The Beginning

It's been a few years since I graduated college and from that graduation ceremony in late spring of 2004 until now, I've been trying to achieve what is so often expected and pushed upon a young adult: to become a successful career-minded individual and to make it in this world on my own. I've watched so many of my peers dive right into careers and achieve early financial success. Others have chosen a different route for their young adult life and have shunned a career for the time being to travel the world-to suck the marrow out of life while they are young. I've found that the post-college years is a time where so many young people find themselves confused, searching for that job, that house, that spouse, that latest adventure, that whatever to finally make them feel content and in control of life once and for all.

Whatever path you have personally chosen for the time being, at whatever junction you find yourself in life (fresh out of college, a newly wed, just starting a new career, traveling the world, looking for a spouse, watching your children move away to college, losing a loved one, etc...) true happiness can be found in any of these situations as long as you make a decision to allow Jesus Christ to be the center of everything, everywhere. True contentment can only be found in the Lord, and it can be found even in the most confusing and difficult times of life. God truly offers a peace that passes all understanding to those who wholeheartedly seek Him, even when we aren't sure what it is that we want to do with any given aspect of our life. We are lying to ourselves if we think anything other than a relationship with Christ will bring deep joy and everlasting contentment into our lives.

I've come to find that the speed of life can be too fast for our own good at times as American capitalism blurs brightly all around us. We are constantly being bombarded with so many events, responsibilities, and expectations, that our active faith takes a back seat to a dead end faith while everything else going on around us-our job, our fun, our anything, consumes our time. We rarely take time to reflect on life introspectively, to find ways to love God and love people, and to live it out.

Okay, so what am I getting at here? Running with Wings is a ministry that I have recently started with which I hope to encourage both you and I to make a difference in a world that is suffering all around us. God has called us to be either hot or cold in our relationship with Him, not lukewarm. He wants us to run with Him, not walk-to soar on wings like eagles.

My goal for this is ministry, for you and I, is simple (or so it seems right here and now): to share ideas with you on a monthly basis that will hopefully encourage you to reserve time to discuss important issues taking place within our personal friendship groups and beyond. I want to us to become more and more content with the love of God wherever we are at in life. I will be sending out a monthly letter with some thoughts and ideas on how we can become better people each and every day, and give encouragement to those who might need a hand, to those who might want to get up where they fell and try again. I encourage you to pass it along to others who want to make a difference as well. That's it.

Much of what I will be sharing in this monthly newsletter is many of the same thoughts and ideas that are raised in a book I have recently published, Da Capo (www.dacapobook.com). Through this ministry, I want to express that, yes, our world is filled with sin. Yes, our society as a whole has undergone a significant moral degradation juxtaposed with years past. We constantly hear in many Christian ministries about how sinful our world has become. But I'm here to say that we're going to be okay if we choose to be, because we have an opportunity to have a relationship with the God who transcends any mess we have created, the God who freely gives infinite grace to those who truly love Him, and the God who is the same today as He has always been-perfect. There is still a perfect God who is alive today, waiting for us to come to Him, waiting to tell us that we can make it, regardless of what we as human beings have done to send our society into a tailspin. He's waiting to pour His perfection upon us everyday. We just need to run to Him.

The point of this is ministry is simple: to get us thinking about Christ more and more, and to allow Him to engulf our lives on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. To admit that we aren't perfect and that we can't do life on our own. We weren't meant to take on such a task. But together, we can make a difference.