4.5 Months In

So it has been close to 4.5 months living in Huntsville, and it has been awesome to say the least. There have been few normal days in living with two families made up of two kids in each family under one roof. The 3 older kids (ages 3-5) are a joy to be around and I have learned so much from them. Mainly in seeing how they respond to authority has been challenging. When I see them disobey it is so easy to sit back and reflect on their disobedience as being absurd, but the same disobedient heart comes out in my own life as well. The grace of God has been lavished on me abundantly and I am coming to understand more and more how much God loves, he's gracious, and merciful to me in my disobedience and that pushes me to want to run from my sin. What has been awesome about the kids is the thousands of nicknames they have given me over the course of a few months. Some examples of are: Sandy Pants, Sethy Methy, Sanderson, Sander Pants, and Sweaty Seth (after I workout). As much as I initially hated Sandy Pants (most common) it has grown on me, and now I have legally changed my name to Sandy Pants, changed the license and everything. Jk, but seriously.

A few weeks ago there was a pretty tight conference here in Huntsville, it was the GCM Collective National Conference. Some of the teachers there were Jeff Vanderstelt, Caesar Kalinowski, Hugh Halter, Jonathan Dodson. The focus of the conference was Missional Living, and one of the main things they were hitting heavy on were Missional Communities. So Missional Communities (generic name) are kind of like your small groups that are typically found in most churches today, but they go a step further, and as a community you are on mission to make known the greatness of Jesus. This type of community has really challenged my views  on the church fulfilling the Great Commission. *Before I write these next few sentences I am not trying to slander the church and point a finger*. But I was challenged with a thought that was posed at the conference and that was really kind of posed in a question, that question being along the lines of: How much effort and money do we put into Sundays ( the day most Christians go to church) and Wednesdays? And is this effort and money taking away from the church itself really fulfilling the Great Commission. I am not a pastor, but I would imagine a lot of preparation goes into Sunday mornings. I am not against Sunday gatherings, in fact I love them, and I love coming together once a week to meet as the church together in a big setting. So long story short, one of the big nuggets at the conference was really focusing on taking the gospel to your community as a smaller group (I'm not sure if anyone wants more clarification on this, but I would be more than happy to talk about it.). Anyways I was challenged greatly by the conference on many levels. 

Recently I have been extremely challenged by the book of John and I have recently been reading through a book called "Note to Self" by Joe Thorn. The book focuses on preaching the gospel to yourself in different areas of your life, and to really start a practice of letting the gospel daily infiltrate your life in every situation. I'm going to try and make this short, but I have been challenged to rejoice more in Christ. I was challenged, because I do not always rejoice in Christ, in fact I find it easier to rejoice in other things at times that rob me from rejoicing in Christ. My affections are split, and so I was challenged by Psalm 100, and mainly with the verse that says, "Know that the Lord, he is God!" Remembering who God is, remembering him brings out the characteristics of his nature that he has shown me. Know that Jesus is God, he is the one who suffered and died on our behalf for our disobedience. So letting the gospel infiltrate all sides and angles of my life does bring about joy, and from that joy I rejoice in God. 

Again it truly has been a blessing to live in Huntsville and to be apart of a church that is passionate about Jesus and his mission, to go into all the world proclaiming the good news of a just and loving God redeeming sinful man to himself. Praise God. 

P.S. - if your looking for a city to move to, Huntsville is the place, jobs and jobs galore. 

It's Been Awhile

It's been some time since I last made a blog post. A lot has happened since then, friends have visited, fireworks have exploded, relationships have been deepened, church has been rocking, these are just a few to mention. This past week I had the house to myself, the Robinson's had gone on vacation to the beach and it was definitely a lonely feeling to come home and to have nobody there but me. Some people love this feeling, I abhor it. I guess living in a 3 bedroom, sometimes 2 bedroom house with 6 guys really has changed me over the years. The week mainly consisted of me going to bed at 8, reading through the rest of Hunger Games Book 1 (don't judge, it was free on the Kindle, and it kept my attention, and I had to see what all the hoopla was all about), eating lots of steak, more reading, an episode of 24 in season 4, and some Summer League Ultimate Frisbee. The coming weeks will be a big change, the Olympics start and a family of 4 will be moving in with us as well. This will make a total of 9 people in the house, it's going to be a party to say the least. The family is from Sojourn and are looking to adopt and possibly move into the same neighborhood as us. Which would be a sweet dynamic; to be able to reach out to those neighbors around us with the gospel in a community. So for them to move in with us allows for them to save up for their adoption and possibly to save for a house as well. I won't go too much further into the situation, because we will be starting a blog about it soon. I will post the link when that thing is up and running. So big changes are going on in Huntsville, and I am looking forward to the coming months and years. And I will throw a little advertisement out; if you are a dude or girl and graduating soon and are reading this blog and you don't know what to do with your life, I can help you with one suggestion. Here it is and completely free: MOVE TO HUNTSVILLE. Make the leap and join with us in what God is doing in this city through us and through his church (all believers). I promise you will love it, and if you don't love it I will pay for your moving expenses, guaranteed.

