Always Learning

If you get emails from me, you know that I often sign-off with the tagline "always learning." It's not meant to be creative or cute...I really hope that it is a reality. And, don't tell anyone, but the truth is that I stole the tagline from my old youth pastor, whose name happened to be Jason.

This season of serving at Mars Hill has been a tremendous season of learning, and a while I back I took a few minutes to journal some of those lessons. Hope that this serves as a brief blessing and challenge, as it has been for me...

1. Just because you have a seat at the table doesn't mean you have a voice at the table. And this is the way it should be. You need to embrace when your role is to serve, man-up when your role is to lead, and have the understanding and graciousness to do both.
2. Always look for evidences of God's grace. Doing so in community with others will encourage the weary toward gratefulness for God's faithfulness.
3. Engaging in silence and solitude is of utmost importance. Life may start out as a lazy river and quickly turn into a raging rapid. Sometimes you have to get out of the river of ministry to reevaluate before the tube flips and you're gasping for air.
4. Reading books doesn't mean you've learned anything. You have to pray for the Spirit to help you grow in knowledge and understanding, so that you can retain what God is teaching you.
5. Jesus fought temptation in the same way we must, by the power of the Holy Spirit.
6. It is good for me to get out into the mountains. I need to feel my smallness and see God's greatness.

Always Learning,
Jason