Chris Burkmenn's Blog

This year in a nutshell Rocked out at Kelly Clarkson's summer tour. This summer I grew a stache and then shaved it. Visited Memphis with our youth at Oasis Church Had fun with all of my friends Dressed sharp for an awards ceremony at Oasis Church Partied with my friend Chase Saw my family they visited and so did I Celebrated my birthday with some crazy friends Enjoyed time with my Mom and sister Went home for my sisters birthday party. Loved my sisters over the Christmas Holiday. Had a photoshoot with my friend Sarah Weeks Enjoyed spending time with my mentee Isaac Chambers Saw Needtobreathe with my good friend Caitlin Miles

Tonight I saw the perks of being a wallflower . A friend blessed me with the opportunity to go and see the movie. I had seen the previews and I was so intrigued, because when I was younger I never really fit in any cliques. I was teased as a child, and sometimes bullied. So I thought it would be great to see this movie. Let me tell you, what a great movie. I felt so sorry for this young boy Charlie, going to school day after day and being treated the way he was. He was teased pretty awfully for the way he dressed, or even the questions he answered in class. I sympathized with him because he had so much going on internally and with his family. No one cared though, and not one person asked him how he was doing. The one thing Charlie has are his letters to his "friend" in a journal, and they summarize his feelings and help him grow as a writer. It helps him process all of the things that are going on around him. Help him not think about how lonely he truly is. One day ...

In a world where our excuse is time, and that we don't have much to give. We get to a place where we can almost become desensitized to the world around us. We tend to think that we should live our lives and we should be the only ones that are benefited from it.  I believe that we have the ability to change, to change the course set in the past. Just an excuse cannot cut it anymore. We have to stand up and say I can't go, but I can support those who have been called to go. We must do a little bit to support a bigger cause than ourself. If we were to give a little it would go so much further than giving none. I am guilty of believing that if I can't give something big then I probably can't do anything at all, but that is so not the case. $5, $10, $20 can make a world of difference in Cambodia, Thailand, Africa. Our third world countries need our help, but let us support our fellow friends and send them and support them on the call that God has placed on their lives...

Driving point to this post is that Purity paves the way to intimacy. Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper who is just right for him.”  So the Lord God formed from the ground all the wild animals and all the birds of the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would call them, and the man chose a name for each one.  He gave names to all the livestock, all the birds of the sky, and all the wild animals. But still there was no helper just right for him. So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep. While the man slept, the Lord God took out one of the man’s ribs and closed up the opening.  Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib, and he brought her to the man. “At last!” the man exclaimed. “This one is bone from my bone, and flesh from my flesh! She will be called ‘woman,’ because she was taken from ‘man.’” This explains why a man leaves his father and mother...

Did you know that in the Bible, the NIV translation specifically the word hope is mention 159 times, must be pretty important to God if it is mentioned so many times.    Hope- the   feeling   that   what   is   wanted   can   be   had   or   that   events will  turn   out   for   the   best. So what does hope mean to you? What would you say hope is? Now there is such a difference in the Worldly sense of hope compared to the Godly Hope. How many of you enjoy hitting piñatas? We hit it several times before anything comes out of the piñata don’t we? How many of us know for certain there was going to be candy inside of it? Most of us aren’t able to see the person filling it, you all HOPE that it will be filled with candy but we really don’t know for certain. We aren’t certain how many hits it will take or even if we will hit it every time we swing, but the expectation is that th...

How many of you have ever had something valuable? What is something you’ve had that was/is valuable? How many of you have made sure that you took really good care of it so that no one would harm it or damage it. But you also wanted to make sure you showed your friends and family so they knew that you had it. When they were looking at it, you said be careful because I don’t want to damage the gift. When you were showing this gift did you want to make sure that the person knew how thankful you were for it and you made sure to let the people admiring know how much you VALUED the gift. Has anyone ever read the Parable of the Talents? 14  “For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants [ a ]  and entrusted to them his property.  15  To one he gave five talents, [ b ]  to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away.  16  He who had received the fi...