The One with Jess and the Wolf

Hey everyone! Here is a one of Jessica's latest greatest pictures. I love my wife because she makes me laugh constantly. I would be way to serious without her in my life!

On another note, Jess is trying to begin Student Staff for Young Life in Prescott this December. If you would be interested in supporting her (or if you know anyone who would) please let us know. Her email is tweed.medlin@gmail.com.

A New Perspective

On monday, a co-worker (Chris Holohan) and I left for Barnes and Noble to buy a book that had caught Chris's attention. Chris had seen this book online and watched several interviews of Ed Dobson to see what this book was all about. Since we were so interested, we decided to each buy one and see what we could learn from it.

Next summer, our middle school camps at United Christian Youth Camp will be taking a close look at the life of Jesus. The hope is that students would have a real, true, and authentic picture of who Jesus is, how he lived, why he died, and what that means for us.

Dobson's book has already began to challenge us and show us new things about the life of Jesus. In this book, Ed Dobson, a longtime pastor of Calvary Bible in Grand Rapids, Michigan, talks about an experiment he recently embarked upon. Dobson was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's Disease several years ago, and this led him to a journey of trying to live like Jesus for an entire year. Some of things he does is amazing to read about. A super-conservative pastor is challenged to break down many barriers and love people as Jesus did.

This is a great book so far, and maybe it will even challenge you! I know it has for me. Because of a challenge from this book, Chris and I will be reading the Gospels all the way through every week from now until summer. It is already a huge challenge. And it is only week 1. My biggest prayer is that it would not become a prideful, shallow, or meaningless homework assignment. My prayer is that God would renew my mind through reading about Jesus every day.

Incarnational Ministry

The first part of John 1: 14 says this, "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us."

I have recently been hearing a lot about this new term, incarnational ministry. And John describes its meaning better than anyone. Jesus (the Word) made his dwelling with us. The word dwell literally means...to live, to make ones home, to inhabit, reside, or make residence. Jesus dwelt among us. He came from his home to live with us. Not just for a visist, but to live as one of us. That is what I call incarnational. God became man and dwelt among us. And durring this time Jesus carried his ministry everywhere he went. The ministry of Jesus was founded as God coming to man. He inhabited a family, a job (carpenter), friends, the temple, and everything else people in his time dealt with. He inhabited our broken world, and yet was perfect.

So here's what I have been thinking about regarding incarnation ministry lately. Why does the ministry of the common church look so different? In more specific words, Why does the common church expect lost, hurting, sick, outcast, hungry, orlonely people to dwell in the church. Why does the church have expectations for people to come to it, instead of the church going to the people?

Now please don't read into these questions as me having a negative view of the church. There are many churches out there that don't fit into this category. I believe that the church is the bride of Christ. And I also believe that God is purifying His bride. This simply means that the church always has somehting to work on. And setting the ministry of the common church up to the life of Jesus will show us some faults and areas to improve on.

What would the church look like if it was founded upon the incarnational ministry of Jesus? I think buildings, crosses, bilboards, giant flags, and multi-million dollar landscaping projects would fade away. I think that people (which really are the church) would have something bigger to look forward to than just a Sunday morning service.

It is my hope that pastors would pastor their people. Youth pastors would get out from behind their desks and go to lunch at the high school or rant and rave at the Friday night football game. Offerings would overwhelmingly be spent on meeting the needs of people around the community, in the area, and in other parts of the world. The people who show up on Sunday morning would show up with the same intentions of living out holiness at work each day of the week. That the church would make its dwelling among the people. And get over the fear that they might be dissapointed, laughed at, or God forbid take a cut in the weekly offering.

I realize this idea is tough, raw, and aggressive, but I think that was reflected in Jesus. He wasn't an in the box, straight cut kind of guy. He was so revolutionary that we still talk about him today (2,009 years later). So I hope that we can each (as members of the church) consider how we are living lives based upon the incarnational ministry demonstrated by Jesus.

YoungLife

I first learned about YoungLife around 3 years ago. Jess on the other hand, has a long history with YoungLife. Up until about 1 year ago, I considered YoungLife as the enemy (I was kidding...mostly). YoungLife embodied all the crazy people who went to ridiculously awesome camps and were always out of control. YoungLife was the unknown, unstructured, and chaotic ministry that I had no room for in my life.

