Its been a while.

This is a personal entry, but I'm putting it on here because its a big moment in my life.

Tomorrow I am being baptized.

I am wholly inadequate.

I am broken, and that is the correct state to be in.

Christ said, you will do even greater miracles than these.

To understand this moment, you need to understand a (very) little about my faith voyage. I'd become a Christian at a young age, raised in the church, and began to take ownership of my faith in my mid teens. Through high school and into college I was a "good Christian kid" but something was always incomplete. I left Houghton in 2001 in part due to this incompleteness. I left to explore some questions of faith, and as most of you know that voyage of exploration took me into the Navy and around the world. I learned a lot of things that I don't need to take the time to discuss today. But when I returned to Houghton, I was not the person that you know today. I wasn't the person I was when I left, either, but I was not who I am now.

During the course of this year, I've experienced a lot of change and growth. I arrived broken in many ways, and some of those are still lose threads. I've had medical issues that I haven't been shy about sharing. I've struggled with my identity, and with recovery from a broken relationship. But I've been continuing the struggle of my faith and my conscience, and how that relates to that all too important collegiate topic of the future.

In January, Catherine introduced me to Journeys End Tutoring, and I began to experience what it might be like to serve the kingdom outside of myself. I've been gradually awakening to a new aspect of the love of God: that we are meant to radiate his Love to others. That we only live as Christians when we are actively loving others.

I still don't know the shape of my ministry to come. But I have come to know that God has plans for me that are greater than myself, whatever shape those are to take. It could be starting a business among the poor, or working with a more traditional mission setting. I do know that I must serve if I am alive. Christ began his period of active ministry with baptism by John the Baptist, and the spirit came into him in bodily form. I pray that my active ministry will begin in earnest with this baptism. I ask you as a congregation to hold me accountable, that wherever I end up and whatever plan He has for me, that I will be an active arm of the Love of God.

As this date drew closer, I began to focus on spiritual and mental preparation for this event in my life. In preparation, I began to examine my spiritual life, and I found it lacking. I examined my spirit looking for readiness, and all I saw was brokenness.

And as I reflected upon my brokenness, I realized that brokenness is readiness. Christ wants us to come to him broken. In Matthew 5:3 He says "Blessed are the poor in spirit." I've always been intrigued by that verse, because it is so easily misunderstood. It doesn't say "Blessed in spirit are the poor." It says blessed are the poor in spirit. What does that mean? It means we approach the throne with spiritual poverty. It means that we approach God empty, as sinners. And so it is as a broken sinner that I am approaching the throne.

Yet there is a corollary. We approach the throne broken, yet how do we return? John 14:12, "I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father." Jesus empowers us to do great works. That's the good news. We come to the throne broken, and he empowers us to do greater works than he himself performed on earth. So I embark on the next phase of my ministry, with hope and faith that He will enable me to do great things.