¿Qué Te Gustaría Compartir Con el Amor?

           Kids say the darndest things, I guess. To be honest, I don’t really know what that means but I do know that kids can say some crazy stuff, even in other countries.

            I was in Colombia recently and had the amazing opportunity to be a part of several different school assemblies where in three day 5,000 kids were reached. I was Jiggles the clown, the tallest most awkward gringo these kids had ever seen complete with curly rainbow ‘fro and face paint. Apparently kids overseas aren’t as terrified of clowns as kids in the States are.

            At one of these assemblies, we had over a hundred elementary school kids staring at us in the main courtyard of the school and our translator lines us up and asks the kids if they have any questions for us Americans. We were expecting them to ask if we knew Hannah Montana, lived in mansions or ate cheeseburgers everyday but one girl with about three teeth in her whole mouth caught us really off guard.

            The first question we got from any of these kids was “¿qué te gustaría compartir con el amor?”

            Our translator asked again, then again, and finally asked a teacher near the girl what she said just to confirm that he heard her right. He turned and looked at us with a confused face and said “she asked what you would like to share with love?”

            What would you like to share with love?

            What an incredible question. We had no idea how to answer that or even what she meant by it but I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since.

            What would I like to share with love?

            That is really the only question I should be asking myself when I wake up in the morning. It’s not about what I have to do or what is expected of me. It is not about making sure I don’t mess up God’s plan for my life or miss any opportunities. It is all about what I would like to share with love.

            I get to decide the difference I make in the world. I get to decide the impact I have on the people around me. This girl just wanted to know if there was any love inside of us worth sharing with her and her friends, and if we wouldn’t mind letting it out. She knew that was more important than anything else we could tell them.

            I have to keep asking myself this question. Everywhere I go there are people who need the love I’ve found but do I want to share it with them? Of course if we were asked if we wanted the whole world to know this love we would say yes but do we do anything about it? Nobody has to force us to do the things we like to do but if I like to share love why don’t I?  Would I like to change the world today?

            I need to want to share love more than I want to have a good day. I want to plan my life around sharing love not doing my own thing.

             I want every decision I make to hinge on how much love I get to share while doing it. I am in a stage of my life where everything is about planning for the future and making the right decisions that will affect the life I end up living. Everybody always talks about a five year plan and career choices. I have absolutely no idea where I will be in five years but I know that wherever it is, I want to be sharing love.

            I talked to a man the other day in Louisville, Kentucky who couldn’t fathom why I would give up even a year to leave everything and follow God around the country with no pay and very little of what the world would call benefits, much less giving my whole life to this cause. He couldn’t grasp that there was the possibility of a life bigger than having a wife and kids and the occasional weekend barbeque with friends. I told him that there was nothing wrong with any of that but that I just wanted more.

            The God who created the Universe is offering to take our dismal existences and let us be a part of something that changes eternity. It isn’t about what job you work or what house you live in but if you are making a difference in the lives of the people you are doing life with. You don’t have to accept this offer, but God wants to know if you would like to. The “call of God” is not some hideous burden of a request that we are forced to follow, but simply an opportunity to be bigger than you ever could be on your own. The truth is, when we share love with the world around us, God shares His love with us.

            It’s not hard. Sharing love just means asking someone how they are doing and caring how they are actually doing. It means scheduling time to be a blessing to someone else. For me it means talking to strangers more, like gas station owners and tired waitresses who just need someone to make them laugh. Awhile ago I asked God what my place in society was. I wanted to know who I was supposed to be when I walked into a room. Was I the life of the party or the one people forgot was there? Was I the one that was the center of attention or the fly on the wall? God just told me that I was supposed to be the one who loves.

            To be honest I still haven’t figured out what that means but I am learning. I want my life to reflect the love that has been given to me. I want the world I keep praying for to see that I love them. I want to embody the love of Christ, not because I have to, but simply because the offer has been presented to me to do so and I would like to. I would like to share something with love.

ITSTHAT SEMPLE Now in Print!!!

       Over the past two years since creating this blog, I have written a good amount of posts. I am doing a second year as well as a summer segment here at Missio Dei School of Missions and Evangelism and am beginning my fundraising campaign. We have found a cheap way to print these blogs for a very high quality hard cover edition and I am excited to announce thaat TWO YEARS WORTH of posts are now available for pre-order in print! 

    I am humbled by the response that I have received from readers and want to give anyone who wants one the chance to own these posts in print. All the proceeds go toward funding my journey across the nation telling people about the love of Christ as well as a portion going to those traveling with me on the journey to help them raise their support. Whether for yourself or a friend, your purchase of Itsthatsemple: The Book of Blogs Vol 1  for only $25 goes toward changing the world for God.

If you are interested, please email me at itsthatsemple@gmail.com and I will give you all the details or if you wish to know more about what I am doing, please visit mymissionsjourney.com-

     Thank you so much for your support!

