Heidi Makayla Paschal

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HUNGRY?

Over the past few weeks the LORD has been leading me on this journey as I have been compiling texts and writing lesson plans for our fall retreat at the end of the month.  I started on this journey as I have many times, thinking about what aspect of the christian way of life would be most beneficial to share with my students.  I always wonder how much "sinks-in'' and is recieved in these lessons, I hear comments and praises from my wife and leaders, and sometimes students, but the real beneficiary, I'm sure, is me.  The theme this year is called 'Hungry?'  because I am convinced that we are pretending to be hungry for God when we really are so stuffed to the gills with all kinds of other junk.  When it comes to the true bread of life in our community, there is a Famine even though church and church events are everywhere to be seen.  I think that we have invited God to come along if he wants a part of us and we will fit him in when it's convienient.  The funny thing is, God doesn't work that way and we wonder why we don't see the powerful representation of God in our world.  God doesn't come along with us, He makes that very clear.  He says to murder ourselves so that He is all we have and we can partner with him in what He is doing in the world. 

It takes a courageous person to make stomach room for the body and blood of Christ, to remove the things that we have always tried to satisfy the stomach pangs.  The LORD calls us to a Fast, a sacrifice of what we have known to acknowledge our true sustenance.  It's in these moments that we realize how silly our attempts to satiate our hunger with "things" really are.  We begin to understand the unsurpassing wealth of resource we have in Christ.

And then we Feast on the plenty from heaven.  We inhale the aroma of righteousness and drink deep the cool water of life.  Pslam 36:8 They feast on the aboundance of your house; you give them drink from your river of delights.  Jesus even says BLESSED are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be FILLED. (Matt. 5:6) What a promise. 

I don't know about you, but I am always trying to find more junk to remove so that my hunger will grow for the things of God.  I'm starting to realize that these youth lessons are just an overflow of what the Lord wants to teach me.  I'm ready to feast.

Cinco de Mayo

Hola! As I sit in 'the warehouse' writing this entry I am looking at the evidence left from what I like to call the 'hispanic hurricane' known as Cinco de Mayo.  Banners hang from the walls, a random sombraro is tossed aside on the floor most likely from a mexican hat dance, the spilled bottle of habanero hot sauce is hidden by the remnants of the pinata mutilation that occured last night.  By far, the greatest Cinco de Mayo EVER.  We were able to prove that even though we took the 'happy' out of the 'happy margaritas' people could still get a little crazy.

Special awards go to the following people:  Danny Miller - for doing the impossible.  Drinking an entire bottle of hot sauce in under 20 seconds (crossing my fingers and hoping I don't get any parent phone calls) Justin Gillette - for hitting the pinata so hard that he broke a 2" thick wooden pinata stick (watch out Albert Pujols).  Senor PIN - for dodging that same pinata stick dagger like something straight from a Matrix movie Lilly Huelfer -  for pinning the cupcake right in the donkey's face, nice shot! Joe"two step"Hannah - for the best interpretation of the mexican hat dance.  Conner Morgan - for the furthest left handed marshmallow home run and Hannah Gross - for somehow knowing what a 'quincinera' is. 

I spoke to a friend of mine that brought his little sister to the party and I think she summed it up the best.  When having to leave a little early, she belted "I don't want to leave, I don't EVER want to leave!!"  Me neither sweetheart, me neither.  I guess we can all thank those brave Mexican forces that defeated the French in 1862 for the fun we had last night.  We lift up our non-alcoholic margarita's to you.  Muchos Gracias!!!

Gotta Love the Frolf

Ok, so I decided today that I needed to get away from the desk for a little while and challenge Ty to a round of frolf (frisbee + golf) or in more snobbish circles (disk golf). I told Ty that we were going to explore the McCurry Park course. To date we have yet to venture into Fayetteville for frolf but Im glad we did. It was a beautiful course but definatly expert level ( I shot 20 over par ) but of course we didnt have the fancy disks that travel super far. We decided the regular walmart frisbees would work....we had fun. I think the best part of the day was when we were both about 40 yards from the hole and it just so happened that BOTH of us somehow threw our frisbees into a drain culvert from about 50 feet away. I thought one frisbee ending up in the drain was impossible but 2 in a row!? I think that the Lord was having some fun with us today. He was sitting above saying to Peter "Hey Pete, watch this!" Hey, its something to talk about at least. Anyway, we battled the abnormal pollen count and walked away with a great day at the office. There are a few videos below if you feel so inclined to watch. What great form that is (above).

