Road Trip-- Where God's Story and Our's Meets!

Last week during our youth worship service, we started a new series called "Road Trip."  We are exploring the the story of the bible and seeing how it relates to each of us and our spiritual journey.  Just like in any trip, you have beginning, you must start somewhere.  So last week we looked at Genesis 1-3 and discussed creation and how God created us, but more important then getting bogged down in the details of the account we discussed how God created us to be in relationship with others and with himself.  I tried to really drive home that God wants a relationship with us more than anything, and that relationship is our beginning.

This week's message is going to be more of a challenge, at least for me personally.  We are calling it ROAD BLOCK.  Like so many trips, I have been on there seems to be last one thing that goes wrong.  Either the car breaks down or you have an unexpected accident or road that's out, so we have to take a detour.  This week we are discussing sin.  Showing that God created us to be in relationship with him, but we hit a road block, we sin.  I want to show the students what sin is and what it is not, and discuss with them that we all have road blocks in life.

Our third week, we will cover the rest of the Old Testament...or at least try!  We are calling it DETOUR.  Just like the Israelites who were always on a detour, trying to get back on the path that God had designed them for.  The whole OT is a story of God providing for his people, yet their stubbornness to turn to him.  It is the story of mankind trying to get back to that relationship that God had created us to have with him.  And just like the Israelites who seemed to be in the desert, wandering and failing at their attempts to get close to God, so we too have struggles and failures in our life that seem to get us from God.  We try and we try, and we feel all alone sometimes, and we are on that detour so unexpected.

ON THE ROAD AGAIN is the title of our fourth week.  We will have finally discuss the good news of Jesus!  Just like after you drive a detour and finally get back on the road again, so we in our spiritual lives experience this.  We may take our time to find him, but once we do we are back on the path that God created us to be on.  Through Jesus we are able to have a relationship with God again.

Our last week of the school year of before summer programming, is called ARRIVING.  We will take a look at Paul's teaching of what it means to be Christ follower and what it means to live a life in view of heaven.  We never quite arrive while here on the earth, but we are always arriving, always moving closer to that goal of being called heavenward.

Road Trip, a journey where God's story and our story meet!

Easter Message

What is Easter all about?  As weird as this may sound, I don't know exactly what to preach on Easter Sunday.  I know that Easter is about Jesus' resurrection and I know that this is what we base our whole faith upon, for if this did not happen, then our faith is futile, says Paul.  So what do I preach when the congregation has all heard this message before?  How do you take a story so well known and reinvent it to the listener's ears to keep them attentive and move them to action?

When I was home last week, we heard a sermon entitled, The Upside Down Way of Jesus: Death is Life.  It really got me thinking.  Everything Jesus did while he was on earth was shake things up, from top down, from down up.  No one could ever get a step ahead of him.  Jesus' message was totally different then what the people were used to hearing from their religious leaders, yet when the leaders confronted him, they couldn't deny what he was saying.  The liked there traditions more then really getting at the heart of the message of God.  Jesus lived an upside down life.

Jesus whole ministry always turned heads.  From the very beginning at the temple as a boy to his death and resurrection, Jesus shook heads and made people think.  He made them think so much that they knew he was the Messiah.  He didn't hid it from them.  He told them many times that they were going to see him die and rise again, that he would leave them, but when the day actually happened, they couldn't believe it.  Was Jesus not the Messiah?  Was he not the one sent from God to set things straight?  Their hearts and hope in a Messiah probably started to disappear.  Yet Jesus knew what God was doing, he knew that once again, he would do something upside down, something contrary to anyone's thinking, he was going to rise from the dead!

Jesus disciples were left without hope.  They placed all their hope in this man, and now he was gone.  What were they do?  Some probably went back to work, others still in mourning just wept.  Had they forgotten Jesus' message throughout his minister?  Did they forget the warnings that Jesus told them?  They didn't even believe it when they heard he had risen and was alive.  They had to see him, touch him, and eat with him.  Their hope had been restored and their faith built even stronger.  They now knew they served a risen God, a risen Savior, and a man who set the whole world upside down.

Are you like the disciples?  Do you forget from time to time Jesus' message of forgiveness and loving others?  Do you forget that Jesus' death gives us life, and that we must die to ourselves to get this life that Jesus calls us too?  In a day and age that doesn't believe in life after death, it is quite odd that in so many places we see this.  Take flowers and tress for instance.  Every fall we see them die, but we know that life will come from this death.  Jesus even said in John 12:24-26 "I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed.  But if it dies, it produces many seeds.  The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life."

The resurrection of Jesus gives us hope again.  When we are down trodden and in despair, we can find hope in Jesus' resurrection.  We have a God who turned everyone's idea of God upside down, a God who was willing to send his son to die for us so that we wouldn't have too one day.  No other religions have this belief.  Aren't you glad that we serve and upside down God!

Journey to the Cross

      Last night at Third Race we did something out of the ordinary (which I hear is now becoming my normal!).  We did prayer stations through the last week of Jesus' life.  There were 12 stations in all.  We start with Palm Sunday and move to Easter Sunday.  It was a pretty moving experience, and most of the students seemed to really get a lot out of it, if even it was there anger or confusion at God, they had quite a few outlets to let it go.  We had 40 plus students again which is so encouraging and so humbling, to know that these students look up to me is quite a load to bear.  God is really starting to get things moving here at Third Race and in the city of Cassville and I can't wait to be a part of it.

      I know the students are ready to have a "normal" youth group time, so for the next 5 weeks we are going to get back in the word and study the whole Bible!  We are going to do series comparing the sequence of the bible to our own personal walk and our lives.  I am pretty stoked about it.  It is called ROADTRIP!  Should prove to be a lot of fun.