February Devotional

Come let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our   salvation. Come let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker. Psalm 95: 1&6

Currently we are caught in the middle of the two biggest church seasons of the year, Advent (Christmas) and Lent (Easter).  These seasons are so big that often we see many families coming out of the wood work to bring praise and worship to the Lord on such significant days, His birth and His death.  These are huge times of the year! Our Lord was born, and about thirty years after, his death is the only reason that we have a hope for the future.  But what about the fifty other Sunday’s of the year?

Now I am not here to convict those who only worship on Christmas and Easter but rather to ask myself, and probably a lot of you who struggle with the same thing as wellwhat are we doing the   other fifty Sundays of the year? I can probably count on both of my hands and maybe a couple toes the amount of church that I have missed in my life. However, I cannot begin to comprehend the amount of times that I have “been” in worship but have only been there and not actually focused on what God is trying to tell me that day.

Why is that? Why do we get so caught up in this two inspirational church seasons and then just drop off for the rest of the Sunday’s of the year, even if we are present in worship? I think a large reason is that we see the Word becoming Flesh. We literally see God’s Word come alive to us in the form of   Jesus. Yes we hear God’s Word and the words that Jesus spoke the rest of the year through the gospel but it becomes familiar to us.

Now of course everything that we do in this life is, or should be form of worship to our God, but I am specifically talking about the gift of community worship that God gave us and we are allowed to  practice in this country.  We have the opportunity around 52 times a year, not counting mid week worship, to come with fellow believers and worship our great and powerful God with all our might and strength. “To kneel before the Lord our Maker”.

There is a reason that God has brought into His house to worship Him, to come before Him with praise and thanksgiving. He comes to us through His Word every time we step through the front doors of wherever you and I worship with other believers to give all praise and glory to Him. Most importantly to hear the Words that He gave to his messengers to tell us. We all would be wise to listen, not just through Advent and Lent, but all year.

Through Him Alone,

Ryan Strehlow

Excited to see you all back in the Midwest this next week!

NADCE and Call news

Hello everyone. I just returned from a beautiful week in sunny California and wanted to update you on my trip as well as the call process here in Alaska.

The week in California was amazing, the speakers were great, time away from the church for a bit was great, and most of all seeing friends and making new ones was by far the best part of the whole conference.  The conference ran Tuesday night to Thursday around noon, but I was in California from Monday morning to Friday late afternoon.  It gave myself quite a bit of down time, but most importantly to see many of my friends from the program who I missed and Adam and Kyla as well.  The theme of the conference was #connect so I was able to meet many new DCE's and some very respected DCE's in our synod as well.  The worship experience when I was there was absolutely phenomenal.  We were led in worship by Kip Fox who lead the worship at the last national youth gathering that was in Orlando, Florida.  So it felt pretty cool to go from seeing him in front of 25,000 people to now only in front of 150.  We had about 1/4 of the DCE's from synod represented at the conference so there was many connections to be made.

Now to the point im sure you are all waiting for.  Last Sunday Our Redeemer as a congregation voted to officially extend me a call for the position that I currently am serving under now.  So now I basically am praying quite a bit and deciding whether or not I believe that this is where God wants me to be. The date for a decision that I am shooting for is when I come back for midyear in a couple weeks, but it could go quicker, or it could take longer.  I am not one to test God so this answer will only come on His time.

More than anything I hope that you all will pray for me and my understanding of what I believe God's call is for my life.  It is not my will, but His.

Thank you all for the support that you have given me through this year thus far, and the continued support and prayers that I know I will receive.

Blessings,

Ryan

January Devotion

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:6-7

“Don’t worry.” How many times has someone told you this, or have you find yourself telling someone these wise words? It’s such an easy thing to say to someone else, however when we find ourselves in a similar situation it is so hard for us to take our own advice.

I consider myself a very easy going person, and able to roll with the punches that this sinful world throws my way on a day-to-day basis, however I was not always this way.  After my father had passed at such an early age I worried about everything you could possibly imagine. If my mother was five minutes late from picking me up from basketball practice, if there was a tornado warning, even crawling into bed every night was a challenge for me (probably the biggest), and an even bigger one for my extremely patient mother.

