“Being a father of four, you just have to be OK with giving certain things up. Here are three things I’ve not had this week because of my kids:

Drinking water, free of floaties
If you can’t handle some Cheez-Its floating around in the bottom of your Aquafina, you might not want to have kids. It’s been almost 7 years since I’ve had water that went down like … well, water. I like my water chunky.

A dry toilet seat
Three of my four kids are boys, so they pee standing up AND they manage to pee on everything except the lightbulb in the ceiling (but not for lack of effort). Why the bathroom upstairs is carpeted we’ll never know, but we do know it has a bunch of pee on it. My boys are the sole reason we have the carpets cleaned every few months. I wish I knew a tile layer in the church.

A good night’s sleep With four kids, you can’t really count on a good night’s sleep, either. Between just the normal baby rhythm, bad dreams, sickness and more, it just seems that a full night’s sleep remains elusive. I remember when 10am was a great mark to wake up to – now I’m just happy with 7:30am.

Hit up Morethandodgeball.com for the rest of this really neat post.

Anyway, this is absolutely incredible.  47 year old Susan Boyle gets up on stage and is almost laughed off before she even starts.  Then she proceeds to shock everyone (including the judges) with her amazing performance!  Truly amazing!

For some reason the embedding is disabled so hit up the link to watch it on YouTube:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxPZh4AnWyk

I am so proud, honored, priveleged, humbled, excited…and humbled that God has chosen to entrust them to me.

The whole experience was definitely eye opening. After the first week, and getting over my initial seflishness, God really showed me a lot.

I had the opportunity to work with a couple situations that were pretty tough to deal with.  In addition, I think I was able to focus my priorities a lot more, both with the church and my family.

I lost 8 lbs.

One of the biggest revelations came because of the financial series that we just ended at Impact.  I knew going in to this fast that doing it at the same time as this financial series, was asking for it.

And God did it.  He really whooped me up.  It was last week as I sat during the first service that God really smacked me.  Barry was speaking and my thoughts had been really consumed with our families financial picture.  I mean it’s not horrible.  It’s not even all that bad.  But it’s not where I (we) need it to be.

And I’ve learned that in order to completely honor God with my money, I need to be willing to sacrifice.  And that sacrifice won’t be an easy thing.  But that’s what makes it a sacrifice.

So as I sat in the service, I heard it.  Clear as day.

VOICE: “Sell your car.”

ME: “No.”

VOICE: “Josh, sell your car.”

ME: “Really? But…”

VOICE: “Seriously Josh, sell your car.”

ME: “But…”

VOICE: “Dude, c’mon, it needs to be done.”

ME: “Crap.”

There’s only been a couple times in my life where I knew, without a doubt, that the message I was hearing was coming straight from God.  This was one of them.

So I spent the next week and a half trying to come up with an excuse to get out of thinking and praying about it.

Then I caved obeyed.

So…anyone wanna buy a ’99 Toyota Camry?

But if you’ve been around youth ministry for a while you’ll know exactly why this has to be one of the funniest videos ever!

There are so many great lines in here!

But really though, the cool part is the message behind it.  You don’t have to be the most hip, cool or trendy person to work with students.  You just need to love them.

I’d like to introduce you to Ignatius.  The video is a little lengthy, but it’s WELL worth it!

Ignatius from travis hawkins on Vimeo

Ashley and I were talking this weekend about our experiences and up until that point, I had been really struggling with not just the physical aspect of the fast, but the spiritual side of it as well.

I was really feeling like I wasn’t and wouldn’t be getting anything really significant out of the experience, because it was taking such a toll on my body and emotions.  I was constantly craving the things I couldn’t have and I found myself for the better part of the week constantly depressed with it and irritable with my family.  In fact, it was to the point on Saturday, where I was honestly considering abandoning it.

It became a little clearer though on Sunday morning when I was on my way to church with our youth worship leader (shout out to John!) and our bassist.  It was 6:45 am and we’re driving like we do every Sunday, except for one thing…I didn’t have my Starbucks.  They were both asking how things were going and I shared a little about my thoughts about feeling like it’s not worth it.

John then said something that made a whole lot of sense.  He asked if maybe this struggle was really what God wanted me to get out of the fast.

I began wrestling with that yesterday and I’ve pretty much decided that I think he may be right.  You see, I think a lot of times, we humans need to come to a point of desperation and quitting, before we can fully commit ourselves to something.

How often do you hear of people hitting “rock bottom” before fully committing to God?  I think it might have been the same way with me and this fast.  I think I needed to come to that point of wanting to give it up, before I could really wholeheartedly not just do it, but live it.

It’s hard though to accept that it took me 8 days before I really came to the spot where I was able to start focusing on my whole reason for doing this.

So here I am. Day 9.

12 days to go.

Almost half way.

And I’m even more excited to see what God teaches me over the next 2 weeks than I was a week ago.

My afternoon hunger cravings have turned from being fulfilled by a quick run to Starbucks or McD’s to an apple and three small (but sweet) Cutie oranges sitting on my desk.

Cheaper. Yes.
Healthier. Yes.
More colorful. Yes.

But it’s just not the same…

Day 5 is close to finishing and I’m realizing that this new way of life is doing something really strange to my body.

For those of you joining in the Daniel fast, I think you might know what I mean…

Um….did anyone hear that?

We started the fast on Sunday and after I came home from church, I walk in the house to join my family.  Jaden, our 5 year old, comes running up to me excited and proceeds to tell me that he is fasting from his “Lovey” for the day!

Now if you have spent any amount of time with Jaden, you probably know Lovey too.  Lovey is Jaden’s teddy bear.  Or more precisely his stained, flattened and burned ball of fabric that he carries around with him…everywhere.  Lovey used to be a teddy bear, but after 5 years with a little boy, you start to look different as time goes by.

Jaden and Lovey have been, for the better part of the last 5 years, inseperable.  So it was to my amazement when Ashley told me that Jaden decided this all on his own!  No prompting from mommy!  I asked him why he decided to give Lovey up for the day and he then told me that it was so he could learn more about God!

Wow! That’s awesome!  Now I’m sure that he heard about this in his children’s ministry class that morning, but the fact that he decided to do this on his own is really cool.  I am SO proud of him!