Lately I have been sitting out side my office and watching the construction of the Performing Arts Building (you can view the construction from the web cam I created for DePauw here). Today I decided to bring my sketch pad and depicted some of the workers.

Last week I had the joy of being a high school church camp counselor. Now you may ask where is the joy in 95 plus degree weather, hormone crazy high schoolers and the great outdoors? The joy is in God himself. We had a great week full of sports, sweating, camp food and conversation. I’ll give a shout out to huddle one the best huddle ever and wacky olympics champions. 

Well my whirl wind weekend is over but its going to stick in my mind for a long time. Last Friday I left for PK16 (Promise Keepers 16 I thing pk16 sounds better it brings me back to the WWF days when all the main events had acronims). PK was great there is nothing better than just soaking in God’s presence. He definitely showed him self, 430 men are now Brothers in Christ YEAH!!! The weekend didn’t end there. On Sunday after we returned from PK our church had a special worship service. At the worship service I got a chance to really worship and let loose with our new Tactic M2 (Performance video program). The worship set went GREAT but I will go into more depth about the Tactic in another post later. Just as I thought the weekend was going to slow down I had the opportunity to create a worship art for camp Indi-co-so. The worship art went GREAT once again God came down and pulled us up. So this weekend I consider my self Lucky because all I have done is jump from Mountain Top Experience to Mountain Top Experience basking and soaking in God’s presence.

One thing I find hard to do when I pray is not making the prayer all about me. For example “Lord I pray that you will…” “Lord I pray for…” it is a real challenge for me sometimes to change “Lord I pray” to “You Are”. One of my good friends Chad Swift works for International House of Prayer (IHOP) in Atlanta. He gave me a outline of one of the worship sets called “Worship with the Word”. The set he gave me was on Psalms 63. The thing that I noticed about the outline was how they pulled out each verse and spoke about who God is. Here are some examples

“O God, you are my God,
earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you,
my body longs for you,
in a dry and weary land
where there is no water.”

Psalms 63:1

You are my Greatest Desire

“I have seen you in the sanctuary
and beheld your power and your glory.“

Psalms 63:2

You are powerful and majestic

“Because your love is better than life,
my lips will glorify you.“

Psalms 63:3

Your love compels me to praise you

“On my bed I remember you;
I think of you through the watches of the night.“

Psalms 63:6

You consume my thoughts

“Because you are my help,
I sing in the shadow of your wings.
My soul clings to you;
your right hand upholds me.
They who seek my life will be destroyed;
they will go down to the depths of the earth.
They will be given over to the sword
and become food for jackals.
But the king will rejoice in God;
all who swear by God’s name will praise him,
while the mouths of liars will be silenced.“

Psalms 63:7-11

You are my refuge

I know this helps me take my mind off of “what I need” and “what I want” and put the focus on who God is , why he is God and why he is my Loving Savior. So next time you pray try to put the focus on God with “You Are…”.

We are almost finished with our kitchen remodel. It has been about a 3 month process (with some heavy delays in the last month). All the cabinets but one are in place, and we are waiting to pick up our new stove to put the last one in. The most exciting addition to our kitchen is what we call the “pass through” it is a cut out square in the wall that allows communication between the kitchen and dining room. It has a neat counter top and cabinet and light to match. Way to go Dad and Jason what a cool idea and good execution. Remember to keep checking out our home remodel photo album from time to time.

This is post is to celebrate out first new car. Totally sweet. If you are regular readers you know how my former car had contracted a fatal disease and was making its way to the car lot in the sky. So this past week we took advantage of the deals and summer promotions and added a pontiac vibe to our car family!!!