Thanks!

Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

I'm sure you've already read a lot of posts about what people are thankful for, so I'll try to avoid making a big list, but I hope everyone was able to reflect on all we've been given in life. If you're reading this, you have access to a computer or phone, which not everyone has the privilege to enjoy, so there's a start!

Monday we had a Thanksgiving meal as a revival group, since that's they day we meet normally. We got to share in pairs things about the other person that we are thankful for, as well as give small gifts, so it was a cool time of getting to know people a little better. 

I was also thankful for beautiful California weather to play football in, and for my safety after we ended up playing tackle football with some guys who were a bit bigger than us:

The "Turkey Bowl" - they've been doing it since '76

On the big day, the other BSSM students from my apartment complex and I banded together and made an amazing feast. For most of us, it was the first one away from home, so the fact that all of our kitchens are still in tact is pretty cool (minus one small burner-on-fire incident). We also took in some other students who needed some awesome company to celebrate Thanksgiving with. Here's the gang:

I contributed the corn pudding and jello salad! Thanks Mom :)

It's been great seeing all the international students post pictures of their "first Thanksgiving". They got to experience this American tradition with us students or families from Bethel who volunteered to host them for their meals. Overall, just a whole lot of smiles and good community. So again, I hope you had a great day or week of celebrating and being content, no matter your situation. Thank YOU so much for reading this and for supporting me in my journey here at Bethel! I pray that you receive many blessings of peace, love, and pumpkin pie!

This week I don't have a song but watch this 6 minute clip from Graham Cooke! About how much God loves us no matter what:

In His Gaze

Thank you to everyone who has donated so far to my South Korea trip! The first payment deadline was met (with 2 hours to spare!) and I have a month and a half until the next one. You can still donate here if you want to.

The past two weeks have been amazing. There are no crazy events that stand out but it seems like every day we get hit with a new truth or revelation about a concept that's spoken on. Kris Vallotton has been blowing our minds with a couple talks on truth, the Bible, and how nobody can accurately interpret the Bible without the guidance of the Holy Spirit. We get to download 10 of the talks for free (3 bucks a piece after that) so I'll definitely try to get some of the more impactful ones to save a share. I'm also enjoying worship more, and it's definitely a highlight of every day. Sometimes I wish I was up on stage playing but I know that I already have plenty of things to do with my time.

A few days ago some friends and I went to Whiskeytown lake to have a late-night bon fire under the stars. The next day there was a fire by the lake on the news but we are 95% sure it wasn't our fault:

Don't worry, we covered it up with sand afterwards

One thing we sang during worship one day was the phrase "You never take your eyes off me." I don't think it's from a particular song, but I love the idea of God constantly looking at each one of us. It's a gaze so loving that no deformity or sin will turn it away. No one can come to Jesus unless the Father draws him in (John 6:44) so even the most rebellious souls are being wooed daily. The stories of people "finding God" are actually stories of people finding out that God has been chasing them their entire life, and He actually knit them together in the womb (Psalm 139).

He's not like a celebrity that people follow on Twitter, limited by time and space. He has enough mind-space to concentrate fully on everybody, all the time. And we're engraved on the palms of his hands (Isaiah 49:16). God delights in us and loves looking at his creation. He knows when we sit and when we rise, when we go out and when we lie down. He is extravagant in his pursuit and extremely optimistic. He is awesome!

I've been jamming out to this on guitar recently: Great I Am by New Life Worship

Annyeonghaseyo!

Hey family and friends!

For those of you just joining the weekly frenzy of this blog, I want to catch you up and get everyone on the same page.

Here's a little refresher, at no extra cost: For the past 2 and a half months, I've been in Redding, California studying (we’ll call it that) at Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry. We are learning how to encounter Jesus and help others encounter Him as well. We get a lot of practical training in ministry, Bible study, and growing in intimacy with God. It’s been an amazing ride and I can’t wait to see what is in store for the remainder of the school year.

One exciting adventure that I will be part of is a 2-week trip to South Korea next March! I’ll be going with a team of about 20 people, including my revival group leaders, Young and Hannah Kim. They were both born in South Korea and want to see the people there meet Jesus. So we're going to introduce them. 

