flawed but saved through faith

Saturday is the 3rd Xing 631 event, the Amazing Race. The staff met last night to start working out details and this event is going to be SO sweet! This should be one of the biggest attended youth events at our church in a LONG time. There isn’t really any spiritual depth to these events so I am praying that through these events we will be able to show people that being a Christian isn’t just attending church and following rules, it's about a relationship.

The youth group at my church is full of great people. There is a fire among them but the flames need to fanned. I think the youth group in any church has the potential to be one of the biggest voices among the congregation. Young people have a passion that most adults have given up on. If the youth would simply take hold of what they know and believe, there would be no limit for them.

While e-mailing a fellow Servant Team member, I was finally able to articulate what I'd been pondering so I'm going to share part of that e-mail with you:

Last night I went to a blog from a Servant Team member from the team that just finished in Sierra Leone. It was cool to see pictures of kids from Kroo Bay and Lighthouse (two ministries I'll be working with), of the places we’ll be and of what we’ll be doing. It was hard though to remember that there are people that we will grow to love there and then have to leave again. That is what I look forward to the least about this trip. I pray God will prepare our hearts in such a way that we won’t look at it like that.

I totally know what you mean about being on sensory overload from the readings. Recently I have been thinking about how misconstrued we (Americans) are when it comes to social values and at times it can be overwhelming to me. So much seems so surface level. I often feel as though something is missing. As the band Starfield so eloquently puts it "there's a yearning again, a thirst for discipline, a hunger for things that are deeper." I am uninterested—becoming apathetic to things I used to find relevant. Becoming more aware of the insignificance of some things to which I place value is good. The problem is that I am failing to share with others what I have learned in such a way that they will want to change. I get frustrated with the misplaced values and jump too quickly to condemn it. This is not always the case but it is when I place any anger behind my dissatisfaction that I fail to love and therefore, succeed in pushing people farther from an understanding of what Christ’s values are.

Having said that, I Praise God we are fighting a war already won. If I had to take all of this in with out the hope I have in Jesus, I don’t think I could handle it. It is by grace we have been saved and therefore it by grace that we must love no matter the cost.

we are flawed but saved through faith

HaleyKate