Since there is NO youth ministry here at all, I am literally starting from the foundation, and that is just building relationships. There are great things in the works, but right now, I am simply focusing on getting to know the students that I have. Once I get in with them, I can start to build on that foundation.

I appreciate all of your continued prayers. The road ahead is a long one, and I know that I am still in the “honeymoon” phase so to speak. Everything right now is very optimistic and cheery, but I know that there is hard work to be done. So here we go!

It’s almost 3 in the morning and I can’t stop thinking about you.
I’m not exactly sure who you are or where you live…
But there are some things you should know…

I love Jesus with all my heart; I know you will too…
When I say I love Him, I mean…
I REALLY LOVE HIM.
And His church.
I plan on loving you like I love His church.
I’ve made a lot of mistakes and I’m not perfect (ha, I guess that’s obvious).
But I will choose to pursue righteousness and holiness in all I do.
I will be man of integrity.
A trustworthy man.
A strong leader.
I promise to be the best husband you could ever ask for in every way.

I look forward to raising little sons and daughters for the kingdom of heaven.
And you can rest assure that I will treat you like a princess.
My name means valiant protector.
I plan on living up to my name and being the valiant protector of your heart and emotions.

I will never cheapen your value by calling other women names reserved for you. Never.
I will not so much think a thought about another woman in a way reserved for you.
I will tell you that you are the most beautiful girl in the world and mean it.
I will tell you that there is no one like you and mean it.
I will never ever cheapen what we have by giving it to others.
I honor you too much for that.
You will know it.

I never plan on making you submit to me.
I only plan to be a good enough leader to earn your honor and respect so that you can trust me even when things are unclear.
I will never abuse you.
I plan on being open and honest about everything in my life.
I know I can trust you.
I know that we will probably have arguments, but no fighting.
I plan on being civil and controlled when speaking, I trust you will do the same.
And if things get a little heated… our love will be too great to let the sun go down on it.
Making up will be wonderful.

I will wait as long as required to find you.
I really mean, until the Lord brings you to me.
I am asking for a whole lot.
I’m not even going try to lie to you.
I’ve known for a long time that my life would never be “normal.”
I know that will excite you.
I feel that we are going to travel together. A lot.
In fact, you are key and essential to what will be our ministry.

I will sing to you. If you want.
I will open your door for you.
I will pray with you.
I will worship God with you.
I will read to our kids and pray with them.
I will do what I say I’m going to do.
I will admit when I’m wrong.
I will do everything I can to help your dreams come true.
I will study the word and share my revelation with you often.
I will be patient with you.
I will ask for directions.

I’ve had these dreams, I’ll tell you about them later, but they make me smile.
Songs, poems… I just want to explode.
There is so much going through my mind… I can’t type it all.
It would take me all night.
Hopefully we’ll talk soon, then it will be easier.

I may not be the best looking guy.
I may not be the richest man.
I may not be the perfect guy.
But no one, I promise, no one will ever love you like I can.
Not on earth anyway.

Well… I suppose I’ll stop here for tonight.
I have church tomorrow morning and I want to be alert for Jesus.
I wish you could be there with me.
Maybe you will be… maybe not.

Maybe you don’t even speak English. Ha. Who knows.
Oh yeah, God knows…
We’ll just wait on Him, ok?
Again, I don’t know who you are or where you live, but I want you to know…

I’m praying for you.
You are beautiful.
Let’s change the world together.

Forever Yours

Tony Mazon

I got an invitation to join “pownce,” the new social networking community of Kevin Rose (founder of Digg.com) and friends. So far, it’s kind of like Twitter and social “sharing” of things lke URLs, files, and common events. I think it has great potential as a collaborative tool, and I definitely see it as being in it’s “infant” stages of learning to walk. I think the minds behind it have great ideas, and I can’t wait to see what’s in store.

Join Pownce

Part 1 – The House. Earlier this month, my parents sold their house. Almost a year a go, they bought a new house in Missouri. They got a sweet deal on it. But now the old house is gone. This is the house that I grew up in. To me, this is the ONLY house they ever had (even though it was their second house after I was born). The deal was supposed to be finished at the end of the month, and then my parents would move out of it then.

