We went up the mountain

Our trip was great! Today I reflect on the the mountain lessons learned

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I had all intentions of recording a podcast episode from the mountains, but when you take a bus trip with about 30 middle school students and you're on the mountain with about a thousand people, it's hard to find a quiet place and time to sit aside and record without somebody walking up and saying, Hey, Mr. Daniel, can we talk? So here I am, back home, sitting at my dining room table and recording an episode about our time this year on the mountain with a bunch of middle schoolers. It was great. My name is Daniel, and for the longest time I thought that my life was ordinary and that I was just an ordinary dad. And this is my journey to see the extra in my ordinary life. Alright, I am back from the mountain, and what a trip it was. When you take six adults and about 30 middle school students, five and a half or six hours north to the mountains, it is not only a long bus ride, but it is a fantastic, exhausting, and epic week with God. We had some of the best times that I can remember at Fuge. I loved our camp pastor Steven Durbin, and I loved our worship leader. Um he was Austin Miller of the Austin Miller band. Every day they said things that made me say, wow. I had my notepad, I was writing little things down. I will probably steal some of their quotes later on, but I will give them credit. They were amazing guys, and our kids' lives are changed. One of the best things that tended to or tended, one of the best things that happened throughout the week was that four of our students gave their lives or rededicated their lives to God. And five high school students did the same. Because if you follow me and you know, you know that I am involved very heavily with the middle school ministry at our church called The Bridge. The middle school pastor, Pastor Jim, as it said on his name tag, and I, we alternate weeks. He goes one week, I go another week. My name tag said Dan the Man, by the way. Little word for the wise. Anybody going to centrifuge camps? When they ask you your nickname, if you put it down, they will put it on your name badge. So you can have some fun with that, especially if you're filling out someone else's information and getting them just to sign it. Parents, you can give your kids cute little nicknames. But it was an amazing trip. We were there, and I really got to see our students' lives change firsthand. That's one of my favorite things about being on the trip. There were a couple of instances that were not perfect because in the boys' side of the camp, we had some a little bit of a stomach bug go around. It hit one student in another chaperone's room, and then it hit two of my kids at different times. And it was pretty gross, but they got over it quickly. It was like a 24-hour bug. One kid it hit in the middle of the week. The other kid, it was like the night before we went home. I just woke up to him saying, I don't know what happened. I was asleep, and that just came out of my mouth. So then we had to clean up the room at 2.15 in the morning. But that being said, everything else was phenomenal. We went, and the way the schedule works at Fuge is breakfast is served at about 6.45. So I would ask my kids every night, what time do you want to get up? And they're like, oh, we're going to get up at 5.30 because we're going to get out and we're going to see the sunrise and go meet some people and do some stuff. Realistically, we got up about 6.15, 6.30. Made it to breakfast by 6.45 and morning worship by 8 o'clock. And then after that, we stayed going until we had to be back in the room every night at 11 o'clock, lights out at 11.30. If you've ever roomed with a group of sixth, seventh, and eighth grade boys, you know lights out at 11:30 means that they're going to start asking you all of the great questions and the deep philosophical things in life at about 11:25. Every evening we would all get laid down, and I would hear, hey, Pastor Daniel, can I ask you a question? And I was like, What you got? And we would lead into some phenomenal topics. We talked for a while. One of the boys one night, he was like, and this is a seventh grade boy, he's like, what is marriage really like? So we talked about it. I told him it is like facing all of the problems and experiencing all of the joys in your life with your best friend. I didn't tell him that. Sometimes I'm Miss Amanda's problem that we're facing together. And sometimes she's my problem that we're facing together. But I love having the conversations with our kids. I love seeing our kids stand up. This summer camp, this particular camp, centrifuge, means a lot to me because it's where when I was 16 years old, I felt a call to ministry. I'd given my life to God earlier in the year when I was 16, in November of that year, and then we went to camp in June, about two weeks before my 17th birthday. And I remember being in a time of prayer and feeling like I knew that I knew that I knew that one day I would be in ministry. I didn't realize that that would be 22 years later. I'll be 38 in a couple weeks or 21 years. But I did know that I would be there one day. In the middle of that long journey for me, I made some decisions that I thought really just blew up my chances of ministry, and I gave up. I started limiting God and I started becoming the shepherd of my own life and telling God, you can use me here, but I'm not qualified to be used there. I'm not qualified for that task anymore. Until about two or three years ago, when Amanda