​When we get to the point in our life where we have to "growing up" or (in the words of my wife) act your age, we sometimes lose site of our inner child. Not only do we do this in our life's journey but sometimes in our spiritual journey as well.

One of the popular scriptures in maturing our spiritual and physical person is in 1 Corinthians 13:11 where is says "When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things." (NKJV). We read this scripture and automatically think, "we need to stop messing around, live life perfect, speak a certain way, dress a certain way, hang out with certain people and/or Christian ONLY and do what mature Christians are suppose to do" and we lose site of our inner child. And now the question comes up "Why do we need our spiritual inner child if the scripture says we put away childish things?" Well the Bible also says in Matthew 18: 3 "...unless you are converted and become as little children, you will not by no means enter the kingdom of heaven." This could be confusing but if you think about it...it's pretty simple.

To put a little personal spin to this, when my son, Maverick, continues to get older and grow up, we will start liking things that are "age appropriate" and stop playing with the toys and stuff that he played with when he was younger. As Christian, our spiritual person needs to continue to move, change, adjust, and grow. When we do this, our spiritual person cannot with the "childish" things. We must strive for the next thing that God has for us and our spiritual person. But we are reminded in Matthew 18:3 that we have to keep the "Childlike Faith" to enter the kingdom. How do we continue to grow and mature in our spiritual person without losing the childlike faith part, our inner child? What this scripture is saying is that we don't need to get so caught up and so "spiritual" that we lose sight of the childlike faith we had when God first radically changed our life! 

When the disciples were chosen BY Jesus to follow Him and Him mentor them, their life was RADICALLY changed and their spiritual person started out green and an "infant Christian". As they walked, talked and learned from Jesus, they HAD to continue to change, adjust and grow their spiritual person. Along their journey with Jesus, they saw crazy awesome miracles performed and heard the stories straight from the authors mouth and they had that Childlike Faith. But after awhile of seeing the miracles being preformed, continually growing their spiritual person, learning from THE teacher first hand, they started losing site of their inner child and thought they'd "put their spiritual big boy pants on" and approach Jesus and see who was the best and greatest in the kingdom of heaven. When they got the nerve to ask Jesus which of them (the disciples) is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, this is where Jesus brought a little child in the middle of them and reminded them in Matthew 18:3 of how important it was keep their inner child.

Well how does this story apply to me? Well sometimes we get so caught up in being so spiritual and this awesome Christian that we lose sight of our inner child and do not act or practice our Childlike Faith! If we ever get to the point in our Christian walk that we don't see why we need that childlike faith to continue growing or moving forward, we need to be reminded, just as the disciples were, that we need to find our inner child! I like how Eugene Peterson puts it in the Message Bible:

Matthew 18: 2-5
For and answer Jesus called over a child, whom he stood in the middle of the room, and said, "I'm telling you, once and for all, that unless you return to square one and start over like children, you are not even going to get a look at the kingdom, let alone get in. Whoever becomes simple and elemental again, like this child, will rank high in God's kingdom. What's more, when you receive the childlike on my account, it's the same as receiving me."

We must continue to operate in and with our Childlike Faith. Even though we also need to continue to adjust, change, grow spiritually, we must remember to keep it simple and not complex.

​Outreach2012 is an idea that came together starting with directors and board members of the non-profit organization (Network 21 Missions) that we work with. Ever since traveling to London a decade ago, they always wanted to have some kind of presence
m there or surrounding area of London. After we saw that the 2012 Summer Olympics were going to be in London, there was an immediate sense of urgency to start preparing and be there before, during and after the 2012 Olympics. So here is how Outreach2012 started an idea into an AMAZING team that is currently raising funds to go over there!

The Beginning...
Of course being here in the States made it (and still is) hard to get everything figured out. We met via phone, email, personal meetings with several people from the UK area, people here in the States with some kind of influence there in the UK, other organizations, etc about this idea and how in the world do we get started....and we got the same answer from about 90% of them, "That's an awesome idea and we want to be apart, let us know when you get it figured out!" Well, that didn't help since we were fishing for ideas and answers on how to get it started from them! We continued working on the idea of having a team in London during the Olympics. About a month or month and a half ago, we went from an idea to a reality with a team of 7 college-aged people! One Sunday morning during church, my sister-in-law felt like she needed to go to London. This in its self was a shock because she is a "home body", she hates being away from home for an extended period of time. So when she approached her dad (which is the director of Network 21 Missions) he was shocked. She continued to express her heart and feelings and after sharing this with us, we all knew this could be the beginning. To take one step back, when she was telling her dad about this, it came up taking a film crew and filming the trip. 
(Outline of the film crew: back in 2009, while Culture Shock Team 1 was out, we had an idea about filming the trips and edited for a possible TV show that we could be used for multiple purposes. #1 - marketed to TV channels to be used to help fund missions and ministries around the world, #2 - show all the different aspects of missions and the trips, #3 - show the different cultures around the world, and #4 -  encourage people to go on a missions trip.) 

