Pass it on to the Next Generation

Yesterday I had the opportunity to preach while our senior pastor was any on vacation. Yesterday was also mothers day so I thought it would be appropriate to talk about passing on what we have learned and experienced to the Next Generation. The following is my notes from yesterday’s sermon, I hope that they help you be inspired to pass it on.

 

Pass it on to the Next Generation

“1 My people, hear my teaching;
listen to the words of my mouth.
2 I will open my mouth with a parable;
I will utter hidden things, things from of old—
3 things we have heard and known,
things our ancestors have told us.

4 We will not hide them from their descendants;
we will tell the next generation
the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord,
his power, and the wonders he has done.
5 He decreed statutes for Jacob
and established the law in Israel,
which he commanded our ancestors
to teach their children,
6 so the next generation would know them,
even the children yet to be born,
and they in turn would tell their children.

7 Then they would put their trust in God
and would not forget his deeds
but would keep his commands.
8 They would not be like their ancestors—
a stubborn and rebellious generation,
whose hearts were not loyal to God,
whose spirits were not faithful to him.”

-Psalm 78:1-8

 

To sorta set the table for the main points of the message today I wanted to tell you a little of my story, as a Son. I was born May 18^th, 1989 in a small hospital in Beech Grove, Indiana. I was the second child of my beautiful red haired Mother. Before I was born my parents had been married four years, my mom was a pharmacist assistant, but not long after I was born she made the choice to stay home and raise us kids. She made the choice early on that she wanted to teach us and I don’t know that she knew at the time but she was going to be the greatest influence any of us kids would have.

 

My mom told me those early years were scary, raising a boy was harder than raising my older sister. There was a lot of fear when I didn’t walk when I was suppose to, and when I got tested positive for ADHD, and when I had a hard time reading and writing, but mom never gave up. I remember struggling through each word of the easy reader book and how nothing sounded right yet her voice assured me I would get it, eventually. When I wanted to give up mom was always right there to encourage, even when it was obvious that my struggles were frustrating her.

My mom championed homeschooling, designing our lessons around how we learned as kids, with hands on science experiments in the kitchen right before lunch, to our individual reading and math lessons, to taking us to historical places all across the country so we didn’t just read about history but we got to experience it ourselves. Sometimes when my mom didn’t know something she would study long enough to be confident to teach us. She was dedicated to telling, teaching, showing and ultimately passing on what she had learned and experienced.

Over the past couple of years I have realized just how much my mom influenced everything about my life and if it wasn’t for her I wouldn’t be here today. Really I wouldn’t be here.

See when I was four years old I remember sitting on my mom’s lap in the floor of our playroom while she read to me from my picture Bible that my parents had got me for my first birthday. She read to me about Jesus and after a few of my curious four year old questions, she explained how he died for me so that we could be friends with him. At four I didn’t have many friends other than my older sister and my imaginary friend johnny so I asked God to forgive me and I started a relationship, a journey with him. My mom was the one that really introduced me to Jesus, her confidence and willingness to share her experience with Jesus was passed on to me.

I wish I could say everything was a smooth ride from there but thats not really how life works. In middle school, through a lot of things that happened I started to doubt my faith and ran from God. But also during that time I was surprised how my mom didn’t give up on me even though I thought it was obvious she knew I was running. When I was sixteen I recommitted my life to following Jesus. My mom had always encouraged us kids to find ways to live out our faith and experience new things. That same year I had the opportunity to go to Brazil for the first time. That trip literally changed my life.

After the trip there was one night that I remember God clearly giving me a vision of people, their faces were hard to make out, many of them I did not know, but in that moment God told me “tell and lead the next generation”. For a long time I’ve wondered what that really means, why me?, but the last eight years I’ve noticed that moment has affected a lot of my life.

God used my mom to tell me about Jesus, her steady encouragement moved me to following Jesus.

Today I want to talk about passing it on to the Next Generation. There are a couple of things I want to talk about from the Psalms 78 passage. First, “How can we pass it on if we have not experienced?”. I think this is an honest and sometimes hard question. How can we really tell anyone about Jesus and what it means to follow him if we aren’t doing it ourselves?

Psalms 78:1-3 “Oh people, hear my teaching; listen to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in parables. I will utter hidden things, things from old- What we have heard and known, what our fathers told us.”

Just this last week we started a new series in youth group titled “Follow Me”. The first weeks lesson dealt with when Jesus called the disciples. He didn’t just say believe that I will save you and go on fishing. Jesus said “Come follow me”, come experience life with me, eat what I eat, go where I go, see what I see, be where I am and I will teach you from showing you and not just telling. Jesus wanted his disciples to experience. They left everything to follow him.

