The Ullrich Haus!

If you didn't know Hailey and I are buying a house and we are just about to close on it next week. We are so excited about because it is pretty much everything we want: downtown, 5 blocks from Palmer (where we lead YL), 5 blocks from work, corner lot, quiet streets to play wiffle-ball in, antique feel, original floors, original trim (that hasn't been painted over, miracle!) and it's older than everyone we know! So here are some picture of where you will be staying when you come visit us!

Here it is!



When you walk in the front door you see this!



To the right is the kitchen



In the center is the bathroom



Then to the left is the living room



Then the master bedroom



And the guest bedroom



All of this! Not to mention the one car garage, wrap around yard, and 10 foot ceilings throughout! Obviously thats not our furniture and decorations in the pictures but when we are done with it it will be even more beautiful than this!

Can't wait to have you at the Ullrich Haus!

The Wild Frontier

Some time ago I drove here to do Summer Staff...



When I drove up I saw a very pretty girl sitting here...



I thought she was cool so I went to flirt with her in here...



I flirted even harder with her here...



I told her she was beautiful in here...



Nothing seemed to work so I vented my frustration with a friend here...



So then I just dreamt about her here...



I watched her spend time with her parents here...



I gathered my courage to ask her to dance here...



Then did some heavy eye flirting here...



I fell head over heals for her when she was all dressed up and standing here...



People were on to us so they accused us of holding hands here...



I told people I liked her here...



I knew there wasn't much time left so I talked to her here... (with my shirt off)



But we didn't talk much so I waited for her in the morning here...



She didn't show up, so I thought all hope was lost, but it turns out her and I are now getting married here...



This is the epic story of me going after Hailey Carrillo and finally getting her to marry me! It all began at Frontier Ranch and we are so excited that we have the privilege of getting married at Frontier also. May 1, 2011, so close!

We could talk of Your love forever!

Hopefully if you're reading this you caught that the title should be sung to the song "I could sing of Your love forever." I thought it was clever haha. Anyways, this maybe short but it is something that has been on my mind a lot lately.

We can all talk about and sing about God's love to no end. And we can talk about all the things God is doing and going to do even more! We love talking about it all because talking alone makes us feel excited, we are enthralled that God is revealing this vision to us of what His love and will is. But in the end that feeling of excitement is worthless if we don't do anything with it. Scripture says,

"what good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead."
-James 2:14-17

Many people upon reading this verse will cringe and probably have some sort of theology to back up why they don't like it. Many contemporary Christians, or they might call themselves Christ followers, would argue that deeds are not what God is looking for, we are set free by Christ after all! Right they would be but not completely. We are given love freely now we should do something with it. If we don't pour out the love we are given then we are just as selfish as the next person.

So how does that verse above translate to what I am talking about? Well I'll reiterate what I said before, we love to talk about God's love and what He can do, very much like the man saying "Go, I wish you well", we will say "God can save this school or this city." Bringing that into todays struggle, we love to say, "let me pray for you" or "I'll be praying for you" but we don't recognize the actually physical needs of the person. Or again we will get together and have these meetings about how we think God wants to change a school or a community or a city and the meeting will make us feel great cause we prayed a lot for all of that to happen but then we just go about our lives as usual and don't do anything about changing the school, community, or city. What are we waiting for? To often now a days we say to ourselves, "it's in Gods hands, He is in control" which is true but we let that truth mean that we are off the hook. We neglect to recognize that God will often orchestrate the change He wishes to see in a place through people. And thus we choose the easy road which is just talking and praying about change instead of actually being the change.

All in all, we need to do something, sure talk and pray about the way God is moving but then get up and be a part of the movement. Don't be satisfied with just the excitement of talking about change, bring about the change yourself. Do it people! God might me asking you to lead that change and not just talk to other Christians about it.

