God Cares About Our Heart

So check it, i am just going to write word for word my journal, it is sweet, God showed me this.

12/15/08 - Last night I was lying in bed thinking about what i would tell people if they asked me what I'm going through and what I've learned here. I tried to think about the many things Drew, this guy who is very awesome and used to be a homosexual but God healed him, taught us and spoke to us about, or all the books I've read and papers i've wrote. Then it hit me and i realized that this is it... God Cares About Our Heart. I honestly believe that God is all about giving us a good life, but He desires our Heart, more than anything. I look a the commandments in the bible and all of the commandments were to help people live better lives, and God wanted them to live better because he wanted their hearts, and he want them to have life. In Genesis Abraham is asked by God to sacrifice his son! God told him to do it because He wanted Abraham's heart. He wanted his heart to be fearing, submitted, and loving. God provided for my heart! He allowed me to get all the time I asked for off of work. Then had someone (Alison) pay for my plane ticket to Portland and back from Meford. Why does God care so much about me seeing my mom, and brothers? It's because He heard me question being able to make it through Anthem; He wants me to go through this whole year and receive the many things he has for me; and he knew that in order for my heart to be His throughout this whole year, i need to have a break and see my mom. Then this morning (12/16/08) Ryan, Anthem leader, said "Drew gave us so many tools, but if there is one thing I don't want you to walk away with is tools but no heart. In a leadership position you have to recognize the heart of God, yeah you need the tools but you have to have God's heart, and be in deep love with him. 'Lay your head down on Jesus' chest and hear Christs' heart beat." The one thing that is so important and that God ultimately cares about is our heart. Think about all the things God has done in your life, it's all been because he wants our hearts to beat to the rhythm of His heart.

I am speaking about this tonight for Middle School youth group, here's some awesome verses to go along with this:

Mark 12:29-30
Deut. 6:5
Romans 10:9-10
Joshua 22:5
1 Chron. 22:19
1 Sam. 16:7

Update Dec. 15 2008

So hey everyone, i hope your still reading because some good is to come. I am going to LA for Christmas just to let everyone know, to see my mom, Micah and Adam. A couple awesome websites for you to look up.

www.livingwatersmedford.org - this is our church's website, it has messages and other things so that you know what's going on here. SO much good stuff.

www.myspace.com/jonnyhillis - this is my band website, yeah sorry it's myspace, but i am trying to record rough copies of my music and put them where you can listen, so enjoy and tell others about it.

Jay's Day Update

So I figured that i would through something new up, because it's been awhile. We are reading this book for a class, it's called Knowledge of The Holy, by A.W. Tozer, and we have to right little one page journal like entrees about it, so I am hopefully going to throw one those papers i wrote up that i did, so you can read some stuff that i've been processing.

My thanksgiving was very chill by the way, no drama, yay! ha. Yet, so true that Thanksgiving always has drama. But anyways, i had at our children's pastor here at Living Waters Church, house. Ryan and his wife Kate were there (Anthem Directors) and 2 other Anthem students, so it was pretty cool, and lax, not awesome, but good.

Mexico Mission Trip and Update

So yes, i know it has been quite a long time until i have put something on my blog worth reading. Also, it's been such a long time since i haven't put anything up because i have been very busy with: Red Robin work, our Mexico missions trip, sickness, and school. So yeah to start it off our Anthem team took a trip to Compostela, Mexico.

The Associate Pastor of our church, Verl, is very close to a mission's type Church there in Mexico. The main church is called La Fluenta i believe, and they have i think 8 or so church plants that they have done. While we were there in Mexico, La Fluenta had their 10 year anniversary celebration and we got to sit in on their service, which was "Awesome-broso" (if you pronounce it that way then you're saying awesome in Spanish). Their church has over 700 people who go there every week. Then they have their small church plants. We got to go help paint and do a service at one of the churches. It was in Pugo, Mexico and it was really awesome. We showed up 3 or so days before their Sunday service and repainted their entire kids house and the outside, and then we cleaned their main Church area. Keep in mind their church has cement walls and floors and white lawn chairs as their chapel's chairs. Obviously, going down to Mexico and spending time in this culture you develop a sense of appreciation for the things you take for granted in life. One of these things being carpet. There is a church here in Medford called Applegate church and I went there with a couple fellow Anthem students. This church had cobblestone walls, nice white candles everywhere, black leather couches in the Foyer, and a light show that went along with their Worship band who has produced a cd and is a big band in Medford. This was their Saturday night service, there were alot of teens there, and i am not sure if this is how their Sunday services looked, but their church is high class. So yeah all that to say, i developed an appreciation for the things we have. But anyways we got to go help out with the church in Pugo's sunday service. We helped run the kids church and Verl, our Associate Pastor, spoke an awesome message that was traslated by one of the founding leaders of The La Fluenta Church. Then we as a team prayed for indiviuals who went up for prayer from the church. It was really awesome the Holy Spirit really moved there.