David Platt Writes, “Sadly today we have subtly and deceptively minimized what it means to follow Jesus. We have replaced challenging words like, “Leave everything and follow me” with trite phrases like:

-Ask Jesus into your heart.

-Invite Christ into your life.

-Pray this prayer after me, and you will be saved.

Should it alarm us that the Bible nowhere mentions such a prayer? Should it concern us that nowhere in scripture is anyone ever told to ask Jesus into their heart or invite Christ into their life?”

I think the reason that it is never minimized to that in scripture is because what Jesus calls us to is to “Follow Him”, to follow him means there is going to be risk, it can’t be minimized or boiled down to one simple pray and thats it. That may be the beginning but there is so much more to following Jesus.

If we aren’t really following Jesus how can we invite others to, and if we haven’t experienced him how can we pass it on?

 

Second, What is there to fear? Often times I think what holds us back from sharing our experience with Jesus is fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of failure, fear of saying the wrong thing, or fear of what others might think if they knew I was a Jesus freak.

Ps 78:4 “We will not hide them from their children, we will tell the next generation”

Growing up I was far to familiar with fear. It controlled my life. The first time my parents took me to the ocean I was almost two year old. They took me down toward the water and set me toward the waves. The water never really even got close to me but each time a wave crashed onto the beach I thought it was coming for me and the sound scared me to death. My parents told me I cried until they turned me around. If I couldn’t see it then it didn’t effect me… they hide the ocean from me!

 

I had a lot of fears like fear of flying, fear of Simi-trucks, fear of the dark, even fireworks on the forth of July scared me. But slowly as I grew older I realized fears didn’t have control over me. A lot of the time when I was running from God was out of fear of both the unknown and fear that God wouldn’t love me anymore. I believe when we really chose to follow Jesus he can release us from the prison of fear. We underestimate the power of the holy spirit in our lives and forget that he is with us.

Paul writes in 2 Timothy 1:6-9 “For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you…for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control. Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God, who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus.”

We all have times we fear but when that fear holds us back from following Jesus and sharing him with the rest of the world maybe it’s time to leave it behind. We have to surrender our fears, our excuses and trust that the things that we lack God has in control. Don’t let fear hold you back. We have to be committed to not hiding God from the Next generation we have to pass it on.

Third, We are all Called to pass it on. I believe whole heartedly that we are all called to pass on and share in our experiences with others. I believe following Jesus though it is an individual choice we each make it isn’t a singular or selfish thing. We who truly choose to follow Jesus, we who say we want to be his disciple, our experience with Jesus it should transform our lives into being about other people.

Passing it on to the next generation starts with our commitment to follow Jesus no matter the cost and in everything learning to love. It troubles me sometimes when we boil Christianity down to being about “me getting to heaven and me being saved”. Life is not about me.

The greatest lesson that I ever learned from my mom was that “life is best spent serving other people”

I believe the greatest way that we can introduce people to Jesus is by loving them wholeheartedly. People are watching us because they want to see Jesus. The next Generation is watching because they want an example to show them what it means to truly follow Jesus.

People will know that we follow Jesus by our love, not by our building, not our programs, not our VBS, not by the name on our sign, or how we use to do things. People will know we follow Jesus by the way we love them in the present, in each moment of this life that we have. They will know that we follow Jesus when we can share our experience with Jesus with them.

Our fresh new purpose statement here at Cedar Square Friends Meeting is “Loving God by Serving all People”… this is what we want people to see and know us by. We we are all in, loving God with all we have it means we are passing on that love to everyone we me. You and I are the Next Generation of Christians and we are all called to pass it on.

I had a professor in college tell me “Caleb, the next generation is the generation before, the generation after and the generation you are in. They all were a next generation at one point or another and they need sometime to pass the gospel to them.”

 

-Caleb Ross Hunter

 

 

 

Who Do You Say I Am?

Our understanding of who God is and who we are drastically affects our understanding of who Christ is and why we need him”– David Platt (Radical pg 34)

Over the course of the past year as a youth pastor I have been trying to help my students get a better understand of Jesus by leading them through the life of Jesus. I think sometimes we focus so much on “the manger” and “the cross” that we miss out on how Jesus really lived his life. Don’t get me wrong, Jesus birth and death are important but we have to see the story as a whole to really grasp how significant both of those events are. I think many times as Christians we treat Jesus death and resurrection as really the only important things that happened, it’s like we open a novel and read only the part about the hero dying. That is important, but thats not everything.