Today, much has changed. I have been leading YoungLife for just over a year now in Prescott, and it has been one of the best parts of my life. Jess and the rest of my family convinced me to join the "dark side" and begin leading at Prescott High School. Now, most of you don't know what a YoungLife leader is. In short, a YoungLife leader is a volunteer who is intentional about reaching into the lives of students in local schools. Our intentions include discipleship, friendship, fun, camp, and mostly just meeting students where they are in life.

At first, the newness and unconventional elements of YoungLife were hard to get used to. Unfortunately I live inside of a box, from which God is constantly pulling me out from. YoungLife is full of loud secular music, dancing, ridiculous games, food, football games, crazy camps, and late nights. These things always have seemed fun, but not what I used to put in the category of ministry. But YoungLife does not stop with the craziness. YoungLife is full of passionate Christ followers, deeper bible studies, genuine prayer, loving community, and focused discipleship.

What I am finding through being in YoungLife, are lots of students who are crying on the inside for someone to relate with. Someone to care. Someone to understand. Someone to teach them about who Jesus really is without all the religious garbage. What I have found is a life that I think Jesus has asked us all to live.

Now, it has been challenging to put aside my past views of ministry and teaching. Many people in my life would tell me that it would be unwise to surround yourself in worldly situations. What I am learning now is that worldly situations is exactly what Jesus put himself in the middle of. He came because the love of our father couldn't simply be written in law, but had to be shown through life. He lived among us. In the middle of our failures. In the midst of our mistakes. And he has shown us a better way to live. This to me is YoungLife. To reflect the life of the man who put himself in our shoes.

Thanks to everyone who has helped bring YoungLife to thousands of young people throughout the world!

God will Provide

Over the weekend, I spent some time listening to some good ol' stories from the bible that are becoming more and more relevant in my life. I used to think, how am I supposed to relate with a 99 year old farmer, but there are things about Abraham, God's friend, that completely blow me away!

Here's a very specific example. You know the part in the story where God asks him to sacrifice his only son, Isaac. I can't imagine what that would have been like to hear God ask something like that. Here's my response, "You mean Isaac? My only son? My son who you promised my wife and me? My son who is my joy and laughter? You have to be kidding me! This can't be God!

I think many times while following God we assume that He only speaks what we want. Such as, God wouldn't ask me to kill my son, leave my home, sell my possessions, get uncomfortable, or take a what seems to be a RIDICULOUS risk. We translate the voice of God to fit our own language of life. So my question is...Do I know God's voice?

I believe that Abraham knew the voice of God. How else could you explain what he did? What kind of man in his right mind gets up the next day to hike up a mountain and offer his son as a sacrifice? The only way you can explain this is to trust that Abraham knew who had asked him this.

Later on in the story, Isaac asks Abraham why they are hiking up a mountain for a sacrifice with no animal to kill. Talk about a punch in the stomach to a father! And how does Abraham respond? "God will provide." Only a man who knew the voice of God could answer like that! And then Abraham's faith carried him to the limit, and God provided.

Will our faith in the voice of our father carry us to the limit? Will we allow God to provide?

Thanks to John Irwin (for your inspiration) and all the YoungLife staff for an amazing weekend!

Wisdom

Jess and I had vacation last week in Missouri. Or I guess you could call it vacation for me, but Jess got the short end of the stick. She had to spend 5 days healing from surgery on 4 wisdom teeth. Let's just say that her teeth were not the easiest case, and they were all impacted. Obviously the surgery was pretty rough (see image :) Note- this was a close up shot so the image seen may appear slightly larger than in real life"

What a blessing to have such amazing family! My uncle Kevin did the surgery and didn't charge us anything! He's amazing and we ow him a ton. Not to mention, he's probably one of the best dental surgeons in the area!

Grandma Medlin made some delicious potatoe soup, which Jessica ate in a hurry since vanilla snack packs were getting old. Grandma Jones brought over sweet corn, which is one of Jessica's favorites (althought we did have to cut it off the cob)!

And of course, my mom and dad were amazing at home. My mom really has a servants heart! I think Jess was in good hands! So thank you so much family! We love you and miss you lots!

While we are on the subject of wisdom teeth, I thought I would talk a little about Solomon (the second wisest man to ever live) (Guess who the first was). I have been reading in 2nd Chronicles lately and I just wrapped up the story of the rule of King Solomon. Here's a question for you...If God told you to ask for anything and He would grant it, what would you ask for?

