THE BLOG MUST CHANGE!

Well...It happened. God blessed Amy and I with an 8 lb. 2 Oz little boy named Grayson Joshua Carter. I guess the blog must change...

I've learned a lot in the last two days. I was trying to comprehend it by using just simple words to express what has gone through my heart but it has been very challenging to express it all. So as I sit here, speaking with you, I would have to say that the only words that come to my mind and lips at this very moment are Grace, Love, and Hope. For some weird reason that is what I am thinking at this very moment.

Can you believe it...I mean come on...the World Cup is on, my favorite sporting event ever and it only comes around every 4 years, and I am thinking of Grace, Love, and Hope while sitting in a dark room while Amy sleeps and tears filling my eyes.

It's funny...If you think about it...I have become soft. Ha! I chuckle to think about it. Did I just say chuckle? Wow, HA, you get my point. Wow, I am a dad and I am officially an emotional basket-case.

You see, my mind has been captivated by this idea of grace. Yesterday, I truly witnessed grace. Labor and delivery was like the scariest and most hopeless feeling I have ever had but probably one of the most hopeful and thrilling moments of my life all at the same time. I know that makes no sense to some of you. Then again, if you are a parent...you know exactly what I mean. I mean I am overwhelmed that a human, a women, can go through something like that and live. I watched as I personally witnessed the hand of God keep a life together yesterday while at the same time bringing another one into life.

I remember begging God for days last week, up to the day of delivery for His grace over my wife and did He ever? You know many of us, including me, strive in situations of pressure. I mean I, we, like situations with short deadlines where we don't seem like we have enough time to get something done but we have confidence to know we can so we do it. It's a control thing I guess, to be the one in the driver seat of something. I used to say I understood grace, and I do too some degree. I understand that without God's grace on me there is no way I could ever know Jesus Christ and could never have a relationship with Him. I know without God's HUGE hand of grace on my life I am one step away from stupid. I understand and lose my breath at the thought that without my Savior I would have nothing. However, I realized yesterday as soon as I thought I understood grace fully God poured His bucket on me once again. I saw grace when I realized God had given me a wife like Amy. I witnessed grace when I realized I was now a dad. But people, I FELT Grace...I mean I really felt Grace when my wife was struggling and I was no longer in the driver seat and could only sit back and plead with a Holy God for mercy and His Grace and He showed up and poured it out so freely. I realized, could it be that the most treasured times in life are missed because I, we, never get in places were we have to plead for mercy and grace? It was the scary, helpless, just plain terrifying but a moment I would NEVER trade my life for because I FELT THE GRACE OF GOD in that moment like never before. It was a moment in my life I will never, ever forget when my Dad, Yahweh, showed up and poured out His Grace.

Love...Love is big word. No really, I mean it is a BIG WORD. It was so big that God used it in three different ways and He used it throughout His entire Word. But we don't always think about that word Love like God sees it do we? But yesterday and today, My heart exploded with true Love. I truly love Grayson. I would have to admit it, I have totally fell in love with him already and that only took the 1 second when my eyes first saw him and my ear first heard his sweet voice. I use to say I loved a lot of things. For instance, Jello. Man, I love Jello, so I thought. Especially when I go to my mother-in-laws house and she fixes a whole bowl for the family and nobody touches it because they know they will lose their life if they dare to stick their dirty spoons in my Jello. So what do I do? I just grab the whole bowl as I walk by the serving table and eat it straight from the serving bowl. Ha, man do I love Jello. I used to say I love a lot of different things but I learned a lot about Love yesterday. I can truly say I love my wife. Now, you ladies don't give me a hard time. I know...I loved my wife before too but I mean I really love my wife. I don't think I could ever be more proud of a single person like I was her yesterday. I really don't have words to describe it. All I can say is that there is nobody on this earth that I will ever love more than my wife Amy. As I experienced God grace, and pleaded for his mercy on Amy yesterday, my eyes burst with tears as I thought about the deep love that God had planted in my heart for this women. It was a moment I will never forget when I realized the blessing God has given me in my wife Amy. Oh...I understand Love more today than ever before. I understand there is nothing and nobody I love more than My Savior Jesus, My Wife, and My little Boy.