Well, the deal with the new owners went much quicker than anticipated, and my parents had to be out by Tuesday, July 3 (only two weeks after the buyers started the process). My dad hadn’t anticipated it to move so quickly, so he hadn’t placed his two week notice at his job yet. That changes a few things, since they can’t just leave town the day they move out. So they ended up making arrangements to stay with my sister until July 16. They frantically began packing what little they still had at the house (most of it had already been moved to their new house in Missouri) to be out on July 3rd. A few things took place, and they ended up not having to be out until July 5th (Thursday)

Part 2 – The Unexpected. On the day that my parents were originally supposed to be out, my dad was getting ready to go to work, when he became very sick very suddenly. My mom found him passed out in the bathroom, and immediately called 911. He was rushed to the emergency room, and they ran some tests to discover that he had a bleeding ulcer. He has been under a lot of stress at his job, and the anxiousness of selling their old house only adds to it. He finally went home yesterday (July 6th), with instructions to rest for about a week.

Part 3 – Conclusion. So with them having to be out of the house this week, and then my dad being in the hospital, it was a pretty crazy week, especially for them. On top of that, the 4th of July holiday fell right smack in the middle of all of this. Of all the times that this could have happened, it was the week they had to move out. Once again, I thank god that my parents are godly, for only He could give them strength to go through all of this.

My dad spent his first of the last two weeks at work in the hospital, then his last week at my sister’s. So his final two weeks he won’t even be there. They fly out on July 16, to arrive at their new home.

To put it simply…I have become busy yet again. April saw a lot of time working on a new site for Pastor Connie, and beginning development on Pastor Berteau’s new website. Both of those have become major projects in themselves.

Gladly, I have finished Knowing the Word’s website AND store. I am very happy with the way they turned out. I admit, I didn’t design them from the ground up. Instead I used WordPress for the main site, since the focus is a radio program with regular updates and with added plugins, I also gave it audio playback and podcasting support. The store was created using the open source shopping cart, oscommerce because of it’s ease of setup and use.

I have been helping Matt get ready for the missions trip to Nicaragua, which they are currently on as I write this. That was definitely a blast, even though I didn’t go this year on the trip. This is the first time I haven’t gone on a missions trip when I was around at the inception of it’s planning. I wish I could have gone, but alas I could not.

The reason is that for almost a year now, I have been looking for a full time youth pastoring job. I had a few openings that I interviewed with. Some in person, some over the phone. But so far, nothing has come about, other than waiting. It’s one of the hardest things having to wait for someone else to get the ball rolling once you go through an interview. But God knows what He is doing and will put me in the right place at the right time. Of that I have no doubts.

In a nutshell, there is the last 3 months. At least the important stuff.

After writing the discussion on repentance, a lot of things got turning in my mind. We look at repentance as this great condemning thing. We think of judgment, death, guilt, shame, etc. But that is quite the opposite of what it really is. Repentance is the door to freedom in Christ. Only the power of Christ can set us free and make us holy and wholly like Him. But we can only gain access to that power through repentance.

Now, repentance is not that time you came to an altar and asked for forgiveness only to go back to those things that you supposedly repented of the very next day. On the contrary, true repentance causes a revolution to take place in your life. If we continue to live as before, then we must question our salvation and question our repentance. True repentance will cause deep change to take place in our lives.

As I got to the end of writing, this part of it really nailed me.

We aren’t ruthless with sin! Many “Christians” spend half of their time sinning, and the other half of their time repenting of that sin! This should not be so. Sin defiles and destroys, it pollutes and poisons, curses and corrupts. Yet we think it’s sweet! We tolerate it because of the temporary benefits it gives us.

The problem is superficial repentance. We repent with our lips, but our heart still longs for the things that sin gives us. We really aren’t free because we really don’t want to be. We still maintain the possibility of committing that same sin. But God will never remove the guilt as long as we continue to entertain the sin. It is deep folly to desire that God forgive us of something that we intend to commit. The Lord is looking at the heart and is more concerned with how we respond to temptation today than with what we promise to do with the temptation tomorrow.

