MOVING

MOVING TO TUMBLR.

HERE IT IS:

ADVENTURECENCI.TUMBLR.COM

Miss you already blogspot.

Thirsting to Know Him, and some thoughts

Quote of the Week:
"There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice."
~John Calvin~

Hey everybody! its my fifteenth day out here on the Jersey Shore, and there is a major thunderstorm goin on right now so i find my self taking time out of my Job hunt to sit down a blog a lil bit. This summer so far has been amazing this group of people this year in OC has been a blessing in my life and a true pleasure to be around. Its fun to meet and hang out with the friends and disciples of my close friends from last summer. We have been having an awesome time together in fellowship, and one of my favorite memories so far has been our student led prayer times. They are a time were we as a group get together and just cry out to God and ask him for big things. They have been moving and intense times in prayer and the Lord is going to honor the prayers of His people.
As the title of this Blog says this week is titled "Thirsting to know Him" which is a week for us as a project to take a time out from the craziness of arriving and meeting 80 or so new people and just focus on the Lord.

"As a deer pants for flowing streams,
so pants my soul for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God."
~Psalm 42:1-2~

This verse has become my heart for this week, i want a deep thirst for God that can only be quenched by the living God and walking in the Power of the Holy Spirit everyday. I pray that this week would give everyone a thirst and that it will not just last the rest of this summer but until we see Him face to face.
I have been reading a book I got at The Gospel Coalition Confrence called The Bookends of the Christian Life Written by two men named Jerry Bridges and Bob Bevington. I just finished reading about the First Bookend which is "The Righteousness of Christ" It has been a challaenging read thus far and really showed me a lot of areas in my life where i need to see Christ as fully sufficient instead of leaning on self and my own abilities.

"But its not enough to merely see the righteousness of Christ as all-sufficient; we must see it as all-suficient for us. Jesus was perfecty obedient in our place, as our substitute. Have we lacked purity? Jesus was pure in our place. Have we lack patience? Jesus was patient in our place. In every area where we see failure and sin, Jesus was successful at providing a perfect obedience that's credited to us."
~The Bookends of the Christian Life, pg. 70~

Self-righteousness creeps into our lives and makes us lean on our own abilities instead of what Christ has already done. That can lead to sin and that brings on guilt for what we have done and that is not where the righteousness of Christ should lead you either. If you know and have a relationship with Jesus Christ rely on what He has already done He has put his righteousness on you and you are no longer seen as sinful. let him satisfy. If you do not have a personal realtionship with Jesus you can have it any time you wan you just need to understand that we are all sinful and that what Jesus did on the cross paid for your sin and ask through faith (prayer) for Jesus to come into your life and forgive you of your sins and ask him to lead your life instead of doing it on your own. Take on the righteousness of Christ and stop trying to do it on your own, check this out two this lays it out well. If you would like to talk about this more e-mail me or facebook me or call if u want. Hope you have an amazing day! HE IS ALIVE!

In Him who did what we couldnt,
Andy C.


Video of the Week:
Video from Phil Wickham who is an awesome guy and an extremly talented musician. He probably has one of the best voices i have ever heard. Hope you enjoy it and if you do check his brother who is also extremly talented name Evan Wickham

Flickr Page

Howdy YA'LL Hope you are doing great!!!! here is a quick post i dont have time to write out anything right now but i wanted to post the Little somethin somethin for ya'll, so here is our flikr page and you can see all the amazing people here and all the fun stuff we do while on project!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/oceancitysp/

Love, 

Andy

Back in the Good Ol' OC

*Quote of the Week*

"How sweet it was for me to rid myself of those fruitless pleasures that I once feared so much to lose...You drove them from me. You the true, the sovereign joy. You drove them from me and took their place. You who are sweeter than all pleasure."
~Aurelius Augustine~