Lastly Hope is on my mind...I have lots of hope...I have hope because I know the ONE where the only true hope is found, the Christ, Jesus, My Lord. So to explain hope to you and what has flooded my mind and heart over the last couple of days I will conclude with a prayer that I have prayed over the family that God has given to me because I know this Hope is rooted in Him.

My Prayer: Lord, my only hope is in You. My hope is rooted in your goodness, grace, and love that you have given to me and my family. Thank you for baby Grayson and what a blessing he is to Amy and I. My prayer is that Grayson comes to know the grace and salvation that I and his mom have experienced. I pray and beg for your mercy on him and that you would prick his heart, convict him of his sinful life that he is now born into, and that he would repent in the near future so that he too will know the greatest gift known to mankind Jesus Christ, YOU as Lord and Savior.

My prayer is that his heart would overflow with a love for Your Kingdom. I pray he grows up to be a man that is blameless, full of integrity, and develop a heart like David so that you to can say he is a "man after your own heart." Oh Lord, don't let him look only like me, make him look more like You and his heart beat for your heart.

But Lord, my urgent prayer is that he would have a true heart for the world. A heart that does not settle for playing the church game or going after all that America has to offer but that he would be broken for his friends, family, and the billions of people who do not know you across this world. That he would fully understand the call Christ call true Christians to. I pray that Amy and I will raise him up to be these things and please let us be his example in our home by how we love our neighbors and how we share the Love of Christ and the Gospel to others so that others will know You. Let us be the parents that lay everything done for you and he sees us give up our wants for your wants and our needs for the needs of others. Let Grayson see his mom and dad give it all and be spent for the Kingdom. Let him say of us when we are gone from this earth, "my father and mother gave it all for Christ and that's all they truly lived for."

But Lord, I beg you to give us your grace and mercy and direction to show us what we must do to be the best stewards of your creation Grayson. May you do with him exactly what you have planned for Your Glory through him. May he have your heart, a heart for the world and your Kingdom.......Amen...

"If i were a parent" blog must change!! CHECK IT PEOPLE....I am a parent!!

The Local Church is being attacked!

The local church is being attacked. Below is an article I wrote out to parents this past week. Really believe this is a major issue for the American Church. Also, Check out this website I ran across about this issue http://www.jimfeeney.org/local-church-decline.html.

High School ministry has great rewards! However, it can be the most difficult ministry in the church as well. There is a STRONG URGENCY to reach these students because statistics show that the majority of them after the age of 18 will never accept Jesus Christ and many within the church will leave and not return because they never really knew Him. We are asking our parents to stand strong at their post as parents and continue to push the importance of ecclesiology! Ecclesiology is the local church. Throughout the NT over 90% of the time when the bible speaks of the church it speaks the local church. Student ministry is not another club, event, social network, activity like school sports, school clubs, para church organizations like FCA, Young life, etc...Some of these are excellent activities and events but they are NOT the local church and they do NOT teach Ecclesiology. What happens in turn is students grow up and leave the church for other organizations or they become the typical church-hopper.

By not developing in young people the Urgency and commitment that Jesus called for in the local church it is devastating not just to each student but to the local churches in this country. You end up with what we see in So many areas of our country specifically in Tennessee where you have churches on every street corner. Those churches are not there because someone wanted to start a church those churches are there because someone got mad, someone got their feelings hurt, someone felt they didn't belong and they misunderstood true commitment to the local church and Ecclesiology and "took their toy and left." They had very bad theology!

