Ruined for the Ordinary

Last week, we had our 2006 JV Fall training conference in Czech Republic at our training center, Hotel Malenovice. It was so so good! Dave Patty, JV founder and president, taught from the book of Colossians on “life in Christ”. My friend, Gavin, who is much better at technical/computer things than I am has managed to put the mp3 files of the talks on his website, so if you want to hear the talks, all you have to do is click on “Gavin and Amanda” over on the right, and read his post about the conference. He explains the links to the mp3 files at the end of his post.

Pictured above is our TCK team (Training Center Kompas) from Slovakia, minus several wives who had to stay home with children during this particular conference.

“[ Wake Up from Your Sleep ] Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that.” Ephesians 5:1 The Message

I want to keep company with God and learn a life of love. I want to learn how to abandon caution and recklessly love others extravagantly. Somewhere along the way, I heard someone say that “we can only love as deeply as we are willing to grieve.” In other words, we can only truly love someone to the degree we are willing to put ourselves at risk of getting hurt. We either wrap ourselves in a cloak of self-protective defense mechanisms, or we vulnerably reach out in love to other people. We are either thinking of ourselves and what we need, or we are thinking of the other person and what he or she needs. We are either manipulating others to meet our own needs, or we are loving others. I think it is that black and white. And I know that I am so often manipulating rather than loving. It breaks my heart to realize this.
We are either striving to BE LOVED, or we are striving TO LOVE. I think every day is made up of a million moments in which we choose one of these motivations. What we do, we either do out of a desire to protect ourselves or secure our own status as “one loved”, or we abandon that temptation and we jump off the cliff of self preservation and dive into the deep riches of self-denial and sacrifice in an attempt to love someone else. Our observable action is not the thing that another person will necessarily be able to define as being an action of love or self-protection. We can be a wonderful listener because we want to be recongized, thanked and loved for that gift of time, or we can be a wonderful listener because we have thrown aside all desire to be heard and we have fully entered into the world of the one speaking. Both actions look the same to the external observer, but the latter opens the spiritual world of possibilities. The first may make a person popular; but the latter invites the Spirit of Love Himself to enter into that moment and empower it with something supernatural and transforming.

I don’t know how to love like this, but I want to learn. I want to learn how to live a life of extravagant love.

I have not been great at keeping up my blog for the last few weeks because life has been absolutely crazy full. I took a couple of weeks to recover from surgery in the middle of May, and then I’ve been so busy I’ve had a hard time sitting down to type things in the computer. June and July were all about promoting camp and training camp teams for the three camps in Bratislava, Lucenec, and Presov.  These camps just ended, and so far, we’re hearing from the national teams that they were possibly the best ever. Our interns were incredible, pouring themselves out for the benefit of others every day. We also had three amazing teams from churches in America come to help out with those camps. (Thank you, Shandon Baptist, North Star Church, and Celebration Church!) The summer interns left on Thursday, and a team from North Point Community Church in Alpharetta, Georgia arrived late last night to help with our own camp in Zilina this week, so we’re still in the midst of camp here!
I spent the last week and a half hanging out with the girls from my university class. We wanted to spend some intentional time together, so we planned things for every day. We had a movie day, we went hiking in the high tatras, we played cards a lot, we sat in the park and played games, and we went for a few days to a cottage up in the hills surrounding Zilina. We just came back from the cottage a few days ago, and now a group of us are all participating in the Zilina camp this week. We leave this afternoon, so I’m home trying to do laundry and re-pack to leave again.

I wanted to put pictures of all of these things on here so you could see some of the beautiful places we’ve been, but my camera broke and I need to get those pictures from someone else. I’ll post them as soon as I can.

So…we’re off to camp again! Oh, and by the way, it is HOT here!! The temperature was 97 degrees yesterday with a real feel of 103, and it is not supposed to fall below the 90s for a good while. I know that sounds normal for everyone in America, but we’re sorely missing the airconditioning over here! :-) I’ve been carrying my fan with me wherever I can, and I don’t even care how silly it may look! I even have this little battery powered one for the places I’ve been that don’t always have electricity! Thank you, Apryl, for bringing that sweet thing over here last summer! :-)

I’ll see if I can get pictures from other people’s cameras, and I’ll post some pics and tell some stories after camp.

to my friend Josh

and my new friend Will

Josh has an amazing blogsite. He is incredibly creative. Check it out. All you have to do is click over there on the right side where it says “Josh”. He and Will have just finished a long tour of Europe which concluded with time here with us in Slovakia. They are both amazing young men that you’ll want to keep up with just because they live lives that are inspiring.
For me personally, it is always deeply meaningful to meet someone who is completely “ruined for the ordinary” when it comes to serving Christ. Both of these guys are ruined. Completely. I hope you take the time to read about them and get to know them a bit. Josh is headed for either seminary (or possibly joining us over here), and Will is headed for a year of serving in the inner city. (Josh talks a little on his blog about what Will is going to be doing)

The interns have gone from the challenge of the GREAT RACE, which included some fun activities like river racing (see pictures in the gallery), to the challenge of helping train national teams to be ready for camp and the challenge of going into new places and meeting new people in order to promote camp. Last week, we were in the city of Lučenec, and this week, it’s Bratislava.

(Read on …)