Finally, made it here it here after a what felt like forever since I had been accepted and then the long car ride from Ohio all the way out to the east coast. It was strange coming over the bridge onto the island it felt as if I had never left Ocean City. Last year was an amazing experience here in Ocean City with the 08 crew, and i am excited to see what the Lord does this summer through this whole new group of people. It has been awesome to meet all of these new people and learn about what God has done in their lives and how the Lord has brought them here. One of the best stories is from 2 brothers from the University of Illinois (Jaron and Dane) who are both here on project. But only couple months ago they had no idea how they would raise the support to get here. Jaron went on a trip out to Southern California while out there he went to a taping of a lil show we like to call "The Price is Right", you can see where this story is going...he made it up to contestants row and won his bid got up on stage won his game and won enough mony on The Price is Right to fully support his and his brothers trip here for the summer!!! How amazing is that!!! The Lord works in weird and awesome, and sometimes funny ways to get what he wants accomplished. So if you find the time through out the week pray that the Lord would continue to build the community here in Ocean City, NJ and that we would grow deeper in our relationships with oneanother. I pray that you have an awesome week and the that you trust in the Lord more and more.

In Him who provides ALL things,
Andy C.

*Video of the Week*

This is the new song off the new CD from Reach Records Artist Tedashii. Havent had much tme to listen but should be a great album.

Quote Of The Week:

"However hard some things are to understand, it is never helpful to start picking and choosing biblical truths we find congenial, as if the Bible is an open-shelved supermarket where we are at perfect liberty to choose only the chocolate bars. For the Christian, it is God's Word, and it is not negotiable. What answers we find may not be exhaustive, but they give us the God who is there, and who gives us some measure of comfort and assurance. The alternative is a god we manufacture, and who provides no comfort at all. Whatever comfort we feel is self-delusion, and it will be stripped away at the end when we give an account to the God who has spoken to us, not only in Scripture, but supremely in his Son Jesus Christ." 

~D.A. Carson~

I am in my third home The A.C. Buehler Library on the beautiful campus of Elmhurst College. Yester i found out that Residence Life was going to kick me and 70 of my fellow juniors off campus for our senior year. At first i was rather upset at my new homelessness but i remembered that last time i checked Jesus was still in Control. And i remembered of Gods promise of great works in the lives of his Children (Ephesians 2:10).  God has Good works for us to do and whether or not they are in our plan God wants us to do them, its not like you give God a Contract and ask him to sign it, its the other way around.

Speaking of doing God's work 33 other elmhurst students and I will be heading down to Panama City Beach, Florida to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ to our fellow college students from all around the country who are down the to party. This will be my third time going and i am still just as excited as i was my first time going down there. If you could please pray for the Holy Spirit to prepare the hearts of the people that we will meet down there and also for Boldness for all the students that will be down there. 

Here is an Article that has really can relate to how i have been feeling lately and this was a great and convicting read for me. its really short and to the point:

Never Let the Gospel Get Smaller

March 17, 2009  |  By: John Piper 
Category: Commentary

Here is a simple exhortation that I have been trying to implement in our family:

Seek to see and feel the gospel as bigger as years go by rather than smaller.

Our temptation is to think that the gospel is for beginners and then we go on to greater things. But the real challenge is to see the gospel as the greatest thing—and getting greater all the time.

The Gospel gets bigger when, in your heart,

• grace gets bigger;
• Christ gets greater;
• his death gets more wonderful;
• his resurrection gets more astonishing;
• the work of the Spirit gets mightier;
• the power of the gospel gets more pervasive;
• its global extent gets wider;
• your own sin gets uglier;
• the devil gets more evil;
• the gospel's roots in eternity go deeper;
• its connections with everything in the Bible and in the world get stronger;
• and the magnitude of its celebration in eternity gets louder.

So keep this in mind: Never let the gospel get smaller in your heart.

Pray that it won’t. Read solid books on it. Sing about it. Tell someone about it who is ignorant or unsure about it.

Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel.... For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. (1 Corinthians 15:1-4)

So dont let the gospel get small. Live it and love its truth.