I believe that the more that we read and study the life of Jesus, the day in and day out doings of Jesus, we will start to experience him in really and intimate way. It’s like when you read a well written novel you get emotional attached to the characters and you start to feel the pains, joys, struggles and change that they go through. You choose to be invested in the story, you choose to let yourself be swept away in what is going on.

Last year I read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, I didn’t necessarily want to read it. The idea of kids killing each other honestly still makes me feel sick to my stomach, but my little sister convenience me to read it. As I started reading I went from having no interest to feeling emotionally invested in the story. Collins evoked emotions through the book that I didn’t want to feel. I found myself crying and cheering at times. I could have just avoided all this if I had just put off reading it. It’s easier to not read it then put myself through that, however, thinking about it now that is the same reason sometimes we put off reading the Bible. We put off reading the story of God’s relationship with humanity because we might be affected. We might change and feel things we didn’t want to, BUT isn’t that the point.

The Bible is the story of God’s relationship with humanity, a story that is full of conflict, struggle, and pain but it is also a story full of grace, love and redemption. Jesus life is part of that story, arguably the most vital part, so what is holding us back from opening the book and being invested in the story. I think maybe what holds us back is how we view Jesus. Let me explain by looking at Mark 8:11-30.

In the first eleven verses of Mark 8 Jesus fed four-thousand people with seven loaves of bread, there are a couple of things we can learn from that but the important one is that Jesus had compassion on the people. His motive for feeding the four-thousand was not to do a miracle or show off, it was simply to feed the hungry because he knew what it meant to be hungry. If we pick up the story in verse eleven it reads:

“11 Pharisees came and began to question Jesus. To test him, they asked him for a sign from heaven. 12 He sighed deeply and said, “Why does this generation ask for a sign? Truly I tell you, no sign will be given to it.” 13 Then he left them, got back into the boat and crossed to the other side.” Mark 8:11-13 (NIV)

Why would they come ask for a sign? It amazes me that the Pharisees would come to Jesus at this point in his life and ask for a sign, some miracle so that they might believe. When I read this I think Jesus was frustrated with them (He sighed deeply). He had just fed four-thousand people, before that he had healed a deaf and mute man, even before that he had fed five-thousand people with five loaves and two fish, he had walked on water, he had cast out evil spirits. Weren’t these things a sign enough for the pharisees. Of all people they should know right? The pharisees prided themselves in their study of the law and of Moses. They would have read the prophecies about the Messiah but they had their own ideas. Reading on…

“14 The disciples had forgotten to bring bread, except for one loaf they had with them in the boat. 15 “Be careful,” Jesus warned them. “Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod.” 16 They discussed this with one another and said, “It is because we have no bread.”

17 Aware of their discussion, Jesus asked them: “Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened? 18 Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? And don’t you remember? 19 When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?” “Twelve,” they replied. 20 “And when I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?” They answered, “Seven.” 21 He said to them, “Do you still not understand?”” -Mark 8:14-21 (NIV)

In this passage we find Jesus with his disciples, they have very little bread which makes me think the disciples were worrying about how they were going to get more and in that moment Jesus warned them. I use to read this and not really care to understand what Jesus meant by this but now it’s starting to make sense after reading N.T. Wrights commentary about this passage. Wright writes “Now Jesus speaks of ‘leaven’, not to warn the disciples about the wrong sort of bread, but to put them on their guard against the wrong sort of kingdom-vision (Mark for Everyone, pg 104).” As I thought of that I realize why Jesus used the word yeast to describe this to the disciples. See yeast is very small but very powerful, when it’s mixed in with flour and water it’s nearly impossible to get it out and it affects the whole loaf.

Jesus warns the disciples of the yeast of the pharisees and Herod. The reason for this is because the pharisees were looking for a Messiah that would come restore Israel politically and spiritually. To them this meant that the Messiah would come and overthrow the Roman’s and take the throne of David here on earth. Secondly, they thought the Messiah would restore the temple to it’s original glory like in the days of Solomon. The temple was central to their spirituality because it was the place God dwelled. That was their focus and it affected everything they thought and did. Thats why when Jesus came they weren’t convinced he was the Messiah because he wasn’t doing what they thought he was suppose to do.

Herod was concerned about his throne. He was a puppet king for the Romans and anyone he thought was a threat to Roman was a threat to him and his “kingdom”. Herod had already put John the baptist to death for speaking against him and I am sure that the stories of Jesus had made it to his ears. Herod wasn’t interested in knowing if Jesus was the Messiah, he was simply concerned about himself and making sure Jesus wasn’t a threat to him. I am sure the crowds that followed Jesus worried Herod, but he didn’t really want to know Jesus.

