Our Hope and Our Mission

I haven't figured out how often I want to post on here. I would like to come up with a regular schedule for that, but knowing me I'll do everything but the schedule I land on. So maybe it's safer to just not have a plan right now. I'm one of those creative, unorganized types if you haven't figured that out from my first post lol.

A lot happened yesterday and not so much today so I'll probably talk more about yesterday. Yesterday the capital "C" Church just blew me away! My church is going through a rough time these past two weeks. We've lost our lead pastor and our executive pastor. It's a big church with multiple pastors. It wasn't an instance of our pastors choosing to serve somewhere else. It was more of one of those moments that makes your heart hurt, anger boil, and really challenges your already shaky ability to trust. Originally our church staff, governing board, elders, and remaining pastors didn't know how our church would react. An emergency meeting of church leaders and members was called. I'm a member, so I was there and saw this first hand. One of our pastors read out from the stage the statement that was later posted on our church website of the incident. I could feel the waves of disbelief and numbness wash over us all. We were all listening hard and I think we were all listening for the same thing because when he got to a certain part of the statement we all jumped to our feet. That part was "We remain utterly committed to the mission of transforming unconvinced people into wholehearted followers of Jesus." It was like a bomb went off in the auditorium! A 500 strong crowd jumped to its feet and cheered and clapped. I saw the looks on our pastors' faces. This was not the reaction they had been expecting at all. It was a moment that I will treasure. I was and am so proud of my church. Our main concern was the mission that God gave us. We weren't a crowd of people mindlessly following some charismatic leaders. We were truly changed, on fire people with hearts beating as one for the gospel of Jesus. From that moment, our church has been stronger, closer, and more unified.

Of course, that was the leader and member meeting. Our church averages an attendance of around 5,000 people on our weekend services across our 4 campuses. I was serving this weekend on speaker support, so I got to attend all 3 of our services. I'm so proud of my leaders. They got back up on that stage for every service and read out the statement. We were not going to sweep this under the rug. We were going to be honest, transparent, and address the truth. I was holding my breath, daring to hope. At the same moment, same part of the statement about being committed to the mission, the people in that auditorium jumped to their feet and cheered, just like we did in that leader/member meeting. It happened every single service. What's more, we had more people attend this weekend than I can ever remember! We were parking cars in the field next to our building because we ran out of parking spaces!!! Our intermittent lead pastor shared with us that many local churches had been praying for us. Two of them even driving around in our parking lot during the week, praying. An outpouring of prayer and support came from our partner churches and local christian schools. What you would expect to kill a church, instead made us stronger and pulled together the capital "C" Church. I could feel it in the air. Jesus is here, taking something horrible and turning it around for good for His Church (Romans 8:28). We're still grieving over this tragedy, but we don't grieve as people who have no hope. We're bursting with hope. I can't wait to see what Jesus is going to do next!

Life Is Like A Box Of Chocolates . . .

So, how to begin. Now that I've finally made the leap of starting this new blog it looks like I'll have to actually find something to talk about. Since this is a first post and introductory that shouldn't be too hard. I'm not ready to make the leap of giving out my real name, it's a bit unique. So in fitting with the title of this blog and my screen name I'll refer to myself by my middle name, Kawika. That's pronounced with the "w" sounding like a "v." Kawika is a Hawaiian name. If you do your research you'll discover that Kawika is the Hawaiianized version of the name David. Yes, I am female. Yes, my parents gave me a boy's name. But if you research the name David, you'll find that it means "Beloved." Therefore, Kawika means "Beloved." I think it's beautiful and it also makes me feel better lol.

What will I be talking about in this blog? Well, a bit of everything. In my previous blog, Simply Life by Faith, I wrote about topics ranging from light-hearted to heavy and deep. Being a female I don't compartmentalize well and this blog will likely be a mixture. I don't shy away from talking about God or hard issues like mental illness. This is not a blog for the faint of heart. But there will be plenty of fun mixed in. Just like in life, everything is mixed together. Life hands us things in a jumble, not in organized packages. Just like Forrest Gump said, "Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get." This blog will be similar and that's not a bad thing.

It would have made a lot of sense for me to just continue posting in my previous blog, seeing as my approach to blogging hasn't changed. However, it has been a very long time since I really wrote in my blog and I was looking for a fresh start. Life is a journey and my life has changed drastically since I started that blog. I thought that since God has been teaching me about love and how much He loves me, Simply Loved would be a good title. That's what I've been discovering lately. I grew up hearing that God loves me. I took Him up on His offer 13 years ago and surrendered to His love and gave Him my life. The insane thing about God is His love is so deep and so overflowing that after 13 years of walking with Him, I'm still learning more about His love. It's so deep there is no end.

So I think I'll end this first post with a list of possible and probable topics so you know what you're getting into. I'll be writing about:

God
The Church
Ministry
Video Games
Comics and Books
Nerd Culture
Dr. Who
Anime
Movies
Arts
Music
Gardening
Sustainable Living
Health and Fitness
Psychology and Mental Disorders
The demons of our pasts (ex. past abuse, unhealthy patterns)

It probably doesn't clear up much. Like I said, I'll be writing about everything. So stay tuned and thank you for reading my blog.

I gotta think of a cool catchphrase and put it here. Suggestions are welcome!