After the filming part was brought up, she automatically knew who she was going to contact. When she got a hold of the guy, from Colorado, he told her that he and some of his college friends were talking about going backpacking in the UK this summer and was stoked about the trip!

The Present....
After it was all said and done, there is now a team of 7 college-aged people that has started raising funds for this trip. This past Sunday night, 6 of the team members got together for the first time and we had our first team meeting. Even though this is a MONSTER leap of faith for some of the team members, you could tell they were ready to embark on this crazy journey. They are all starting to post blogs on their trip blog page (well, we've asked them to anyways) to start getting the word out about what they are doing and also maybe help them raise the money they are needing for this trip. You can read their blogs by going to the Network 21 Missions website and going to the "Blogs" page and choose the team member you would like to read about. We are hoping to have the blogs up and ready on the website by the end of this month, so by December you can start following the team on their journey before they actually go out on their journey on OUTREACH2012!

​The last few years I have been reminded of how important prayer was in my life. Of course I know that my personal prayer time is super important, but I'm talking about other people keeping you, your family, your life situations and the things your involved in a part of their prayer life....Prayer Warriors or Prayer Supports. 

Which ever you choose to call it, it doesn't really matter. I like to use both terms but in two completely different context. I know sometimes in my life, my family and I need someone to "support" (help) us during their daily prayer sessions because we maybe be facing some roadblocks and spiritual crossroads during our day...but sometimes there are times we need someone to go to battle with us and for us. When life's roadblocks and crossroads turn into battle field of giants that we are facing and we can't do it alone.....we need the "warriors" behind and beside it helping us.

What brought me to this place and blog was this....when your growing up and finding your way in life, you don't really thing about this topic. If you grow up in church, you hear about prayer warriors and being someone's prayer supporter but never really process the topic because it's not "relevant" to you at the time...so you think. When you decide to actually grow up, do the college thing, get married and start being "family-minded", this topic kind of turns "relevant" to you. The reason why it's not "relevant" to us until we're that "family-minded" person is because we're too busy trying to be cool and doing stupid stuff not thinking it's stupid. While sitting here and reflecting on all the stupid stuff we did when we were young, I can clearly see times of my parents and family was praying for our safety. Even though I never had any crazy things happen to me, thank God, I can think of a few things with my family. 

I can remember a time where my little brothers should be glad someone was praying for him. Back in 2005 on his way home from college, he decided to turn stuntman and roll his truck after crossing the Red River just inside Oklahoma. If you know that area...there is nothing around you except wheat fields, a sketchy "hwy" that has deep ditches on either side and no cell service (especially if you have AT&T). After finding himself in the middle of the wheat field, he was surprisingly able to find his way to the closest town to call someone. After the highway patrolman saw what had happened and saw his truck, he said there was no way he should be alive or at least badly injured. There are a few other stories about someone in my family that decided to follow my brother's footsteps and become "stuntwomen" but I will not tell those stories or say who it is, because I don't want her to get upset at me know "telling her stories". (If you know me personally, you should know who I'm talking about...)

A more recent story that effected me directly has to do with my son. When my wife was in labor with my son, we didn't know what was about to happen, and didn't learn about it until later on. When Mav was born I wasn't able to cut the umbilical cord, not really thinking why I couldn't since I was about to pass out my self due to the craziness that comes with the experiences of your first child. Later we find out that the umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck. 

Now to land this plane (or blog)...we need to know the importance and "relevance" that prayer supporters and prayer warriors have on our life no matter our age or where we are in life. I know Val and I have seen first the power of prayer in numbers. We both have lost our grandmothers, which both were some prayer warriors for us and our families 24/7 until they day they died. Since Val and I have decided to make this huge faith jump into God's well, the last 3 years have be pretty crazy. Sometimes it seems as if all hell has broke out and we're making the most stupid choices, we question everything we're doing, even though things are falling into place...we don't see them coming the way we want or how we want...we notice that we didn't just loose our amazing grandmothers but we lost 2 amazing prayer supporters and warriors.

So, the point is, even it your a person in ministry or not, you need prayer supporters in your life. When we are doing in God's well and doing what we're suppose to be doing, we will have roadblock, crossroads or even giants in our way that we need the prayer support from our friends and family.