Archive for February, 2010
How?
One of my favorite things about my job is that I get to help you as parents and your teens by providing resources and encouragement as you pursue your daily walk with God and as you provide leadership and discipleship for your teens as they pursue their daily walk with God. (I think that’s the longest sentence I’ve ever typed)
Last night I blogged about our teaching on this season of Lent. We discussed the “why” that drives our desire for intentional and focussed spiritual growth…especially during this season. A huge part of my job is to communicate the “why” and encourage you and your students to internalize the why in your own lives. But another huge part of my job is to help with the “how.”
How do you grow spiritually? How do you spend intentional and intensely focussed time deepening your relationship with God?
The “how” can’t and won’t happen exclusively during an hour of Sunday School, an hour of worship, and an hour of Wednesday Bible study. Hopefully 3 hours will be a catalyst for the other 165 hours of your week. That’s why we have provided some free resources to help you and your teens in your daily walk. We are continually working to create and/or purchase more resources, but I wanted to let you know about some that are available right now. The following are available in the E3 youth room:
- Prayer journals
- Daily quiet time books
- Bible study guides through individual books of the Bible
- “Essentials” Bible study guide for juniors and senior
- “Walk with Jesus” daily Bible reading guides
- Small group student books that cover the small group lessons
- Bibles for anybody who needs one
- A prayer room that provides a quiet place for personal prayer and meditation
Besides these resources there are magazines available in the church office and shelves of resources available in the church library. (Later this month I will be posting a recommended reading list for parents and teens from the books available in our library). There are also unlimited resources available online. Obviously I can’t control everything published on the internet so I don’t (nor does FBC) endorse all resources that you might come across while surfing the web. However, I will let you know via this blog about many that I do recommend.
Ultimately the “how” of deepening our personal walk with Jesus happens only as we intentionally work on it (we don’t accidently grow closer to God). That’s why I try to teach and encourage our students to practice spiritual disciplines…things like personal Bible study, journaling, prayer, fasting, meditation, silence and solitude, personal worship, corporate worship, serving, and giving sacrificially.
I hope you will commit to spend some very intentional and focussed time working on your relationship with God…always, but especially during this season of Lent. And I hope you will encourage and challenge your teens to do the same thing.
40 Days
Today is Ash Wednesday. It marks the first day of Lent. For the majority of my life I never really observed Lent. Sadly I was never taught about the spiritual significance of this season. Until a few years ago I never participated in observing Lent. And quite honestly still today I’m somewhat uncomfortable in some circles using the term “Lent.” I know this shouldn’t be the case, but for too many Christians we haven’t been challenged to observe many of the liturgical seasons that can have such an significant impact on our relationship with God. And Lent is one of those seasons.
Last year I posted this entry with a link to an article about Lent. I taught our students about Lent and focussed on it as a time of intense focus on God and spiritual growth. Tonight I taught about Lent again. But this time I spent more time talking about why this should be important for us as followers of Jesus. I referred to the question I asked in Sunday School last Sunday and the question I wrote about in this entry earlier this week. For me when I think about what I deserve…what’s fair…I can’t help but to want to deepen my relationship with God. I want to spend focussed time with Him. I want to spend time in intense study and prayer. I want to allow God to purge me of anything in my life that doesn’t need to be there. I want to allow Him to change the way I talk, the things I do, and the words I say. And I believe with an incredible amount of conviction that once our students accept what is fair and right and just (that they die and go to hell) any apathy that exists will be replaced with a passionate desire to know more of God, to allow God to change them, to tell others about God’s amazing grace and unconditional love. There will be a natural desire and an unexplainable urgency to live as Jesus lived, to love as Jesus loved, and to leave behind what Jesus left behind. I pray for you as a parent and for your teenager that during this season of Lent you would spend intentional time focussing on your relationship with God and that you would allow God to grow you, to stretch you, to refine you, and to change you as He sees fit. Yes, this can (and should) happen throughout the year, but let’s take advantage of this season that is before us as we prepare our hearts to remember the ultimate sacrifice that was made for you and for me.
Is it fair?
So yesterday in Sunday School our focus was that God demands purity in His church. This was the 7th week of a 16 week study on the beginning of the Christian church. The scripture was from Acts 5:1-11…the story of Ananias and Sapphira.
I lead a small group of middle school guys and after we read the story I asked them the question, “Is it fair what happened to Ananias and Sapphira?” Go back and read the passage for yourself and answer the question. The immediate response in my small group was a resounding “No! It’s not fair.”
I have left this particular passage many times thinking it was absolutely not fair. But one area that God has been working on me personally is in this area about what is fair when it comes to my relationship as a sinner with the one true and holy God. Here’s what I’ve discovered and the challenge I gave to my small group yesterday and to you today: When I realize that what is fair and just and right is for me to die and spend an eternity in hell because I am a sinner, and when you realize that what is fair and just and right is for you to die and spend an eternity in hell because you are a sinner…we will become infinitely more passionate about the overwhelming grace and love and forgiveness of God.
Each time I sin I deserve to die, but rather than striking me dead Jesus took that blow for me on the cross. That’s grace. That’s reason to celebrate. That’s what a dying world around us needs to know and experience firsthand.
So is it fair what happened to Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5? Absolutely it was fair. Does God demand purity in the church…the Bride of Christ? Absolutely He does…no questions asked. Is it fair that I take my next breath? or the one after that? No…it’s grace.
Youth “Bring One” Party This Sunday
So this coming Sunday, February 7, there is a major championship game for a major sport that is not baseball or basketball. The game will begin at 5:30 pm and will be shown on a major television network. Now, the governing body of this major sport has set some pretty strict limits on what can be used publicly in reference to this game (i.e. it would be a copyright infringement if I used the actual name of this game on this website…but it rhymes with “pooper roll”).
Anyhoo…our students will be getting together for the purpose of watching this game on Sunday at 5:15 at the home of Ricky and Wanda Lawless. We will be eating hamburgers and hotdogs. All girls that come need to bring one bag of chips and one dip that goes with the chosen bag of chips. (I would be eternally grateful if a couple of you girls would come with a hot crock-pot full of queso!). All the guys that come need to bring one batch of brownies or cookies.
The name “Bring One” was chosen because there are a few “ones” that everyone needs to bring: Bring one snack (see the instructions in the above paragraph); Bring one can of food (for our local food ministry); Bring $1 (for our student ministry’s Compassion International sponsor child); Bring one friend (if possible…more than one would be okay too).
If you have any other questions about this party feel free to give me a call in the church office.
Suffering Well
A few weeks ago I shared this post about Matt Chandler, pastor of The Village Church in Flower Mound, TX. I found this article written about him last weekend. Reading the article was a huge encouragement and challenge for me and I wanted to share it with you.
Sunday Small Groups
Yesterday our youth small groups discussed Pentecost. This event recorded in Acts 2 marked the beginning of the new community of believers soon to be known as Christians…Christ-followers.
Over the past few weeks we have learned about the foundation of the church…Peter’s confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God; about the purpose of the church…to make disciples; about the strategy of the church…we get our power from the Holy Spirit, we are to be witnesses for Christ, and we are to start at home and work outwards to the rest of the world; and about the fact that sometimes we have to obediently wait for God to work…just as the apostles waited for the Holy Spirit to come.
From here our small groups will begin to look at the characteristics of the early church. We will carefully evaluate to see if our youth ministry possesses these same characteristics and what we can do to more closely follow the model that was set for us in the early church.
I encourage you to read through the first few chapters of Acts. Make a list of the qualities of the early church and have conversations with your teens about what it must have been like to be a part of this new community.