Jesus warns the disciples and then reminds them that they don’t have to worry about having enough bread. Jesus is almost sarcastically saying “Remember when… I fed five-thousand and four-thousand people with very little.” Right after this Jesus encounters a crowd that brings Jesus a blind man to be healed.

“22 They came to Bethsaida, and some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. 23 He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit on the man’s eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, “Do you see anything?” 24 He looked up and said, “I see people; they look like trees walking around.” 25 Once more Jesus put his hands on the man’s eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. 26 Jesus sent him home, saying, “Don’t even go into[a] the village.”

-Mark 8:22-26 (NIV)

This experience that Jesus has with the blind man has a few things that could be missed if we just read it as another healing. First, a crowd gathers bringing Jesus someone to heal, like many of the crowds before they might have had different motives, but Jesus actions speaks of his heart for people. Jesus didn’t just heal him right there in front of the crowd. He wasn’t about putting on a show or simply doing miracles because he could. Jesus took the man away, outside the village, away from the crowd. He didn’t say any magical words or forgive the guys sins, he simply took a little spit and rubbed the man’s eye. Then like an eye doctor would he asked him what he could see, finding that he didn’t have 20/20 vision Jesus touched him again giving him permanent contacts. He then just sends the man away.

The second thing I see in this is the kingdom-vision of the crowd and possibly the blind man. The crowd had come to see a show. They weren’t all concerned that Jesus might be the Messiah, they thought he was the greatest show on earth long before the Barnum and Bailey Circus. They wanted to see miracles. We see that also with the crowd of the four-thousand who followed Jesus for three days. After reading the stories of Jesus healing I always wonder what happened to the people he healed. How were their lives changed and what did they do after that experience. We don’t really know, some may have followed Jesus and others may not. For this reason I think for those that were healed they really might not have cared if Jesus was the Messiah. They might have seen Jesus as the healer, the best thing that ever happened to them, or the only doctor who really knew what he was doing.

Finally we come to Mark 8:27-30…

“27 Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked them, “Who do people say I am?” 28 They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” 29 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.” 30 Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him” (NIV)

Here all those other things make sense, as if Mark is building everything to this climax, a question that Jesus asks “Who do you say I am?”. We just looked at the pharisees and how they thought Jesus might have just been a prophet or really good teacher or just a radical guy, because he didn’t fit their view of the Messiah and their Kingdom-vision. Then we looked at Herod and how he thought Jesus might just be another John the baptist, a crazy man who could draw a crowd, which was okay as long as he wasn’t a threat. Then the crowds and the blind man, who might have saw Jesus simply as Elijah come back from the dead because he could heal and do miracles.

But, who do you say I am? is Jesus question, not to them but to his disciples. Peter makes a really bold statement with his response “You are the Messiah”(vs.29). This was a bold statement because not even the pharisees who knew the law and the prophecies would say this. Herod wouldn’t believe it because Jesus would then be a threat. The crowd was to caught up in the show to care. However, Peter knew, he knew because he had been with Jesus he had experienced Jesus.

Peter and the disciples had something that none of the other people in these passages had. They had three years with Jesus. They had invested in being with him, they had given up a lot along the way but they had experienced life with Jesus. They hadn’t settled for waiting on the outside to see if Jesus was going to redeem Israel. Even though at times they got caught up in thinking like the pharisees and being wowed like the crowds the whole of their experiences with Jesus lead them to understand that he was the Messiah.

So what does that have to do with us? Well the first thing I think we have to ask ourselves is who do we say Jesus is? Do we know him well enough to even give a good answer? I believe that being a christian isn’t so much about when and where we prayed for Jesus to save us from our sins as it is about the process that we go through when we surrender our kingdom-vision and begin investing in knowing him. This means the relationship is important. Those three years Jesus had with his disciples were very important! Every moment we have with Jesus is important. Because the experiences we have with Jesus will help us answer that question.

Who do I say Jesus is? God started a relationship with humanity in the beginning, you and I are part of that humanity. When I realize that I am a part of humanity that God has created to have a relationship with I have a better understand of who I am. That this life isn’t about me it’s about my God and the relationship I have with him. Jesus is the only one that can restore that relationship, he is the redeemer, the Messiah. “Our understanding of who God is and who we are drastically affects our understanding of who Christ is and why we need him”– David Platt (Radical pg 34).

Think about this. I dare you to ask the question, “Who do I say Jesus is? Do I really believe he is who I say he is?

