New baby

Hey there everyone, I'm sorry I haven't got to update at all this week Esther and I had our first baby.

His name is Samuel Richard Sharp! He was 5lbs 12oz, 19 inches long. He was born on March 26th, 2012. He is doing great, and so is Mom! We are super excited.

Quick little thing we are going to be doing next week for Spring break. We are doing to be doing a Devotional everyday on here so you can have some great times with God even if you are in Florida, or right here in Middlebury.

So I will start blogging on Monday again! Thanks guys have a great Spring Break.

P.A.

Redeeming the holy day

This series is based on a book from, Mark Buchanan Redeeming Rest: Symptoms of Not Resting, who wrote the book, The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath Redeeming Rest: Symptoms of Not Resting. If you haven't read it I recommend it. You need to read this book!

Lets be honest for a second. Our culture does not want to slow down. And because we don’t slow down to rest, we show symptoms and these symptoms often lead to burn out. I have talked to countless youth pastors who are burnt out. How can we get to this place? I think the answer is as simple as rest. We need to take a day or two days off a week to enjoy family, and give the whole day to God. What a crazy idea in our fast paced culture.

Take a few moments and go over the list. What statement is true for you? How have you been acting out of exhaustion lately?

What symptoms are true for you?

1. Oversized Emotions. Are your reactions disproportionate to reality?

2. Indifference in a Colossal Amount. Did the words, “I don’t care” come out of your mouth lately? This is a reality for me when I am exhausted. This can also be apathy.

3. Restless and Listless. At the end of the day are you so exhausted, that you can’t do anything else? You have no clarity of what you should be doing.

4. Growing Resentment Against ___________ ! If we just got rid of this person all would be great. Have you lost the capacity to find good in another?

5. When people come to you and you say, “I’m busy!” What signal are you sending to the students and parents you serve? Do you hear the words, “You are really busy” as a compliment? Or do you boast that you are busy to show how valuable you are to a church? Can you stay that busy for a year? What about 5 years?

6. Intimacy at All Levels. Are you with drawn from people? Do you have anyone who truly knows you? Resting should get you more of God and more of your family/friends.

7. Self-pity. Are you an Eeyore? Do you wallow in all the things that are going wrong?

8. Confidence in Christ Diminishes. I can do this on my own. Have you been relying on your self lately? Let Christ increase so that you can decrease. Don’t get in the way of what Jesus is trying to do in your life.

9. Stop Caring about What I Truly Care About. What about the things that bring you joy? What haven’t you been doing lately?

Let Christ Redeem your soul by you resting.

P.A.

Baby week!

Hey there everyone, this is the week that our first born child is due, so I will not be updating much this week at all. But here are somethings that you need to be aware of.

1. This Wednesday night you won't want to miss because we have some amazing games planned, some great student led worship, and also Wes miller is going to be bringing the house down with a great message.

2. Just a reminder that student impact applications are due the week after spring break!

3. The new April thru august calendars will be out in 2 weeks, so you can start planning your adventures with us through the summer.

4. For those who are interested in our Urban Plunge trips coming up this July we will be having a meeting here in 3 weeks (April 11th) about what to expect. We will be doing a junior high and a high school trip this year. Those who are going to be freshmen we would like you to go on the High school trip this year.

Those are all the things to remember for today, again if you have any questions at all please email me at cvmcadam@gmail.com

Have a great day!

P.A.

Ladies and gentleman

Hey there everyone, I hope things are going well. I was done with my workout this morning before the sun came up today, I am not a fan of that. Oh well, I will get used to no sleep soon anyways.

Tomorrow night at REFUGE is going to rock, that's all I can say about that. We hope you can join us tomorrow night at 6:30pm to 8:30pm. I know there are a lot of students who have track, golf, baseball, softball, and other events going on, but we for those who are able to make it we have some great things planned for you. Lots of fun games, great worship, and a really challenging message from the story of Joseph!

I wish I had more time to update today, but I swamped right now with so many things so I will leave you with this awesome video.

Hope to see you tomorrow night!



P.A.

REFUGE this week.

Hey there everyone. Here are a couple things you need to be aware of for this Week at the REFUGE!

1. Pancakes and Prayer - This Wednesday morning at 8am. Bring a friend if you want! We will have enough people to bring you to school so don't worry about getting over to school. We will leave at 8:45 to take students over to school.

2. Movie night this friday night! 8pm - 10pm, we will be showing a great movie! Despicable me. Oh man such a good movie. We will have popcorn for you, but you will need to bring your own drink! Last time we had a super fun time. We hope to see you there.

3. This coming Wednesday night we have some great things coming back.
- Impossible Shot
- Bracket Challenge
- We do this every year with the brackets, every small group will fill out the brackets for the NCAA tournament, and the winner will win a pizza party for their small group.

This wednesday we will also be talking about what happens when God seems to let you down. We will be digging into Joesph and his story. Joesph lived a pretty insane life, like his life was crazy, but yet He stuck with God through some really crazy times.