In the church, if people would recognize there calling to a specific body of believers and were willing to lay their life down for their other brothers or sisters in their local church then you would not have so much church hopping or so much uncommitted lives to His church. God would have to call me to a certain place before I would leave. Josh Carter isn't going to put his resume out or even think about another body of believers unless God calls me and they come get me. God never called someone some place and didn't tell them a direction to go throughout the scriptures... I have heard so many adults say, "well..we are not leaving the church but we are looking around." I ask, "where is that in the bible? That's like saying to my wife, "Honey, I love you and am not going any place but I am going to look around for another women if that is alright." Crazy...What type of commitment is that? I have heard, "well...my kids doesn't really like it"...My answer to that is..Did God call you parents here? If God called you then commit everything. Maybe the issue isn't the ministry but the kid..Maybe the kid is lost and convicted. Who wants to go some place where they are convicted when you are lost and don't want to change. What you do by jumping ship on your local church is teaching your kid that preference is more important then the calling of GOD. Blasphemy! For example: Take a student of ours Emily...In the church I should be willing to lay by wants and life for Emily. For my wife, I should want to lay down my wants and life for my Wife Amy. In the church Emily is my sister. In the church my wife is my sister! In heaven and on earth in the church, we all are family. Now, there is NO other lady more important than my wife Amy who I dearly love. But in the church I must be willing to die for all and all for me. TCBC is our family! TCBC is our life!!! Jesus calls us to this radical type of commitment! If we understood this then we could conquer GREAT things for the Glory of God.

What I am asking parents of high school and even middle school students is that you teach your child ECCLESIOLOGY by making their student ministry (their church) their priority over ALL ELSE! Including sports teams, school clubs and events, para church organizations....I was so proud of my wife. She is the assistant swim coach at Sullivan Central High School. They decided not to have practice on Wednesday because they didn't get done in time for students to attend their specific churches. Praise GOD! All these things are good but they are NOT the church. I was so proud of a family in our church who has an 11th grade son who asked me about a para church organization such as younglife, fca, one way, etc...They said their son wanted to go to a weekend getaway with this club. I said great that's fine but the problem was the student couldn't go to xtreme with his own youth group (His church) I said, not good! You teach your child that preference is more important then commitment..Local church is less important then something else. The family listened and now the student is active. This same family fought for years with this boy about coming to summit or any student ministry event. They forced him for years to come. They were doing their job as parents by showing their kid what is important. Now, this student is making huge leaps and is now serving in our middle school ministry and loves to come.

I think of a student Chelsea who runs our Wired Middle School Ministry on Wednesday nights. I am so proud of her. You know Chelsea is very smart, involved in everything including sports, president of student counsel of a major high school (south), lots of friends, fca, you name it she is apart of it. However, Chelsea has made the local church her MAIN priority and because of that I am telling you that she is more mature and understands theology, doctrine, and commitment more than some 50 year olds. However, Chelsea is still a high school student, a teenager, and at times her parents still have to make choices for her. She is still not ready for full responsibility to run her life and she makes good choices but a high school student cannot make the best choice all the time. She has proven herself but she understands the importance of mom and dad keeping her on track especially in the area of Ecclesiology.

Parents, I am calling out from the Word of God that Ecclesiology is important. The local church is to die for. Jesus did!! Please help your student develop this type of commitment before we have another generation of "preference over commitment people and church hoppers." If America is to be saved it has to be through this generation and without the local church strong through their commitment to die for one another the local church in America is in trouble. Please stand strong at your post as parents and take up this challenge!

day 30

Prayer breakfast at 6:30 am in the Outpost in the morning. Super excited about getting together with everyone in the morning! See ya there!!

Day 29, Be silent!!

Well...two more days. Saturday is the 31st and God has done Great things through this prayer blog. Please spend Thursday in a day of praise by "being silent a know that He is God." Today, Thursday instead of going and asking God for things and instead of talking, just take some time today to just be still and listen to see what God is saying. What is he laying on your heart to pray for the student ministry in the next couple of days. I really believe God will tell us what we should be praying for and what we should do and pray for after this prayer blog.

So, when will you spend some time today being silent and listening for God? Driving down the road and you turn off the radio? Sitting at home and not turning on TV? When and Where will you be silent?

Tuesday & Wednesday Day 27-28

Hello everyone! Sorry for not blogging today but just had no chance to get to it so i hope everyone just continued to pray. These last couple of days are so critical for us as we finish this month of prayer up. So many people have been participating and thank you for your emails of encouragement. Below are the things I would ask everyone to pray for everyday for the rest of this prayer blog. Again, this will be the blog for Tuesday & Wednesday.

