August 21st, 2009

Ahh to be back in my home church again. What a breath of fresh air! Not that I don't love Grace Church but to see the faces that have helped support me in my walk with the Lord and now my journey that I'm beginning at GCBI was very nice. I also just looked around and realized how blessed the Lord has made me. It was quite humbling but at the same time I felt the need of the kids in that church that need is the word. Pastor Todd and Harry and the Grubb family are doing an extraordinary job but Todd's the Pastor, Harry's the music director, and the Grubb's have there life I mean no one's sole focus is the Youth group of Bible Fellowship Church and rightly it shouldn't be because they probably aren't called to make that their sole objective. God has opened doors for me to hopefully speak on Sunday nights as the main speaker which is just so exciting. I mean I want these kids to get fed with the word more than anything else. Every time I look at the Youth group I can't help but think about the Parable of the Sower. I feel that a lot of the kids are like the seeds that fell among the rocky soil and among the thorns. They accept Christ as their Savior and when the Joy of that fire that burns in them goes down from that "Spiritual High" and when temptation comes they are not ready to combat it with the word of the lord or choose to do whats wrong knowing that they will just ask him for forgiveness like pastor Randy spoke about last weekend. They use salvation as there own little get out Hell card and continue to live their lives as if nothing is different. I feel they do this though because they are not being discipled and that's where we need to come in. Salvation is a great thing but when we don't fully understand what we are accepting it is quite possibly the scariest thing and most harming thing to the Christian faith from what I see. People see Christians living in constant sin and A.) See that and want nothing to do with the faith because they assume all of us are like that. or B.) see that think its ok and do that as well. Its very scary. And Yes Jesus will forgive you as we all fall short of the glory of God and we still have the sin nature in us but when we knowingly do wrong because its what WE want when WE want it and because WE know that God will forgive us...its a slippery slope and not the life the disciples had planned for the believers of the church. I don't want to sound like I'm criticizing any church youth group or anything because I'm not I'm just very concerned about Youth Groups in general. Hyping the kids on Soda and getting them riled up and then expecting them to calm down for the word is crazy. That's something that has been very heavy on my heart and I really have been thinking about it but at the same time tonight made me realize something else as well. Though while doing this I realized that I was not praying about it which is something that I plan to start doing as Bible Fellowship is looking for a Youth Pastor. I hope and pray that God puts someone there that has a passion for the word and to feed kids the word...not the pop culture Jesus but the Jesus that like Pastor Randy said in verse 7 of John where he was like you go to the place but I'm so offensive to them they are trying to plot to kill me because I tell them what they are doing is wrong! You guys can go because your not telling the world that what they are doing is wrong! Who am I the guy who is worried about not hurting some one's feelings or the person who love that person enough to tell them in Del Tackets words " You do wrong!" in a loving way but like a wise friend said " If I don't say it then I'm hurting the person". What an exciting couple of days I have in front of myself. God is working great things at GCBI and I can't say that enough. I sometimes don't even realize I'm still in Sebring because I feel that it's just me my brothers and sisters and the Lord studying his word. I continue to pray that the lord guides me in all I do here and get everything I can from his word and this week while at sometimes may be hard but to take as much as I can for our " Bible Boot Camp".