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Name: Andrew
Birthday: 1/9/1988
Gender: Male
Expertise: "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me," but, "without Him I can do nothing."
Occupation: Designer
Industry: Graphic/Web/Multimedia Design
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
3/2/2006
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| In the Summer of 2006, I was an assistant leader on a missions team to Wales, comprised of 20 American and Canadian young people. Though the summer had it’s share of difficulties, I came away a changed person, blessed by the people I had met and the experiences I had encountered.
Ever since then, it has always been on my heart to go on another team, but for the past few years, my summers have been spent attending college and building my career as a web developer. I have been waiting and praying for the opportunity to lead a team to Europe once again.
Well, my opportunity has finally come! This summer, from June 15th to August 13th, I will be co-leading a team of young people to the country of Switzerland, in the area around Lake Thun, a region with a long history of being a retreat for those seeking spiritual rest, purpose, and fulfillment. True to it's heritage, the area has many religious communities and retreat centers, making it a hot-spot for modern spiritual "seekers."
We will be partnering with Schlössli Le Rüdli, a Christian missionary training and retreat center that caters to those "seekers." The ministry’s property is expansive, with several buildings, thirteen acres of farmland, gardens, and a walking park. The team will be renovating some of the buildings and landscaping the grounds while staying there.
Working at Le Rüdli will also give us a unique opportunity to meet and mingle with people from all over the world that have come to find rest and retreat. Pray for us that God would give us wisdom and understanding in how to interact, whether to the seeker or to fellow believers.
Before we go to Switzerland for the summer, the team will spend two weeks at Teen Mission’s primitive “boot camp” on Merritt Island, Florida, preparing ourselves for a summer of serving by leaving behind the distractions of the modern life. There are no cell phones, computers, or iPods allowed in boot camp. Not even modern conveniences like showers or laundry machines are available for use. All this is to focus the team on what their true purpose for going overseas is: not to go on vacation or to be comfortable, but to serve God by serving others.
Being a leader on this trip will be an extra challenge for me. A team leader’s mission field is not just to the people of the country, but to the members of the team. It isn't just the responsibility of taking a group of 20+ teenagers overseas while making sure they're safe and provided for, but of doing my best to ensure that they get the most out of the Summer, both physically and spiritually. Please pray for me in this respect especially.
My goal is to try and give those on the team, especially those going for the first time, the wonderful experience that I had when I first went on a missions trip. It was a life-changing experience for me. One that really began to shape me into the person who I am today.
In order to go on this missions trip, however, I need to raise over $3000 by June 15th. If you wish to support me, just click here to donate online! (Be sure to select "Team Member" and then type in "Andrew Beck" in the comment field.)
But even more than your monetary support, I value the support of prayer. Believe me, I'll need it!  Please pray for me, my team, and my fellow leaders.
I'm really going to miss you all over the summer! If you want to write to me, feel free! I'd love to hear from you! Letters are a great comfort and encouragement overseas, especially to a guy like me. (Big family, you know. I get kinda lonely. )
Here is the address:
Teen Missions Team 09015
Schlossi 'Le rudli
Steinacherweg 29,
3646 Einigen
SWITZERLAND
Thanks everyone for supporting me, whether in money, in letters, or even in prayer! God bless you for your friendship. | | |
| I read a very disturbing blog entry this morning here, and decided to post the eyewitness account of one of the members of the Christian prayer group that was assaulted and molested by a Sodom-like mob of homosexuals in San Francisco.
We wanted to write you and fill you guys in on what happened to our team here in San Francisco last night. This is what happened from Daniel's point of view and gives a pretty good overview of the night.
I went to the Castro (the homosexual district of San Francisco) with JHOPSF (I have been with the Justice House of Prayer San Francisco since April 2008.) like we usually do on Friday nights. Normally, we sit on 18th and Castro, and someone plays the guitar, and we all worship God. Often times people will be drawn to us, even if only for curiosity of what we're doing, so we get to talk to them, and tell them about the Love of Jesus Christ. On rare occasions, when the Holy Spirit clearly guides one of us (Usually a leader, probably Roger), one person will open-air preach for a little bit.
Sometimes a person will yell at us, or maybe a few. Sometimes people will ignore us. Sometimes people will let us pray with them. We get different responses from different people each time, but the Lord always meets us there.
