I have been planning for this weekend for longer that I thought I was.
This weekend the Heights Youth Ministry at Arlington Heights UMC where I am blessed to be the Director of Youth Ministry is having a retreat at our church for our youth to deepen in their faith, their identity in Christ, and their call to live a full life in love and grace. The actual retreat have been on my mind ever since I started at Arlington Heights.
Teenagers need an experience away from school, family, and stress of life to focus completely on God. We all need that, but it is crucial to have that experience in your adolescence, because these experiences ground you in the only identity that you should concern yourself with.
I am additionally blessed that I have the pleasure to lead this retreat with a co-speaker, Jason Weaver, my best friend, my brother in arms. We have always dreamed what it would be like to do ministry together and this weekend we finally get to experience what crazy ministry God is going to do. Even more so our worship team is a team of two of my other brother in arms. Joseph Cisneroz and Timothy Miler. It’s a scary thought the four of us together, but nonetheless I am excited.
Personal moment over.
What I need from you is prayers. We have over 15 students coming to stay with us this weekend from Arlington Heights and I want you to pray for them consistently through the weekend. Pray for them to cast aside all distractions and to focus completely on God and God alone this weekend. Pray that God rocks our souls with His mighty love and grace and that through that they cement their identity in God.
It’s going to be amazing to see what God does in us, through us, and thankfully in spite of us.
Lately I have been wondering a lot of things, but mostly about an issue with ourselves and our culture. It seems that we have come to a place in our world and maybe we have always been there, but recently it has been more prevalent in my mind. It’s not just that its political season, but there is an overwhelming movement in ourselves and by ourselves I am being very broad; culture itself is moving towards a place where commitment means very little. In our culture we say things like:
If my marriage fails then that’s ok because I can always get a divorce.
or
I didn’t necessarily lie, I just didn’t tell the whole truth
We are moving further and further away from the Integrity of Christ and it’s dangerous. So dangerous that in fact we will not see the damage coming until it’s too late. We will repent when we are caught, but only because we are caught not because it was wrong. Today is Palm Sunday, a day of short celebration for Jesus coming to Jerusalem and yet the moment that always hits me in the gut is not the Palm Sunday Road, but on what happens that night. This is how it is told by the Gospel of John.
Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. 2 The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper 3 Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, 4 got up from the table,[a] took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. 5 Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. 6 He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” 7 Jesus answered, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” 8 Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” 9 Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” 10 Jesus said to him, “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet,[b] but is entirely clean. And you[c] are clean, though not all of you.” 11 For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, “Not all of you are clean.”
12 After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? 13 You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are right, for that is what I am. 14 So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. 15 For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. 16 Very truly, I tell you, servants[d] are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. 17 If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them. 18 I am not speaking of all of you; I know whom I have chosen. But it is to fulfill the scripture, ‘The one who ate my bread[e] has lifted his heel against me.’ 19 I tell you this now, before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe that I am he.[f] 20 Very truly, I tell you, whoever receives one whom I send receives me; and whoever receives me receives him who sent me.” (John 13:1-20, NRSV)
What a powerful moment for the Disciples to experience with their Master and Friend. What an incredible for us to ponder for the rest of our lives in the context of following Jesus and living with each other. Jesus in this moment teaches us the utmost important priority that He has and that we are called to have.
Jesus shows what really matters. The relationship that we have with God and our neighbor. Relationship is the utmost important when it comes to following Jesus
It’s not about us, and it never will be. It’s about uniting with Christ in transforming the world in His sight not our own. His will is always better than ours. Our will and our limited thinking is the easier way to go, but it far lesser than His.
Finally, this may be a crucial one. Jesus never did anything for the sake of just doing it, there was always a purpose and that purpose was never about Him, but about furthering God’s Kingdom. Everything He did furthered the Kingdom of God.
Let’s let that sink in.
Relationships matter. Your neighbor matters. What you do matters.
