Final Week

This is our final week at Link Year and it has been filled with tears. It's going to be super hard to leave this group of people that have walked alongside me the past 8 months. We started the week off with LinkOlympics. This was a really fun Mystery Monday activity that everyone enjoyed. The best part of this activity was when the girls played powder-puff football. It got really intense but was so fun!!
Jonathan Pokluda from Watermark Church in Dallas came to speak to us for our final week. He talked to us about the pitfalls that we will face in college. The first one being narcissism. Our generation is the most narcissistic generation that has ever walked the face of this earth. That is a sad statistic. Christians are called to be servants and to love our neighbors as ourself, not be narcissistic. The second pitfall was lack of commitment. Our generation doesn't make commitments. The Bible tells us in Matthew 5:37 "let your yes be yes and your no be no." If we make a commitment we need to follow through with it and stop making up excuses to get out of things we don't want to do. JP suggested that if we ever want to get out of a commitment we should go to the person and say hey I know I made a commitment to you, will you let me out of this commitment? If the person responds yes then great, but if they say no then you have to respect that and honor the commitment you made.

Counseling... It's Biblical

This week we loaded up the vans and went to the middle of nowhere for some fun in the trees for mystery Monday. Once we arrived at Zipline USA, we loaded buses again to go on a very bumpy, windy, curvy dirt/rock road to the top of the ziplines. We then proceeded to go on a series of five ziplines. This was a fun experience, the scenery was beautiful and I had fun being in community with my peers.

This week’s speaker was Tim Watson. Tim is a Christian counselor in Fort Worth, Texas; he is also Brian Wang’s brother-in-law. Tim joined us for mystery Monday and hung out with us throughout the week so it was fun to get to know him and play with his precious son Owen. It was really interesting to hear what Tim had to say about counseling. I know that in our society counseling generally carries a negative connotation, however a friend of mine that is a Christian counselor has told me that it is for anyone and everyone; it doesn’t necessarily mean anything is wrong. Tim’s purpose this week was to enlist, equip, and encourage followers of Jesus Christ to live and counsel the Gospel of Jesus Christ and His word to themselves and to other people; especially those living amidst sufferings and problems of life. Tim pointed out this week that counseling is Biblical. This was a new take on counseling for me. Counsel is not a new invention; God gave instruction or counsel in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:16-17). When the Bible talks about instruction, teaching, or discipleship these are just other words for counsel.

Biblical counseling is a continuous process, where one person offers loving direction and comfort to another person or persons according to the word of God. Biblical counseling aims at human hearts in order to help human hearts fully for Christ. This is done primarily in two ways: 1) transform heart toward loving God and others well 2) expose the parts of the heart that are unwilling or unable to change. We are called to teach, disciple, and counsel those in our lives. I hope everyone enjoys their weekend!

Pursuing Excellence

            This week started off with a trip to our local martial arts studio for self-defense class! This was a very entertaining mystery Monday. We each partnered up and practiced several self-defense moves.

            Austin Oches did a phenomenal job as our speaker this week as he spoke on living a high impact life. He used the diagram below to explain this process of how we honor God. My favorite part about this diagram however, is pursuing excellence. Christians often forget to do this, but we are called to do so. This has kind been a hot topic at Link Year as we are wrapping up the year the staff here keeps encouraging all the students to finish strong. 1 Corinthians 3:23-24 says, “whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.” Christians are working for the God of the Universe!! What an exciting thing that we get to do! Our real reason for performing with excellence is to Honor God. There are three components of excellence:

1.)   expertise- knowledge and ability to see what should be done

2.)   innovation- drive and passion to believe it can be done a new or better way

3.)   discipline- commitment to persevere until it is done

Persevere and don’t give up on pursing excellence to honor our Creator. Check out some of these other verses to see what the Bible says about why excellence is important: Psalm 8:1, 2 Samuel 22:31, Romans 12:1-2, Psalm 36:7, and Isaiah 12:2-5. So if you could choose one are in your life to excel in (that your currently aren’t already) what would be? 

Another Phenomenal Week at Link!!!

This week we started off Monday with a work day! We picked up the trash along the road by campus (about a mile in length). And let me just tell y’all people litter! It was crazy at how much trash we picked up in just a short mile. I kinda felt like a delinquent on the side of the road in a neon vest. But some of us chose to make the most of it and play games as we worked our up the road.

            Next up, was the mystery activity! We went to Dogwood Canyon and just went on a nice walk with time to reflect on this year and all that has happened over the past few months. And then sweet sweet Adam Martin took us to sonic, which is always a fun treat!

            We had Sean Mcdowell for class on Tuesday and Wednesday. He was a phenomenal speaker. He is very bright and knows so much. He played the role of an atheist and allowed us to have an open discussion with him. He talked about the objective and subjective truth. And he has the most precious little girl that came to play with me and paint nails in my room.

            To end our week of class we had Chad Hampsch, the Vice President of the Kanakuk Institute and Director of K-7 Kamp. He is a genius, and perhaps one of my favorite speakers. We just had a Q&A with him to answer any questions we had. He was very encouraging. When discussing our last few weeks here at Link Year he said that in a race no one remembers your first mile, they remember how you finish, so finish strong. He stressed the importance of finding a mentor next year in college. It won’t be easy, and we will have to be the one to pursue a mentor, but that it is crucial to seek out a mentor. He also encouraged us to find someone to mentor. Something that I heard before, that has always stuck out in my mind is people aren’t going to remember you for what you accomplished or didn’t, but they will remember how you made them feel and how much you invested into their lives. I think this is a great reminder because our society often steps on people to get to the top, but character and the relationships you invest in are way more important than achieving a goal in life. What are you striving for? Seek out a mentor, dive into God’s word, and listen to the wisdom of Christian mentors in your life.