-Caleb Ross Hunter

10/8/2013

When God Calls You to Hunt for Cars…

There are times in life that I think we get in our minds that we were meant to do something and we set out to do whatever that thing is and it ends up that that was just a small part of something else that God wanted us to be a part of. Over the course of the last few months I have been searching for a car, because the car I have been driving is my parent’s and they were hoping to get it back soon. So with the full intent of finding a car, I and one of the older men of the church, who I thought might know more about cars than myself set out one day a week to go to dealerships and test drive some cars. We drove a lot of different cars some a little to big, some way to small and a few that I thought I couldn’t afford. Every time we went out we would come back with a lot of new information, tired and a little discouraged because the cars that would work for what I wanted were to much. Honestly, it frustrated me a little that somedays it just felt like we waisted our time, but the more I thought about it and reflected on those days I realized there was a lot more going on then searching for a car.

The older man and I would spend the day talking and telling stories. I learned a lot more about his life because we just decided to go hunting for cars and it opened the opportunity to just talk. If you spend six to eight hours in the car with a guy thats three times your age your bound to hear about things you never knew about.  Those days of just driving along and listening reminded me of my passion for people and my belief that everyone has a story worth tell. I think sometimes we get so busy with doing things in life that we forget to stop and listen. We forget that the people around us have a totally different way they have experienced life and there is so much that we can learn and share if we just stop for a while and take it in.

On our trips to the dealers we met a lot of car salesmen, some of which were helpful and others who were not. But what was interesting to me was the conversations we had with some of them. Obviously there were a few times that they would try to sell me cars that I knew I didn’t want, but there were a few that were honest and open. There was one car that we took for a test drive that was pretty nice car until we went back to the dealership and the salesman pulled up the cars history and started to laugh. He said he couldn’t honestly sell me the car cause it had been in eleven wrecks and been totally rebuilt. For some reason growing up I got this idea that car salesmen weren’t always the most honest people and they would just try to sell you anything, however, I learned that that is not always the case.

The last day that we went out we met three pastors who had either retired or this was their side job or were just in transition looking for the next ministry opening. I found these conversations really helpful to me as one of the guys said he just felt like he was done with ministry which to me sounded weird because as a pastor I do not see ministry as a job but rather part of living life. Jesus didn’t call people to be pastors or elders he called people to be disciples and make disciples. Ministry is everything we do even if thats having conversations over our life stories with older men or the salesman who is trying to sell you a car. We communicate the gospel by the way that we live our lives. I believe that this was the way that Jesus carried out his ministry. He ate and drank with sinners, he called tax collectors (car dealers and IRS agents of our day) to come and follow him, he met people in their homes and on hillsides, he fed them with whatever they had, and he most certainly  did not settle to doing ministry within the bounds of the established traditions and institutions of his day.

For three hours we talked with one of the pastor/salesman about everything except cars. I found the conversation encouraging and

refreshing simple because we were sharing our passion for people and what we believe God has called us too. Being a car salesman was not exactly what he thought God had called him to do but out of that he was still finding ways to minister to others and start a

non profit to help children in africa. He and a few friends bought a coffee roaster and sell the blends they make as fair trade sending everything they make over to schools in Africa. Even though he may not be doing “traditional” ministry he is still doing what God called him to do for this time and place that he is in.

There are times in my life that I can be rather discouraged about where I am at or what I am doing, but when I stop and allow myself to center on what God is doing I start to see that he has this awesome way of using the places we are and the things we do. God used the simplest three hour conversation with a car salesman to remind me of the dream he has put on my heart for “Love Helps” and how there is no retiring from following Jesus and even when the place and the methods of ministry change the message is always the same, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself”. When we start to see our lives as a means to spreading the God news of God’s love for humanity our whole outlook on the way we live and what we are doing will change. It’s still a learning process for me and it takes time to really grasp that God can use everything.

I didn’t end up buying a car from any of the places that we went and checked out, however, maybe that wasn’t the point of the car hunting. Maybe God was using the time to remind me of what my calling is and how he can use conversations with salesman to encourage us to live everyday as the day he has given us to live for him.

-Caleb Ross Hunter

 

P.S. I did find a car and have since bought it with help from my parents up in Indiana.

Tell a Story, Live the Story

Every time that I read a story or watch a movie I can’t help but feel that I am a part of the story. As if in someway I have a connection to the imagination of the author. I know that is an insane thought however, isn’t that how we should live our lives. If our life is a story or a small chapter in the larger picture of the novel shouldn’t we have some connection to the author.

God is not only our creator but the author of life, We have the opportunity to turn the page each day on new lines he is writing in his story. Lived out in and through us.

