| insert non-cliche title about a new year and new beginnings |

A year goes by and I'm staring at my watch again, and I dig deep this time, for something greater than I've ever been, life to ancient wineskins. And I was blind but now I see.

([above]I always have to quote a part of the song New Years Eve by Five Iron Frenzy on the New Year.)


As I looked to the approaching new year, I realized a lot of things are going to be different. 

1. My brother Chris and his wife Angela are having a baby. The first grandchild/niece in our family. 
2. My other brother Nathan is getting married in May.
3. I'm moving to Ireland. 

2010 was grinding to a halt, and 2011 was revving its engine. Normally, I try to stay in the year and prolong Christmas as much as possible, but this year was different. The three things I previously mentioned are waiting in the future, and this is the first year in the history of my life that I'm not affected by the school calendar. 

Anyway, I wanted to start off this new stage of my life with a solid foundation. Something to focus me - start the new year off right. So I went to Passion. Passion is a Christian conference in Atlanta. That's an entirely different blog post that I'm honestly not going to write. So why don't you just ... check out the website? 

The Passion conference was a huge blessing, and a great way to kick off the new year. So here's a bit of what's been on my heart for my future. 

• Jesus Christ must be my one solid motivation for everything I think, say and do. He is the LORD, and the best possible thing for us, therefore if my life is solidly based on the fact that I believe my motivations are His motivations, then I will be a living testimony to Him and that's all I can hope for. 
• I believe that my peers and I have the power to affect the Church. And I feel an obligation to be the change that I want to see in the Church.
• The Holy Spirit is on the move. Everywhere. And I think this is one of the most vital things that if the Church could grasp, things could change drastically and be cause for motivation and movement.  C.S. Lewis wrote this in his Screwtape Letters (backup if you don't know about the Screwtape Letters. They are letters from one demon to another. Lewis used this book as a major work of "reverse psychology" for Christians.) 

• One of our great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do riot mean the Church as we see her spread but through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes I our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans. All your patient sees is the half-finished, sham Gothic erection on the new building estate. When he goes inside, he sees the local grocer with rather in oily expression on his face bustling up to offer him one shiny little book containing a liturgy which neither of them understands, and one shabby little book containing corrupt texts of a number of religious lyrics, mostly bad, and in very small print. When he gets to his pew and looks round him he sees just that selection of his neighbours whom he has hitherto avoided. You want to lean pretty heavily on those neighbours. Make his mind flit to and fro between an expression like "the body of Christ" and the actual faces in the next pew. It matters very little, of course, what kind of people that next pew really contains. You may know one of them to be a great warrior on the Enemy's side. No matter. 

  So, do you have any New Year's resolutions?