Anyways, this week I took a little break from Ezekiel, and my heart was craving some Psalms. I spent a majority of my week reading, pondering, praying and thinking on Psalms 103; hands down one of my favorite passages in Psalms, if not the whole Bible. It encompasses a lot of what the whole Bible is telling us. That God is good and completely worthy of all praise, he is the Forgiver, the Redeemer, the Satisfier of Good, the Merciful Savior, the Just, he does not deal with us as he ought to, the Compassionate King, and much more. David states at the beginning and the end: Bless(Praise) the Lord, O my Soul, and all that is in him bless(praise) is Holy name. This Psalm is a remembrance of all that God has done in the life of David, and from all that he has known and seen God do he offers up praise. David makes some super powerful statements in this passage that strike me deeply. Verse 3, David says: "who forgives all your iniquity and heals all your disease." Verse 4, "who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy." Verse 5, "who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagles." Verse 8, "The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love." Verse 10, "He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities." Verse 11, "For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love towards those who fear him." Verse 12, "as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us." Verse 13, "As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him." Verse 15 and 16, in light of this weeks events with the Colorado shootings, "As for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more." Verse 17, "But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children's children." And verse 19, "The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all." These verses are incredibly powerful and make known a powerful God. I encourage you to spend time on this passage, it speaks deeply to the soul when you begin to meditate on the words that are spoken in this passage, and I guarantee praise will come forth from your heart, and if the words don't pierce you and strike a chord in your heart, ask God to soften your heart and repent of the sin that he can only forgive. These words will speak volumes to your heart, because God has spoken them. So Bless the Lord, O our souls, and all that is within us bless his Holy name. 

60 Seconds of Free Falling

These past few weeks have been great. I have been able to join Huntsville Ultimate (Frisbee) Summer League, which has been a lot of fun. Every Thursday I come home with a sweat laden shirt and tired legs, these are the perks of playing ultimate. I recently decided to start back doing Crossfit, which is a workout style that is extremely effective in building muscle as well as endurance. So I decided to go ahead and buy a small bumper weight system, a kettlebell, made my own slam ball/medicine ball, constructed a pull-up bar, and will be in the process in the next week or so in building a box jump. I was able the past two weeks to get my landlord/co-worker/friend, Eric, to join me almost everyday. Which makes Crossfit much more enjoyable and endurable.

Anyways, this past weekend I went home to see my family and wish my dad a happy fathers day. Very enjoyable time to spend talking with my mom and dad and getting to see my sister and aunt, whom I had not seen for some time. But it was good to be together with all of the family. And to see Chattanooga once more, a city I hold close to my heart. That weekend I was able to see a good friend, Greg, whom I had not seen since Christmas time, we grabbed dinner and the idea of sky diving got thrown around towards the end of the conversation. In my opinion it was more of a something that sounded fun, but thought it would probably never actually go down. Well Greg did his research, and on Wednesday apparently it was going down. So yesterday we went to an airfield about 50 minutes south of Huntsville, right after work, and at 5 we were up in the plane climbing to 14,000 feet, above the clouds. It was unreal being that high up and realizing, "Ok, I'm about to jump and I will be falling really fast out of an airplane that is not on fire towards the ground, and the airplane is perfectly fine." I was pumped to say the least. I get nervous with heights, but only when I don't feel secure. If I am strapped to something or someone securely I am fine. But if I am on the edge of a cliff not attached to something that is when I get light headed and step away from the edge. But everyone went before Greg and myself jumped, and then Greg and his instructor were next and before I knew it they jumped and then me and my instructor were next. We get to edge and I look out over the horizon, and it is breathtaking. It is super beautiful, the cloud formations are massive, and it is just an unreal feeling to be on the edge of the plane like that with 14,000 ft between you and the ground. We pumped forward once, we pumped forward twice, and on the third we were out the door. Yowwwwwwww, the thought of, "I am actually falling really fast right now," ran through my mind. Then I started screaming, "This is awesome, this is awesome." Looking at the horizon you really do not get a good feel for how fast you are falling until you go through or past a cloud, and you just see it zoom by. After 60 seconds of that the shoot deploys safely and you get yanked really hard. You definitely feel secure when you feel that thing yank and compress everything on your body. So on the 5 minute ride down, my instructor pulls a hard left on the chute, and we are almost horizontal to the ground going in circles towards the earth. You definitely feel a lot of force when you do that. But I liked it. We eventually land and Greg comes right behind us, we get unattached from our instructors and we were pumped for how much fun that was. Greg made the comment, "That is the best use of $140 I've ever spent." Anyways, it was tight. It is tempting to go for your jump license once you make that first jump. But that may not happen. It was a fun activity to end the week on, and looking back now I wish I would have gotten some pictures and video, but oh well.