That's kind of a rough outline of the kind of stuff we did there. We spent 4 or so afternoons hanging out with kids and adults at a park, played hockey, basketball, vollleyball, and soccer. It was really great being able to shine Jesus' love on them by just spending time with them and laughing.

Sadly the second day we were there i rolled my ankle very badly. It swelled up pretty big and there was bruising very high up on my leg and down below my ankle. I was able to walk on it though but i had to baby it the hole trip and i was pretty limited to what i could do. It was a bummer for sure. Also just to let you know about how else the trip was hard was the last day we were there i woke up feeling very sick. It's funny because before i went to bed that night, i told some guys about the last time i had the flu and i felt like i was going to die. Then i woke up and i was having that feeling!! It was nappy, as we say here. My ankle is still sore today and my stomach is feeling very poorly, tonight especially, but i will live.

I also worked today for the first time as not a trainee. I actually got 5 days of training in right before i left for Mexico, then i forgot pretty much everything and had to work the next day we got back which was yesterday morning ha. In the first half-hour i really contemplated quiting, but i stuck it through and by the end i was starting to get in the flow, so that was good.

Just to let everyone know about my schedule and how busy i am and when to call me here it is:

Sunday - 8 am pre-church service stay until 2 service ends
12 am work at Red Robin until about 5pm
5:30 pm high school youth group, ends around 8:30

Monday - 8 am worship time/class/church rotations until 3ish
(maybe work)
6 pm every other week Anthem students get together and hang-out with leaders

Tuesday -8 am class thing as well until 3ish
(maybe work)

Wednesday-8 am class stuff again until 3ish
5 pm middle school every other week

Thursday-7 am prayer
8 am class stuff until 3ish
(maybe work)

Friday - Work and usually we have youth events planned this night

Saturday - Work and college group at 6 pm everyother week

So this a gist of it.

The Harvest Festival we helped at for our church

Praying for the Nation

So since last Thursday I believe we (anthem) has been interceding for our nation and the president and so forth. I probably should have put this up then so that I would have reminded those of you who still check this blog out, to pray for our country but oh well... Not really but it will just have to do. But not saying that it's never too late to pray for our country. So Obama did it, and now abortion and homosexual marriage are going to start hitting home hard, so be praying for truth, wisdom, and love to be sought after. A big prayer that I think most if not all of us Anthem students have been praying for, is that the church would rise up and really dive into a deep faith in God and seek miracles and provisions that only he can do. Just to let you peeps know faith is being pursued very heavily here and right now, the Bible says it is impossible to please God without faith, and God wants us to be faithful in the small things, so I encourage everyone to be pursuing (not perusing) a great faith in the love of Jesus and the power of God.

It's funny whenever I say or think "power of God" I say it in my head with this deep "powerful" voice, kind of like when God shows up in the movie, "Monte Python and The Holy Grail". What a great movie. But in that I challenge you, yes you, to be seeking a power of God that is real, because by faith we believe that the power of God is real and immense, and that anything, yes anything can happen with that "power!" So don't think of God's power as this "aww (angle cry)" cartoonish thing, because it's real and it is powerful.

I'd like to take this time to make a shout out to J Prickett, you rock, yeah!

Forevermore Once Again!!!!

Yes, it's Coming again, it's Forevermore, The Re-Birth!

This post is going to be coming in parts as I keep updating it, but today we had a class with our Senior Pastor Garris Elkins, and during it I totally felt the Holy Spirit bringing a major heaviness on me as I thought about Forevermore. I was feeling so excited about it that my stomach was hurting, and I was like "okay God I get it, you want us to do Forevermore, now take away the butterflies in my stomach." It's was a crazy awesome thing, but I really felt like God was wanting me to Re-Birth Forevermore and have everyone in Anthem be apart of it.

But what is IT? you may be asking... Well Forevermore is an event me and a core group of friends did where we invited all the youth groups from Sisters, and our church to come to a night of worship where it was our core youth worship team and a couple other individuals that helped us out. Our focus was that we could all come together under one common theme of, Jesus. Our phrase for it was, "No religion, just Jesus." With this in mind we didn't was to be teaching doctrine, or telling people about how they suck as life, or that eveyone is a sinner. We were coming together to pursue the Holy Spirit and let God speak to everyones' heart. This was kind of the basics.

Jessica

This girl who is next to me. Is yes oh yes so free. But she sits wondering at what she's to do. Her days go on as she trys to persue, the things of God she desires, but life struggles make fires. Until one day she will finally know, that all of this is just a show.

