Where Will You Be When the Spirit Moves?

I had the opportunity to share with my church congregation this past Sunday about the ministries that I have been involved with locally.  I received an email with bold letters reminding me the importance of sticking to the 5 minutes allotted to me.

My first thought was, "How can I say what I want to say in just 5 minutes??"

There were so many points and exhortations that I wanted to make.  Originally my pastor wanted me to simply share what I've done and how others can get involved.

Of course I decided that those things would not be the main focus of my sharing, but rather I would share about why I go out and do the things I've done.

What I came up with was this statement:
The Spirit is going to move, where will you be when this happens?
I shared a few reasons and outcomes of going out and sharing Jesus

1. Showing love is one of the only things that cannot fail

• Programs and strategies will constantly fail and need to be rethought, but if at the end of the day you someone was able to experience Christ's love through something you did, then you were successful

2. When you give away Jesus, you get more of Him in return

• When we give Jesus away we begin to see and understand a side of Him that can only be seen by giving.  Through this God becomes bigger in our eyes.  

3. Loving people makes life simple

• When you try to think about what career you should pursue or what things to invest in, life becomes stressful and complicated.  In Micah 6:8, God makes our lives simple.  He tells us to act justly, love mercy and to walk humbly.  

I then listed various things I have been involved with the past 2 years

• Helped open a school in Watts
  
• Music workshop in South Central Los Angeles and Fullerton
  
• Spending time with teens at a teen center in LA
  
• Leading worship in Spanish for inner city church plants
  
• Taught computer class once a week for a semester in an inner city middle school
  
• Chaperoned an outdoor ed trip for inner city 7th graders
  
• Helped wrap Christmas presents for an affordable Christmas store in Los Angeles
  
• Prepared and distributed food for people in need
  
• Worked with teens during a summer program in Fullerton

I closed with this word
"The Spirit is going to move.  Where will you be when it happens?  Will you be safe in the walls of this church or will you be out there ready to catch the train of His robe and a glimpse of His glory?"

The Power of Compassion to Those Who Are Watching

I’d like to share a small story that I experienced this year that also ties into a way that God has been growing me this year. To start off this story I have to go all the way back to my childhood and the experiences that molded me into who I’ve become.  I have many memories of my mom and when I think back I can see how her actions have shaped how I view others. 

As far back as I can remember my mom has always been someone who is generous and giving. Even as three boys we were never in want or in shortage of any GI Joe toys, video game consoles , comic books or sports equipment.  If there was something we wanted, at the appropriate time she would buy it for us. But, this wasn’t the only generous side of my mom. The years before I was a teen my mom worked in the heart of San Francisco. She would take BART into “The City” and then walk a number of blocks to her office. It was always an exciting trip whenever I got to visit her at the office. There was one tradition of that journey that I will never forget. Along our path from point A to point B there lived a homeless family. There was a man, a woman and a dog. I remember every time I visited my mom, I got to observe her providing food to these people on the street and giving them money.

Fast forward to the week of Christmas. Christmas is always a time of good eating and spending time with family. Needless to say my family is good at cooking up a great meal. This particular day I was heading down to the supermarket with my mom to pickup produce for Christmas dinner.  As we drove into the parking lot we passed by a family on a corner with a simple cardboard sign that shared about the struggles they were going through and gave opportunity for people to help. We passed by, parked and walked into the grocery store to pickup our ingredients. As we were walking out, my mom paused and pulled something out of her pocket.

“Go give this to that family over there”, she said to me.

I looked down and in her hand was a twenty-dollar bill. I took it from her hand and walked over to the mother, placed it into her hands and gave her a simple blessing.

My mom was not only generous, but she empowered me to be generous by letting me do the giving.  At that moment it suddenly struck me of where I had been trained to have compassion. It had all started during those moments in San Francisco visiting my mom at work where she would place items in my hands to give away. Those actions were instrumental in any justice ministry I have participated in.

Not only has my mom been a model of compassion, but also a model of generosity in my life. She is a woman to loves to give and empower those who are giving.  She is always quick to donate during a natural disaster to empower those who are on the ground helping. Through her I’ve learned the joy of giving and using the resources that God has given to me to empower others to be a blessing.

I would like to now introduce to a friend of mine named Lorraina.

Lorraina is a friend of mine was born to spend a life of giving. She is one of the kindest and most compassionate people I know. She is the kind of person who will go into the post office for stamps and end up spending an hour helping a complete stranger (in a second language) fill out paper work to send a package to their family across the world.  She is the kind of person who after a week of constantly being on the move will have the neighborhood kids over for fun and games. I have heard stories of neighborhood kids ringing the doorbell just to ask, “Is she here??”.  She somehow never runs out of the ability to give.

Lorraina is the kind of person that I want to encourage and empower. I find joy in being able to financially support her so that she can continue touching the lives of countless people.

I know that this is not a typical prayer letter, and I know most of you don’t know who Lorraina is (which can and should change) but if you are encouraged to empower her, I’d like to extend an opportunity to you to support her. She is now working in a neighborhood filled with families of extremely low income. Her goal is to help these families know and understand the love of God.

I would like to challenge some of your to join her team and be a monthly supporter. For others I encourage you to send her a note of encouragement. And for others to follow her stories and keep her lifted up in prayer.

http://www.worldimpactla.org/missionaries/results.php?NameID=68

Blessings for Water - My Charity:Water Campaign Story

It was earlier this year that my path began to branch into something different. Through a few rough patches this summer  and needing to keep my mind occupied, I began to watch a lot of Ted talks and read a tons of blogs. Most of the talks that I enjoy watching have to so with how to change the world. One of the ones that caught my eye was the one by Simon Sinek on the Golden Circle and the ideas that people don't buy what we do, but why we do it. I then went on to discover Gary Vaynerchuck where I learned the importance in adding value to your audience before asking them anything.  From T4T and Brene Brown I learned about the power of being vulnerable in sharing your story. 

