I am a relatively simple guy.  My daily routine is nothing out of the ordinary: wake up, do devotionals, go to work, eat, relax, spend time with friends, watch tv, eat more, sleep and repeat.  Regardless of my simplicity and the ordinary nature of my daily routine, life is certainly not mundane.  When you work with as many different personalities and characters as I do, and with the involvement of a plethora of emotions (my own and others), God tends to use the above to “mix things up.”  Every day, my God takes the simple and the ordinary to reveal to me His intricate and exciting plan for me and the world, which ultimately leads me to Him.  How?  Let me share with you how God has been challenging me to do this.
For my enjoyment, I have been reading “The Pursuit of God” by A.W. Tozer.  I highly recommend it.  Here is what Tozer says about God:
“God is a person, and in the deep of His mighty nature He thinks, wills, enjoys, feels, loves, desires and suffers as any other person may.  In making Himself known to us He stays by the familiar pattern of personality.  He communicates with us through the avenues of our minds, our wills and our emotions.  The continuous and unembarrassed interchange of love and thought between God and the soul of the redeemed is the throbbing heart of New Testament religion.”
God is near to us.  Not only is He the God of the Old and New Testament times, but He is God of the 21st century and is well, aware of the world we live in today.  If we are able to fathom the mystery that the God of the universe, who spoke life into being, calls Himself Emmanuel, God with us, we begin to understand that God is a person with personality and not only does He ordain and allow things to happen, He cares about the people that things happen to!
Our relationship with God is no different than any other relationship we have with the people around us.  God gently and powerfully invites us to pursue Him.  God in His perfection makes Himself available to us, reaches out to us first, and loves and delights in our pursuit of Him. If that would only be our response to His grace!  Even more, He brings us and uses the different physical places that we find ourselves, different situations and circumstances, and simple routines, that perhaps we would seek Him and know Him more (Acts 13).
“How tragic that we in this dark day have had our seeking done for us by our teachers.  Everything is made to center upon the initial act of “accepting” Christ and we are not expected thereafter to crave any further revelation of God to our souls.  We have been snared in the coils of a spurious logic which insists that if we have found Him we need no more to seek Him.”
Where are we in our pursuit of God?  Do we recognize that He took that first step through Jesus Christ in reconciling sinners to an amazing, personal relationship with Almighty God?  I pray that God would open our eyes to see how He uses the ordinary to draw us closer to an extraordinary God and that we would be driven to radically pursue our Awesome God.

From Pastor Keeyoung’s Heart
October 21, 2012

In case you were wondering why Pastor Sara was nowhere to be seen last Sunday, I was away in Italy for a week!  I have two special friends that I’ve known for more than 30 years, and when we all turned 45 and realized that we weren’t getting any younger, we decided to take trips of our own every two years without our children or husbands.  We live in three separate states, each busy with family and professional responsibilities, so we have to intentionally plan time for ourselves to maintain our precious friendships. This was our second international travel after our trip to Paris four years ago.  There are so many interesting cities in Italy, such as Rome, Venice, Florence, Pompeii, and Naples just to name a few, but since we didn’t want to spend all our precious time on the road travelling from one city to another, we decided to spend half of our time in Rome, visiting the many tourist attractions and the remaining days on the beautiful Amalfi Coast located in the southwestern region of Italy, relaxing and enjoying the breathtaking view of the Mediterranean Sea. 
While in Rome we visited many world-famous structures, including the Colosseum, Vatican Museums, St. Peter’s Basilica, the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon (ancient Roman temple), and several other ancient landmarks.  The Colosseum was definitely one of the most extraordinary places I’ve visited in my life. It was not just its amazing architecture or impressive size, but the sense of its gory history stirred up something in me. While so many tourists from all over the world were casually strolling through the structure, posing for pictures here and there, it dawned on me that it was here that gladiators engaged in deadly combat and condemned prisoners fought off hungry lions while tens of thousands of Roman citizens were cheering on. During mass battles, the smell of blood and burnt flesh and that of wild animals became unbearable.
According to the tour guide, such violence was considered rousing entertainment.   It also served as a crime deterrent, reminding people of the brutal punishment for criminals and prisoners of war. Another important function of these brutal public events was to give the citizens something to occupy their minds with - to distract them from political and economic problems.  As soon as I heard the word ‘distract,’ I could not help but think of all the year-round sporting events that keep many people occupied and obsessed in the US, while distracting them from dealing with real life problems.  When baseball season nears its end, football season is in full swing. Once football season winds down, basketball games begin. And then back to baseball and so on. Sports - and any other entertainment for that matter - are not harmful in and of themselves.  However, if all our leisure time, energy, and resources are spent on them, Satan surely has succeeded in distracting us from pursuing joy and satisfaction in God.  Just as the emperors used the gladiators and wild animals to create spectacular scenes to control the crowd, Satan has used the media, electronic gadgets, music idols, sporting events, and other means to distract born-again Christians from seeking and fulfilling God’s will for their lives, to render them ineffective as God’s people.  The scheme of the enemy has remained pretty much the same from the very beginning.  It’s to distract us, to keep us occupied with things of this world.  Tragically, too many of us have fallen victim.  We must wake up and walk out of this modern-day Colosseum.

