Wednesday, November 4, 2020

A Month of Challenges


Hello Friends! 


This past month has been a month full of challenges. Challenges on my character, bad habits that I have picked up, and challenges in learning how to better center and root myself in Christ. Overall, these are things that I continue to work on these areas in my life and seek accountability with the people who are around me. 

TNT afterevent. 




This past month we finished our Old Testament class! After reading all the books in the Old Testament so many things have become clear when it comes to God’s character and the connections can be made more easily with the New Testament. 

Something that we got to do with this OT class was listen to lectures from Iain Proven who is a professor of biblical theology at Regent College. The audio lectures were something that was challenging to listen to as they expanded me in ways that I never would have expected when it came to the things that I thought I knew about the OT. With that, we got the opportunity to do an online session of asking him questions that we wanted to get clarified. It was a neat opportunity to be able to do this and see his insights on the Old Testament that he has studied for many years. 


Our zoom chat with Iain Proven (the person with the headphones on) 



With the ending of that class, we now venture into two new classes which are financial stewardship and spiritual leadership. Though we have not yet started our spiritual leadership class, we have begun our financial stewardship class. In this class, we are going to be talking about views of money and how to have a healthy relationship with it. Some of the things we are going to be talking about are how to keep a budget, insurance, stocks, and many other things that regard money. 


I continue still with my Spiritual discipline in Mandy’s class. This week however I’m working on Examen. This process of seeing how God is moving in my every day and seeing where he working as well. Apart from that, we have been learning practical skills in this class on what to expect and how to not rush things in life. 


Richland Focus has been going well this past month. We finished our sermon series on a voice in the wilderness and how we use our voice in these times that full of many conflicting issues. With that series coming to an end we are now moving to deep diving into Luke 10, in learning how to love God with all your heart, mind, and strength. This something that we see a need for in our community of students as they learning to develop a love for God’s word and overall love for God. 


Doing a bit of playing before TNT




KFG (Keep Focus Growing) 

Every year Focus holds an annual fundraiser to help raise support for us to continue doing ministry for our students outside of our staff salaries. This fundraiser helps us do outreach activities, planting new campuses, administrative support, etc. This all goes towards helping our ministry grow and we continue to do the mission that God has given us in bringing Jesus to our college campuses. 

With that in mind, I want to invite you all to give to this ministry that has the mission of reaching out to college students on different campuses in the DFW area. I encourage you to give on Giving Tuesday that falls on Dec 1st as we also have a team of donors that are willing to do up to $42,000 in matching funds. If this is something that you are interested in doing feel free to contact me at any time for more information. 



Prayers 

I ask for prayer for our students as they learn to love God and his word. 

I ask for prayer for our staff as they are going through a season that requires discernment 

I ask for prayer for myself as learn to break these bad habits that I have developed over time and learning to rely on God and the people he has placed in my life at the moment.