Tomorrow I return to Word of Peace to prepare for our trip to Louisiana and the National Youth Gathering. I still have a month of sabbatical left but this was a trip that I could not miss. This return also marks the beginning of taking what I have learned and been taught by the Holy Spirit and putting it into action or at least of plan for action for the next years of youth ministry at Word of Peace. To be perfectly honest, I am really freaked out about what I have learned. How in the world am I, an individual working for the Lord going to effect the lives of the thousands of youth in the Rogers area? Well, one thing I did learn is that it is not about me doing it all. It is more about a community raising up and providing a safe environment where youth are able to be themselves, where they can forget about the pressure for one minute placed on them by their peers, society, coaches, and parents. I can't tell you how important it is for kids to be kids and youth to be youth. To not grow up so quickly. To hold on to that child-like faith we once had because before we know it parents will be placing their kids into advanced classes, higher level sports teams, and confirmation just so the accomplishment of achieving something can be held and had and shown off to everyone around. To me this seems like a very publicly lived life where the teens and twenties are being put in the spotlight while everyone else looks at them and says "wow, aren't they amazing".
When did this life become about becoming the best the earliest? Is it really that important that we get kids potty trained, walking, speaking, reading, and going to school before they are 1 year old? Or is it really important for youth to be married, have two kids, a PHD, a house, a nice car and be the boss of their own company by 25? In the same vein is it necessary for youth to be so mature in their faith that they can debate with the greats and understand what God thinks by the time that they are done with confirmation and/or high school? I personally can't believe that youth are ever done. The learning, questioning, discovery, wonder and imagination of youth should never leave any of us. But it does. We begin to settle realizing that we will never be able to grow any more than we have, that our efforts will be in vain and we best be happy with where we are. This never got anyone anywhere.
The idea that God can somehow be fully grasped understood and even predicted is a load of bull. God is by far the most confusing thing I have come upon and I believe that God is fully present in the youth of today. (Maybe that's why they are so confusing). And that God is working in ways that we will hardly understand until we are years down the road and can look back and see His guidance along the way.
God is in all of us and until we loose ourself and realize that fact we will never be able to be used in a way that is truly pleasing unto our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Think about it, really think, what is the ultimate goal in your life, in my life? Is it to make money, grow old and retire, invent something amazing, have a historical marker somewhere with my name on it, or is it to live this life as best I can loving everyone, caring for the least of these, raising wonderful children, loving my wife and family, and loving God? In my mind these things can't be measured or compared, they don't need to be because it is not about the accomplishment it is not about what we can do to please God or getting into heaven. It is taking the grace God has given us and turning right around and giving it away to someone else who needs it. It is forming and being a part of a community that is working for justice on earth and praising God. It is loving Jesus in the wonderful times and in the dark times. Using Jesus instead of relying on our own strength . It is loving Jesus from the inside out, loving others, praising God with others, worshipping Jesus with others, helping others, being the light of Christ to the world. Stepping out even when it may seem like you are alone. It is about loving everyone.
I love youth. I care more everyday for their lives and the decisions they make hoping and praying they do so with so much love in their hearts that it can't help but overflow to everyone they know and even to strangers they don't know. I pray their lives are examples not only Christ when it is convenient but in everything, everywhere, everyday.
My prayer is that I can effect one person in my lifetime, and that that person may effect someone else and they would also do the same. I pray that my goals and focus are not dictated by the pressures of the world but of the one and only Savior of my life, Jesus Christ. That my life would be lived from the inside out.
There is nothing stopping us, there is nothing that can tear us down, there is nothing that Christ has not overcome. Bring it on. Here WE go!
dain
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