full time youth pastors working in local churches. This morning I got to have breakfast with one of the newest ones in the country. He’s the youth pastor at PIB Satélite, one of the largest Baptist churches in the area. We could say that this is a church on the move. It’s the church that meets right at the seminary.
And Josué has the vision. I’m excited to see what God does through the youth ministry at this church. We had a great time talking about ministry and breaking old structures and thought patterns in ministry. I’m sure I’ll be writing about this a lot in the future. It was very encouraging.
Here are 5 things I bet you didn’t know were owned or partially owned by Mexico’s rich and powerful:
- Entenmann’s pastries
- Thomas’ English Muffins
- GE Stoves and Refrigerators (many are made by Mexican companies)
- CompUSA
- Saks Fifth Avenue
Carlos Slim, according to Forbes magazine, is the third richest man in the world. The crazy thing is that we don’t have Entenmann’s, Thomas’ English Muffins, or any of the other things on the list here in Mexico.
I guess it’s not all tortillas and corn around here after all. What else could be owned by Mexicans that you didn’t know? There’s a lot more than you would think.
(via: The Arizona Republic)