We hope you can join us this Wednesday night! I can't wait to play some awesome games with everyone, Worship loud and proud, and then be challenged by what the bible has to tell us.

Hope to see you there.

P.A.

REFUGE recap

Hey there everyone, I hope things are going awesome for you today. I want to give you a run down of what we did last night! It was pretty Epic.

We decided that we should put a little spin on Chicken on the roof so we made it EXTREME! Where you had to carry your partner over to the other side of the room. It was awesome sauce!

Then we decided to celebrate my birthday with some cake, but it was just any cake it was a face cake, and those faces were some students faces that we put a bunch of frosting, candles, sprinkles, and chocolate chips. It was pretty awesome, and I felt like my birthday was celebrated perfectly.

Then we went into an awesome worship set!
Sing to the King
Sing Sing Sing
Never once
Our God

Then we spent some time talking about relationship letdown and the 4 things I feel like happen to us when people let us down.
1. Prideful spirit
2. Revengeful attitude
3. Justified sin
4. Hard heart

These are just a couple of things that happen when we get let down, and we have to watch ourselves so that the enemy doesn't swoop in and pick us off with any of these attitudes.

Then we showed a video of a girl who was let down by someone really close to her. You can watch the video here.

The Story of Harlee Lowder. from To Write Love on Her

Then we challenged the students to pray a prayer of forgiveness and invited them to talk with people that maybe have let them down, and be open and honest with them. We then showed them another video about being made new. You can watch that video here.



P.A.

Tonight's gonna be a good good night!

Hey there everyone! I hope things are going super awesome for you today. Here are a couple things you will need to know about tonight.

1. It's going to be a ton of loud music, that you can dance to!
2. We have some pretty awesome games tonight, some new twists on old game, and 2 brand new games that we have never ever played before! It's going to be awesome.
3. We have a brand new song we are doing tonight called "Never once" by Matt Redmen. You should check it out on Youtube. Click Here to listen to it.
4. We are starting a new series called Letdown, and we are going to be talking about how people can let you down, but we are called to some very cool and interesting things in the Bible. We are also going to be learning some Hebrew tonight. You definitely don't want to miss that.

Those are just some of the things you can expect coming tonight to REFUGE. Also we will have our Cafe open tonight, so we will have some goodies ready for ya! Can't wait to see ya.

P.A.

Brothers and Sisters

Hey there everyone, I hope you guys are having a great and awesome day.

I want to tell you a story that happened to me this weekend while I was in Kentucky. This past week I was at a youth ministry conference called Simply Youth Ministry. It was a fantastic time and renewing, being challenged, and also getting taught a ton about youth ministry. It was fantastic.

On Friday night there were some massive storms that blew through, producing tornado's all around the city I was in, luckily we didn't get hit directly but we still felt the effects of it. A friend and I were walking to dinner that night, and it was really really windy. Windy enough to make us stop in our tracks and brace ourselves against railing that near us. We couldn't move, we couldn't do anything until that storm had past a little.

It got me thinking about how God moves in our lives, and how sometimes we get stopped in our tracks because of the Spirit of God.

My prayer for tomorrow night at REFUGE, is that God moves in such a way that we are stopped in our tracks. That for a moment we are awe struck by what God is doing in our lives and the lives of others.

So tonight I invite whoever wants to, to pray for these 3 things to happen tomorrow night at REFUGE.

1. That students and leaders would worship God with all their heart.
2. That Small Group time would be out of this world and students would be able to share their hearts openly without feeling judged.
3. That students would experience Jesus Christ in a brand new way.

I am super excited for tomorrow night and what it holds, God is going to do some great things, but we have to do our part and position ourselves in a way to hear from God, and that starts with us falling on our knees in prayer.

To God be the glory!

P.A.

My next couple days.

I am in Louisville for the weekend and I am getting super pumped for the schedule I got to put together. Even today I have got some great time to plan, pray, and get a good work out in. Below is my schedule of the seminars and the things I will be learning about the next 4 days.

Thanks for the prayers!

Purity Ceremony Recap

Hey there everyone, I hope you have come down off your sugar high from all of last nights food! Wow, Oh, Wow! There were some delicious desserts made.

I want to thank you all for coming out last night, I think it was an amazing night where students and parents a like got challenged to live more of a pure life. From purity of mind, to purity with our bodies.

It was so exciting to me watching students show off their purity rings, and talk with other students about their rings and what it stood for. God did some pretty awesome things last night, and I cant wait to hear about them.

Here are a couple things that are coming up for you guys to be aware of:

1. This Sunday morning we are kicking off our NEXT class for our Junior High students, we have a great teacher who has some pretty amazing stories and she is going to be rocking it for the month of March! I hope you guys can make it. It starts at 9:30am this Sunday morning at CVMC!

2. We are starting our Letdown and identity series this March we are going to be talking about how God never lets us down, and how of friends sometimes can. Then we are going to be spending some time talking about our identity in Christ.

I believe God has some amazing things planned for this REFUGE in the month of March. I hope you guys can join us for this amazing ride!

P.A.