17, 18, 19, Routine

I don't know if your life is anything like mine, but I bet it is. It seems like I do the same things over and over. I eat the same things, watch the same things on t.v., go to the same website. Even church is routine. We have the same order of service, sing the same songs.

Routine is enough to make anyone go crazy! Now some routine is good I will say, like brushing your teeth before bed and paying your taxes.

There is more to life than routine though. We need to bust out with something random! Something that catches us off guard, and dare I say it, something that makes us uncomfortable! Maybe even brings a cold sweat.

We have hearts, it's what pumps our blood, it keeps life going, but we've been doing the same things over and over that our heart is just numb, beating the same amount each day. Not any faster or any slower.

We need to spike that heart rate! We need to live! We need to punch our routines in the face and bust out something random! I don't know what that random thing can be, hey it can be anything! Just do something different! Catch yourself off guard! We need new ideas, a fresh ways to look at the world around us, and that is only going to happen if we step outside of our cookie cutter, routine existence and really live!!!

Your challenge is to do something you normally wouldn't do everyday for a week, or maybe a month! Heck you might like it so much that you make it an everyday thing! But whatever you do, just break free.

"Randomness is the spice of life."
                               -The Adam Rainwater

Yeah I quoted myself, it's a great quote that I try to live my life by. I came up with it.
What are you going to come up with?

It's been a crazy year!

So around this time last year I start my journey as a full time children's minister at FBE Lawton.

I gotta say, it has been a crazy year! But, crazy good!

I have made tons of mistakes because I've never done anything like this before. I am constantly learning. I am still in the process of forming my opinions on what is important in children's ministry. It is an ongoing process. A process that will not end until I die! I learn something new everyday. And ya know that makes life exciting.
I have grown to love everyone here at FBE Lawton. I am way beyond blessed to be here and to be a part of what goes on.

Something I hear over and over is: "Your young!" "Your just a baby!"
Well yeah! I am young! Sorry I didn't play hide the dinosaur egg when I was a kid!
I am young! I will take full ownership of that. But I have a passion inside. I am called by God to lead kids to the Lord. God has gifted me and he is with me and is helping me everyday. I can not do this on my own. It is only with God that I am able to do anything.

It's been one awesome year! It's been so crazy. Sometimes I just sit in my office and think "Is this real? Am I really a children's minister?"

Like I said, I am beyond blessed. When I first got here to FBE I decided something. If God isn't helping me every second of every day as I am ministering to children and families, then I don't want to do it. I can only do this with Gods help.

I am forever dependent on him. I am nothing without him. I am worthless, but with him, I'm a little less worthless

-The Adam Rainwater

How to be a Dangerous Disciple.

We have been in revival this week with a great speaker. Last night he talked about being a dangerous disciple. He shared 7 characteristics of a Dangerous Disciple based on 2 Timothy chapter 2. I thought I would share this with you. This is something every christian should strive to be.


How to be a dangerous disciple

1. Have a healthy relationship with God. (What crooked bones in your body does God need to break and set right?)

2. Be disciplined. (Keep your mind on your mission.)
-Scripture memory
-Priority time (This is what I call my quiet time. Its not a quiet time to me, its a priority.)
-Prayer life

3. Set some Goals in your life. Know the rules. Cast your vision
-Ask the Holy Spirit to give you goals

4. Have the work ethic of a farmer.Work Hard.Also don't pick and choose verses from the Bible you like and focus only on them. Read and focus on the hard verses too. Faith without works is dead.

5. Be an Artisan, a craftsman. Make the word of God live and breathe.
-Memorize scripture.
-Make it part of your D.N.A.
-What you memorize is different from what you read. When the word of God is in you, it will ooze out when you are squeezed by life.

6. Be a holy Vessel. You are no longer pottery, with Christ in your heart you are fine China. The creator of all of the universe in living inside you. God has chosen to love you. Even though you sin, and mess up constantly God doesn't see you as pottery, you are fine China in his eyes. He created you, you are his most prized possession. Set your standards high, set your goals high. Have godly character.

7. Be a servant, teach it to other people. Look for ways to serve other people around. and serve expecting to get nothing in return. Serve just to spread the love. Be a vessel of honor, and of character. Character is what is you do when no one is watching. Are you truthful when alone? Are you doing things that would be pleasing to the Lord when no one is watching?


