Grace, a call confirmed, and the need for more grace.

Thankful for a community of brothers that know me and allow me to know them. I tend to run away from them sometimes but they love me regardless (whoa sanctification). Me and Aug really are totally opposite but we've concluded that it makes us a great tag team.

Today I was reading Ezra at work today (my job allows me to do whatever basically), and somehow at chapter 9 something just stirred in me and helped me reevaluate my most singular life passion: To be able to play my part in a resurgence of the explicit gospel of Jesus Christ. Resurgence being the word for a particular reason while also seeing and being greatly encouraged by many many faithful men and women living and breathing it as I type this. I'm grateful for my first mentor who loved the gospel so much that he preached it every single sermon, talked of it in tons of conversations (a lot of fun dating convos haha) and I could always tell he was thinking about it by that look in his eye. I've been blessed with an apartment-mate who not only loves the gospel but has ANGST to see its power manifested. I'm excited and hopeful that our generation of young people would be obsessed, enamored, and deeply satisfied by the beauty of the explicit gospel of Jesus. Not a system, not a particular camp of theology, but simply the person and work of Jesus. This is what excites me more than anything else and I'm excited to see that my burning for it is making me see the urgent need for it right before my eyes everyday. I've always known it and felt it a lil, but it's getting stronger and I feel it pushing me to where, by grace, I'll be able to say with Jeremiah (Jer. 20:9):

If I say, “I will not mention him,
or speak any more in his name,”
there is in my heart as it were a burning fire
shut up in my bones,
and I am weary with holding it in,
and I cannot.

This campus here at baylor, each time I go to the SLC, the library, the business building, the CUB, it's slowly pressing in even more each day ... that people not only need the gospel, but that the harvest really is ready and the workers really are few. I've confessed over the past couple of weeks that I don't give people enough credit in thinking that they don't want this gospel, this Jesus, this God. But I'm compelled a tad bit more each day that they're just waiting and almost pleading for someone to tell em.

I've always somewhat run from the call to pastoral ministry, particularly the ministry of preaching. I'm a preachy guy but when it came to it, I'd shy away and pretend that the business major I'm in would actually be in my long term plans. But this year, I've been freed to at least be able to answer honestly to the question "What are your plans after college?" with "I'm planning on going to seminary and becoming a pastor." It's freeing to not have to shy away from that and being 100% confirmed in that. I'll have my days where I begin to doubt but God willing, I don't think I'd be satisfied doing anything else. So I'm reminded today, and reinvigorated with that passion that I had seemed to have lost the past semester with a question from Paul. I want to dedicate my life to this and consider my life itself as nothing if only I may gain Christ. He's too true to chase anything or anyone else.

"How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ."
-Romans 10:14-17

I'm begging you brothers and sisters, let us partner in this gospel together. It's powerful beyond measure. It's freedom for the captives. It's life to the full. Can't believe he entrusts the ministry of reconciliation to continual screw ups. Maybe it's to "show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us" (2 Corinthians 4:7). Thank You Jesus. You've won my heart and there's no turning back. Your love keeps me. To the praise of His glorious grace.
-Jon

Prayer request for my life: "[Jesus] we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me" (Colossians 1:28-29).