Camp Barnabas

Sunday morning, bright and early...and I mean EARLY, we are leaving out (at 5:30 in the AM) for Camp Barnabas!!! Huzzah! Ashley, Naomi, Iain, Jonathan P., Jonathan H., Brian and I are going to Missouri to hang out with children with special needs. They may be physically or mentally handicapped or both. Camp Barnabas provides for them a fun summer camp experience just like any other. Kids with disabilities are generally the ones on the side lines watching everyone else. Everything at Camp Barnabas has been adapted so that they too can experience summer camp fun. Swimming, ropes course, horse back riding...these are just a few of the fun things we will do at camp. It is a Christ centered camp and organization. Every night we have a different themed party and will dress up and have some fun! We are each placed with one child for the whole week. We get to love on, bond with and devote everything to that one child:)

Please be in prayer for the campers, that they will see Christ in each of the staff members and volunteers and that they will have a memorable and fun week that will effect their lives for the better.

Please also pray for the staff and volunteers. Specifically for our group, as the nerves are riding high right now. Pray that the Lord will meet us at every challenge and that we would be willing and able to do whatever is demanded of us, even if it's hard and we don't feel that we can. This will be a very demanding, challenging and maybe even a little bit stressful week and we will have to rely on God. Pray that we will trust Him and not only make it through, have some fun along the way! Pray for our attitudes and our health. Me specifically, I get head aches quite frequently and sometimes they get really bad. I do not want them to get in the way of what I am doing. I want to be able to give my camper 101% 23 hours of the day (we get an hour a day to ourselves and of course we do get to sleep as well.) Lastly pray for us, that we would take something away from the week, that God would not only meet our physical needs, but also spiritual. Pray that we will build friendships, learn and grow.

Thank you!

"God, you are my God; I earnestly seek you; my soul thirsts for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory. Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you. I will bless you as long as I live; in your name I will lift up my hands." Psalm 63:1-4
Good stuff....

My Identity: Christ's Identity

Self depreciation is a big struggle that I have had for many years. Over the past year or so I have gotten a little bit better about it, but I still fall into it. It is a sin rooted in a pride issue.

Every time a comment like "ugh my hair looks funny" or "I don't like the way I sound" or "I don't know why you would want to be friends with me", it just goes to show what I am looking to for my identity. Looks, talents, friends...they are all things that can be used for identity. False identity.

While at youth conference last week, I was reminded of something. As a christian, when I became saved, I died to myself. I took up Christ's righteousness. I took up Christ's identity.

In turn, I believe that as a christian, by being self depreciating, I am being Christ depreciating. When I degrade myself, I degrade Christ. It is as if I do not trust in who He is and in what He has done for me. Jesus didn't save me for my talents, looks or popularity. "If that were the case, he wouldn't have saved me!" (see it's easy to throw self depreciation into anything!) (*Joking*) Seriously though, by acting like I suck at life, it downplays what's important, The Cross.

I know I am not the only person that struggles with this. Give it some thought. Don't let people give you and identity. Find your identity in Christ and what the bible says you are as a child of Christ.

Psalm 139:13-16
"For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them."