and I, we were working in our children's ministry, and one of our little girls that we had that was going from fifth grade to sixth grade didn't want to go to the sixth grade because she was nervous, so we decided that we would go with her to middle school. Every other week that we weren't in our children's church, we would go to the middle school ministry, and we fell absolutely head over heels in love with middle school ministry. And through a chain of events, I began our ministry training program at church. And then this past year, Pastor Jim, Pastor Jim Bob, started alternating with me and allowing me to preach every other week, which I do not take for granted because he did not have to do that. It's a huge thing for a pastor or a minister to take their calling and be willing to invest time that they could use to operate in their calling to invest in someone else's growth and someone else's development. A lot of what has happened to me in this year and transpired in my life in the positive way has been because of Pastor Jim Bob's obedience and his willingness to open up and share with me and allow me the chance to experience leadership with him being my safety net. It's an experience that a lot of pastors don't get. A lot of times when you're in ministry, especially when you're in ministry school, you finish up and you fly or you fall. But I've had the unique opportunity of having a mentor there with me every step of the way for the past two years. And it has been something that is refreshing. It is helpful. Sometimes he'll give me this look and I'm like, oh yeah, that's an area I need to work on. And then other times I see a nod and a smile of agreement and acknowledgement, and I'm like, all right, you're doing good, Daniel. Keep going. Pastor Jim Bob has been amazing. He and his wife, Tracy, were my Sunday school teachers back in the time that I talked about when I first felt called to Jesus. His ordination service is the first ordination service I ever saw. So him being my mentor and him being the person who is showing me and helping me build the foundation of ministry that I've had has been truly special. Him along with Pastor Gary, my youth pastor from when I was in youth, who still is our family life pastor at church. And he, along with Pastor Brian, handled the high school students and then Brandon. Pastor Brandon does the college students at church. But spending that time with Pastor Gary and Pastor Brian, because they also brought the high school kids on the ministry is so valuable. And it's so wonderful to see the way they interact with kids. Still, because I remember the way they interacted with me, and it's still happening now. They're still building relationships and still spending time with children and helping them grow closer to God. On the mountain, we had times where we would get to go do track times, and the kids would do things ranging from volleyball to ropes course to all about the Bible and four boys only and four girls only, and they would learn about Jesus. Every day they would come to me and they would tell me something that they had learned. They would tell me an exciting experience, something that happened to them at camp. And I loved every second of it. For many of the students, this is their first time ever being away from their moms and dads. And being able to see them walk by you with confidence. The first day they're a little nervous, but after that, they have confidence. They say, Hey, I'm running to Nibblenook to get a snack, or I'm running to the coffee shop to get a cup of coffee. You get a little glimpse of the kind of person that they're going to be when they're grown and they're independent and they have their own lives and they're doing their own thing. And it's just something that when you're spending so much of your own life investing in students, it's something wonderful to see because you look at them and you say, Okay, they're going to make it. Or for some of them, you're like, okay, they need to work on their directions. Because we had a couple kids who would just forget where everything was on the third or fourth day when they should know where everything is. But I realized being there, the weight of what my call is. Because God has called us to be shepherds for this flock of middle school students. God has called us to lead and to guide, and not just lead and guide them, but to go before them and walk a walk that we would be proud to see them walk. There have been times in my life where if my students walked the same way I did, I would really, really not like that. But there's also been times where I know if I saw these boys make decisions that I made where I'd say, you're doing the right thing. It's a consistent thing that I have to be conscious of that these boys are watching. Not just my kids, but other people's kids are watching to see what we do, to see how we respond. And if you're an adult with a child in your life, you have to think about that. How are you responding to life's difficulties? How do you handle the challenges and the things that come against you? Do you react like a victim and immediately complain and say how wrong the circumstances are and how against you they are, and how you don't understand why this is happening to you? Or do you respond properly? Do you respond with faith? Do you respond with hope? Hope that even though you don't understand what's going on, Christ has a plan for you. You respond in the knowledge that God has had a plan for your life since the very foundations of the earth, that he knew you before you were even formed in your mother's