Somedays I honestly struggle with the motivation to live and to write and tell “MY STORY”, however, when I step back and realize the story is already being written and I am a character with curtain experiences and adventures that still and always will point back to my author, then i find motivation to pen words that tell of Him rather than ME.

If I am to write, create, paint,speak or live, for that matter, for me than I will never be motivated, never fulfill my potential or ever really matter, however luckily life is not about ME. When life is about me I get lonely, unmotivated to do anything and nothing really makes any sense. But GOD has set out to transform my mind and heart and has placed his story upon my soul.

Humanity is God’s story being lived out full of individual characters and sub plots yet the over arching theme remains. The theme

of humanities struggle for meaning and purpose. A struggle that leaves us lost if we rely on ourselves, confused by the pain we

cause each other in our attempts to edit the story, yet hope though sadly found by the few, those who choose simply to walk out the story and plot God laid before them.

So what is my story that God is asking me to live?

What is that one thing you know that you were meant for?

Doesn’t have to be complex of world changing but it does have to be what God has made for you to live.

I believe beyond a shadow of a doubt God has asked me to tell stories, to live a story, and to share his story with the world. I was created with my potential in the mind of God, my potential has always lay in him and he is my motivation.

As long as God is still writing my story I will keep living.

Think about this…

Perhaps we were all born to do the same thing, to tell God’s story, to live what he has written, yet the way we tell it is in our own unique way.

-Caleb Ross Hunter

Day 60 “A Year of Thoughts”: What If

What if the world really did need to know?

What if they really did need to know our life stories in memoir form so that they might learn from our joy’s and failures and be encouraged to live more open and honest lives. I hope the world does come to know the importance of story. To know their deepest needs and bloodiest wounds can be met and healed through countless life changing stories. For by telling our story, our whole story and nothing but the trust of our story despite the pain and open wounds the world might come to know the healing that we all so desperately need.

What if we took off our masks, spoke our insecurities as we turn them into confidence.

What if we know the world would end tomorrow would you want everyone to finally know who you are.

What if I told you all my lies and secrets to a world that would listen.

What if people could really see the things that have changed in my life over the past twenty-two years.

What if the ones who know me the best really knew my struggles.

What if I were Honest…

Then what if the world would follow.

What if a small honest life were all it took to change the mind of the world.

Wake up to What if?

-Caleb Ross Hunter

Day 55 “A Year of Though”: If a Son, If a Daughter

If I were to have a son I’d teach him such poetic verse

That when he speaks his words flow like the clouds

Their shape and form are created by imagination before education

His numbers mer markers for lines that run their course

For unbound by the world of standards free to be thus loud

In spirit full he will live life a legacy of quotations

 

If I were to have a daughter I’d read her such stories

That move her heart to be bold and brave yet sweet

Those things that shape her beauty from the inside to the out

Her own apart from the rest a simply elegant master piece

With each stroke of abstract art in the people that she may meet

Comes to persist in compassion her love they will not leave without

 

Such love in words and form and art they learn

Not from their father for my heart be torn

But from grace, life, and experience all their own

There they speak and seek a world unknown

Now clear to us by them and them alone.

 

-Caleb Ross Hunter

Day 43 “A Year of Thoughts”: Faith Moves You to be Crazy

 

Today in church Pastor Donnie talked about Noah and how he was crazy. Crazy in a faith that moves, kind of way. Noah didn’t just build a small boat for his family, he built a boat for every kind of animal, crazy big boat, it’s crazy. God asks us to have crazy faith, Noah is not just a kids bed time story, It’s a crazy story of how God love us and by faith moved Noah to do something crazy.

 

 

I want to do something crazy in my life, God has already has, and he keeps on.

 

Are you crazy enough to build a bigger boat than will hold your family?

 

Crazy enough to spend a hundred years building it?

 

Or a life time?

 

Start dreaming big God size crazy awesome dreams.

 

-Caleb Ross Hunter

Day 29 “A Year of Thoughts”: Tell Me a Story

When I search back to the earliest memory in my life, the one thing that really stands out to me is the stories. Stories I would listen to and stories I would tell. As soon as I was able to talk I told stories. I’ve always had a wild imagination and that often flowed through when I told stories.

I remember as a kid going on long car rides with my family and my sisters asking me to tell stories. Perhaps at the age of four or so I had discovered who I was and then spent eighteen years trying to forget. My creativity and passion would show through my stories. Perhaps my purpose is to tell stories or more rather to live a story. Our lives are stories, an oral tradition of new experiences that are marked by our days. Each day, each moment is a part of our story.