A Poem I just wrote off the top of my head. Hope you like it!

Red Robin It Is!!

So yes, I am now a Red Robin Employee!! I just got hired today, thank you Jesus!! Now I will have money.

A Job ;(

So I still don't have a job yet. And i have applied to 5 different resturaunts and the only place that seems like a slight possibility is Red Robin. Everyone so far has told me, "they are accepting applications anytime, but they are fully staffed at the moment." I have also talked with a couple manangers and I get the same speil. Red Robin however told me they didn't have many servers, but i have to wait until monday to talk with someone and see if I have the job. I been waiting for a week and a half now, and I am praying that all this waiting is going to pay-off. Be praying that I get a job, 'cause I need one.

Mexico...shots...pass out...

So Anthem is going on a Mission trip to Compistella, Mexico. While we are there we will be helping out a freshly started church and doing many other things, possibly helping out an orphanage, i believe. But in order to go to on the mission trip we had to get some shots...

So I found out, that even though I have gone to Mexico 2 years in a row, I had to get 3 series of vaccines. Hep A (2), Typhoid, and Tetnus. So i got all these shots this morning, also i had no breakfast because I had the brilliant idea that I shouldn't eat because I was getting a shot. Smart I know! So after the 2 shots (my 3rd vaccine was a pill) I went up to pay... In a series of steps I felt sick to my stomach, then I felt hot, then I was in a cartoon, then I was looking at 2 old ladies (the nurses) and I was laying on the ground and they were asking me if I was ok. Very very trippy, but awesome!!! I am all good now though. I hit my head pretty hard on the tile floor I guess, and messed up a wall in the lounge, and I ate a nurses granola bar.

"The Canteen"

I had this picture the other day (I thought I wrote about it, but i guess not), and it was of us being so dependant on God that we (metaphore) run to the river with our canteen in hand saying God fill us, and he overflows our canteen. It's kind of a simple concept and picture, but it spoke to me and made me think. I think I had the picture when I was praying and thinking about the whole communion thing (last post, for people who are actually keeping up ha).

The cool part of this picture is that tonight, we had a worship and soaking service at the church, and it was awesome by the way. But what was sweet was that God gave me a different picture that related to the canteen. It was that we were going to the river with this huge canteen that weighed like 100 pounds (not filled) and it took both arms completely outstretched to hold. Then we'd finally make it to the river, dropping it a couple times on the way, maybe contemplate on not actually taking this huge monster. But then we tell ourselves we have so much STUFF in our life that we have to have to have this HUGE canteen filled with God's water to refresh us, so that we can keep going on the same way, but "feel" better and refreshed. With that God was saying to me that we should progressively bring a smaller canteen because as we become more surrendered to God, we have less stuff that we need God to cover and refresh us with. Because as we become more surrendered, we care less and less about ourselves, because we are completely surrendered to God, and we care more for others, the way Jesus did, and the way that Christianity says we are supposed to. (the whole Christians are Christ-like thing - which is actually true) You could even get to a point where you are carrying two canteen's down to the river, one for you (because you will always need a canteen for yourself, because only Jesus could really be completely selfless and surrendered) and another canteen for someone else.

Communion...

So this is not a post at all to tell how communion should look, or anything against how church's are doing communion. This is more of a revelation from God for me to be able to participate in communion so that God can fully work through me.

To back track, the idea of communion never seemed significant to me. I kind of just did it just to do it, like most. I mean yeah it's a recollection of what Jesus did for us, and may be a unifying thing for the body of Christ. But it's just another part of church, I think most people do just because. My brother (Micah) actually stirred this up in me when at a Sunday morning church service he did not take communion. Rather he just worshipped and prayed. When I asked him what that was all about (because it struck me weird that my brother who I looked up to, and knew loved God very much, did do this), he told me that he never understood the significance of it as well, he just kind of had the same feelings for it as me, he just chose not to do it, because why do something if you don't believe whole heartedly in doing it. (I think that is close to a famous quote or something) But anyways we talked about what we thought communion should look like.

This brings me to this last sunday morning church service where we took communion. I really pressed into God and tried to understand what it was all about, and I got these words:

Communion is a choice to participate, surrender, and step-out and say, "Lord I thank you for your body and the blood you shed, so I will take these elements because I can not do anything on my own, and I need your body and you blood, I have to have Jesus." It's also a unifying thing, when the whole body is joining together saying that (what i just said). And by unifying fully to be DEPENDANT, we grow as a body and we see the glory and power of God. I also wrote He will move, which is kind of implied by seeing the glory and power of God.

