Indianapolis

After alot of thinking and reading and mental debate Linds and I have decided on a graduate school. We looked everywhere from George Fox in Portland OR to Denver Seminary in CO and Azusa in southern California. We debated and numbercrunched and prayed our guts out and in the end we decided...on IWU. I know what you are thinking. Why in the world would you go crawling back to the university that you did your undergrad in? I had some nice sounding reasons prepared but when it comes down to it it was about the money. I can get a Ministerial Leadership/Non-profi managment degree for about a third less that any of those other places. For a person who is planning on working and managing nonprofit organizations that was an offer i couldn't refuse. So Linds and I are looking for jobs in Indy and hoping to start school this november. It was a little hard to give up my dreams of living in the Pacific Northwest but this is definatly the best decision for us and we are pumped to live near so many friends.

We also just finished a month long road trip that started in Charleston SC and wound its way through Chicago, Montana, Yellowstone, and Denver. It was a blast! A good chunck of the trip we journeyed with Nate and Jenny Richardson. It was good to be with friends again.

I am planning on posting my reflections on this trip here soon. Wish us luck on the job search and see pics on Facebook

Justin and Lindsay

Discipline

Discipline always out of reach
It must be how they preach
How can I love more than me?
Enough to take the tree

Coldness of soul, desires heat
Content to hide behind veil and sheet
Tries to dig a little deeper
Sadly prefers the grace that comes cheaper

Reinventing Divinity

Jesus was too secular
So the saying goes
Such a thought spectacular
The right side says it knows

"Make Jesus sacred more and more
Wine meant grapejuice you see
Loving Him should be a chore
Cause He came to set you free"

Settling in Greenville

Sorry it has been so long since my last update. I can't think of any really good excuses so I will just use the standard, "We are busy." Things in Greenville are good. The weather is great but the locals think it is cold (what kind of wimps think that 60 is cold...Southern Softies).

Linds got a job at a local Starbucks (and surprisingly does not like it) I am working at the local Rib joint/blues bar Sticky Fingers(and surprisingly am loving it). No real word on Grad Schools yet. We are beginning a season of prayer for this...please keep praying for us.

Personally, I have really been wrestling with God and what it means to be called by Him. Nothing new there. Linds and I both just want to follow Jesus.

Keep Praying,

Love you all,

J + L

Leaving Whiteford

After 2 years of ministry Lindsay and I have decided to submit my resignation to Whiteford Wesleyan Church. We have had a great experience and have made some great friends but we feel strongly that God has called us elsewhere. We are excited, scared, releaved, nervious and a host of other feelings but we have an undeniable peace about the whole thing. We are sure we are doing the right thing, we are just not sure what the next thing is.

Please pray for us:

Pay stops March 4th and the plan is to move in with Linds parents and work while seeking grad schools. This is really humbling and a blow to my overinflated sense of self worth. I love Ma and Pa Miller but moving in with parents sometimes feels like defeat. Pray that I can have a healthy attitude about it and that we can use this time to be refreshed and ready for where God leads us next.

We need direction and peace about the next step. We are 100% sure we need to leave Whiteford and move to SC but it gets pretty foggy after that. We need to be freed from the shackles of having to see 5 and 6 steps ahead and be ok with waiting for God to direct and speak in his time.

We are actively looking for graduate schools but cannot settle on a field of study. Do we both get a degree? What kind? How long? Sacred (MDiv, Counseling etc.) or Secular (Writing, Business, Film)? The list goes on and on.

Thanks for your prayers,

Justin and Lindsay

God is crazy

“To whom much is given much is required” – Jesus Christ according to Luke

This phrase haunts me. I don’t think any other teaching of Jesus scares me more. As an American I have been given more wealth and opportunity than most people in history…what am I doing with it? As a mentally sane person (relatively) I have been blessed with intelligence and reasoning skills that some can only dream of…what am I doing with it? As a…well you get the picture. If I look at all I have been blessed with there really is no excuse for me not the achieve God’s wildest dreams for me.

God’s dreams are scary. When he called Moses, Moses was scared. When he asked Abraham to sacrifice is only son Isaac I am sure he felt knots and butterflies all the way up the mountain…imagine how Isaac felt about it. Jesus sweated drops of blood before he was executed. When we look at what God was asking of these people and apply it to “rational” thought we come to the conclusion that God is in fact crazy.

I think that we sell ourselves short when we seek to achieve our dreams because our dreams are too small. We tend to dream things that we can achieve just in case God does not come through for us. We call it “practical” but in reality it is atheism because we are living life like there is no God. We have been given so much yet we hold so much back in the name of reason (from the human point of view). What if we began to dream dreams that are destined to fail if God does not show up? That might make us crazy but I also believe that it makes us godly.
Following God is not for the faint of heart. If we cherish safety and comfort more than obedience we will be disappointed and I believe that God will then be disappointed in us. I don’t think it was ever meant to be easy. I think that it is supposed to be impossible. We then have to depend on a God who is crazy enough to specialize in the impossible.

For some further reading see Luke 12: 35-48 and 19: 11-27

Talk Amongst Yourselves J