Young Life Update 4.21.08

 
Friends,

Well our last official Club at the YMCA was last night.  At least for the year.  We still have a couple more events coming up (All Hill Country YL Club @ Luckenbach next week, and then CRUD WARS!). 

Last night we had a low turnout for Club.  Its the Spring and kids are already beginning to live in the summer.  You know how it is.  Its so close you can just shut down and start living like you don’t have anything to do.  With that said, we just shortened Club a bit to make room for some hangout time on the back end.  I played a few songs then we played this game called Over The Mountain.  If you really want to get to know someone more, play Over The Mountain.  Its played like this.  Everyone sits in a circle and one person says “Over the mountain if you ever…..”, and they would say something like “brush your teeth, etc.” Everyone then has to get up and run across the circle to find a seat.  The last one seated has to come up with something.  Now playing this with high school kids is very interesting! It was a blast.  Just use your imagination this morning.  I’ll leave it at that!

After the game I spoke to kids.  As I was preparing my talk I asked myself a question “What if this was the last time I was going to speak to my friends? What would I say?” Okay, two questions actually.  I asked kids the same question.  If they knew they were never going to see someone again, what would be the last thing they would say to that person? My thinking behind this question comes from an even deeper question that we all are asking.  Let me back up a bit.

This semester we’ve talked all about life, true life.  We talked about Jesus. We talked about his character, compassion, power, his relationships, etc.  We talked about him coming for us.  We talked about his ultimate sacrifice to pay for our SIN.  We’ve been set free! But for many of us we don’t know what it means to be free.  You see, we have all the evidence and have given our lives to Jesus but we somehow we aren’t experiencing freedom.  I talked to kids about a deeper question that all of us long to get answered, “Am I truly enough?” Its a deeper longing that takes us back to the cross where Jesus paid for our SIN.  Yes! You are enough.  You don’t have to continue to work, and strive, and work more to be accepted by life or even God.  All of humanity wants to know if they are enough.  Even in Christianity I think we struggle deeply with the idea of no more work.  We feel we still have to brush up and work hard, strive to be accepted by God.  We all work so hard to get this question answered but Jesus answers it for us.  So, if there was something I would say to someone whom I knew I’d never see, it would probably be something like this… “you are free.”  

I ended the night talking to kids more in depth about what it meant to be a follower of Christ.  We are all follower’s.  Everything that I know is unoriginal. Jesus called us sheep because sheep follow.  I told kids that we will be follower’s for the rest of our lives.  Whether it be an idea, culture, or a person, we are going to follow something.  Jesus invites us into this extremely challenging, yet completely life giving journey to follow him.  I gave some details and we ended the night with laughter and relationship at Marble Slab.

Thanks for your continued support!

Be praying for our summer! We already have 25 kids signed up to go to Sharp Top Cove summer!