What is our motivation behind our actions? There are many motivations for what we do: greed, power, lust, and hate, but I am finding out that the most important and most lasting actions are done out of love. I am convinced more and more that love is the most powerful force in this world. It makes even more sense when we read that God is love (1 John 4:8).
The other motivations fail in comparison to actions done out of love. I’ve heard of so many stories of one person’s hate being overwhelmed by love. Why is it? We weren’t made to hate, we weren’t made to seek power, we weren’t made to be motivated by greed, we were made to love and
We had the privilege to tag along with a church that does a Jesus Bus ministry. Linköping, Sweden, is a college town and so many of the youth go to a strip of bars in the town center to hang out with friends. The Jesus Bus has been coming to the town square for quite awhile. It is well known in the town for serving warm Glogg and coffee with a hot pastry on Saturday nights from around 10PM to 2AM. It gives the group a chance to strike up conversations with students and people from town. Many times it results in prayer and ministering to these people.
I was so encouraged to see the healthy way the group goes about “evangelizing”. It is set up in almost the same way
We made it! We traveled halfway around the world from the most remote islands in the world to Sweden in northern Europe.
Here’s the breakdown of travel:
Kona airport delay – 3 hours
Kona to San Francisco – 6 Hours
San Francisco to Frankfurt, Germany – 10 hours
Frankfurt Germany to Stockholm, Sweden – 2 hours
Stockholm to Linkoping by train – 2:30 hours
Time change between Kona and Sweden – 12 hours
This week we had Jamie Smith come and visit us from The Outerbanks, North Carolina. His most impacting day for me was when he told us about his in-depth study of Eagles following this verse Isaiah 40:28-31:
ast week, we were in class and our speaker, Corey Martin, started talking about relationship and community and how God views them. We talked about the Trinity and how the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are always working together since the beginning of time. In scripture, Jesus talks about only doing what he sees the Father doing. The Spirit reveals the Father and the Son. The Father entrusts things to Jesus and when you ask things in Jesus name, He will do it to glorify God. A good chapter on the Trinity relationship is John 14. You get the picture that They are always working together and loving each other.
Very spontaneously, my class started to stand up and uplift our brothers and sisters. Not things like “I really like your hair” but by speaking life and encouragement to them. It was amazing! The whole teaching
I was in Brazil a few years ago and was speaking to a class of 4th or 5th graders. It was an amazing opportunity to talk to them about Jesus. I decided to talk to them about how just as they become healthy by playing soccer, they also need to be healthy spiritually. There attention span was pretty short so I resorted to doing jumping jacks in the front of class! It was probably the first time any of them had seen Americans so I may have given them an interesting view of Americans haha.
My message to that class was pretty basic, but I’ve realized spiritual health has more parallels to physical health than I had originally thought. The more I read the Bible the more I see action verbs. Just on this
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Calvin
Puigcerdà Pond
February 4, 2012:
"Anytime Noel! I’ll see ya tomorrow at El Lokal"
Noel
Puigcerdà Pond
February 2, 2012:
"You really master that camera Calvin!!! Maybe I could take classes with you"
Calvin Hanson
Community with God
January 29, 2012:
"Jels, thanks for commenting on this post so I could re-read it and..."
jelle
Community with God
January 29, 2012:
"Thanks for reminding me Calv, its so true. Keep writing about it! Pride is..."
Calvin
True Freedom
January 1, 2012:
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