Jason Vana | Igniting a Generation

A Week of Rest

May 13, 2012 in Ignite, Life with 6 Appreciated Comments

Photo Credit: David Goehring (Creative Commons)

It’s finals week right now at Monmouth College and the semester ended last week at Carl Sandburg College, the two schools where Ignite operates, which means one thing:

It’s time for a week off.

After a school-year long of meetings and prep work and planning the Czech mission trip and social events and counseling students and writing resources and fundraising and sending out tax-deduction letters and building our team, I need a break.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s been a great year for Ignite. God has impacted the lives of students in powerful ways this year – and we’ve seen a lot of firsts for Ignite:

Our first Ignite group plant at Carl Sandburg College
Our first offer to partner with a church to lead a mission trip
Our first time transitioning to new board members
Our first time bringing up a crop of new leaders
Our first time raising up coaches from outside Ignite
The first redesign of our website
The first time a youth from Czech visited our Monmouth group – and prayed for us here in person
The first time our Lent book went global – having been downloaded in over 25 states and 3 countries.
Our first multi-campus retreat
Our first multi-campus social event

I couldn’t be more excited for what God has done in us and through us this year.

But by the end of each school year, I need a break.

Embracing a Mysterious God

May 10, 2012 in Living our Faith with 10 Appreciated Comments

Photo Credit: Luis Argerich (Creative Commons)

We want to figure God out.
We want to know why God is doing what He’s doing.

When life gets tough, we want to know why.
When we wanted to be married by age 25 but are still single at 30, we want to know what we did wrong.
When we see others being blessed by God, we want to mimic their faith.
When God pours out His favor, we want the ten steps to make it happen again.
When a friend hurts us, betrays us and speaks bad of us, we wonder what character quality God is developing within us.
When we lose our job, our car breaks down or the AC unit stops working, we wonder why God is testing us.

We want to know how God operates.

We are Not Our Own

May 8, 2012 in Living our Faith with 16 Appreciated Comments

Photo Credit: geograph.org.uk (Creative Commons)

We like to be in control.
We are comforted believing we can decide our own destinies.

We make plans for how we want our lives to look in the next 5, 10, even 20 years.
We develop goals and deadlines for every big change in life.
We know when we want to be married, when we want to be successful, when we want to have our 2.5 kids and white picket fence.
We want to live in a certain place, have a specific kind of job and know that nothing bad will ever happen to us.

We like to control the path of our own lives.

Controlling God

May 6, 2012 in Living our Faith with 26 Appreciated Comments

Photo Credit: Rebecca Finch (Creative Commons)

We all have tried to control God.
We’ve all tried to get Him to do what we want.

We’ve prayed and fasted in order to get our way.
We’ve bargained with Him, promising to do something if He answers our prayers.
We’ve complained and thrown a fit when life didn’t turn out our way.
We’ve wondered by we have to wait for God to answer our prayers, when others don’t.
We’ve asked God to come into our meetings, our services, our outreaches and bless us.
We’ve gone to church, worshiped, reached out, went on mission trips and helped in the local food pantry thinking that if we did enough right stuff, He would surely give us what we want.

Deep down, we want a God we can control.

The Reward of our Perseverance

May 3, 2012 in Living our Faith with 18 Appreciated Comments

Photo Credit: withoutwax.tv

We tend to think of perseverance as a battle.

We battle our doubts and insecurities.
We battle our fears and hesitations.
We fight against the disparity between the promise and our current reality.
We struggle to hold on, battle to keep trusting, and try everything we can to keep from getting discouraged.

Perseverance is a fight.

It drains our energy.
Steals our joy.
Stretches every inch of our faith.
And leaves us worn, battered and sometimes cranky.

Some don’t even make it to the other side.

Wrestling to Persevere

May 1, 2012 in Living our Faith with 21 Appreciated Comments

Photo Credit: Ron Wise (Creative Commons)

We tend to think of perseverance as waiting.

We find ourselves in less-than-desirable circumstances and have to wait for God to bring about something better. We are given a promise from God, or a glimpse of something greater, and have to be patient until God fulfills it. We start looking for a better job, better school, that one true love and find ourselves waiting for it to come around.

Perseverance seems to be nothing more than enduring a season of waiting.

We’re given a promise, and have to persevere until it is fulfilled.
We’re pursuing a dream, and have to persevere until we are able to reach it.
We set goals, make a plan and start changing our lives, and have to persevere during those tough months of transition.

We grit our teeth.
Hunker down.
Keep to the path we’re on.

And wait for something to change.

Perseverance, in our minds, is a passive activity.