This week has been great as well reading through Lamentations. I had made this transition once I had moved out of the book of Jeremiah. And now I am in Ezekiel, but I just started that today. But Lamentations complimented Jeremiah very well. in the transition from Israel continually rebelling against God, and God telling Israel that he would punish their disobedience with handing them over to other nations. This is the effect of sin. Whether you believe it or not, sin affects us in ways that we selfishly either do not see or choose to ignore. What motivates you to lie, to cheat, to steal, to lust, to disobey, to be apathetic, to covet, to worship the things you own, to worship yourself, etc? The motivation if it leads to sin, is self gratification. To be satisfied in stuff, image, religion, etc. Every human, since the beginning of the fall of man has been this way, myself included. And this is how Israel was towards God, the one who redeemed them from a life of slavery and gave them a land that he had promised he would, a land that was fruitful. And even though God had done this for Israel, Israel decided to bow down to things they created with their own hands like wood, stone, and metal idols. They decided to worship gods that other nation created. But even though they had been taken care of and blessed beyond need, they still decided to rebel against the one true God. And like I said in the last post God is holy and his holiness will not be profaned by sin. So he must punish sin, and so he gives his people over to other nations to rule over them, they lose their freedom of having their own king, their own land, their own houses, their own freedoms, their own lives. They lose what God had given them, because they willfully turned against God and turned to the things they and others had created. Is it not foolish to bow down to something you created with your own hands and to say I give you power to rule my life? Or better yet to turn to wooden idol that came from a tree you cut down, that you used it's own wood to burn to create the tools to form it, and eventually carve out a shape and bow down to it and say, "I want to be satisfied in you, I want you to bring rain for my crops, I want for you to provide for my family, I want you to oust the foreign kings that have ruled our land." How foolish, yet this is how Israel acted towards God, and this is the exact same way we react as sinful human beings towards God. We don't create wooden idols anymore, but we turn to anything other than God to sustain us. This all builds towards what happens in Lamentations. Israel rebels against God, God punishes Israel by handing them over to another nation. The writer of Lamentations recounts how painful it has been to see how God punishes those who willfully rebel against him. He talks about how things use to be when they were under God and how good it use to be when they were their own nation under God. How they have pretty much starved to the point where women are boiling their own babies for food. How the enemy has prevailed over them, and taken down all their mighty men. How they use to be comforted by God. This comfort is gone, because of their rebellion against God, their protector has now turned his wrath against them, because of their sin. All of these things are happening to Israel, yet one thing this man recounts in the third chapter is this, and he says,

"so I say, “My endurance has perished;so has my hope from the Lord.”
Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall!
My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me.
But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,  “therefore I will hope in him.”
The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.
It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.
It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.
Let him sit alone in silence when it is laid on him;
let him put his mouth in the dust—there may yet be hope;
let him give his cheek to the one who strikes, and let him be filled with insults.
For the Lord will not cast off forever,
but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not afflict from his heart or grieve the children of men."

What is so great about this is that the writer knows and remembers that God is compassionate, and that he is loving. Even in his suffering for the sin of Israel he is making this known. He knows that it is the sin of Israel that has brought about this pain, death, and suffering. It is sin that brings about the justice of God. Sin doesn't prevail, God love and justice prevail. And at the end of Lamentations he makes this known:

Restore us to yourself, O Lord, that we may be restored!
    Renew our days as of old—
unless you have utterly rejected us,
    and you remain exceedingly angry with us.

