LIFE COMPASS & The dump

So here we are in the 3rd week of our 5th of six postures. If you could recall, we started out with listening then submerging, inviting, contending, and now we are in the Imagining posture. We have been working on a project called “life compass”. So far it has been the best thing for me this year. We have mapped out major events, people and places in our lives and put them on posted notes. We then put them in order and broke our lives into chapters. (This project has been inspired by Bobby Clinton’s research of 700 influential leaders. He has researched and interviewed these leaders and found out that they all tend to go through six stages in life. The first stage is sovereign foundations, then inner life growth, ministry phase, life maturing, convergence and finally afterglow.) So we have come up with certain landmarks in our past and have visualized or imagined what our future could look like. Finally after three weeks of working on this project we are concluding with a life vision statement.
The greatest discovery has been realizing my heart is moving from ministry phase into life-maturing phase. This does not mean that missions or ministry stops, rather ministry is going to come from more being then doing. I have felt like the 13 years of youth ministry was more about doing for others. Now I feel that ministry is going to be more about being for others. Does this make sense? I pray it does because I feel like God has major plans with Dayna and I starting a family and still being called to live cross culturally.
I also wanted to write about a heart issue that affected me yesterday. I drove two guys to the dump in order to unload a trailer full of junk. As we pulled up my eyes were open to ultimate despair. While I was backing the trailer up about 10 guys came up to see what we had. In all there were about 80-90 women and children searching for anything they could get their hands on of any value. I was stunned and it just didn’t make sense. I wondered what it would be like to live this way…. Or what if that were my mom or dad out there? It’s hard for me to express how I felt in words. All my senses were being put to the test. I tell you I just don’t think it’s right for humans to have to resort to this.
Finally I wanted to thank you for the prayers for my dad. He seems to be recovering from his broken neck very well. I do have hope that I will get to see him in November. When I left home last year I was not sure that I would get to see him again. Thank you……
LOVE
THE CERMAKS