-The Adam Rainwater
Minister to Children and Families
FBE Lawton

The "I'm talking to a kid voice"

There is a certain tone in an adults voice when they speak with kids. I think we all know what I'm talking about. Its the same tone you use when talking to your dog.
"AWWW HEY WHOA! HOW ARE YOU MY LITTLE BAY BAY!!!"

I've talked to kids and I have asked them about this very thing. I usually get the same response from them.
"They are talking to me like I'm a baby..."
You probably don't even know your doing it, but when you talk to a kid in that "I'm talking to a kid/ I'm talking to my dog" tone. It really belittles children. You are talking down to them. You are saying you are just a little baby and I'm going to treat you like one.
Kids just want you to talk to them like anyone else. Does that mean you should talk about adult topics? NO! You are not getting what I am trying to say here. They want you to talk to them about what they are interested in, just don't use the "I'm talking to a kid" tone.
Since I don't talk to kids like this, they actually talk to me! I talk to them like I am their friend, not like they are a little baby sucking on a binky, ya feel me? Smell what I'm steppin in?

So the next time you volunteer in kids church, or teach elementary Sunday school, remember this blog post, and stop talking to kids like they are little babies. I promise they will open up to you more.

Don't belittle children, build them up.


-The Adam Rainwater
Minister to Children and Families
FBE LAWTON

Routine.

Routines are a funny thing. We seem to get into a lot of them. How we brush our teeth, how we get dressed, even how we eat dinner. Life is a system of patterns that just repeat themselves. Are routines bad? I don't think they are fully bad. But I think we can get stuck in this sometimes.

There are times when you just need to break free.

There are times I will get in my car to go to the grocery store and I will end up in the church parking lot in my usual spot that I park in, why? We are creatures of habit. And this woke me up a little bit, I thought if I go on auto-pilot while I drive, how else do I go on auto-pilot?

I think this is when we start taking things for granted. This is why we never tell our loved ones that we love him, because we just go through out life on auto piolt. This isn't tuesday, this is routine day. I do the same thing ever tuesday.

So why do I type all of this? I just want you to break free, do something different! Take a different route to work! Have breakfest for dinner. Tell your loved ones you love them, wake up and see the world around you.

Life moves pretty fast, if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

God ways are higher than our ways

So recently I've been thinking about the greatness of God and how His ways are higher than our ways. No one created God, He has always been. He didn't have a beginning and he certainly won't have an end. He is infinite and we are finite. We have a beginning and an end. So see there? We are already starting off in a way of thinking. We can only think with our finite minds.

Now as a Christian, I can tell you that there are things in the Bible that are just hard to fathom. Does that mean they didn't happen that way? No. Just because we can't fully wrap our minds around something doesn't mean it didn't happen. (Double Negative for the win!)

Many would argue that the Bible is imperfect. They would say that it was written by many men and they question if those men didn't put in there own agendas into the Bible.
Now let me stop right here. I will agree that man is by nature, sinful. Humans screw things up, it's just what we do. But to say that God would just allow these people to put their own agendas into the bible would be belittling God.

God could crush existence its-self by blinking! Don't you think that he would be able to dictate what would and would not go into the Bible.

Another may argue, "Well Adam what about all the books that are not in our Bible. What about those?"
And to this I say, I have a hard enough time reading the bible I got, with the 66 books in it. Do you really think I want to add more books to that!? I mean I haven't even read all of those 66 books.
I really believe the bible that Christians use is enough. I know it's enough for me.

It's good to think, but sometimes we think to much. God gave us the Bible to help us out in life. To give us a clue! and I am very thankful for that.

Now I know there are other Bibles out there that have other books in them. and thats fine. But I don't think I will be reading them anytime soon. I have a hard enough time reading the Bible as it is.

Heres a thought, instead of arguing about the Bible and worrying about what happened to the other books, why don't you just pick your Bible up and read it and let the God of all the universe speak to you. Have faith like a child! Trust in the Lord! He is bigger than anything you could ever face in your lifetime, God is way smarter than you are, He is way more powerful, and He is in control you are not!
Why not just have a little trust?

I challenge you today to just take your concerns about the Bible, your argument that it's not perfect and your worrying about all the different books that are not part of your Bible but are parts of other Bibles, why don't you take that and place it at the feet of your Savior who is on the cross, and just simply gaze up at Jesus.