The punishment of his sin does not leave him going on in utter rebellion against God, it leads him to repent and to seek restoration. This idea is foreign to the world. The question becomes, "Why would a loving God do this and allow this to happen?" "Why would a loving God give his own people Israel over to another nation?" "Why would he cause the one's he loves so much grief?" The answer is because he wants them to repent and turn to him. He wants to continually show his love to them. So I think the question should become, "Why would you want to sin against a loving God?" It should challenge both the believer and non-believer. For the believer to continually run and die to sin, and for the non-believer to understand God's holiness and love in a right way, and repent of your rebellion and your sinning against God. It is the love that Christ has shown the world by dying for the sin that separates from God. I must continually be challenged and reminded of the truth of, "Why would I want to sin against such a loving God, who laid down his life for me, and offer joy and joy abundantly?"

3 Weeks In The Hunt

So a lot has happened in the past month and a half. I have finished my Master's degree at Tennessee Tech, I have a job, I have moved to a new city, and have moved in with some good friends of mine. Quick change of this nature is hard for me, I enjoyed Cookeville where I had lived for the past six years of my life. There I had become apart of a church that I dearly loved, and I grew to love a lot of really good friends in that city, and I was able to see good friends come to know Christ as well as see good friends grow more in the likeness of the character of Christ. I have not experienced this type of change since I first moved to Cookeville, for my first year of college. That first semester was rough and I bucked it hardcore, but through it I came to know Christ by bowing the knee to him, I gained some incredible friendships, and I grew into the man I am today. As hard as the move was initially, I am starting to enjoy the city of Huntsville more and more. I look to spend a majority of the rest of my life in this city. I look forward to seeing what will happen in the next five years. To see the people God brings into my life, to hopefully see familiar people move to this city and join in all that God is doing here. It's going to be exciting.

I would ask you, especially if you are still in college and are looking for a job once you graduate that you would consider the city of Huntsville. It's a great city for engineering, bio-tech, teaching, really any type of science related field. There are great churches here to be apart of that seek to proclaim the good news of the gospel to this city. And eventually I may need a roommate, if you are a dude. Anyways it would be sweet to have fellow Christians move to a city that needs Christ.

I look forward to continue to write about my experiences in this new city and the things that the Holy Spirit teaches me through his word. And before I check out, I did want to share some thoughts I had on reading through Jeremiah this week. I am in the last 10 chapters of Jeremiah. I will be honest a lot of stuff has gone on in this book that I am not too sure what is going on, but there has been a lot of good truths that have been presented before me to dwell on. One of those was while I was reading through the sections where God is pronouncing his judgement's on certain nations. With one (Moab) nation he says that he will pronounce his judgement on them, not because they're innocent, but because they are like every human on this earth, rebellious and not wanting to follow God in any way (unless their heart has been changed). They spit and curse his holiness by going to other gods and disobeying what he has commanded. But there is something amazing that is said in chapter 48, and not just there but other places in the Bible as well. His judgement's are a product of his holiness and our sinfulness. But God says that his heart moans for Moab like a flute. The things they have gained will perish. And it causes him to be sorrowful, not because he regrets what he is doing, but because he wishes that Moab would turn to him as their God. He knows that their sinfulness must be done away with, but he wants Moab to repent and turn to him and he will remember their sin no more. But God is compassionate, he wishes that no man should perish, but men by nature are God-haters. But that does not stop God from extending his grace to broken men. And so I started to think more on the grace of God and how when Christ would look out on a crowd of people and have compassion on them. And how Christ knows the hearts of men and how they were bent away from him. He will one day judge all men, but yet he can still look out on a crowd of people and have compassion on them. I'm not sure how much that may or may not make sense to you. But the one who judges and rightful to do so, because he has been sinned against, still looks out on a crowd of people and his heart breaks to know that these people would not choose him, unless he opened their eyes to see how good he is. He is gracious, He has opened my eyes. And I hope that the whoever reads this knows and understands that Christ is gracious. He has grace and grace abundantly, to those who repent and believe. May you be encouraged to know that when you were dead in your sins Christ died for you. You are still alive today because he has shown everyone some amount of common grace to where you get to breathe your next breath. I pray that everyone who reads this gets to experience a grace that goes beyond this life and into eternity, where you experience the grace Christ wants to show you based on what he did on the cross. He is gracious, so come to him and experience the joy of the one who created and can/has save(d) you.