The world around us often tries to read our story but for them to assume they know the characters and the plot is useless unless they honestly and intentionally get to know the characters. For the world to even understand your story you have to tell the truth. You have to be honest with yourself and stop trying to be someone you are not. We have to discover who God made us to be. We have to learn to tell our story by the way we live our lives.

Today in church, the sermon was over the story of Cain and Able. The bible is full of stories and it seems as God is screaming the fact to us on each page that your life is a story. A story worth telling, worth living. One of the things mentioned in the sermon this morning was that Abel’s life still spoke after Cain killed him (Hebrews 11:4). We don’t know much about Abel’s life other than the short story about his offering and his death. But that story still speaks.

The point of Cain and Abel is one of faith and unbelief. In faith Abel offered his sacrifice to the Lord. Cain’s attitude and offering was poor and he allowed his anger to push him to unbelief. He had a choice how the story was to go. God asked Cain, “why are you angry?” Yet Cain would not listen, he killed Abel out of unbelief that his life could be more, That God is outside of time and there is more potential in Cain to turn his life story into one of worship like his brother.

We face this same choice in our story. Our lives are a story told by non other that you. Yes guided hopefully by the grace and love of God, yet we still have the choice. To live by faith, faith that moves mountains, faith that says tomorrow can be better than today, faith that says God has so much more for my life than the sin within me. Faith that transforms our lives, heals our wounds, redeems our past and leads us to move through our discontent to live an even more unbelievable story.

For much of my life I was like Cain. God kept asking me why I was angry? Why I didn’t want to believe there was more? I allowed the people that were trying to read my story assume everything was fine, I allowed them to put assumptions and expectations on me based off of what little they knew. I was angry because didn’t want to be honest I didn’t want them to know me. To know that I had unbelief, to know that I doubted my dreams just because of things people said.

I hid behind my stories because it was safe. Now I want people to know the true story. I want to be honest and real. Even if that shaders the world’s simple understanding of who I am. Even if that means it hurts. I’m not angry because my story makes me who I am and my tomorrow is shaped by the way I live.

 

What is your story?

 

Does the world really honestly know your story?

 

What dreams have you given up on?

 

How can we tell our stories?

 

When my children someday say “tell me a story”, I will. The Good the bad and the ugly.

 

Tell A Story, Live your story.

 

-Caleb Ross Hunter

Day 19 “A Year of Thoughts”: Your Face Tells a Story

Today is Day 320 in my adventure of taking a picture a day for a whole year. Mathematically that means I’m 45 days away from completing my goal. For me this has been a great learning experience and more of a challenge then I thought it would be. There were somedays that just seem to beg for the camera to be taken out of the case and taken on some grand adventure to fins those things worth taking a picture while there were other days that taking a picture was an after thought once everything else the day had to hold had ran it’s course.

I learned to not get disappointed and not compare one day’s picture to another because each day was different. Each day had it’s challenge. Each day had it’s different sunsets and weather to case that sunset was my choice to make. Each day had it’s unexpected and it’s planned moments but when to take a picture was always different.

 

This has challenged my commitment level each day, even though taking a picture is a small commitment it has a lasting effect on me knowing that I can do something everyday for a whole year. Not just something like brush my teeth or take a shower, but something out of the ordinary, something that stretched my creativity and also challenged me to think more outside the box.

 

There were days I would think for hours about how I wanted to take a certain picture or catch an idea or message through a picture and then do it. There were days that I would create something to go in the picture and if it didn’t turn out the way I wanted I would create something else. (This happened a lot actually.) There were days were ideas came fast and quick. The pictures taken could be anywhere from on average 70 to 150 pictures on a good day or as low as 10. Taking a picture a day opened my eyes literally to a passion that I had dabbled in as a kid but hadn’t really considered pursuing until I took on this challenge.

 

There is just something about capturing a moment, or framing a day, or a place, a time, an idea, a message or just anything. For me these pictures have created memories for me. I can tell stories about most of the days from the last year because of these pictures. I like the challenge, I like to be challenged, especially when that challenge deals with being creative.

 

As a little part of this challenge to myself I wanted to explore a little more about myself and getting to know me for me. I know that sounds a little weird, but one of the questions that has come out of this past year in a number of ways is how can I be more honest with myself and others? So why not through pictures. Many of these picture have captured little parts of me, my passion, my heart, my thoughts, my feelings, emotions, travels, stories and life.