Thursday, I will blog (Wednesday night) one last time on this prayer emphasis and then on Friday morning I would like to have a prayer breakfast with everyone. However, it is totally depending on who RSVP's and see if anyone can make it. If you can make it Friday morning at 6:30 am for a light breakfast and prayer time in the Outpost I promise you will be gone by 7:30 am. Please RSVP by Thursday at noon. RSVP at jcarter@tcbchurch.org and let me know if you can come.

For the next two days I beg everyone to pray hard over these couple of things

1. Continue to pray for our students both middle school and high school. We still have LOTS of students who are not involved in the ministry but on Sunday mornings and this scares me and our leaders very much. God has been working through His WORD at Summit on Sunday nights and Wednesday nights at Wired but so many students have messed up priorities and are no shows. We believe this starts in the home please pray Parents will step up and help their kids have the priority of God and His church, the local church. This is a major problem that we look over but it is a small sign of a BIG problem. One of the top, if not the top thing we see in students who grow and become successful in their walk with the Lord and in character are students who have the priority of being committed to church. I have been in student ministry long enough to say this is not legalistic or over powering but a PROVEN fact and people, parents some times don't seem to understand this. It is amazing to see adults (parents) who come serve in the student ministry and see this with their own eyes and then are shocked at the amount of students who we have that lay out, work, or just do other things instead of being committed to the church. It is very hard when those same parents who allow their kids to do this come to us when they are juniors or seniors and are losing them and want us to fix the problem but its to late. Please pray that our parents would step up and make their students have right priorities before its to late and pray that not only all the students become committed to coming but would be open to God and He would change their lives.
The type of commitment we are talking about is throughout the NT. I think about Christians all over the world like in Asia that give their LIVES for the gospel and their local church. These people are willing to die, literally and many of them do as martyrs just to be together with a local body of believers on a consistent basis. It is not legalism it is Christianity and we in America don't understand this. Pray our students, the next generation won't miss this truth!

2. Pray for revival in our own students and salvation in many of our students and guest who are coming. We still believe we have many students not saved, have not relationship with Jesus but have a strong intellect toward Him. This is one of the reasons for the #1 request. Please pray that God convict hearts and we would see things happen in this student ministry and through this student ministry like we have never seen before.

3. Continue to pray for leadership. We need so many more adults. Please pray we get them SOON!

Day 25, Sunday

Tonight was a great night with our middle school students and leaders over at the bonfire/cookout at the Sprinkles. We had a great time!

1. Today, Sunday pray for Summit our high school service tonight. We are starting a new series called "my bubble" Basically it is a series about priorities. We are supper excited about it! Pray that God would work, give me the words to preach, and that MANY students would come, worship would be awesome, and we would see students changed! We start at 6 pm! Please pray for Summit.

2. Continue to pray for our students to be broken and we would see many of them come to Christ in salvation and also pray that we would reach more students that God would open doors for us to see more and reach more students in our schools and in our community. I will write more on this one day next week where we will spend a whole day on this topic.

Praise the Lord on the Lord's day tomorrow!!

Day 24, A fight against addictions and pride

Day 24, Sorry about the late blog...again working at the church til later on and coming home and not being able to get to it.

1 . Today I feel called to pray for students who are currently dealing with sin and dealing specifically with addictions. We have lots of students who deal with pornography, lots of students who are playing the party scene or dealing with an urge for alcohol You name it we probably have one dealing with it. Pray for the students who are doing these things and are not broken about it. Pray that God would do what He has to do to break them and bring them to a place of repentance, a place of commitment, a place of salvation. Pray specifically for our high school students because this is where we see a huge down turn in life typically. Specifically 10-12 grade.

2. Again, pray for leadership. God has been so good in this area this month as we have several opportunities to gain new leadership. God is doing it and we thank Him. Continue to pray God would send us people to help reach and disciple these students.