Lastly I, yes this is a me moment and thought, think that the offering elements should be, when done in a church service, at the front of the santuary and people should get up out of their seats to go and grab the elements. But then I don't know what they should do after that, i think it is just a cool concept to make people have to go and get it themselves. I think you see what I am saying here.

Surrender...

Surrender, has been my theme of life this summer and is still continuing. I just read a verse, Galations 5:24-25. And it talks about following the Spirit leading us, and by doing that we who belong to Jesus Christ have nailed our passions and sinful desires to the cross and cruicified them there. That's an awesome verse.

It's funny I recall AP English Senior year and we read a book entitled, "Anthem" (which is funny in that I am at Anthem, how ironic). I keep looking back at the significance of this book, and it was that the main character developed an Ego, in a society where NO ONE had an ego. The funny part of this is that God's challenging me to drop my Ego, and not necessarily follow the crowd or develop my own thoughts, but to be selfless.

Corinthians

Hey so I had this idea for a band. I have told lots of people about it, but it would be awesome if people pray about this and if they feel like God wants this for me.

So this is the gist of the band. We are called Corinthians because, the point of Corinthians was for Paul to help the Corinthians Church by strengthening the church, and challenge those people to model their lives after the heart of Christ. With that in mind, we (which is just me at the moment) are going to go to churches (mostly 4 square and assemblies of God) to challenge the churches body and really get to know the people in the church, and help them keep their focus on the heart of God. Our (mine so far ha) mission statement is: "Reshape and reignite God's Holy church by unifying the body of Christ under a shared passion for the love of Jesus Christ."

Our schedule would look like: Saturday we would be at a church and have an awesome worship concert and share God's heart with the people. Sunday we would help out with the worship and talk with the worship team and be constantly getting closer to the people at the head of the church, so that we develop a faithful bond between them. Monday we would travel to another church/youth group. Show up on Tuesday and have a concert/worship night with youth or church, and once again hang out with the people, and have fun and laugh. Wednesday we would help out with worship and maybe share a message for youth. Ultimately doing this so that we can impact the youth and see the spread out to their families. "Any revolution starts with the youth" - I think I heard this quote from Joe. Thursday and Friday maybe have another concert in which we invite people from all over, and we advertise this concert and have a major revival!!! Then we would start it all over on Saturday doing what we did the week before.

Another idea I had in mind for Corinthians is that we are totally not doing this for money, maybe alittle bit for publicity, but mainly for the church. Our only income we will get is from the churh, as donatoins towards us being able to continue spreading God's heart for the church.

I will be posting more stuff about Corinthians, like who else is in the band ha, and what else God gives me for this. But be praying for this.

Beginning of Anthem and our Retreat

So this is my first post for my days in Anthem.

To start it off, as everyone knows I took off on Friday to go to Medford, and I left around 12 o'clock, ,made it through Bend and was so excited, until about 20 minutes just outside of Sunriver, my car birthed a glitch. I was maintaing about 60 mph when all the sudden my accelerator dropped and became very touchy. I would push my foot down on the accelerator and I would maybe accelerate about 2 mph but my rpm's were jumping like crazy. On top of it all smelled some burning oil and heard a whining in my engine that was probably close to a G# tone. My transmission was shot! Long story short, I could still drive my car, so I back tracked it all to Sisters and left it at Alison Tenneson's house. She has someone take a look at it, and yes, my transmission was shot. Cost: $1,800. Not quite pocket change. I am looking forward to my tax return I will get sometime in February, but I am not going to enjoy the 4 months being carless. Be praying for my transportation issue. It's such a minor thing right now, because I am trusting that Jesus has such a great plan for me and will take care of me.

I made it to Meford though on Saturday, by mooching a ride off the Tenneson's. I got to my apartment, have all my stuff unpacked and I am nice and settled - for all those people who may be ask others if I am settled. I stayed for a night, and Sunday I went and attended Living Waters Church service. Talk about a church who's entire body is completely surrendered and broken to the love and Holy Spirit of God. I have honestly never seen a church like this; a normal church service was like a day of summer camp at Crestview. I will talk more about church in future posts, since this is only the first.

The Retreat was sooo amazing, God has so much in store for me, and is taking me to greater things. It was so awesome to be in this intimate setting with all these people who are longing for the desires and heart of God. Ryan Rhoden, the head of Anthem, took us through Colossians chapter 3. What an amazing chapter, this is the basis of our rules for Anthem. We went through this chapter like two hundred times throughout the retreat, analyzing it so much, and really get what God wants us to get us out of the chapter.

Well they are shutting down the internet here in 10, no now 9 minutes. So I will get these out to you and keep in touch.

"Renewing of the Mind" - Tory Wheeler who got it from our Associate Pastor Verl Simpson