Don’t live your life by making decisions that don’t matter. Every bit of success that you achieve in this world is meaningless if you are furthering the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom is the only thing we are asked to be a part, and please get that, Jesus invites us. He doesn’t force us like any other deity, he invites us, he wants us.
Money will fade.
Possessions will break.
The Kingdom is forever.
Let’s invest in what matters.
In closing for today I would like you to watch this video; I apologize for the watermark on the video:
They went to a place called Gethsemane; and he said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.” He took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be distressed and agitated. And he said to them, “I am deeply grieved, even to death; remain here, and keep awake.” And going a little farther, he threw himself on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. He said, “Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want, but what you want.” He came and found them sleeping; and he said to Peter, “Simon, are you asleep? Could you not keep awake one hour? Keep awake and pray that you may not come into the time of trial; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” And again he went away and prayed, saying the same words. And once more he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy; and they did not know what to say to him. He came a third time and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? Enough! The hour has come; the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Get up, let us be going. See, my betrayer is at hand.” (Mark 14:32-42, NRSV)
Prayer is a vital part of our lives and for centuries upon centuries we have be praying to God for help, guidance, strength, and maybe ultimately just to vent. Prayer is also very much not what we think it is. For some it is to clarify what we desire to God, for some to grow closer to God, but let’s look at the greatest example of what prayer really is, Jesus.
Jesus was a prayer warrior, he was constantly going off to be alone with God and to pray. This scripture example above is just one of the many examples in the Gospels of the life of prayer that Jesus regularly invested in. What’s important about this is that he was frequently active in prayer.
This moment in Mark 14 is a moment of desperation, of pain, but ultimately Jesus is scared. Jesus who is our Savior and Lord of the world, everything in the world is here because of Him and yet in this moment he is desperate, scared, and praying to God for assistance, except Jesus knows what prayer is about. It’s another opportunity to glorify God which is why even in his fear Jesus responds to do God’s will.
See this is what we don’t like about prayer. We don’t like that we can’t just get our way. Admit it, there have been times in your life when you wanted something to happen or something not to happen and you to go in prayer pleading with Him to let it be as you desire, but we can’t control God.
Prayer is about a relationship about the need to invest in more than ourselves. Jesus knew that prayer was a lifestyle, not something we grab onto when things go wrong. The power of prayer is not in that you can make God do things, but that in prayer God is always with us no matter what happens in our lives. Through the good and the bad God is present, always.
Prayer is a gift of presence and a holy gift given to us by God himself. No matter what happens God is always with you, comforting you, encouraging you, and supporting you to live a life that is far better than one we can do on our own.
This is a post that was originally written by myself and shared on Youthworker Movement.
When you come to the land that the Lord will give you, as he has promised, you shall keep this observance. 26 And when your children ask you, ‘What do you mean by this observance?’ 27 you shall say, ‘It is the passover sacrifice to the Lord, for he passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt, when he struck down the Egyptians but spared our houses.’” And the people bowed down and worshiped. (Exodus 12:25, NRSV)
We like order, control, but essentially we like having things OUR way. We really like things our way, and we resist like the dickens anything else. When the operative word, “change,” is uttered any sense of the word we tend to clam up and resist, and yet we have this quandary of the lesson that we get in the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.
To have new life, something must die.
Ouch.
New life in Christ is amazing, but bad things had to happen for that new life to happen. Jesus had to die for us to live. Really think about what this means for our lives now. For us to live into that new life we have to consider that some parts of our lives do not belong. You can’t give your heart to Christ and the world, you can only serve one master.
So what does that mean for our lives?
It means that there is nothing in our lives that doesn’t connect to our deep faith in Christ. That is what it means to be a disciple to constantly point to our savior, if we are not doing that then why are we following Him. I mean seriously, this is what discipleship is and what it looks like. Things have to go aside and Christ has to reign in our lives. Christ’s love and grace gives understanding of what we truly need and everything Christ passing over us because we don’t need it.