This time was not a normal night. It was the first time we'd been back in the Castro to do our normal outreach since California Proposition 8, which defined marriage as "one man with one woman" was passed. Apparently, previously, someone at a no on 8 rally singled out Promised Land Fellowship (The church that we attend), and specifically the team they send out to the Castro on Friday nights (Us) as being affiliated with the yes on 8 campaign (Which is partially true. All the individuals involved with the Castro Outreach were involved with the yes on 8 campaign, but mostly in prayer. However, the Castro Outreach isn't about Gay marriage, or politics - it's about Jesus Christ.).
We played the guitar and sang together and worshiped the Lord. Nobody preached. Nobody even really talked to anyone except for a little bit near the beginning. After just singing and worshiping God for a while, Roger decided that we should all hold hands in a circle and continue singing. So we did.
Someone (Actually a person who came up and hugged and kissed some of us who he knew from the past and was asking us how we were doing) convinced some people that we were there to protest against the no on 8 campaign. Then some guy who was dressed up like one of the sisters (The sisters of perpetual indulgence is a group of men who dress up in drag like nuns and call themselves the spiritual authority of the Castro.) took a curtain-type thing (Which I think they use to curse people) and wrapped it around us.
Then a crowd started gathering. We began to sing "Amazing Grace", and basically sang that song the whole night. (At some points we also sang "Nothing but the Blood of Jesus" and "Oh the Blood of Jesus".)
At first, they just shouted at us, using crude, rude, and foul language and calling us names like "haters" and "bigots". Since it was a long night, I can't even begin to remember all of the things that were shouted and/or chanted at us.
Then, they started throwing hot coffee, some people got it in their faces, soda and alcohol on us and spitting (and maybe even peeing) on us. Then, a group of guys surrounded us with whistles, and blasted them inches away from our ears continually.
Then, they started getting violent and started shoving us. We just gathered in as tight as we could together and worshiped singing Amazing Grace. At one point a man tried to steal one of our Bibles. Chrisdene noticed, so she walked up to him and said "Hey, that's not yours, can you please give it back?". He responded by hitting her on the head with the Bible, shoving her to the ground, and kicking her. I called the cops, and when they got there, they pulled her out of the circle and asked her if she wanted to press charges. She said "No, tell him I forgive him." Afterwards, she didn't rejoin us in the circle, but she made friends with one of the people in the crowd, and really connected heart to heart.
Roger got death threats. As the leader of our group, people looked him in the eyes and said "I am going to kill you.", and they were serious. A cop heard one of them, and confronted him.
It wasn't long before the violence turned to perversion. They were touching and grabbing me, , even trying to take off my pants - basically trying to molest me. I used one hand to hold my pants up, while I used the other arm to hold one of the girls. The guys huddled around all the girls, and protected them.
Soon after, the cops came and stood between us and the mob. When it was getting more heated, the cops were like "You guys should leave." because it was getting harder to protect us. and Roger said "We want to stay." Then he said if you want to get out you have to get out now.
Someone tried to steal my backpack, but I tapped a cop on the shoulder, and said "Hey, that's my bag." and he got it from him and gave it to me. Others weren't so lucky. Probably half our team got their jackets stolen.
Eventually, as the crowd was getting more and more uncontrollable, the cops were afraid for our lives, so they escorted us to our van. (The cops were very nice to us from start to finish.) Our van was parked pretty far because it was hard to find parking that day. As the cops escorted us, the mob followed us, until the cops formed a line, and held off the people so we could drive away. We took the long way home, just in case anyone tried to follow us.
When we got home, we prayed and sang more, and then prayed over each-other.The whole experience made me love, and brought me closer to God, and my friends, and the people in the Castro, as well as the church in general, and the lost in general.
Please know my heart. All of what we do is for the Love of Jesus Christ, and the love for those in the Castro. The Bible says to love God, and then love people. We can only love because He loved us first. We can't hate the people because they are just broken and blinded by the spirit of this age. Our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against Principalities and Powers. It's not a political thing, we just love the people.
As the mob raged, all I could pray was "God have mercy.". It really is all about God's mercy. He desires mercy over judgment. He desires for all to be saved.
This is the raw footage of the walk from 18th and Castro Street to our car. It was only the very tail end of the night and says that we were all about prop8... when in reality we had nothing to do with prop 8 this night.
http://www.ktvu.com/news/17986914/detail.html
Thank you for praying for us, and more for this people in the Castro. We have found ourselves even more broken over them. We love you!
-Missy
I share the sentiment of Missy: I am not trying to arouse any kind of hatred or fear of homosexuals; I love them with all my heart and would gladly lay down my life for any one of them.
