Y Be Afraid? from Gus Bishop on Vimeo.

is the way you are living your life matching up with the way you want it to be seen by others?

“The devil believes more of the Bible than a majority of Christians.” - George Whitefield

BACKGROUND on George Whitefield: (December 16, 1714 - September 30, 1770), was an Anglican itinerant minister who helped spread the Great Awakening in Great Britain and, especially, in the British North American colonies. He was born at the Bell Inn, Southgate Street, Gloucester.[1] in England. He was a very influential figure in the establishment of Methodism. He was famous for his preaching in America which was a significant part of an 18th century movement of Christian revivals, sometimes called “The Great Awakening.”

given your beliefs on Whitefield’s statement…….how much more do we as followers of Christ need to be in Scripture? if the devil knows it……shouldn’t we even more than he? how are we to combat his attacks if we don’t?

your thoughts? are you in Scripture as much as you should be?

direction, not intention, determines destination
you agree or disagree? discuss with each other thru comments.
keep it nice…no bashing others comments is the rule!
love you fiercely!

we just finished going thru the app process for our student leadership team. they are top notch. and can’t wait to have lunch with them this sunday. of course, the adult team always rocks the HD world.

we just finished up our P3 - Passion series. i learned a few things about myself in message preparation and i learned a lot about the students of this community.

we all say “we love the Lord”, BUT how often do we say “i desire to be in love with the Lord more and more everyday” and then live it out with our every thought, word and action. you see we get so entangled in our worlds, our daily lives, the busy everyday tasks that we choose those things over Him. but Paul teaches us (the church) as he spoke to “God’s holy people in Philippi who belong to Christ Jesus” in chapter 3:7-11 “7 I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done. 8 Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ 9 and become one with him. I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law; rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ.[a] For God’s way of making us right with himself depends on faith. 10 I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death, 11 so that one way or another I will experience the resurrection from the dead!”

notice he is speaking to believers. he is NOT speaking to non-believers or seekers or the nonchurched people. i ask myself, have i “discarded everything else” or BLUNTLY, have i discarded all of the stuff that i cling to (MY future, MY plans, MY retirement, MY securities) in order to be more in love with Him and seek His will and TRUST it? PLEASE notice i capitalized MY. that’s the biggest problem we have is that we believe our lives revolve around US. so i ask you the same? what is MOST important in your life? your stuff or your passion for the Lord, your Creator (the one who gave you life) who passionately seeks to be in loving relations with you?

there are a lot of people in this generation who are sincerely asking themselves these questions. they are sincerely seeking, what TRULY are their priorities. they are asking tough and honest questions of themselves. they want to know what it means to TRULY depend on the Lord in their lives. i pray that we all ask ourselves the same questions.

more to come….

i can’t begin to tell you how blessed that i am. not because of a single thing that i have done BUT because of all that Jesus has done for me. i can’t begin to tell you how blessed i am. my King loves me. He gave Himself away for me and you. and He has placed so many people………my family (in case you haven’t heard; my wife and kids are UH-MAZING!), the leaders and students at HiDef are incredible. they all remind me daily of how much they love me. whether it is a hug from my children or a text from a leader or a student asking me, “hey gus! is there anything i can do or pray for you today?”

i think so often we forget what a privileged life we live. a Creator, who died so that we may experience TRUE LIFE, family that loves us (immediate and/or extended) and the fact that we are allowed to live our lives to make Jesus known. that is a PRIVILEGE! don’t forget that. don’t take that for granted. we get to live our lives as an example of what it means to follow, chase after and LOVE like Christ! responsibility? UH…..YES! but what a privilege! LIVE LIFE AS THOUGH YOU WANT EVERYONE TO HAVE WHAT YOU HAVE OR BETTER! Jesus wanted more for us than we could ever imagine for ourselves. and He wants us to do the same for the rest of the world.

thank you Lord for my life! for my family! for my calling! for the privilege! thank you Lord for putting all of those in my life who show me daily how much they love me!

part of our family at The Vine just had their baby girl while on vacation. Ella was born
8-9 weeks early. our students have been praying for specifics that the parents of Ella,
kent and candace, have been asking us to pray for. saturday night during worship here
at the (scheduled InsideOut) lock-in we prayed for Ella to be able to breathe on her own
with no ventilator. sunday morning got a text form kent and ella was breathing on her
own. Praise God!