Ouch. God, may I always be a person of deep repentance like David, that repented not because he was wrong, but because it hurt you and put a wedge in the relationship.

Heard about this on a podcast…It basically let’s the world know what I am doing. Do I care? Do I want the world to know what I am doing 24/7? Well, not necessarily…but I can see how something like this can be attractive to teens.

Teenagers are always looking for attention, for their voice to be heard, to be noticed. While I myself may not be into Twitter much, I can only imagine the countless number of teens that would take advantage of such a thing. Plus, it’s kind of a great way to get deeper into the minds of teenagers.

I’m gonna give it a spin for a bit, see how I like it.

A very dear friend of mine got me thinking about coffee from a new perspective: Christianity. We as Christians are not unlike coffee. Some people like it, some don’t. Some people like us, some don’t. Coffee has a very distinct flavor. It’s usually noticed right away. So is Christianity. There is an aroma to coffee. There is an aroma to Christians.

But what separates good coffee from bad? The same things that separate good Christians from bad. Or should I say true Christians from those that aren’t? How about the saints from the ain’ts? There are several things that make good coffee, each one discussed in recurring devotionals.

1. It must be fresh daily.

Coffee is the best when it’s fresh! People enjoy fresh coffee! Coffee is so gross when it is old. Day old coffee is…disgusting. Now, I’m a little crazy, and will drink cold coffee. When I get Starbucks, it will take me all morning just about to finish it. And I tell you from experience that while I still drink it, the fresh stuff is way better. Also, the beans that you use are best made right after they have been ground for maximum freshness. It doesn’t get any fresher than that right there.

16 These are the Lord’s instructions: “Each household should gather as much as it needs. Pick up two quarts for each person in your tent.” 17 So the people of Israel did as they were told. Some gathered a lot, some only a little. 18 But when they measured it out, everyone had just enough. Those who gathered a lot had nothing left over, and those who gathered only a little had enough. Each family had just what it needed. 19 Then Moses told them, “Do not keep any of it until morning.” 20 But some of them didn’t listen and kept some of it until morning. But by then it was full of maggots and had a terrible smell.
Exodus 16.16-20

This is a great story about keeping it fresh. God hooked up daily. Some people didn’t listen and tried to have some for the next day. They tried to use yesterday’s food for today. And God clearly did not have that in mind. When they tried to eat yesterday’s food, it was rotten! God never intended for them to save it! He had fresh stuff for them the next day!

Our relationship with God must also be fresh daily. We can’t live on yesterday’s word. It has to be fresh, or it gets bitter, like old coffee. We have to keep ourselves in God’s Word on a regular basis if we want to stay healthy as a Christian. God is always ready to teach us, to cause us to grow, but we must be in His Word and in prayer on a regular basis, or we start to lose our flavor. Just as making coffee becomes part of the daily things of life, make time with God and His word part of your daily activities. Keep yourself in His word regularly.

Grow daily or die gradually.

The family is much more personal with me than they are with even some of their friends. I see all sides of the family: the good, the bad, and everything in between. I know who these people are because I live with them. I have access to things in the home that not everyone does. I can get into the fridge without asking. I can even store my own personal items in the fridge and pantry. I became the family roommate.

I heard Pastor Matt say in a recent altar call, “If you want to go to heaven, you have to ask Jesus to come and live in your heart.” This is very true, and that phrase got me thinking about roommates. When people ask Jesus to come into their lives, they are in essence asking Him to move in with them, not unlike a roommate.

God is always at work in us. We must allow Him to “move in” to our lives. We must give him access to even the very private things in our lives. The deepest, darkest areas that visitors don’t have access to, must be accessible by Him. We have to open ourselves to Him and let Him work His will in us. He must literally “live” with us.

Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.
Revelation 3.20

How sad would it be if the day I moved into the family’s home, they said to me, “Oh, we were just kidding. You can’t live here?” and they kicked me out? How would that make me feel? Probably betrayed and abandoned. The sad part is, many people do this to Jesus. They ask Him to move in, and then kick Him out the very next day. They do this by the way that they live. They respond to a moving altar call and ask Jesus to come in and forgive them and live inside of them, but the very next day they go back to the way they used to live. When a roommate moves in, things change. But if we ask Jesus to come in and we aren’t changed…then we have only asked him to spend the night. The last time I checked, lives were changed when Jesus moved in.

