We prayed over our kids on Sunday since Monday was their first day of school, at least for most of them. Chad read this passage from Carry on Warrior by Glennon Doyle Melton that I wanted to add here. It’s from a mother to her son, but it fits for more than that. It’s beautiful.

“I think that God puts people in our lives as gifts to us. The children in your class this year, they are some of God’s gifts to you. So please treat each one like a gift from God. Every single one. Baby, if you see a child being left out, or hurt, or teased, part of your heart will hurt a little. Your daddy and I want you to trust that heartache. Your whole life, we want you to notice and trust your heartache. That heartache is called compassion and it is God’s signal to you to do something. It is God saying Wake up! One of my babies is hurting! Do something to help! Whenever you feel compassion, be thrilled! It means God is speaking to you and that is magic. It means he trusts you and needs you. Sometimes the magic of compassion will make you step into the middle of a bad situation right away. Compassion might lead you to tell a teaser to stop it and then ask the teased kid to play. You might invite a left out kid to sit next to you at lunch. You might choose a kid for your team first who usually gets chosen last. These things will be hard to do, but you can do hard things. Sometimes you will feel compassion but you won’t step in right away. That’s okay too. You might choose instead to tell your teacher and then to tell us. We are on your team –We are on your whole class’s team. Asking for help for someone who is hurting is not tattling; it is doing the right thing. If someone in your class needs help, please tell me, baby. We will make a plan to help together. When God speaks to you by making your heart hurt for another, by giving you compassion, just do something. Please do not ignore God whispering to you. We do not care if you are the smartest or fastest or coolest or funniest. There will be lots of contests at school and we don’t care if you win a single one of them. We don’t care if you get straight As. We don’t care if the girls think you’re cute or whether you’re picked first or last for kickball at recess. We don’t care if you are your teachers’s favorite or not. We don’t care if you have the best clothes or most trading cards or coolest gadgets. We just don’t care. We don’t send you to school to become the best at anything at all. We already love you as much as we possibly could. You do not have to earn our love or pride and you can’t lose it. That’s done. We send you to school to practice being brave and kind. Kind people are brave people. Brave is not something you should wait to feel. Brave is a decision. It is a decision that compassion is more important than fear, than fitting in, than following the crowd. Trust me baby, it is. It is more important. Don’t try to be the best this year, honey, just be grateful and kind and brave. That’s all you ever need to be. Take care of those classmates of yours, and your teacher too. You belong to each other. You are one lucky boy with all of these new gifts to unwrap this year. I love you so much that my heart might explode. Enjoy and cherish your gifts. And thank you for being my favorite gift of all time.”

The Youtube video we watched was of Grave VanderWaal during the live show on America’s Got Talent. And then we enjoyed this wonderful message. What a beautiful Sunday.

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With school fast approaching and summer vacation taking its last breaths, I wanted to reach out to lay out our fall schedule at the Bridge. We’ve all been away, missing each other, I’m anxious to re-connect.

This Sunday, I’ll share a message that has been sitting on my shoulders for weeks, like an animal, waiting for the right time to pounce. It’s taken from 2 parallel passages in Matthew (20:29-34) and Mark (10:46-52). Erwin McManus says, “We set the boundaries of our own existence,” and we’ll dive into a conversation on the many ways in which that is true and why. It’s a perfect message for our current season of new beginnings and soaring expectations. I can’t wait to dream big together, with each other and the God who continues to ask us, “What do you want me to do for you?”

The following Sunday (and the entire month of September), we’ll be studying the 2nd letter Paul wrote to Timothy. On the 11th, as we discuss Truth and faithfulness in the letter, we’ll celebrate this kind of beautiful faithfulness as we baptize Scott Kneasel. And, as we always do, we’ll eat a meal together afterwards.

October & November hold a very different journey for us. (Very different because the only book we’ve studied, so far, is the Bible – and we will continue to bring the Scriptures to all of our conversations, of course) We will study the 5 Love Languages, and Angel and I will co-teach. If you’ve ever had a conversation of any length with me, you’ve heard me refer to this book. It’s completely life-changing, so we’ll change our lives together. This requires small group discussion, so we’ll begin 2 mid-week groups to work out the concepts and how to apply them to our lives and relationships.

It’s an exciting time for our community – there is no question God has been leading us on this journey, I can’t wait to experience what He has planned for us in these next few months.

Our next steps begin Sunday. I’ll see you then.

Love. Peace.

chad.

Thank you Kelly Ohlin for bring us the message Sunday. Be ready to look at scripture as Kelly takes us on a journey about who Jesus is and is he who he says he is.

What a privilege to hear you speak! Thank you Don Kelly for bringing us the message this morning. For teaching us that we were made to soar and we are made for no less. This is the link to the Marshmallow Video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX_oy9614HQ