- Seth Anderson

Fight Club Talks

Here are some talks from the Acts 29 Fight Club Conference Taylor, Patrick, and myself attended. The talks are very good and exciting I suggest you watch them in order, the first two are dynamite. The first talk blew my mind, as Taylor has said, "When this guy speaks golden nuggets come out of his mouth." All this guy is is a vessel used by God and has a good deal of wisdom. Enjoy. Just copy and paste the link below.

http://www.jointhefightclub.com/media/

-seth

School supplies and fruit flies

Hi, this blog is coming fresh out of the corn fields of Ohio. I am in Ohio this week for a family reunion with family I have never seen before, and it is good. It's good to talk to people you have never met before, because they do not know who I am and most of the people I am meeting are old they are curious about the lives of young people. Which is sweet cause it allows to talk about God and his greatness. Which is even sweeter, because God has been changing my heart more and more on how to share about the cross and who God is and why he would want to die for us. Through the transforming power of the gospel it brings about a desire in our hearts to where we cannot hold this good news in and the beans must be spilt. God has been changing my heart on this, not just to go through a dry presentation of the gospel, but to share with excitement, because it is a very exciting truth. Jesus in his love came to earth to redeem those who hated him....Exciting.
Psalm 1:1-3 - "Blessed is the man... whose delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers." Has been a verse of meditation these past few days. How I want the verses I meditate on to take root in my life, to meditate on the law and word's of God that yields fruit in my life that magnifies his name. Let his word continually produce healthy fruit in our lives.
The start of school is biting at most of our heels and we will all start back here soon, and I am excited to see every single one of yalls faces. See yins in the coming weeks. Feel free to come over to our house. Sam Metzger, Taylor Kidwell, Jeff Beckett, and myself have moved to a sweet house right next to the SOC House behind the stadium. Feel free to bring over friends and come and chill.

May the cross transform your life,
Seth

YOWWWWWWhat a week.

What a week it has been. Got out on the golf course this week with a guy who recently graduated Tech and I realized how bad I am at golf. Robert Pattison (Vampire from Twilight) and Reese Witherspoon were in Chattanooga this week, so the whole town was buzzing with excitement. Apparently every girl from the age of 12-28 in Chattanooga wants to meet Robert Pattison. I work near where he was staying and on Monday I was walking to Monday Lunch Prayer with some guys from my church and some teenage girl pulled the fire alarm in his hotel so that the 100 or so people waiting to see him would get to see him as he had to exit the hotel for safety reasons. I have to give props to this teenage girl for going to the extremes of wanting to see him. We talked about it at the lunch prayer and just talking about in general how we as people just completely idolize people in those positions whether its A-list actors or Christian pastors. Anyways today Taylor, Patrick Komisky, and myself went to an Acts 29 Regional conference called Fight Club X. Super convicting. Really unique outlooks on what discipleship looks like for these guys in their communities was very encouraging. And to hear how they go about it was exciting about what it could look like for each of us whether in school or post-graduation. There was one guy there from India and to hear what God is doing in India would blow your mind, and to hear what God was doing in Dr. Samuel Thomas life and his ministry was unbelievable. When the talks get posted on their website I will try to post the links to the talks. I think I can speak for all three of us in that we walked away challenged.


Top o' the morning lads and lassies,
Like Seth said, I pulled a fire alarm this week.... jk. This week was good. I turned 21 on Wednesday and got to go with my parents for my first beer and steak... delicious. Friday I went with some of my friends and my brother to a brewery called the terminal. I had a bison burger...also delicious and an oatmeal stout...not so delicious haha. My time in Chattanooga wraps up this week sadly but its been great. Ive been meeting with two of my best friends one who just recently became a Christian to talk about the bible. I've really enjoyed it and I think we are all growing in friendship and in our relationship with Christ through it. I have also been able to talk to my brother some about God. You better believe it has been awkward haha. But it is great to see God make plays. We also just got back from an Acts 29 conference...crazy. It was very convicting and challenged a lot of my thoughts about my life and goals. I am just praying that the things learned really take root and begin to shape my relationship with Christ. And dude should check them out. I say dude because it was a men's conference. That's all for now. Peace.
Taylor Batson Kidwell