Rather, I am trying to inform Christians on what any one of us may have to face if we are going to profess Jesus Christ. The Christians in this account were not political activists, and yet they still faced persecution. This is not Sodom and Gomorrah. This is not Europe. This is America.
What would you have done if you were there that night? What would be more important to you? Your rights? Your safety? Or your testimony?
These things I have spoken unto you, that in Me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.
-Jesus
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I am not ashamed to say that God has blessed me. I’m not anything special. I have done nothing to make myself deserving. I’m nothing but just an ordinary guy. But God is the source of all blessings, and He bestows them as He wills. . .
He has blessed me by placing me with godly parents who have been the truest examples of what it means to follow Christ that I have ever seen. I would credit them with my upbringing if I did not know that they would simply deflect it upwards towards the One who changed them from the inside-out and honed them into mighty warriors, officers really, in His army to bring forth and train new warriors to serve their Commander. I am blessed to be one of those warriors.
When I hear people talk, or even see for myself, how their parents reared them or taught them, it brings me to tears in gratefulness to God that He would place me in the home that He did. It makes me ask: “Why, Father? Why would you bless me with such wonderful parents?”
He has blessed me by surrounding me with loving, accepting brothers and sisters, six in all, who are in every respect my closest and most enduring friends. When the friends outside the home have let me down, disappointed me, even deliberately hurt me, my brothers and sisters have comforted me, encouraged me, and picked me back up. Each one of them is a gift and a blessing of God, and I could not imagine what life would be like without a single one of them.
When I hear of, or see for myself the siblings of others, how they are their worst enemies, not their best friends, it brings a crushing weight of gratefulness upon my heart, making me ask: “Why, Father? Why would you bless me with such a family?”
This past year especially has been a testament to God’s faithfulness and goodness to little Andrew Beck. He led me to a wonderful school full of wonderful people that launched a career that is still astonishing me with the way it fits so perfectly to my life and to me as a person. That could only be God’s doing, because I had NO clue that this is what I would be doing for work even a year ago!
One area of blessing that God has only just recently been revealing to me is the “bad” things that happened to me. The woundings that I have received in this past year were more than I thought I could ever endure.
I have been made to ache with burdens for friends and loved ones who I know are not walking with God. That is some of the hardest pain to endure, because you know that eternity is at stake in these peoples lives, and to think that they are heading for an eternity without God is often enough to weep in agony. If you don’t know the feeling, I cannot explain it to you much more than that.
And then there was that biting cold morning in the early Spring. . . where I was torn-apart by the destructive termination of a close relationship, one that I had thought for a year would result in being bound in matrimony to my beloved best friend for the rest of my days. With a ring in my pocket, I was awakened to the fact that I was not loved as I loved. . . that I was not to her as she was to me. Words and actions were misunderstood, misjudged, and misread, leaving a wall of confusion and contention between us. I thought that perhaps all of that stuff may have been the cause of the relationship’s meltdown, but after the dust settled, after the wall was broken down, the truth was finally seen, and the truth was that things were not right.
Marriage is a union of two who sacrificially lay down their lives for each other, not the slave-like love and devotion of one to another, who’s ambitions, dreams, and desires are too important to be even partially laid down for another.
Children cannot be dreaded as though they were some sort of curse because they get in the way of their parents’ “freedom.”
The Word of God must unify, not divide a marriage. If it does, it shows that there is not spiritual unity, and that one or both of the partners are not simply resisting their partner, but are resisting the Holy Spirit.
This is not how any marriage should be, and this is why my marriage never was.
Of course the break-up hurt. Worse than anything I have ever experienced. My father, who was with me when it happened, told me how he remembers seeing me laying on a bed in a state of what he called: “emotional shock.” I can barely remember all that happened. . . it is like a very vivid nightmare, where I remember feeling more than seeing or thinking. . .
I should’ve seen it coming, I know, but I had been wearing the rose-colored glasses of love, and could not imagine that she could make an even gradual 180 degree turn in her heart towards me. The cause of that “shock” was due simply to the trauma of having the rose-colored glasses torn off my face and seeing true colors for the first time.
Now I’m not telling you all this for you to feel sympathy for me or anything like that. I’m telling you this because I consider it to be one of the great blessings of God in the life of little Andrew Beck. I cannot tell you how much I thank Him that He spared me, my children, and even my potential wife from a life of continual heartache, distress, and discontentment.