In Him Who reedeems,

Andy C.

Video of the Week:

Lots of Goodies for You!!! Because I Love You!

I Toatally Stole This from Another Blog Called "Between Two Worlds" which you should Check out the address is:

http://theologica.blogspot.com/

Its is a great little article from D.A. Carson who is a New Testament Proffesor at Trinity in Deerfield, IL. 

D.A. Carson on the Relationship Between the Gospel and Social Issues

From an essay by D.A. Carson on "The Biblical Gospel" (in For Such a Time as This: Perspectives on Evangelicalism, Past, Present and Future, ed. Steve Brady and Harold Rowdon [London: Evangelical Alliance, 1986], p. 83):

"Pundits have often noted that many in the Western world have become single-issue people. The church is not immune from such influences. The result is that many Christians assume the gospel (often, regrettably, some form of the ‘simple gospel’) but are passionate about something on the relative periphery: abortion, poverty, forms of worship, cultural decay, ecology, overpopulation, pornography, family breakdown, and much more. By labelling these complex subjects ‘relatively peripheral’ I open myself to attack from as many quarters as there are subjects on the list. For example, some of those whose every thought is shaded green will not be convinced that the ecological problems we face are peripheral to human survival. But I remain quite unrepentant. From a biblical-theological perspective, these challenges, as serious as they are, are reflections of the still deeper problem—our odious alienation from God. If we tackle these problems without tackling what is central, we are merely playing around with symptoms. This is no excuse for Christians not to get involved in these and many other issues. But it is to insist that where we get involved in such issues, many of which are explicitly laid upon us in scripture, we do so from the centre out, ie beginning with full-orbed gospel proclamation and witness and passion, and then, while acknowledging that no one can do everything, doing our ‘significant something’ to address the wretched entailments of sin in our world. The good news of Jesus Christ will never allow us to be smug and other-worldly in the face of suffering and evil. But what does it profit us to save the world from smog and damn our own souls? There are lots of ways of getting rid of pornography. For instance, one does not find much smut in Saudi Arabia. But one doesn’t find much of the gospel there, either.

The point is that in all our efforts to address painful and complex societal problems, we must do so from the centre, out of a profound passion for the gospel. This is for us both a creedal necessity and a strategic choice. It is a creedal necessity because this gospel alone prepares men and women for eternity, for meeting our Maker—and all problems are relativized in the contemplation of the cross, the final judgement, and eternity. It is a strategic choice because we are persuaded that the gospel, comprehensively preached in the power of the Spirit, will do more to transform men and women, not least their attitudes, than anything else in the world."

Also found an intresting Article in Time Magazine on what is being dubbed "New Calvanism". Which Time is calling one of the "10 ideas Changing the world right now"

And Tedashii a member of Reach Records Just Released a single off of his new album (Identity Crisis) whcih is realeased on May 19th!!! Its sounds great and is just another great album of God Glorifying Hip-Hop So enjoy the single i am.

Also i havent givin you guys a video in a while so here you go!

Back at School and Back to Blogging....

Quote of the Week:

"We are not human beings on a spiritual adventure. We are spiritual beings on a human adventure."
~Wendell Deyo (Thanks Ty)~

Well summer Project is over and i am finally getting over the deep depression I was in afterwards. :) just kidding...but seriously. I am in my Second week of School here at Elmhurst and God is already doing crazy things here and in my own personal life. I am undergoing a lot of personal Change and i am trusting the Lord with it and leaving it all up to him. At Elmhurst, God has been showing up like CRAZY!!!! Our prayer for this summer was for Illinois hall would be full for our Thursday night meetings for Campus Crusade, And well as always the Lord was faithful and responded by doing just that so Praise The Lord!!! I wish i had more time to Focus my Thoughts but i am in a rush between Classes Thanks for reading and Check back for more.

Video of The Week: I know its long but take time to watch it and Stop and Think.