Solomon asked for wisdom and knowledge so that he might lead God's people. Usually kings want wealth, power, control, armies, kingdoms, and women, but Solomon had something much more humble in mind. I have been reading about king after king in the old testament, and there is a constant theme. Good kings listen to God and do what He says. Bad Kings do what they want. Solomon got it! His success as a king wasn't going to come from himself.

So the question for me is...How will I lead?

Jaws

Jessica likes to tell me that the ocean isn't safe. She can't stand the idea that there are things in the water that she can't control. Let alone, a 36 foot whale shark!

About 3 weeks ago, Jess and I got to swim with whale sharks just of the coast of Cancun. Jessica's grandparents took us on a family vacation and they jumped at the idea of getting us on a whale shark tour. So, at 6am on Monday morning our family headed to the dock and after about an hour long boat ride the engine stopped and we were in the whale shark waters. After 10 minutes or so of nothing but blue waters, we saw the fin. There is some kind of crazy feeling that crawls through your insides when you see a fin cutting through the water's surface. What we thought we were seeing was the dorsal fin the shark, but what we soon found out was that the fin was only the very tip of the tale.

The boat captain found the direction the shark was heading and then made a large circle and got in front of the fin. Jess and I were first up. With our snorkeling gear on, we straddled the edge of safety in our boat. Seconds later our guide yelled at us to jump in, and then he was gone. We followed him, but it was not easy to take that leap in the water. Every thought going through my mind goes something like, "I must be nuts! Sharks eat people! Even Jaws wasn't 36 feet long! I don't care if they are friendly sharks, they are huge! That tail could cut me in half!"

As soon as we got in the water, the guide was yelling for us to look down. This didn't make sense to me because the fin was a long ways from where we were, but I soon found out that just feet below me was the head of 36 foot long giant of the ocean. That first look down was incredible. Talk about a rush! All i could see was a huge spotted mass of shark. Jess kind of freaked that first time in the water, so we kinda took it easy, but in the process we got a ways off from our guide. That was the scariest part. The only safety and hope in my mind was being next to our guide. I trusted him!

As the day went on, we swam with the whale shark several different times. It turns out that they are pretty slow movers. I'm no Michael Phelps, but I could out swim this guy pretty easily. It was an incredible feeling swimming beside this creation. Unimaginable! You only see things like these on the discovery channel! Not that day. It was very real!

This day has continually brought me back to thoughts about my guide on the tour. It was an unbelievable challenge to ask us to swim with sharks, and the only way I was getting in the water was with him in first. Even then, it wasn't easy to jump in. Finally, when I did get in, I wanted to be as close as possible. And I quickly found that the best way to see the shark was to be right beside my guide. He knew exactly where to be. And I wasn't going to let him out of my sight!

Why should it be any different with Jesus? If I really knew what I was up against in this world, I don't think Jesus would be more than a thought away. It makes me ask myself....Do I really follow him, or am I ok on my own? Truthfully, I do way too much on my own. Way too much. I guess I know that I have a lot to work on!

Jarred

The Colorado River

Here's a beter picture of some of the waves in the canyon! You better strap it on for this kind of intensity!

Out of Control

I wrote this quite a while ago, but I thought it was definitely worth reposting...Hope you enjoy!

There is a very special girl in my life that seems to always be reminding me that I am "out of control." Thanks to an incredible week on the Colorado River, I am reminded of how right she is.

River mile 231 will probably never set easy on my mind as I try to sleep in the days prior to captaining that rapid. After becoming the first captain in the history of United Christian Youth Camp to entirely flip a paddle boat, I realize just how "out of control" I am. Looking back on how our team approached the giant roller in the middle of the 231 wave train, I can't help but trust that I did everything in my own ability to keep our boat square and "in control." Despite an unrelenting effort, we were toast. Slammed and dogpiled by water without a second to react. Being underwater is probably one of the scarier things that I have ever been through personally. Kris, my friend and captain does great job of describing an encounter such as this, but words will never prepare you for the kind of power underneath the waters’ surface.