The Next American Idol: Worship

We are all well aware of the "bad" things we can worship, we hear about these almost every week whether it be sunday morning, youth group, or bible study. The "bad" things of course the usual sex, drugs, rock and roll. But what about things that are good in our eyes? Like food, we worship that and we become gluttons. Or our friends, we worship them and then when they let us down it only breaks our hearts more. And what about worship? Is it possible to worship worship? I would argue yes. We worship worship when we think we are the only ones that do it right. We think our worship is the most "spirit lead" you can find. It becomes our only connection to God, if we go week to week and the one night of worship is the only thing that connects us to God then we are probably on the road to worshipping worship.

This may seem nit picky because it is so hard to determine what the motivations of ones heart is but that is the very reason it is so important, it is the motivation of our hearts we are dealing with here. What is so scary about our hearts coming from the wrong place of motivation as we go to worship is that if we are worshiping worship then we are just worshiping ourselves. We are worshiping what we can bring to God and thus worshiping our works. When are works are worth nothing, we cannot worship our way to the Lord loving us. He loves us if we never utter a song of praise. We love the hope the book of Isaiah gives us for when Christ comes back but we easily forget what the author says near the end of the book, "all our righteous acts are like filthy rags." (Isaiah 64:6)

So be critical of your heart, scripture says "the heart is deceitful above all things" (Jer. 17:9) aswell as "the wellspring of life." Ps. 4:23) It would appear that the heart is a tricky thing and knowing the motivation of our heart is paramount. Don't take your heart lightly, it's a part of you!

Nation Mourns as National Hero Falls

What makes a hero? Is there a job description for such a thing? Can one claim their past our current occupation as "hero"? A hero is one of the intangible mysteries which no one has put an adequate definition too. I would argue that the term "hero" is thrown around to flippantly in today's culture. One day we hear the story of a man rescuing four kittens from a drainage pipe and they are a hero but the next we are faced with the heart breaking story of person laying down their life for the well being of others. Who is the true hero? Who is more "heroey"?

My definition of hero would be one that always puts others first, never complains about the trying task ahead, always puts one hundred percent into their efforts, and of course is willing to lay their life down for another. Being a hero may mean more than these things but it certainly does not mean less. And if these characteristics are good enough to define a hero than a hero died last week... my 1992 Jeep Cherokee Limited.

Some say the best death is one in the field of duty and the Jeep had just that. It was like any other day of difficult roads to maneuver and pot holes to dodge when all of the sudden the life left the Jeep. It was unexpected to say the least for no one thought the Jeep could die. It's nick name was even "Leviathan", after the mythical creature that only the God of the Bible could kill. (Psalm 74:14) But it would seem that God looked down on the Jeep with proud eyes and knew that it was time that it leave this world. So with a soft hand the life was taken out of the body of the Jeep and taken to Jeep heaven, where millions of Jeeps live and they drive on rugged terrain all day without fear of being hurt. And of course all the faithful Jeep owners are there to see their Jeep and change its oil just like old times. It is in this place which I believe my Jeep resides today.

While there may be no funeral procession or twenty one gun salute to honor you, you will be remembered for your service Jeep. You will be remembered for the way you served me for six trying years and pressed on to pass the two hundred thousand mile mark. Any fine young lady car would say you aged well despite your off-road lifestyle. But that is probably because you had the engine of a lion. I for one know your engine beats on in the hearts of many and you will not be forgotten. Rest in peace noble companion and may your spirit be with us.

Dangerous Comfort

We love control. We want to be in control because it is then that we feel like everything will go as we planned. We never want outside influences to come in and disrupt our control cause then we lose it. We even put God under our control complex sometimes. We can see this when we make up things about the character of God to make us feel better about whats happening in our lives.

Hailey recently sent me an email with this quote from Rick Warren's "Purpose Driven Life":

"In order to build your faith, God will give you a dream; then he'll urge you to make a decision; but then he'll allow a delay, because in the delay he matures you and prepares you for what is to come."