The Cool of the Day

Something magical happens after midnight, especially at Waffle House.

            During the day it is just a dingy little diner with creepy truck drivers and burnt toast but after midnight it is a whole new experience. I can’t count the amount of good memories I have had late at night at some Waffle House with various groups of people, all laughing and talking about whatever it was that we have just come from and that has kept us out so late. It is not that the food gets any better, the service any nicer, or the bathrooms any cleaner. It is simply the fact that there is something enjoyable about being alive when the world is asleep.

            I’m sure I will grow old one day and appreciate these times less and less but I am 19 now and therefore have a right to enjoy them.

            I have heard people say, though, that nothing good happens after midnight. I don’t completely agree with that but there is definitely some truth to the fact that evenings are usually when we blow it completely.

            Think about it. We can be fine all day until we are tired and come home from a long day and are still asked to do a million things at once. We are exhausted and ticked off at whatever and evening is when it usually boils over to eruption. We just want to get off of our feet and relax and we usually stop at nothing to achieve that goal. Our defenses slacken and suddenly we are watching a movie that we never would have let ourselves watch had it been at any other time of day and we start snapping at people for hardly anything at all. Then the next day we wake up and wonder why it is so hard to have a good quiet time with God.

            Reading through Genesis, something was recently pointed out to me that I had never seen before that has completely changed the way I do my day.

            In the first chapter God has just spoken Light into existence and separated it from Darkness. Then at the end of verse five it says “there was evening, and there was morning- the first day.”

            Did you catch that?

            We usually start our day when our alarm clock buzzes in our ears while the sun begins to peak through our blinds but when God made the first day, He started with the night before. There was evening, and then there was morning. This whole time I have been thinking that evening was my time, since I had given God the rest of my day, and that He wouldn’t mind if I just turned the brain off and relaxed. I used to wonder why I would wake up distracted and my mind going a million places at once thus making it impossible to sit down and talk to God. Now I know it was because I was taking the evenings of my day for myself when that should have been the beginning of my day with God.

            What would our lives look like if instead of coming home from work or school and venting at how terrible our day has been we just sat in the presence of God? What if instead of holding in our frustrations all day until the exploded on our family at home, we gave them all over to God the first chance we got? What if we opened our Bible before going to bed instead plopping down in front of the TV?

            Now it might seem like I am saying we should never take time to rest, but actually I am saying the exact opposite.

            The great Chinese preacher and writer of the early 20^th century Watchmen Nee pointed out in his book, Sit, Walk, Stand, that since God made Adam on the sixth day and rested on the seventh, that Adam’s first day was a day of rest. Adam began his life in rest with God. God worked then rested, Adam rested then worked but their days of rest fell on the same day.

            If God began His days in the evening, and started out humanity with a day of rest, then I think I have been missing out on a lot of what God has been trying to teach me by thinking I could take evenings to do whatever I wanted to do. Evenings are the finish in my mentality and if each day were a race, how many times could I say I finished strong?

            Flip over to chapter three of Genesis and we find that God is walking through the Garden of Eden in the “cool of the day,” looking for His friends. God came to them in the evening wanting to know how their day had been and they hid from Him.

            Taking this literally has transformed my whole outlook on how I plan my day. If I promise God my life than I promise Him my whole day, even when I am exhausted and worn out. I think it’s awesome that the point of my greatest weakness is exactly when God wants to hang out with me.

            Beyond literally, though, God has also been showing me that the way I finish anything directly connects to how much I care about it in the first place. In high school running cross country, I never walked across the finish line because I cared about the race I was running. I wanted to show that this race mattered to me and that the next race will matter too.

            I am coming to an end of my first ten months with Missio Dei and all I want to do is just coast through the end but that isn’t an option. Nothing will have mattered this year if I don’t finish like it mattered. The way I start next year will be affected by how I finish this year.

            Evenings are the transition points. They are the end of one season and the beginning of the next. They are the point when I am exhausted and worn out but need more than ever to push through and seek God. I refuse to limp into the next season of my life. It will be a new day and I am not carrying anything into it that shouldn’t be there even if that means giving it all over to God when I am too tired to care.

            Musician John Reuben said in one of his songs that “good evening is a greeting, goodnight is farewell, ” and that’s the truth. “Good Night” is a closing statement but “Good Evening” recognizes the past but is more excited about the future, which is a place I always want to be.

            So as I close this season of my life I just want to give it all up. God, take all of me. I can give no more and I am exhausted and worn out but that is exactly where You want me. It is here that I realize how powerless I am and how powerful You are. You are the creator of my days and my nights and I know that You will be there tomorrow morning like You are here with me this evening, whatever it looks like. Thank You for a great day, and thank You for the promise of a greater one tomorrow.

            Good Evening.