I wake up this Monday morning and am ready to start a new week. There is something about Mondays being the first day of the work week and the feeling of having some time off over the weekend.
Yesterday, I led my Sunday School class in discussing what it means to be a Christian. My goal for the lesson was to get people thinking about how their faith impacts their lives.
I first played this video to introduce the book I used for some of the discussion points by Scott Kelby.
The core of Scott’s book, It’s a Jesus Thing, is that he wants people to know how much his faith has enriched his life and to share that with friends and family outside of Christianity.
I like how he explains that “Jesus spent most of His time here on earth trying to teach us how to get along, live in peace together, care for each other, and relate to God—in a new way.”
Sundays are a time when I go to my church, especially my Sunday School class called “THINK,” study Jesus, and hear others’ thoughts and how they view what he is teaching us.
Yesterday I was reminded that God loves everyone. That is hard to take in when I find many unloving and even despicable people. The cool thing is that the creator of the universe loves me and wants the very best for me and everyone.
He gave me grace so that I would always feel welcome to talk to God. This means there is nothing I can do that he is unwilling to forgive, and even before I ask for forgiveness, he gives it to me.
Now, that is the kind of friend everyone needs—someone who knows I have done wrong but is willing to look past whatever I have done to have a relationship with me.
My grandfather, a Baptist minister, asked me one day why I was created. That was the only time I remember him talking one-on-one with me about God. He then told me about the scriptures about why I was made.
8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Ephesians 2:8-10
I felt God’s call during high school and thought I might be a church pastor. While studying social work, my plan to go to seminary, I discovered photojournalism. This was the first time I started to feel a passion for something. This was my spiritual gift from God that would need to be nurtured.
10 Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.
1 Peter 4:10
As I grew in the faith, I also started to see how we are all called and all given gifts. Our gifts are to be used to serve others.
After spending years learning how to capture people’s stories in the most authentic way possible–photojournalism—I began to share this knowledge with others.
The central turning point in my life was receiving a phone call from Dennis Fahringer asking me to come and teach lighting to his School of Photography 1 students in Kona, Hawaii.
Hearing Hawaii alone was enough to get my bags packed. That first group of students was some of the most intelligent people I have ever encountered. My family came with me, and we were treated so wonderfully.
When you are raised in a family of faith over time, you start to understand how awesome it is to experience grace and how revolutionary an idea is when you receive it and, more importantly, begin practicing it yourself.
I say practice because only God can honestly give that kind of grace. I am too human, and people tick me off.
What grace has done for me is to care for my students. While I want them to learn the subject, I am there to teach; I have learned through the years that why we are there may not be the life lesson needed to be discovered.
Jim Veneman, a good friend, once said that we may be here on this earth for God to have us on a street corner at a certain point in time to help someone with something he had planned.
Two people have impacted my world and the lives of many of my friends–Billy Graham and Truett Cathy.
They both have in common that they both had a Sunday School teacher around the age of ten who took them under their wing and changed their lives.
Today, you might not be the rock star or celebrity impacting the world, but you could be the person moving the next generation’s leaders.
Remember how much God loves you today, and respond by loving others and using your gifts today to serve.