womb. And that he has great plans for you. How do you respond? Because when you have someone watching you, how you respond is oftentimes how they will respond. Amanda and I talk about our kids often, and one of the things that we say is where we walk, our kids are going to run. If we walk with this sin, our kids will run with this sin. If we walk with the response, just kind of every once in a while, we're like, oh, this is horrible. Our kids are gonna be, this is the worst day ever. And they're gonna be even more than we are. Because they're gonna take what we do and they're gonna run with it. So we always say that it's best for us, best for our family, best for who we are, to put God first and respond with God first. Have we always done that? No. Have we seen negative behavior patterns in our kids because they emulate what we have done in the past? Yes. We've seen it, and that's when we're like, oh, whoa, this is an area we need to create in ourselves if we want to see our kids correct it in themselves. We're putting in the work. We're putting in the work because we love God. We're putting in the work because we love our kids, we're putting in the work because we love the kids that God has trusted us with in ministry. And it's important that we're there for them. I have a unique opportunity coming up this week that Pastor Gary told me one day when we were waiting in line for lunch. He said, Hey Daniel, you know we have summer celebration coming up next Wednesday. And I said, Yes, sir. He goes, Normally we have three pastors preach it, but this year you got it. It's on you. So this Wednesday night at our church, I get to preach our summer celebration, and it is so special to me. When we felt called to go home, summer celebration was the first service that we attended. And I told Amanda, this is where God has us. This is where we're gonna be. This year, our theme is love God, love people, celebrate together. Wednesday night, we're gonna celebrate everything that God did on the mountain. We're gonna celebrate all of the great gifts He's given us. And we're also gonna discuss how to love God and how to share that love for God with people so that we can go to heaven and that we can bring someone with us. God's laid something special on my heart and a way that we're going to invite people to experience this walk with God that we share. I believe it'll be powerful because God put it on my heart as not something that I came up with by myself. It's something that I immediately knew I needed to do. And it's something so out of the norm for the way I would normally operate in things myself. So I'm excited to put it in his hands and see what he does. I want to take just a moment before I wrap things up and encourage you. God has a plan for your life. God has a plan for your children's life. God has a plan for everyone's life that you come in contact with. The most important thing you can ever do with your life is make it to heaven. And the second most important thing you can ever do is to bring someone with you. Those are the favorite two quotes from my dear friend and mentor Pat Hodges. Pat acknowledges the importance of pursuing God and also the importance of having that pursuit lead lead others to Jesus. And it's the truth. As you go throughout your week, as you go throughout your journey, as you go throughout your life, no matter what you do, if you can do those two things, go to heaven and bring people with you, you have lived a rich and lovely and vibrant life for God. I can't wait to talk to you guys again. I went to the mountain with intentions of recording this episode up there, but the mountain was busier than I thought. Pat said one thing when we were on the mountain, he said, hey, the kids are all still the same age. They're sixth, seventh, and eighth graders, but we're the ones getting older. We're the ones that it's a little bit harder to get up the mountain. We're the ones that we're a little more tired than we were last year because they're all still the same age. We're just aging. But we're also growing in wisdom. We're growing in our ability to understand our kids and understand what they need, how to speak to them, and our ability to tell the high school what our eighth graders need that are moving to them next year. It's a wonderful experience together. And I'm excited to see what God does in your life. We now have the ability on our podcast to accept fan mail. So instead of telling me how wonderful and how handsome I sound on the radio, I would prefer that you tell me what God is doing in your life. Please take the opportunity to send us some fan mail so that I can read what God is doing, and you never know. I might read it here on the show. With that being said, I love you. God loves you, and you should love you too. I'm gonna pray and we're gonna get out of here, and I'll see you next time. God, thank you for everything that you have given us. Your name is above all names on earth, in the heavens, below the earth. There is no one or nothing that matches you, and nothing can stand before you, God. We praise you for your presence and your love for us. I thank you for your provision. I thank you for your forgiveness. I thank you for your mercy, and I ask that you help me to dispense the same mercy and forgiveness that you have given me. Use me, guide me, reach the lost through my life, God. And when people hear me speak, let them hear from you. When they see my walk, let them see your footsteps right beside me. I love you, God. I praise you. I'm gonna serve you forever. In your precious name I pray. Amen. Love you guys.