“Revival is an encounter with God the Holy One, disclosed and made known. Revival removes the veil and makes things clear. Revival is stark and absolute, uncovering the nature of man and revealing the glory of God. In the end, it boils down to this: Do we really want God to live in our midst?” – Dr. Michael L Brown

We must be prepared for God to move in. I encourage you today, don’t ask Jesus to move in, and make Him live somewhere else.

I only covered the first 1.5 chapters of the book for the discussion, and it was a heavy one. I knew based on my study and writing the teaching that it would be a heavy one that required the presence of God. I know I needed him for a few reasons. First, the things I wrote were strongly convicting me, and I knew that God needed to do some work on me first. I also knew that a word like this one really needed God’s touch on it, otherwise it could come off as a bashing message. I desperately wanted God to show up and do something. And show up He did.

But before I get there, I’ll highlight parts of the discussion. One of the things that really struck me was the opening line. “We don’t know much about the gospel.” We went on to talk about how we SAY that we know our friends and neighbors are going to hell, but how much does that really weigh on our hearts and minds? For most, probably not much. We are too concerned with what we see that what is unseen is of little concern when it really comes down to it. We don’t want to be inconvenienced, so we don’t step out. “The church today is not fully experiencing what Jesus died for and not becoming what he prayed for.”

I gave an analogy of a family that has an abundance of food every meal in a land of severe famine. The starving people around would KNOW that you had food, and would not hesitate chasing you down asking for some nourishment. Then I asked why people aren’t running to the church or to us begging us to show them the way to Life. That was something that none of them (including me) had pondered. Why isn’t the world knocking down the doors of the church trying to get in?

We say we want God to move, we have prayer meetings dedicated to God bringing revival. But do we REALLY understand what that truly means? Often, we don’t, or we would pray differently. If we REALLY understood what it is we are praying for, our prayers would change dramatically. God wants to pour out His Spirit, but for the sake of the saints, He can’t. I sincerely believe with all of my heart that if God poured out His Spirit like in Acts, many in the church would fall over dead, literally. I know those are bold words, but I truly believe them.

In Acts, the whole book is dedicated to what the Holy Spirit did through the men and women of God immediately following Christ’s ascension. Tremendous salvations, awesome miracles, incredible healings and deliverances all took place in the book of Acts. Peter preached his first message, and 3,000 people got saved. People were being added to the church daily. Peter would walk, and his shadow would fall on some, and they would get healed. Paul, one of the greatest persecutors of the church has a radical conversion, and sees incredible miracles take place in his ministry. God is moving.

But severe judgment also took place in Acts. Ananias and Sapphira told a lie to the people of God, and God struck them down. God was seriously moving in ways that we can only imagine today. But judgment was also falling in ways that we only read about. The reason I believe that a move of God that we WANT to happen would kill people in the church is because it did in the past. People took the things of God lightly, and God destroyed them.

God MUST show Himself to be holy. Whether that means through our obedience to His will, or through our punishment of disobedience, God WILL show Himself to be holy to the world. For those in disobedience, He will give a “grace period,’ but that only lasts for so long before it becomes about His name and not you anymore. And that is when the judgment comes. And today, most of the church is in disobedience. But God in His infinite wisdom, spares us severe judgment as in the days of old by simply holding back the outpouring that WE claim we so desperately want.

After the discussion, I posed the question, “Are you willing to do what it takes to really see God move? Judgment begins in the house of God.” I told them to find a place and just figure out if you are willing to do your part in that move by surrendering COMPLETELY to Him and walking in His ways, with the UTMOST integrity. I got on my knees and thanked God for speaking through me, and then prayed that I would let God do in me what He always wanted to do, but couldn’t because I was in the way. After, I glanced around to see many of the college students weeping before the Lord, just letting Him get in and do some rearranging in their lives. God showed up and really moved on some people. It was awesome, thank you Lord!