From Pastor Sara’s Heart
October 21, 2012

It's become something of a running joke about the fact that i break down in tears when I'm preaching or even just talking with others, whether it's during Saturday early morning prayer, staff Oikos or service. I've tried to make light of it in order to perhaps make it stop. I assure you that nowhere in my personal sermon notes do I have any notation "cry here for dramatic effect." My season of weeping has been going on now for hmmm, let's see - 5 or 6 years now! I can recall back then when things were starting to happen to me in my spiritual growth., I was in my car driving northbound on I-270. I didn't have any particular thing weighing on my mind but as I was on the highway driving past NCFC I started crying- bawling actually. Now that's just plain weird.
I'm not quite sure about what exactly is occurring when I get that emotional. It's definitely not as though I'm in grief but moreso because I'm relieved and touched that God would still bother to be present and at work in my heart and mind despite my many screwups. I guess it also has something to do with the fact that for 40-plus years I had been blind to certain anger issues that in the last two to three years since seminary I've had to finally confront for maybe the first time in my life. I won't bore you with the details of all of that but I think maybe it's God's way of breaking me down- breaking down a lot of hurt and dysfunction that had manifested over the years which were damaging to my relationships as a husband, father and brother in Christ.
It's embarrassing to be sure to breakdown like that in public. I don't mind the emotional part at all when I'm by myself or standing in the congregation anonymously but who knows, maybe a dose of public humiliation now and again is good for the soul too. I know most guys would prefer to be more stoic and non-expressive of emotions because we tend to associate emotion with effeminate weakness. And none of us guys want to appear as complete wimps. But I think the Spirit moves in that emotional realm. So when we build up those walls by denying this response I think we lose out on those transforming moments of love and grace that God wants for everyone, even the tough guys. Amen to that.

From Pastor Mark’s Heart
October 14, 2012

This past week as I was sitting in my office  I logged onto facebook and started visiting old friends from college and found myself  thinking back to my college days all because of the “people you may know” and “mutual friends” section on my friends’ pages. So many good memories of my “youth” made me smile and brought such warmth to my heart. One common thing I noticed as I was visiting the pages of my friends from college is that their facebook pages were filled with pictures of their families, especially their kids. This is a huge change from when we used to post up “self-shots” on Xanga or cyworld (for fobs). Most of the people got married with someone I don’t really know but there were a number of people who married within the circle of friends that used to hang out together in college. I for one am an example of that. My wife and I met in a campus ministry in 2002 and became friends and got married in 2007. One thing my wife and I enjoy is attending weddings of our friends because that’s the time when we see many of our college friends. Many of our friends have moved away from this area for schools, jobs, and even missions so we don’t get to meet or hear about them. But thanks to facebook, I am able to see pictures, read about their lives, ministries, and connect with them through internet.  How amazing is that? I’ve been using facebook for a couple years now but I never fully appreciate this great tool that God gave to us.
According to Wiki answers.com, an average person, during his lifespan of 60-62 years, meets 67,000 people. Of course I don’t have that many friends on facebook nor do I have that many contacts on my phone or email, but it’s amazing how many people we come in contact with in our lifetime. Out of the thousands of people that I have met over 30 years of my life, I probably talk to less than 5% of those people on a regular basis, including my family and co-workers. However, I must say many individuals have made an impact, small or big, on what kind of person I am now. There were teachers, friends, family members, and mentors who encouraged me and brought out the best in me and my abilities when I was deeply discouraged and was struggling with my insecurities. I cherish every conversation, the meals we shared, the times we spent with one another and the prayers and tears that we shed together. It would be awesome to have a big reunion with all the people that I miss. However, the only way that can happen is in heaven so I pray that everyone that I came in contact with, the people that I shared my life with, my friends and family will be in heaven when I get there.
It must be the weather that’s making me feel this way these days. I’m getting somewhat moody and emotional about little things and those of you who know me will certainly say something’s wrong with me because I usually have a hard time expressing my own feelings. My wife will surely agree with me on this one. I’m slowly learning to process my feelings and emotions. Hopefully it will lead me to the next step of expressing it!

From Pastor Brian’s Heart 
October 14, 2012