I found myself attending Christian counseling often, and finally one thing got through to me, and that was prayer.  My counselor, Doug, wrote out a prayer for me on a small sheet of paper to keep in those awful Velcro wallets that we used to have growing up.  I was to read this prayer every time that I was worried. This task was a little bit more difficult than one would think since I did not have much of a reason to carry around a wallet with on $1 and few quarters, but that stuck with me. That prayer still rests in my top drawer in Milwaukee with that awful wallet, but I still remember what Doug taught me, prayer is powerful.

So often we overlook prayer in our daily lives because we don't trust it. Which can only mean one thing, that we do not trust God.  In addition when we actually do slow down and have some prayer time it is just us telling God what we think (key word) we need.  God wants to have a conversation with us, not  just have us throw requests at His feet like he is a magic Jeanie who will give us three wishes, if that was the case I hope you all would wish for a million more wishes, I’m not sure how that got overlooked in all these movies. God rather wants to have a relationship with us, that is why we were created!

This month in Sunday Night Life we are going to talk about prayer. Different types of prayer, how to go deeper in our prayer lives as a family, as individuals, and how to make that relationship with God deeper.  Two very simple adjustments can be made to your prayer life to make this phase of your walk with Christ a conversation. The first is for every prayer request you have, thank God for something that He has done for you, is doing for you, or something of that nature. The second is to just stop, be silent, it’s a conversation for a reason. Quiet your heart and soul and see what God has to say back at you.  You may be surprised by what you have been missing.

Through Him Alone,

Ryan Strehlow– DCE Intern

Christmas Madness

Well I once again have failed at informing you all of my life more than once every couple of months. I apologize.  I have no excuses apart from the fact that I was busy, and lazy, also watching Illinois lose to Mizzou seems like a better past time than writing a blog, but here we go!

So Christmas time in the Church is crazy busy! Who would have thought? It seriously was crazy though, we had our Children's Christmas service the weekend before Christmas on December the 16th which was nice to spread out the mass chaos that seemed to run about everywhere. All of the Advent services, and also where the date of Christmas fell this year we had Sunday service on the 23rd, two services on the 24th and also a service Christmas morning.  It was an awesome experience though and many families took me in for the days before and after Christmas, which made me feel as though I was not as far away from home as I thought I was.  Christmas eve I was over at two different church families houses for dinner, and Christmas day I spent with one family for almost the whole day. The day after Christmas  I went to "boxing day party" at one of the church families houses as well. Needless to say I had enough food to eat, and enough company to share.  Alaskan's do these crazy things called hikes before your allowed to eat dinner as well, something about staying healthy was their reasoning. I wasnt really listening but for some reason this Christmas I didnt gain my classic 10 pounds.

Honestly though I cant begin to describe how amazing people are in the church, and how well they take care of church workers around Christmas, and of course through the rest of the year as well.  I received so many gift cards that will help me out with grocery's and also getting some fun stuff for myself as well.  It was way above and beyond what I ever expected to receive from anyone, and I was not expecting to get anything from anyone. It seriously was unreal.

Sunday is a pretty big day. The church votes on whether they are going to issue a call or whether they are going to continue forward with two part time workers for the congregation.  Depending on what their choice is, and possibly what my choice is after that It could have huge implications on my life for awhile.  More than anything I am praying that God's will is done on Sunday and I hope that is what all of your prayers are as well please.

On Sunday night I also head to California for the NADCE conference! which is a huge gathering of DCE's that happens once every three years which is a pretty big deal! Im very excited to see some friends from the DCE program and Adam and Kyla will be in attendance as well which is pretty exciting, I miss the the two of them very much.

After Christmas and between New Years I took a bit of break from work and hung out with my good buddy Trent up here and his Fiance Shawna.  It was nice to take a breather from work and just hang out for a bit.  I have been working well into February due to the fact that I am going to be gone so much in January around here.

I look forward to coming home to see you all in less than a month! I also am going to start posting the devotions that I write for our monthly newsletter on here, now that I actually write them myself so I hope that you all enjoy them as well!

I hope that all is well in the lower 48 and I cant wait to see you all very very soon! Thank you for continued prayers that you send all the way up here, I can tell you they are reaching God continues to bless in ways that shock me every day that I am up here.

~Ryan