First Blog Ever

Hi! Well this is my first blog that I have ever done. I really don’t know what the word Blog really means but I do know it has something to do with people writing on a place online and people responding to it. Anyway, this is a cool experience all around, and I hope if you are reading this that you will shoot something back at me and say hi.

Now you might be saying who in the world are you? That is a very good question. My name is Mike Harder and I am just a normal guy who was lucky/blessed enough to be used by God to do some writing for Threads. I am currently serving at a cool progressive church in Memphis and really have felt God put a burden on my heart for people in my generation. That sounds pretty cliche, but basically what that means is I really care about Jesus and want people my age to care about him too. That means it’s probably not going to be too churchy or too cookie cutter but more about how we can best connect to God and make him relevant.

You know, my Bible study, “In Transit,” is all about learning how to wait on God and be ready to achieve the promises and dreams God has spoken into your life. We are all waiting on something: a relationship with a loved one to get better, a job promotion, the love of our life to appear, to get healthy. The list is too long to count. I am still waiting on so much stuff to come true in my life and I get frustrated about it, but the other day I had a moment of clarity. I was in the shower (that’s where I seem to think best, although that is weird) and I realized that God has me right where he wants me. I would never have the current success I have right now if I hadn’t gone through the hard times of the last 5 years. If I had chosen to have gone any other road in my life, there is no way I would have the opportunity to write this book or even this blog. That’s really sobering and it made me shut up because I had been whining that morning about how frustrated I was about some things I was waiting for and complaining that I was trying to do things right and yet I felt like I was getting punished. I had a really good relationship end because of a conscious choice to follow God’s calling in the direction of my life and it just stung. Somewhere I heard once that your life is perfectly engineered to get the results you are getting right now. If that is true and I am trying to follow God as fully as I can, then I can trust him to bring the appropriate results.

Anyway, that’s my story right now, and the reason I shared all that is because I know that right now things may seem really tough - but through those tough times you will be able to see God’s hand the clearest if you take a moment to get perspective. I hope that God speaks to you as much as he has to me recently.

I am going to be trying to blog every week with a post appearing every Wednesday. If you want to be a part of this blog stuff I would love it if you started checking it every week! Have a great day!

Mike