It was God, not her, that initialized the break-up, even if He was not the cause. He was not wearing rose-colored glasses as Andrew Beck was. He saw her heart as it was and saw that it had grown cold to me, so instead of letting me get what I wanted, (or what I thought I wanted) He prompted her to tear it away.
It didn’t happen because God does not want to bless me with a wife, but because He does indeed! He knew and still knows better than I what is best for me, and He wants met to have His best. He wants me to be joined to a woman after His own heart who will love me as I will love her, not one that will bring me heartache.
When I see the heartache and discouragement of men married to grievous wives, and the joy and happiness of those joined to mighty women of God; mothers, counselors, and helpmeets, I cannot help but ask the Lord with tears of gratefulness: “Why, Father? Why would you bless me by wounding me now to spare me a lifetime of wounds?”
Never view “blessings” as only “good” things. No trial or suffering is pleasant when you are right in the middle of it, but if you turn to God for comfort and strength and endure it without falling, He will reveal to you when you are on the other side that it was for your ultimate good. And when that happens, there will be a glorious joy in your heart that no one but you will be able to fully understand!
Oh the goodness of God towards those who love and fear Him! How wonderful it is to be the son of a Father who watches out for me in protective jealousy because of the zealous love He has towards me!
He has shown me His lovingkindness not just in things that He has given me in His goodness; my parents, my family, my career. . . but in the things that He has taken away in His mercy, with the promise to restore them a hundredfold if I abide in Him.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever. - Psalm 23:6
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| This is taken from an article by Tim Keller found here: (http://www.redeemer.com/news_and_events/articles/the_importance_of_hell.html) I am going to just post the main points and the conclusion of Keller, and add an afterthought of my own. 
Introduction
There are plenty of people today who don't believe in the
Bible's teaching on everlasting punishment, even those who do find it
an unreal and a remote concept.
1. It is important because Jesus taught about it more than all other Biblical authors put together.
2. It is important because it shows how infinitely dependent we are on God for everything.
3. It is important because it unveils the seriousness and danger of living life for yourself.
4. The doctrine of hell is important because it is the only way to know how much Jesus loved us and how much he did for us.
ConclusionThe doctrine of hell is crucial-without it we can't
understand our complete dependence on God, the character and danger of
even the smallest sins, and the true scope of the costly love of Jesus.
Nevertheless, it is possible to stress the doctrine of hell in unwise
ways. Many, for fear of doctrinal compromise, want to put all the
emphasis on God's active judgment, and none on the self-chosen
character of hell. Ironically, as we have seen, this unBiblical
imbalance often makes it less of a deterrent to non-believers rather
than more of one. And some can preach hell in such a way that people
reform their lives only out of a self-interested fear of avoiding
consequences, not out of love and loyalty to the one who embraced and
experienced hell in our place. The distinction between those two
motives is all-important. The first creates a moralist, the second a
born-again believer.
We must come to grips with the fact that Jesus said more about hell
than Daniel, Isaiah, Paul, John, Peter put together. Before we dismiss
this, we have to realize we are saying to Jesus, the pre-eminent
teacher of love and grace in history, "I am less barbaric than you,
Jesus--I am more compassionate and wiser than you." Surely that should
give us pause! Indeed, upon reflection, it is because of the doctrine
of judgment and hell that Jesus' proclamations of grace and love are so
astounding.
My AfterthoughtMy father once gave a definition of hell. He said:
"Hell is where God is not." I think that pretty much sums it up. 'Hell
on earth' is not just a cute catchphrase, since hell does not begin
only upon physical death. There is certainly a physical place called
'hell', but the spiritual state of hell applies to both the living and
the dead.
If hell is where God is not, then a person without God is living in a literal living hell.
You see, Jesus Christ does not simply save us from hell, the place, but
more importantly, from hell, the state of being. He did not die on the
cross simply to send us to heaven when we die. Heaven is where God is,
just as hell is where He is not.
Jesus Christ is in the business of rescuing souls from their own living
hells, from the inner torments that sin brings to their lives, and
translating them into the kingdom of light; the kingdom inside of every
born-again Christian. It is a life lived in the presence of God, which
is not just when we go to church on Sundays, but every moment of the
day, every day of the week. It is a life of praying: "Not my will, but
Yours be done." in every aspect, area, and decision of our lives.
This is what it means to be lost. Not just going to a hell of God's
making, but living in a hell of our own making. But this is also what
it means to be saved. Not just going to a heavenly kingdom when we die,
but having the kingdom of God abiding in our hearts. | | |
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