Under Construction

Well, Here it goes!

Excitement is not the only thing that has been building recently. God has decided to bless us with the opportunity to build a new home in our new home town. It has been 8 months so far that we have been staying in a temporary home (in-laws...God Bless them!) and it will be another 3-4 months before we are moved in but we are eager in anticipation of getting our material possessions out of storage and into use again. I think God has been grooming us to rely on Him. OK, Already! We rely, we rely! So, for those who want a peek at progress, enjoy the pictures. Hopefully I'll add to them as we go...

More to come....

The Know-ability of God

Have you ever lay on the grass outside and starred up into the clear sky? Have you looked at all the stars…maybe you saw a shooting star or two. I have. Everything in that moment seems to melt away. I would begin to ask myself questions like: How far away are those stars? How old are they? I bet Jesus looked at the same stars like I am doing right now. Is God is bigger than I ever thought of Him to be? It is in those very moments that I begin to recognize that I am not the center of the universe like I am so apt to thinking. The same can be said about standing on the very top of a mountain or staring into the crevasse of the Grand Canyon. These are humbling experiences. In that very moment we realize that we, after all, are very small indeed.

We have grown up in the United States to think “If I study hard enough, or work hard enough, nothing is impossible.” And “If I choose to make a single subject my life’s study, I can know all there is to know about any given subject” In many situations, this is very true. Unfortunately, I think we can sometimes group God into this same category. To think, “Our pastors have figured it out because they seem to know everything about God” or “If I wanted to, I could get all kinds of Biblical degrees and become an expert on knowing God.” This is so very far from the truth.

Where Paul did say to us in Romans 1 “what may be known of God is plain to us” he did not say that all of God is made plain to us. There are 2 very important truths to understand when we consider what it means to know God.
1) God is infinite
2) We are finite or limited
God is said to be Incomprehensible. Not that we don’t have the ability to know God, but that we are unable to understand God fully or completely.

Psalm 145:3 says “Great is the Lord, and most worthy of praise; His greatness no one can fathom.”
Psalm 147:5 “Great is our Lord and abundant in power; His understanding is beyond measure.”

I believe that even David, a man after God’s own heart could have been starring into the night sky when he authored Psalm 139:6 “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it” and then later in verse 17 he continues: “How precious are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them they would outnumber the grains of sand.”

If we would begin to ponder God, really press into Him, we would all be forced to draw the same conclusion; that there is no way we can understand God completely or fully. But even more than that I think we can draw even another conclusion from these very same passages: We can never understand any one single attribute of God either. His understanding, His greatness, His knowledge are all too vast to comprehend. We may be able to know something about God’s love, His power, or His purposes, but to know these things fully would mean that we would have minds on equal standing with God himself.

For those of us that find our satisfaction from intellectual pride, this might seem limiting or even a little hopeless of ever achieving that mark of completion or accomplishment. We won’t ever be able to check the knowledge of God off our list of study, but there is one very amazing thing about this very relationship between God and man.

There will never be a moment in time that we know “too much” about God. We will never grow tired in delighting in the expanse of His attributes. Whenever we get “bowled over” in amazement of God’s love, for example, we can rest assured that our revelation is only the tip of the iceberg in comparison of God’s overwhelming love. And this can be applied to every one of God’s attributes.
This means that for all eternity we will never be able to stop increasing our knowledge of Him and delighting in His character.
The apostle Paul in Colossians 1:9 asks God to “…fill us with the knowledge of His will, through all spiritual wisdom and understanding…growing in the knowledge of God.”

So, can God be known? Yes. Can we ever know God completely? No. Is this great news for us? Absolutely.