This is Seoul, the nation's capital. We'll be spending most of our time here, teaching, preaching, and showing them honor in any way we can (one of BSSM's core values is having a culture of honor). We will get an opportunity to teach at supernatural school ministries that have started in Korea, preach at church services, lead treasure hunts, pray for the sick, and minister to Korean celebrities who are hungry for Jesus and influential in their society. Young and Hannah also led a team here last year, so they already have people inviting us back to be with them. I'm praying that we will be able to meet PSY, a very famous South Korean celebrity who has grown in popularity recently. With music videos getting over a billion views, imagine the people he could reach if he found out what Jesus did for him:

He could be the next Billy Graham!

I can't wait to visit Asia for the first time and surprise South Korea with God's love. Please mark March 22 - April 4 on your calendar if you want to partner with us in prayer. We'll be meeting as a team to get to know each other and pray a couple times each month until the trip. If you want to contribute to the $2,400 it will cost me to get there, there are a couple different ways to do that. You can make a check to Bethel Church (with a note that it's for Nick Hunter's South Korea trip) and send it here:

Bethel Church
ATTN: Missions Dept
915 Twin View Blvd
Redding, CA 96003

Or you can just click here!

  

Thank you in advance for sowing into what God is doing throughout the world! One hundred years ago Korea experienced a powerful move of God's revival and from that historical outpouring of the Holy Spirit birthed churches all over the nation. Korea was split into two nations after Korean war and to this day is separated. We are going to be Jesus' hands and feet to bring renewal, revival, healing, restoration, identity, and reconciliation to these wonderful people.

Kamsa Hanmida! (Thank you)

This song is awesome, especially when it gets to the bridge! Alleluia by Jesus Culture

Sacrifice

November is in full swing and it's still sunny and in the seventies here :)

This was part of the inspiration for last week's post:

We've moved into the second term which means new AMT's (electives) and now tracks are emerging. A track is basically an in-depth elective that will last longer so you can go deeper. I was accepted into the counseling/inner healing track, so I'm excited to be starting that on Tuesday! One thing we'll be talking about is the Sozo ministry at Bethel. I'll be in this track for the remainder of the school year. 

My revival group had our first City Project last Friday, so we got to go to a park and do various feats of physical strength and cleaning. Mine involved wearing a very cool jet-pack (leaf blower) and clearing the path of leaves for an event that weekend:

We just passed a homework milestone, which is the monthly date where they will actually start locking you out of the attendance system if you have missing assignments. Since we don't really have tests at BSSM and there really aren't that many rules either, this is probably the biggest measure put in place to make sure students are actually doing work, not just getting drunk on the Holy Spirit and having worship parties, as awesome as those are. So we've all pretty much settled into a (barely) regular rhythm of reading:

One thing that has been on my mind lately is the idea of sacrifice and how it surfaces in almost every area of our lives. We were saved by a sacrifice and though we no longer have to make physical sacrifices to atone for our sins, we have chances every day to sacrifice to our King. He is certainly worthy of our time, our money, and our to-do lists. I think God enjoys when we "waste" our resources on him. Like when the woman poured a bottle of very expensive perfume on Jesus' head (Matthew 26:7) and he said it was a beautiful thing. The disciples all said "Why this waste?" but they didn't understand that the woman was showing that she was truly willing to give up everything for the Savior of the world. 

David was man who understood sacrifice. He writes in the Psalms, "My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise" (Psalm 51:17). What God really wants is our heart. And Proverbs tells us that everything we do flows from our heart (Proverbs 4:23) so what happens inside will manifest on the outside. One great story from David's life that I've heard taught on a few times here comes from 2 Samuel 24. King David is told to use another guy's land to build an altar to God which will stop a plague on Israel. When he goes to buy the man's land, the man offers to give it to David for free along with cattle for sacrifices because he knows it's for the Lord. But David refuses the gift and says "I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing." If love doesn't hurt a little, we're not seeing the full spectrum of love. Sacrificial love is the kind that endures through hardship. 