All this information was being poured over me and I wanted to figure out how to put it all to use. I went around evangelizing how this could relate to customer service, or to marketing, or to sharing Jesus. The idea was that by doing a few of these ideas you could make a bigger impact in the world. I've always been about doing good and inspiring others to do the same. 

I began meeting with my friend, Martin Yan. Martin and I began to encourage each other with these grand ideas that we had been learning. We both began to do things in our company that could add value to our customers that had not been there already. For me it is customer service and blogging about how our customers could better serve their customers. As we spent time tossing inspiring blog posts and videos to each other during the week, one that he sent to me was a keynote from a marketing conference that he had attended. It was about this guy who had, in his life, been convicted to help provide clean water to everyone in the world. He created an organization called Charity:Water.

So, I immediately went out and donated thousands of dollars to his cause? Absolutely not. My first thought was, "There are plenty of people doing this. I don't need to."  Martin told me that he would be participating in the Giving Up Your Birthday campaign and asking his friends to donate his age in dollars to Charity Water.  I was pretty sure that I wouldn't give up mine because there was no way an introverted guy like me could raise much money.

As I thought about it more, I came to the realization that this would be the perfect way for me to tell my story. Charity Water could provide me the opportunity to share what God has done in my life as well as invite others to help make a difference. 

It was then decided that I would start my campaign. 

My goals were twofold. The first was to work hard to tell my story to as many people as possible. The second was to invite everyone to join me in making a difference for good in this world. 

Here are the steps I took to attempt to achieve this goal:

1. Create a campaign where I shared my story, my purpose, our (my friends, my family and myself) purpose, and an invitation. The invitation was literally a tiny part of everything else.

2. Set a high goal that I probably could not meet.

3. Create a good note to send to all of my friends of how they have impacted my life and invite to view my story

4. Personalize each message that I sent to each person of how they have personally touched my life

5. For my birthday I bought 108 donuts for my coworkers and invited them to read my story

6. Every person that asked about my birthday, I used that opportunity to share about charity water.

7. I normally turn off my wall for my birthday because I think it's an impersonal way of saying "Happy Birthday".  This time, every person that wrote 'Happy Birthday' on my wall got a personal message of how they have been a blessing to my life and then an invitation to check out my story or to thank them for donating and encourage them to pledge their birthdays.  I received over 70 wall posts, so I spent most of my birthday evening responding to them.

In every interaction I had,  rarely asked for them to donate, I only asked them to read my story.  My hope was that them knowing the value that they added to my life with the value that I hopefully added to their life would cause a kind of engagement that would not only encourage them to give, but would exhort them to join into having the same desire to change the world. 

In 8 days I was able to raise $3,330 from 71 different friends and family members

All this, for what?  Raising money is never the end goal. I believe that true value is if I can inspire others to do good. I believe that it is more valuable for me to inspire 10 people to give up their birthdays for clean water. They would not only raise more money than I could, but they could also inspire others to do the same and a cascade movement can happen. 

In the end I’m not about raising money, I’m about inspiring the masses to care.

This is my Charity:Water story. 

Your Trophy Case

When I purchased my house a few rooms had built in shelves.  The room that I decided to inhabit had one shelf that spans about half the length of the room.  I ended up using that shelf to throw up things that I would want to occasionally look at from time to time.  As I began doing different physical events, all of the medals I got after crossing that finish line would end up hanging from that shelf.  Through the 6 years that I've lived there, this shelf has become pretty full.  I looked at it the other day and realized that it has basically become my trophy shelf.  There are medals hanging down from it that remind me of different events that I've done how I had accomplished something difficult physically.  Though these "trophies" are from me crossing the finish line, they are not the most valuable trophies on my shelf.  A majority of this shelf is filled with cards and letters from people who have been in my life.  Most of them are testimonies of what kind of impact I have been in their lives or encouragements to me to continue pursuing greatness.

When you think about your trophy case, what do you have displayed?  Is it your job or career, your kids’ accomplishments, your stock portfolio or bank account, your grades, your major, your status in different social groups?  Or is your trophy case full of lives that you have impacted for good.  It should be full of ways that you have tried to make a difference in this world and to be a positive force of change.

The Ministry of Availability

I was asked by my pastor to share about the College Ministry that I am helping lead.  Basically he wanted me to share for 3 to 5 minutes about what we’re all about and ways that people can get involved.  When I began to think about it, I could list out a few tasks that we do such as our meeting once a month and the small group that has formed, but it didn’t seem to convey what we are attempting to accomplish.  

As I thought about it, I came up what type of ministry we do.  We do the ministry of availability.  Most of the things we do create a space for our college students to grow in an unofficial way.  Our ministries are unconventional ones.  We have ministry through texts checking up weekly or daily with our students.  We spend time meeting our students where they are at.  We do campus visits for students that are not in the immediate area.  We will go and encourage our students who are involved in on-campus ministries by visiting their groups and participating with them.  We will go on campus with our students and eat dinner with them in the commons or take them off campus to get away for a little bit.  We will sit with them and study.  In the midst of this we get the opportunity to see how the Lord is leading them and have great opportunities to have solid spiritual conversations.  When we are able to meet one on one with students we have opportunities to open the bible and share scripture.  It is often that on a Sunday I will have the week completely open.  At the end of the week I look back and may have had one evening open.

I simply want God to send me to whom he will send me to.  As Isaiah 6:8 says:

And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here am I! Send me.”

The ministry of availability is based on being available and willing to meet the students where they are at.  Though we are not often a large group, we do our best being resources to help our students get involved in different and continue to grow in their spiritual walks in and in maturity.