I met my wife, Elizabeth, in February of my sophomore year of college. It was a love story that almost didn’t happen.

She asked me out first for a special “reverse weekend” event at our school. I turned her down.

Okay, don’t be too hard on me. I already had plans that weekend.

Two weeks later, I asked her out.

She turned me down.

And yes, she already had plans too.

Finally, we settled on a midweek date the following week.

That’s all it took. Not long after that, we started dating.

I dreamed of the day I would become a great baseball player.

Every spring in elementary school, we would head out to the ballfield at recess. In my imagination, I was a star. I could see myself hitting home runs, making amazing catches, and being the hero of the game.

But picking teams always brought me crashing back to reality.

I was often chosen last.

Have you ever felt trapped by a label someone gave you?

Smart. Lazy. Funny. Beautiful. Slow. Clumsy. Ugly. Popular. Annoying. Angry. Weird. Too much. Not enough.

Labels can hurt. They can make us feel stuck. They are usually too small to tell the whole truth about who we are.

Maybe someone else has labeled you. Maybe you have labeled yourself.

But God tells a better story.

I was so excited. I was going to see the President of the United States. I got out my camera and began snapping pictures That’s when a disappointing reality hit me. The door to Marine On the opposite side of the helicopter. I waited and watched snapping pictures the whole time, but the President never emerged from behind the helicopter. I was so close, but so far.

My wife, Elizabeth, spent four years of her childhood living in Saigon, Viet Nam. Her parents were missionaries there during the height of the war.

It was an uncertain and frightening time. At night, Elizabeth would go to sleep hearing bombs exploding in the distance. Sometimes she could hear the quiet, worried conversations of her parents as they tried to figure out how they were going to get their family safely out of the country.

Danielle Strickland tells the story of working with The Salvation Army on the drug-affected streets of downtown Vancouver, British Columbia. Each day, she would walk the neighborhood, look for people who were hurting, and try to help in whatever way she could.

One day, her friend Cathy came with her.

Cathy was bold and fearless. She was not afraid to talk to anyone.

They had only walked a few blocks when Cathy noticed a tough-looking man leaning against a set of concrete steps. Before Danielle could warn her that this man was one of the most powerful drug dealers in the neighborhood, Cathy walked straight up to him.

It was one o’clock in the morning, and I was sitting on the end of my bed.

I had just come home from a night with my friends in Fort Worth, Texas. We had gone out to eat at The Old Spaghetti Factory, wandered around Sundance Square, and spent the evening doing the kinds of things we did most Saturday nights.

Nothing terrible happened. Nothing dramatic or stupid. We were just hanging out and having fun like we did every Saturday night.

But that night felt different.

Each year, hundreds of campers at Sunset Lake choose to accept Jesus as their Savior. Many also express a desire to prepare for baptism. This short guide is designed to help parents affirm and nurture those spiritual decisions.

I love a good story—the kind that starts with “Once upon a time” and ends with “...and they lived happily ever after.”
But the truth is, our lives don’t always feel like those kinds of stories.

One afternoon, a teen camper came up to me—we’ll call her Amanda.

“Pastor Dave, can I talk to you?” she asked.

As the sun set and darkness crept over the dunes, we headed back to the parking lot. Ours was the only car left.

I reached into my pocket for the car keys—nothing. I checked another pocket. Still empty. Panic started to rise in my chest.

“Did I give you the keys?” I asked my wife.

“I don’t have them,” she replied.

My heart sank.

Somewhere out there, in 1,500 acres of dunes and sand, my keys had fallen out of my pocket. And with the strong winds, even if we could find them, they might already be buried. It was cold, getting dark, and we were miles from town. The odds were not in our favor.

It was Wednesday night of Tween Camp. The evening program had ended. I had just finished telling the campers that Jesus gave His life for them because He loves them, and they are His children.

That’s when a boys’ counselor ran up to me in a panic.
“One of my campers just ran out the side door of the gym!” he said.

When I was in 8th grade, I joined a youth group called Pathfinders. We went camping, learned outdoor skills, and did service projects for our community. As Labor Day approached, our club director had a big idea—he reached out to the Governor of Michigan to ask if we could join him in the annual Mackinac Bridge Walk.

By now, we’d been gone for a long time, and it was time to head back to the car. We tried retracing our steps, but the faint trail we’d made had vanished into the thick brush. We were lost—and we had no idea which way to go.

For fifteen minutes, we pushed through a dense patch of fir trees. The branches were so thick we couldn’t see more than three feet in front of us. In my head, I imagined the headline: "Camp Director and Staff Lost in the Foothills of Mount Rainier."

The first time I ever used a chainsaw, I was 17 years old. I was working on the summer maintenance crew at Camp Au Sable in northern Michigan. During the last two weeks of camp, it was our job to find and cut down all the dead trees and turn them into firewood for the winter.

Before we started, our supervisor, Mr. Dick Scott, gathered us together and gave us a serious safety talk about using a chainsaw. We all promised to be careful and then headed out into the woods.

I loved when my dad called my name and said it was time for our next adventure. But when he pulled out his barber kit and announced it was haircut time, I felt something very different—fear.

So, when my dad called my name with the clippers in hand, I would run and hide—sometimes in the closet, under the dining room table, even in the garage. Anywhere I could escape the dreaded buzz cut.

The holiday rush is fast approaching. Your kids are excited for the decorations, family time, and gifts under the tree. Meanwhile, you might be dreading the hustle, endless shopping, and commercialization of the season – all while hoping for something more meaningful. So, how can you make this time of year everything it was meant to be? What if you could bring the core principles of camp into your holiday celebrations? Here are a few ideas to spark some creativity for you and your family.

As adults we often forget how to play … But what if we took the time to play catch with our kids, or hide and seek, or build a cardboard rocket ship in the backyard and pretend to be astronauts and fly to the moon.

The statistics are astounding. According to research by Dr. Bryant Myers nearly 85% of the decision that are made for Christ in the United States happen between the ages of 4-14.

What would happen if you lived by these same five promises at your home? How would the dynamic of your home change if your children knew that will do all you can to keep them safe, that you will always be present for them, that will always respect them and take responsibility for your actions? And what if every word spoken at home was used to build each other up? These five promises could change everything.