After seconds (seeming like minutes) of helpless longing for the surface, I found myself back on top. Amongst such confusion, I still carried the role of paddle captain to my team. I found myself swimming to shore and praying that God would just take care of the 6 men who were trusted in my care. I realized that I had no chance to rescue anyone from where I stood. That is a tough feeling to swallow. My sense of responsibility to my team was pounding in my chest, but all I could do was wait and hope. On the other end of the line, my good friend and fellow paddle captain, Reuben, had his paddle boat positioned to rescue oncoming swimmers. Sean, one of the men in Reuben's boat, later put some amazing words to his experience. He mentioned how hard it was to just wait and throw lines to the men, when there were still 2 missing men (myself and a guy named Tim who had swam to the shore). Sean wanted to just hurl himself in and take off to find us. My explanation does little to describe the intensity behind his words.

This experience does nothing short of pointing directly at God's love for us. A love that gives us a choice. How hard it must have been for God to stand on the shore while His only son was trapped by the rapids. Because of God’s love for us, our choice is simply, "Do I want rescued, or not."

You see, we are all in the middle of the rapids, whether we know it or not. We are flat out drowning. Underwater. Pounding like crazy. And here God is with his hand outstretched to us. All I need to do as a regular guy is to recognize that I am in over my head. Revelation chapter 2 says this, "Remember the height from which you have fallen." Oh, how often I forget just that. My team was nothing short of grateful to be rescued. I was grateful to climb up on the motor rig next to Kris. I longed to be rescued, and I pray that we each may continue to see how desperately we need rescuing. I pray that I remember that I am "out of control." For He is and always will be the captain of all boats.

Jarred

Dan the Man

It's kind of crazy how God puts people in your life to bring you to where he needs you to be. For me, when I found out that Dan would be my first roommate, I thought it was the other way around. I thought that living with Dan was going to be great for him. Like I had something great to offer Dan. I hope it was great to an extent, but I really found out that it was probably more for me.

3 weeks ago I didn't know if I would ever be able to talk to Dan again. I didn't even know if he would make it through the night. If you don't know what really happened to Dan, then you would probably be surprised to hear that about 3 weeks ago Dan slipped off a rock face and fell approximately 50 feet onto a bed of rocks. Pretty crazy huh! Not even Dan the Man should have survived that one! I guess God had other plans in mind...

Through a series of events, Dan was rescued by a guy who heard cries for help. Instead of searching for Dan, he ran straight to the rangers station 1.5 miles away to get medical teams in route. The guy said that he had a gut feeling that this person crying for help was in bad shape and that he needed medical help if he was going to make it. Now he called it a "gut feeling" but a lot of us know that God stood beside Dan that Saturday afternoon. The doctors said that time was one of Dan's biggest opponents that day, and if things had gone any differently then Dan might not be here today.

After 3 weeks of questions, surgeries, tubes, treatments, and victories, Dan came back to us. Yesterday I visited Prescott Valley's rehab hospital and sat down to eat lunch with one of my best friends in the world. I can't describe what kind of feeling that was. I can't describe what kind of miracle God has done in Dan. I can't tell you why a guy who should be dead or in a bed for the rest of his life was walking around and making fun of me like nothing had ever changed. I can tell you that God isn't finished with Dan's chapter. And as if Dan didn't already have a story to tell, he now has more. Praise God! No more words for a story like this...just excitement about what is to come...

Jarred

In the Beginning

"In the beginning Jess, God made the mountains, the sun, and the trees..." To be honest, I hate this picture, but Jess thinks it's the funniest thing ever. She says that this is the picture where Jarred is teaching me about life. My wife makes me laugh so much! I would be way to serious without her in my life today.

So, in the beginning, I wanted to write a little about this blog. The idea of My Life and His Story came about this past year while me and the program team at United Christian Youth Camp were writing our Middle School program for summer camp. My Life, is all about the idea that we each share a small chapter in God's greater story. And My Life and yours looks different. The exciting part is how God pieces each of our chapters into His Story. How He presses, shapes, and fits us into this world and each other's lives is incredible and worth telling!

My Life and this blog is centered around a few things. 1, that my life is not so much about me, but much more about Him. 2, that my life isn't always easy, in fact, most of the time it's hard. And following Jesus doesn't make it easier. But it is better. 3, that I make mistakes, and in those mistakes God uses them for a better story. And finally 4, that I need to tell my story, not just through words, but by loving God and people. It's not a story to tell everyone how cool Jarred is, but it's a story to share with people in hopes that we would be encouraged and challenged in our lives.

So, I hope you enjoy reading a little about my life and the ups and downs it entails.

Later