Weekend Wrapup

The weekend is over and it is time to start a new week. Normally on Monday I am recovering from a busy week at church and with my youth group, but that isn't the case today. My weekend was actually pretty relaxing. Beth and I spent Saturday cleaning out our garage and taking some garbage to the dump. Our garage is packed with junk, so we had to go through it and make sure we wanted to keep all of it.

Then yesterday was pretty relaxing. The worship yesterday was very good and I was really excited about it. Standing in the back of the church in the sound booth praising God is cool. Sometimes I feel like I can't do much because of having to run sound, but I have found ways to get into the worship. Our Sunday night service with the students was good. We continued to talk about sin and how it affects our life.

My students have been going through a lot of problems right now. Some are struggling with parents and their rules, others are dealing with their influence by friends, others just aren't sure what to believe. I struggle with my kids because I want them so much to believe in God, to put their faith and trust in Him, but when the church is the only positive spiritual voice they hear, it is really hard. Last night we talked about the vertical relationship with God and that for most of them, that is a one way street. God is trying to reach them but they are busy doing their own thing and not worrying about communicating back with God. And that if our vertical relationship with God isn't happening, then the horizontal relationship with our friends, parents and other people can NEVER be complete. No matter how much we try, we cannot have a complete relationship with someone else, without having the complete relationship with God. Otherwise, we bring too much of ourselves into the situation and that causes problems.

In Matthew, God narrows down the rules of the law at that time to 2 commandments. Love the Lord your God, and love your neighbor as yourself. Do we follow this? Truthfully??? Our do we spend more time thinking of ourselves and how to please ourselves than we do worrying about what God or our neighbors need. Again, if our relationship with God isn't right, the others will struggle and cause us grief. This doesn't mean our life won't have problems, but when we are thinking about others and not ourself and striving to do what God wants, then those struggles will go smoother and we will work harder to make the best of them.

God knows that life can be hard, but He also tells us He will be with us as we go through it. Teenagers of today need help in understanding that this world isn't about them. That their are people, feeling and lives outside of their own. They are a small part of the story, God's story, but they need to realize that before they can join in.