Growing up in the church, sharing the story of Jesus lost its luster. It was never something that I was passionate about, but something that "should be done" as a good Christian. If we're not careful, many of the passions that Jesus once motivated in our hearts care turn sour if we choose not to grow closer to him. In fact, it's a good spiritual barometer to gut check your heart on these things, asking "How passionate am I about..." . For me it's always been easier to preach in front of a crowd what we should do rather than walk through those things on-on-one. But as my faith has been tested and refined lately I have seen passions be renewed, especially in the area of sharing Jesus' story with people.
We began a new series of talks and discussions at Ignite a few weeks ago called "Believe". We're walking through the book of John a chapter a week. I know that the scriptures cannot be read for long without igniting passion in our beliefs and faith, so I've issued this challenge to Ignite Students: I won't shave my beard for the duration of our John study, which is 21 weeks. If any of them can memorize an entire chapter of John, when the study is concluded they can shave my beard however they wish and I'll wear it that way for 48 hours. To be honest, I'm so much more excited about seeing students passionate about God's Word than about wearing a "different" beard for a few days.
So each week I'll post a beard picture to keep the interest alive. It's going to get manly... or nasty weird.
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