So we have many chances to sacrifice to God. Not to earn his love but to demonstrate our love in response to His. Sometimes it means giving up our comfort or our reputation. God does not command us to be outcasts but Jesus promised many times that following him would bring hardships. In the end, we are His children who don't need to worry about lacking anything. Our Dad owns it all and he "has been pleased to give [us] the Kingdom" (Luke 12:32). Living for God is not easy but it's joyfully hard.

Our first payment deadline for mission trips is coming up in a couple weeks! It's been so cool to hear the different testimonies of God's provision flowing in. If you want to sow into my trip to South Korea, you can donate here!

This week's song is a good, intimate one: Worthy is the Lamb by Brian Johnson.

A Christian's defense of Halloween

Halloween is unique, to say the least. Like every other holiday, it involves food (in this case, 2 of the 4 main food groups according to Buddy the Elf - candy and candy corn). But unlike other holidays, the season culminates in a 2-hour game of make-believe followed by a candy coma and the realization that you've taken in a week's worth of sugar in one night. The holiday takes a lot of flack for its spookier connotations, and many Christians take cover and suffer through it, happy to be one day closer to Thanksgiving. But I want to share what I love about Halloween and some characteristics that I think God loves too. Instead of writing about its origins (which have mixed Christian and pagan roots) I want to call out 4 great things I see in it today:

Creativity- God is the ultimate Creator, and since we're made in his image, we've got some pretty active creative juices flowing in us too. People go all out on creating the best costumes, sometimes planning for days what they will wear for a few hours come October 31st. Whether it means popping some tags at the thrift shop or popping holes in a cardboard box to make a robot, everybody loves a creative costume. Even if someone is making a gross, inappropriate, or in some way "sinful" costume, they can't help but use their God-given creativity, which has potential to one day lead them closer to the One who gave them that gift.

Generosity- Isn't it fun to give?? Jesus said "It is more blessed to give than to receive" (Acts 20:35). That may be a hard principle to teach the kid sitting on his bed surrounded by Milky Way wrappers and the unopened Bottle Caps that nobody likes, but everyone who has seen the delight on a child's face when they get candy can attest to this truth. Obviously Christmas kind of takes the cake for bringing about generosity (though Black Friday shoppers certainly hide their generosity well) but people generally enjoy sitting on their porches with their fog machines and flickering lights, waiting to give without asking anything in return.

Fellowship- How many nights a year is it socially normal to visit all your neighbors' houses and see parents walking with children on every sidewalk? I'm not saying that broken families are made new because of Halloween, but it certainly has a way of bringing people together and creating friendships. Now you could leave it at that and decide to only talk to your neighbors once - Hey...Bill. How have you been since...last Halloween? - or you could take advantage of one of the many conversations starters made possible by Halloween - Hey Fred I love how you used a mop on your kid's head to make the evil minion's hair from Despicable Me 2. Did you find that on Pinterest? - the possibilities really are endless. Find a couple people who seem cool or maybe who don't seem cool at all (they could probably use some friends) and start some relationships. It's what we're built for.

Being like a kid- Jesus said "unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 18:3). There are a lot of childish ways that we shouldn't strive to emulate (being irresponsible, selfish, or rude) but there are SO many child-like characteristics that we often lose when we make the journey into adulthood. Children have faith, they trust without questioning, they rely on their providers, and they sleep soundly even during troubles. God wants us to have an awe for him like a child watching his dad work on something amazing. He wants us to talk to him just because we can, not only when we're in trouble. Halloween brings out the kid in everybody. You get to dress up like anything you want and eat every Reese's cup in the bag. You get to go to dance parties, watch movies, and laugh a lot more than you would on an ordinary day. The main event happens after work hours and ends early enough for everyone to participate.

So there you have it. We're made to look like God and even those who don't know that yet find themselves acting like Him somehow. Halloween comes with a lot of weird baggage, but when you boil it down to its celebration, you can see little glimpses of Heaven invading Earth. And superheroes invading your front lawn.