Arrival

Here I am in Findlay Ohio. For those that don't know, I was real close to dropping engineering and going in to full time mission work. Or at least what I thought was full time mission work at the time. Over the course of the next few months, the Lord really showed me that my life as it was then in college station had so many opportunities for mission work that I passed on as a disobedience to Gods calling. I was convicted too that I really was not open to what the Lord had for me in my future, but rather I wanted my way and then I would make it fit to be in service to Him.


Well a real huge wave of job rejections hit me as well as many other heavy convictions hit me around in November. This was it this was the time for me that God put the plow before me and said take hold of it now to look back. Which is big because in Luke 62 Jesus replied, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God."


That was the time in my life when feel I really started to understand repentance.
<http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=acts%2017:30,%20proverbs%2028:13,%201%20john%201:8-9,%202%20corinthians%207:9-10&version=47>

The next semester was one where I felt it was time to die to myself including in my occupation.


Luke 9:23 'Then he said to them all: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.' So I went and searched hard for a mission job. I went to the Go Missions conference and gave a request for full time employment to 40-some tables.


This is where God revealed that my mission field was not there, as only one person contacted me back with any serious conversation. Instead it was time to go back to the engineering table. My parents made it very clear, while supporting whatever final choice I made, that it would be a waste of the gift that it my college education to not even try to use it. Honoring my parents in this case I read as getting back the to the Engineering career fair.

So to the Spring '08 career fair I went. Now there are hundreds of companies and it is suggested that in order to be prepared for a career fair you must 'simply' research the companies to find out what the job would be like and if you are a good fit for the company. Then during the interviews they can decide if you are a good fit for them. That would take a long time though to search through 200 companies. And that is not what I call 'simple'. Wrestling Puppies...that is simple... puppies are small, weak, and have no concept of the game we are playing.


I instead put faith in the Lord to guide this process through prayer. And when I arrived at the career fair, I spoke with the people I felt were brought to me, and the 4 hours later when I was tired, I left trusting that the Lord had already gotten me the interview with the company I was supposed to work for. As it happens I did have an interview with Marathon before I left the building that day.

My interviews were tough in that I had to keep my focus on honouring the Lord above myself. At first I was a bit worried that if I talked about God in the interviews, that no one would want me to work for them as someone claiming there best achievements as ot there own but works of the Lord who was kind enough to let me witness them. But it came quite easy, and the people were interested in what the Lord had done in my life.

Sometimes the interview was completely derailed, but it was ok in fact it was Joyful and satisfying and comforting to know that I was able to not put in a shift for God and then my wage will be a good job. But rather I am free under grace to be honest about how great He is. Freedom in Christ experience through the obedience.

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=52&chapter=4&version=47


I got the job here at Marathon after all was done and now before the job starts it has been great to see all the ways that this town which I feel that the Lord has chosen for me, suits me so well. It is small, I got the grand tour in about 2 hours, it has lots of parks, there is great food, and I have a very cheap house in a great neighborhood with a front porch and Land lord that almost encourage drilling into the wall.

I count the blessings now, but I can also start to count the cost. I don't know how long I will have to job but I doesn't matter. I don't know how I will be able to share the gospel with people living deeply and outward joyfully in every sin Paul talks about creeping into the early churches.

But it seems like those cost have in the past, through an obedience to the great commission and the wisdom of 2 tim 2
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Timothy%202:16;&version=47;

from what I understand is the gospel and not fancy explanations from my own head, have only turned in to more joys. On not earthly joys of good movies, good sport plays, the drunken nights of my past, fulfilled lusts of my heart, but real joy through seeing people grow in the Lord in your fellowship of a church and seeing people meet to Lord for the first time. There is not a comparison looking back.

Up to the point of June 30th, when I should have written this as I had promised, thanks to everyone who took time out of their settled life and spent some time on the phone with me in my newer and less settled life.

I am not a proponet of too much profreading, so if you find errors, please accept that as a gift from me form the bottom of my heart and the back of my unfocused brain that did not read enough as a child.