just emailed with kent:

yesterday, he had asked us to be praying for “no infections”; which we did last
night at youth. kent sends me this this morning: “Guess what? She was taken
off the antibiotics yesterday. Her cultures were all negative: no infections.
I am working on the next video. I’ll have it up shortly.”

to which i respond:
that’s awesome! kent, you should have seen the passion and energy in the
students faces yesterday morning after “no sleep” when they heard the news of
ella’s breathing. and then last night in prayer. i just sent out texts and
emails to them…….no infections was our prayers last night. God rocks and He
is awesome to be doing what He’s doing in your family’s lives. i know it is
hard on you guys BUT He is being made known and glorified through this…..i
know that for a fact in the lives of about 50 students who are seeing the
demonstration of His power when we pray.

to answer the question “WHAT I LOVE ABOUT MY JOB?” again is this:
i have had about 10 texts messages from different students asking how they are
doing before 8am. they had been thinking about them and praying for them and
wanted to know. i love to see this generation given the opportunity to get
vested in the lives of people and follow through. FAITH is being grown out of
the life of Ella into the live’s of these students and Ella is only 3 days old.
it reminds me that no matter how young a person; God will always use the humble
(Ella has no clue or maybe she does……what she is doing for the Kingdom) to
build His legacy of love in this world. i love that i have the privilege of
doing life with these students and teaching them things like this. if humble to
the Lord (a 3 day old precious little girl who can NOT speak yet, walk yet, or
carry out major physical action yet can advance God’s Kingdom in such a huge
way) what greater potential they have to do the same.

just some thoughts!

i’m constantly humbled by how awesome our God is and how the students at HD allow themselves to be humbled by His presence. they show this in so many ways. here’s a few examples: 1) 2 sunday nights ago, almost the entire youth body hung around and worked their behinds off tearing down set, sound and stage. there were pieces of stage, cables and screens flying around everywhere. last night, the same thing. these students are an example of how this generation wants to see change take place in this world by stepping up and getting their hands dirty. even if they aren’t quite sure what an aviom or cat5 is, they didn’t stand there……they asked what do i do next, what can i do to help? TRANSLATION: WHAT CAN I DO TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE?

everyone is concerned where this generation is going and what the world will be like in 10-20 years. i’m excited because, i believe in these students, i believe in this generation because they are willing to humble themselves before God and serve Him and serve the Body and serve His people! they get that humility is “not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less!” my thoughts on the term leadership: leadership is best when led from the back; when you put yourself last. you are allowed to see and enjoy other’s successes. whoever said it was better to be in the front row, hasn’t experienced the JOY that i have watching these students from the back as they begin to unravel the Lord’s call and purpose in their lives. loving others! yes, serving is an act of love!

it is an honor and privilege to be serving the Lord as these students’ pastor!

being involved in HiDef, as the pastor, absolutely rocks me! these students are absolutely AMAZING. but of course they are……they are God’s creations. they desire to draw closer to the Lord and they desire to allow Him to make them into what He desires for them. i love the excitement and the spark that is in their eyes. i love it when they laugh without restraint. at HYDRATION, they forgot about all they had left back home and focused in on growing and pursuing the Lord. many of them shared with me that they have realized that they can have that everyday of their lives. ACHIEVEMENT!

my children play such a huge role in my ministry world. briana (my 6 year old daughter) said something so prophetic. i believe, as He often does, the Lord uses my children to directly speak wisdom into my life and prepare me for things. as we, the family of HiDef, were about to go thru some honest and vulnerable times at the beach in a worship service, she says, “it hurts really bad; but it’s a good kinda hurt!” she said it twice. and as i leaned down to ask her a 3rd time, she told me that as i was scratching her sunburned back, “it hurts really bad; but it’s a good kinda hurt!” how prophetic for what was about to take place on the beach that night. students dealt with some painful issues that night. but as we shared with each other; it began to feel good because they began to be liberated with the knowledge of how much the Creator of the Universe loves us and how much He desires for us to be free to LIVE life with Him.

these are just some of my thoughts for now. as i continue to process; i will share more experiences.