History lesson

Thanks to Slippey and his borderline addictive use of Google Reader, I have all my posts from Possibly Irrelevant back. They are pasted here in order. There are some new tidbits in a few of them, if you look hard you might find them.

Back from Expedition '08!

A crossroads. A place where roads cross, and we must choose between them. When we come to crossroads in our life, there are many choices, but we can only choose one at that moment. 

Right now I am approaching the crossroads. I can see it on the 

horizon, in the distance, but I can't make out how many roads there are ahead, never mind the street signs on the posts. I know I'm headed for it, but I don't know what choices I will face, or which I will choose. 

The picture to the left is almost where's I'm at right now. The road I am on is straight and narrow, leading straight to graduation. The sky is large, the horizon far off in the distance. The road signs don't say anything like "Albany  240mi," but the lone sign simply states "Destination UNKNOWN" (Please ignore the plug for some event on the sign).

So crossroads was also a track at this year's Expedition. As the name implies, I definitely took an Expedition with God last weekend. We journeyed deep into my life, and looked at why I try every day to push down my own will and let His be done, and why I want to include him in the decisions I will soon be facing. We looked far into the future at things like finding a place to live, finding a church community, and getting married. 

The thing that I most remember about the weekend was that God showed me how much He loves me. He convinced me that any effort I put into furthering the Kingdom of God will be more than repaid, and that the best option I have for the future is to let God take control.

I trust that the Lord God will is preparing a place for me , and that he will lead me there if I let him. I rejoice that he wants to be with me in my travels, and that all he asks of us is that we stand and say "Here I am, Lord. I will go Lord, if You need me."

I want to thank all the IV staff and Volunteers for allowing God to work through them in the lives of so many students. I will be praying for the people who put on Expedition and for the students who attended, and I encourage you join me in that.

~ Troy

God tests us

It's so cool when God tests our faith so that we might grow in it. 

Recently, God has really be changing my heart about sacrificing for others. Not financially, but time and effort wise. I tend to be quite selfish with my time (like it's mine anyway!) and I'm grateful God is changing that. Recently, my apartment accepted a request from someone on couchsurfing.com to stay for three nights on one of our many couches (their choice, of course). I have to admit, I was not thrilled about it, but I accepted the request because I knew it was the right thing to do. Well, God must have noticed my discontented "yes" response because the more I thought about how annoying it would be to have a stranger here for three nights, the more he changed my heart to be excited about it. It turned out the fellow on couchsurfing found another place to stay (I have no idea why). With this turn of events, I realized that God had, quite creatively, taught me to open my home to those who need it without actually having anyone stay with me. Pretty neat huh?

A very similar situation involving taking someone to get something they needed a vehicle to get arose a day later (today), and again, I grudingly accepted. Again, God changed my cold heart to be more than willing to do it (this time in the span of a 30 second conversation about it), and again, another option revealed itself and I didn't need to go anywhere or get anything. 

I'm so glad God is reminding me that my time is all a gift, and that I do not deserve all of it!

P.S. I am slightly worried that God will use the 6 couches in our living room to house 6 at once at some point :-P

~Troy

Longboarding in Rochester

Last night, I went out with some friends to skate Rochester. It was a blast! From the middle of a 4 lane road to the upper levels of parking garages, no one was around. We rode from parking garage to parking garage, doing a few runs at each then moving to a harder, faster one. The final garage had 10 stories to skate down. The best part? They all had ELEVATORS. Its amazing how fast they go up, and they allowed us to do many more runs then the stairs would have.

I highly recommend bombing parking garages to anyone bored at midnight in Rochester.

Holy Spirit Dynamite

I encourage you to say "Holy Spirit dynamite" in the presence of Jim Salmon (when he's interpreting) . He has an amazing sign for it.

In the past week God has really been showing me the power of the Holy Spirit inside of us, and what it means for our lives. It still (rightly so) astounds me that a little bit of God resides in me. 

Mick's message at IV opened my eyes to the obvious. I had accepted that God Holy Spirit was with me and could influence my life, but I had not figured out how to let it. Recently, God has been showing me exactly how to let the Spirit aid me in ways I never imagined. 

I had definitely not been using the power of the Holy Spirit for the glory of God. I was floundering in attempts to utilize it, but realized that its power is not applicable to my own agenda (even if I think I'm striving to do God's work). I think the trick to allowing the power of the Spirit to shine is not jumping the gun and deciding what is God's work, and actually talking to God about it and being shown what he work is to be.

I have written about how God has changed my heart (which can be pretty stubborn) to thank and praise my Father for what he has done, and to encourage my friends to let the Spirit guide us.

21st Birthday

Yesterday was my twenty-first birthday. It was an awesome day, but man 20 went by fast. I went swimming in Irondeqouit creek, was bit (twice) by a fire ant, did a canonball into about 2 feet of water (not the best idea I've had), and went out to The Old toad with close friends. We had lots of time to talk, because our food and bill were very slow in coming. So slow, in fact that we got a discount. 

The best part: we didn't understand 90% of what our waiter said to us that night (He was an English exchange student). This further proves that Americans don't speak English.