Life is full of unanswered questions, and heres a secret, you don't have to know all the answers.
Kinda freeing huh?
As long as you live, life is going to be filled with more and more unanswered questions and thats ok!
Place those questions in the hands of God, and simply gaze at Him and see his amazing power.

Looking at the past

I catch myself reminiscing all the time. Thinking back to the summers I spent as a staffer at a children's camp. I think about the way I was, and how the friendships I made those summers seem to help define me. I seriously don't think I would be the man I am today if I hadn't worked all those summers at camp.

God showed me a lot of things in those summers. I learned a lot about leadership and a lot about children. I feel thats were my calling of being a children's minister started.
When I worked my first Summer at camp in 2007 I had no intention of becoming a children's minister, to be honest, I didn't even know children's ministry existed.
But as I started the next summer in 2008 I began to think more seriously about children's ministry, the question in my mind "Could I really be a children's minister?"
Did I have it in me? Was God leading me in that direction.
By my 3rd summer working at camp, I was ready to move on, I still enjoyed working at camp and getting to minister to so many kids. But I just felt my time at camp had come to a close.
In 2010 I didn't return to camp, instead I was an intern at a church working under the children's ministry. It started out well enough but, soon became a huge thorn in my side.
I was constantly belittled by my boss, told that I had the raw talent but that it needed to be more defined.
He constantly would say "I'm just waiting for you to take ownership of something"
Those times working at that church were really hard, on top of my boss belittling me, I was beginning to die spiritually. In the years that I worked there I maybe only attended a service at the church 6 times. I worked at that church for 3 years.
When I approached my boss about it, he advice was to listen to podcasts or just find another church to go to that wasn't having church at the same time we were.
Terrible advice!
Before I left the church I was really at a cross roads. I did not want to work at this church anymore. Spiritual things didn't interest me anymore. I went to service in the children's area at the church just for a pay check and not for the joy of ministering to children.
I had reached an end with children's ministry. I was done.
I began to put my application in at different places, I started with churches and then I put my application in at Lowes, Target and pretty much any where else I could think of. I just wanted out.
So in the middle of all of this my boss leaves on a mission trip for a week and leaves me in charge. And I gotta say I really enjoyed it. I got to do children's ministry the way I wanted to do it. Thats only confirmed that, thats what I wanted to do with my life. While he was gone on his mission trip, a church contacted me saying they were interested in me being their children's minister. So I went for an interview, after a few more meetings and going to the church and getting voted on, I was their children's minister.
I gotta admit after all this, I still felt like I couldn't do the job. Could God really use me? I was burnt out spiritually, my well had run dry, I was thirsty.
I remember when I went to the church in view of a call, and I had my beautiful wife by my side during the worship service and I remember how good it felt to just be ministered to. To just sign a praise song to God with other people, to actually sit and hear someone preach a sermon.
I still get to sign a praise song to God with other people and hear someone preach a sermon each and every week.
We have an early service and a later service, and we have kids church in the later service. I am blessed to be able to be a children's minister and also that I get to go to service. I actually get to go to sunday school. Wow! What a blessing.
So why did I type out all of this? Whats the point, Adam?
The point is, you never know where life is going to take you. You may be in the middle of a real crappy situation, you may hate your job and you feel like you can't work another day there. Or you may feel like you have reached the end with a relationship and you are scared whats gonna happen.
Can I tell you that life is full of those moments? Life is full of questions, and to be honest some questions will never be answered, so we just have to accept that and move on with our lives.
I use to tell myself "Adam this is just a transitional time in your life, once you get past this life will be better and you will finally have arrived!"

What a stupid thing to think! I have since learned that your whole life is a transitional time, you will always be inbetween something in life. You are constantly between one chapter and the next.
What matters is, what are you doing with your time now? Are you truly enjoying the days in which you are giving, or are you looking forward.
There is a saying that say "The grass is always greener on the other side"
You know why that is? Its because you are not taking care of your own grass, you are always looking over the fence at someone elses green grass.
We need to take care of our own lives, enjoy the time we are given. Stop worrying about the future and just enjoy life right now, stop looking over the fence at someone elses grass, look at your own grass and enjoy it.
Ya feel me? Smell what I'm steppin in?
Let tomorrow worry about its self, today you have enough to worry about.
Enjoy the days you are given.
Keep God #1
And all else will fall into place.

-The Adam Rainwater