 

I have taken over 120 self portraits over the past year to help me understand me. To catch a moment and look back and try to think through what I was thinking through. The self portraits are not because I want attention on me, or need everyone to remember what I look like, no the self portraits tell me stories. As if my own face is telling me my story over the past year. I think I read somewhere or I’m making this up that a photographer can look at a picture and always see beyond it, in it and though it, they were in that moment so the story is there for them. The rest of the world my not understand the story but they get it. Now I get it…

 

One of the pictures that has come to mean a lot to me from the project 365 and is one of the self portraits is this picture I took while sitting in a bed up against the wall in a room that my friend David and I used as our teachers lounge while I was teaching at the International school in Carpina, Brazil. The picture was taken in the midst of my trying to stop crying because for two hours I had the worst homesickness of my entire twenty-two years of life. In that moment I had been telling God he had to carry me through the rest of my time in Brazil. I was tired and worn out and I had three months to go. In that moment I knew all my tears were not in vain, I realized how human I was, how much I needed God’s strength and how deeply I really wanted to learn how to love the students I was teaching. That for me was one of the defining moments in that trip.

 

 

 

 

 

Another portrait that I really like is this one where I’m looking through a magnifying glass. I remember finding the magnifying glass somewhere in the school after I had gotten done teaching for the day. But in the picture you can see parts of the sky behind it. I wasn’t planning on catching the sky but it happened. The picture is a reminder to me of how much I love to adventure and find new things, to find the unexpected and to look close at life. Life interests me more than any other subject. How we live each and every day of our lives must be examined, experienced, and sometimes looked at through a magnifying glass.

 

 

 

 

One of the cool self portraits that I took came when I discover my interest in lighting. With different lighting you can create different effects on the face or object. I don’t think I really thought about lighting until I started taking pictures each day. This one picture basically was just my face pressed as close to the light bulb as I could without touching it and seeing if I could get half my face to disappear. It took me a while but it worked. So I have the picture to remember.

 

 

 

 

There are obviously many different pictures that I have taken over the past year that are “self portraits” and each tells a story but to share them all would make for a really long blog post that even I might not want to read. However, the last one that I want to share is a picture that I titled “Justice” it’s a self portrait that I took in response to human trafficking and the sex trade. I feel strongly about these things and finding justice for those who cannot speak for themselves. To me the pictures says a lot with saying very little.

 

Through project 365 I have been able to learn a lot about my self and my world. I believe many people assume they know themselves and they assume they know the world around them but I challenge them to take a picture, to really be honest with themselves, to look deep into their own life. To take a real honest look at the world, did you know that there are human’s enslaved right here in the USA, did you know that most of our youth, the next Generation are broken and longing for healing, did you know that most people go through life without meaning or purpose, did you know that your face tells a story every single day.

 

You are telling a story… Remembering your story, understanding yourself honestly will help you tell that story.

 

Even when this project is over I hope to keep learning and being challenged to become a better photographer and help people tell their stories.

 

How will you live?

 

How will you tell your story?

 

-Caleb Ross Hunter

Day 11 “A Year Of Thoughts”: That’s When We Were The Young

That’s When We Were The Youth

Over a sunset that set to soon

The green grows like the hills

For which we climbed then,

That’s when it was our youth

 

Those days we wondered in timeless masses out to play

 

To play was the name of it

That thing we did to pass the day

It was slow much slower then,

That’s when we were the youth

 

Feathers in our hair and speaking in our native tongue

 

To take to dreaming riding west

The horses flew across the yard

Always chasing the smallest one

That’s when milk made giant youth

 

Our mothers told us to grow strong so by and by we did

 

To this we write now as past

Though on we grow like children

For we still climb, play, chase the day

That’s when we find time for it

 

The time we never had as youth has found us, bound us, caught us somehow.

 

-Caleb Ross Hunter

A little reflection of growing old and moving past our childhood in poem form. Sometimes I think as youth we had a much better grasp on how fun life really is but as we grow older that fun gets sucked out of us by the ever faster moving time. The picture is of a piece of art that I painted and painted over again and this is actually of the middle stage of the piece. The original piece was a sunset, then I over laid that with two different greens and finally placed a feather on top of that. The final result of the piece is a curved canvas that allows for the feather to stand out off the canvas while being held on by a smearing of blue paint. As a child my imagination would run like crazy and there was always a story everyday to fill the time. Now my mind and imagination still run but i have to find the time for it. Find the time to stop and imagine, create, and remember.  That’s when we were the youth.

P.s. The milk reference is true, my mother would say drink milk it will make you strong however, I was allergic to dairy as a kid and when i out grew that I became lactose intolerant because i couldn’t drink it as a kid, somehow even without that much milk I still grew, I wouldn’t say strong but I grew.