Dive Deep Ministries was founded at the beginning of 2009 by a few students who were tired of seeing a generation continue to forget their spiritual roots. We have been given numerous things at our disposal for advancing the kingdom, and we want to use those to the best of our ability.  This includes things like Twitter, Facebook, Blogs and the like to proclaim the message of Jesus Christ to more people than we can do at a local level. We don’t want to be super spiritual, but we want to go after issues that everyone has and talk about things that are relevant to our culture.

We are founded on the principles of a few key verses. 1 Timothy 4:12 gives us a look at one of the reasons that we do what we do, even though we are younger than alot of people. The verse says:

“Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity.”

Mathew 28:19-20 also gives us direction and purpose. It says:

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations… teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

We may not belong to the same denomination or share the same political beliefs, but what we do share is a love of Our Savior and a desire to learn more about Him.

Dive Deep is not a church or affiliated with a specific denomination. We do, however, believe a few core principles about our faith. We believe that Jesus Christ was God in the flesh and lived among us, was crucified on the cross so that everyone could be redeemed though Him and live forever in eternal salvation, and that he rose again on the third day. We believe that salvation is open to anyone who calls upon the name of the Lord and commits to follow Him all the days of their life. The only absolute truth is the Word of God, and it holds no conflict with it’s text.

It is our desire to expand the ministry reach of Dive Deep. Over the summer we will be launching some new and exciting things. There will be some changes along the way, but our mission will stay the same.

Next week, we will be starting a series called Living Sacrifices. We will take some time to unpack the idea of worship. We hope that this series will help you find your pathway of worshiping the Father in your daily life.

Have a great week!

Dive Deep,

KC

Everyone can probably think of a time when you have been too trusting of someone or haven’t trusted enough. In a world where it seems that corruption and lies live we must find a way to trust others so that our relationships flourish. It is very clear through the Bible that God wants us to trust Him fully with all that we are. One of the best stories that shows trust is about an old guy named Noah whom God told to build an Ark. Now we don’t have Arks floating around in the water today, but the Ark was huge. By the time that it was completed, it was large enough to hold 8 freight trains with 65 cars each! Noah built the Ark because he trusted that God would do what He said, but it was quite an interesting project.

Noah came under huge pressure from his neighbors and his community while he was constructing the Ark, but he continued to put his trust in God and follow what He had commanded him to do. The end result was Noah, his family and two of every kind of animal were on the Ark and spared from God flooding the world, but everyone else was not. Noah’s family was spared because he had spent 600 years trusting in God before he built the Ark.

Noah figured out he had to trust God first, and then trust others. If he had trusted in the people around him who told him that he was crazy, he would have lost out on the reason that God told him to build the Ark in the first place. We so often get this backwards and begin to put our trust in those around us first, and in God second or further. When we do this, we take our eyes off of the one who has created relationships, and then we wonder why our relationships aren’t working out well. We tend to put our trust in things we can see and not in the One who is unseen. If we flip these, we will find out our relationships will begin to flourish.

Trusting in God is hard for the majority of us because when we trust in Him, we lose control over our kingdom. We begin to try to trust in God with some of our self and hold back other areas for us to control. Relationships are an area that we tend to hold on to, but they should be the first we give away. If we want to be blessed in our relationships, we have to trust in God to direct us in the way that we should go with them.

We can’t trust on ourselves and the things of this world, that’s why we should trust God first, then others second. When we get in a relationship with someone at any level, there has to be trust between us. It becomes hard to be in a relationship when you keep secrets from each other, because out of secrets come lies. You will find yourself lying to the other person to cover your tracks, and then you get to the point where the lies overwhelm you and your relationship falls.

There is also a difference between boundaries and trust. Within your relationships before marriage, it’s not the best thing to tell the other person every little thing about you. When you’re married, your trust level changes, and you should be totally open with your spouse. We are going to go more into boundaries next week, so stay tuned for that.

If you find yourself trusting someone else first, then trusting God, it’s time for a change. God is longing for you to trust in Him so He can move in your relationships and in your life. The one thing He is waiting for is for you to surrender your life to Him with no strings attached. This week, take a self-evaluation and look at your relationships to see if you really are trusting God or the other person. If you have any doubt, surrender these areas to God and watch what He will do. You will be free to live better, and He will be able to move in your life in mighty ways. Your relationships will become better over time if you are willing to give up control and be surrendered to God.

There are some pretty cool things that will be happening with Dive Deep in the near future. We will be revealing them over the next few weeks in our blog post and on our Facebook group, so be sure to jump in on the cool stuff going on.

Dive Deep,

KC

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SR8j_P1O0os]

Now that we have an idea of the labels that exist, lets dive into this subject.

If you think back to high school, or if you are in high school you can probably think of some labels that were placed on you. Those labels began to make you think that you were what they say, even if that wasn’t you. You begin to believe the lies that people around you are telling you.

The real issue that we face is not what labels we have but what voices we listen to. Casting Crowns sees that this is an issue, and addresses it in their song Voice of Truth. The end of the chorus says:

Out of all the voices calling out to me
I will choose to listen and believe the voice of truth

In a world of messed up morals and lies, the only voice that we can truly rely on is that of Christ.  Sometimes it is so hard to listen to the voice of God, because it isn’t always the loudest, but most of the time the still soft whisper of our Creator. God doesn’t do this so that we can’t hear him, but rather so that we seek him to hear what he is saying to us.

So what keeps us from hearing the voice of God? Its quite simple, but something that we don’t even realize we do. We love to hang onto labels, because the longer we listen to the other voices, the more we become that label. We begin to allow ourselves to find our identity in the lies we are told. There is a quote that says:

A lie, if told enough times, becomes truth

What we fail to realize is that once we step into a relationship with Jesus Christ, we become a new creation! 

2 Corinthians 5:17 says