I have a bit of a problem with this passage because I feel like we constantly take a little bit of God and then expand Him to fit what we need and also we try and explain God. So in this case with Rick Warren we see a formula is put on God. He gives a dream, then delays, then matures, then provides. But this is crap! One could just as easily say "God gives you a dream and in faith you should follow it now without delay." And you can justify it! After the quote given above Warren goes on to talk about how the people of Israel had to go through that time of delay in the dessert and thus his statement is justified. Well, I'll use the same book, in Exodus Moses meets God in the form of a burning bush and God gives Moses the new path that his life will go on. But does Moses go through the same period of delay like Warren said people will? No, Moses and Aaron go to Egypt right away, with no delay to mature in faith, even though Moses just heard a bush of fire talk to him he has no time to "mature in faith" over the bush. And now my statement above is justified. Using the same book, same Bible, just I took what I wanted out of the Bible the same way Warren did.

What is also interesting about all this is we don't need for us to have ownership over the control for us to feel comfortable. So in both statements made above by Warren and myself, God is still very much the one on control, we were not given the power of control, but since both statements put a formula on God we feel comfortable because we know the formula. So we don't even need to be in control we just want to know what's going to happen and how. And from that we get our sense of control. It's all a mind game we play with ourselves. We will make up anything to make ourselves feel better even if that means making a formula for God to function under.

So how does God work? I don't know. Not fully. No one knows fully, we can only get little glimpses of how God might work. It's supposed to be that way. If we can figure out how God works than He ceases to be in control and thus ceases to be God! Look at Job. He thinks he figured out how God works and determines that all the hardships he has suffered he did not deserve, and from our perspective he probably didn't, at least we can't figure out why he would deserve such torture. But what does God say when he speaks to Job? "Well done figuring this out Job, you did not deserve all this, I was testing you." No! He rocks his world by saying "Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me. Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it?"

You see we don't know how this all works. We do not go through some formula outlined in a book. All we have is Salvation in Christ and that is enough. His grace is sufficient. Seek comfort in that, not in weak justifications that make you feel better for a moment. Like most things it will leave you empty with only a space Christ can fill.

superNATURAL

The great thing about walking with Christ is how faith becomes so dynamic as you learn and walk more. Thus every year is far different from the last because my faith is always developing. These past two years I have gotten to know more and more about the supernatural side of our God. When speaking of the supernatural it often means one of two things, either the Holy Spirit or the supernatural things capable through Christ, such as healing. Either way I see them as some what similar or at least intimately tied to each other.

Because of learning more and more about this topic I have been getting to know more and more people who are very connected to the Holy Spirit or at least seem to be very connected. People who believe that the dreams they have are prophecy or that they have the power to heal. I have no problem with this, I too want to be in a place with the Spirit someday where I am capable of these things. But here is my concern, it is short and simple; I think we can easily get enthralled by the supernatural side of Christ and neglect His natural side. In other words we are attracted to Christ by His wonders and not by His purpose. There is a reason why Christ constantly told people to not spread word of what they have seen Him do, such as healings. He did not want to draw the attention of people only seeking out a miraculous sign, He wanted those who would believe in Him without ever seeing the lame walk and the blind see. I would argue that the banner over Christ is His love and not His works. Yet it is my fear that we will become so focused on His supernatural works that we will forget about His natural character. Because honestly the supernatural ways of Christ are worthless in us without the natural side of Him first, that natural side being His love.

"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing."
-1 Corinthians 13:1-3

You see before Christ was a miracle worker, a healer, a prophet or anything else, He was and is love. So what good is it to do are be in touch with all the supernatural stuff without first knowing Christ and His love? Sure you can see the future or move mountains but Paul seems to deem you as "no good" if you don't have love.

So lets quit playing these games and getting distracted. We must be wise enough to know that we can become distracted by even godly things, for example, there is nothing wrong with giving sight to the blind but if you seek that over seeking Christ alone than it is a deadly distraction. Seek Christ, that's it!