CONTENTMENT - Mission Trip Reflections - Part 3

I’ve been keeping journals for years.  Before the advent of computers, I hand wrote them in notebooks, but now I record them in Word documents.  One of the things I like to do before I begin a new month is to go back to the same month of the previous year and see what was going on then.   I did this yesterday when I went back to August 2010.

August can sometimes be a spiritually and emotionally low month for me, and last year was no different.  By the time August rolls around, we’ve usually already had vacation, so after a number of weeks without anything in particular on my schedule and an entire month of summer to go before ministry activities at church begin again, time starts to hang heavy.  I get restless and lazy and lethargic and I can’t wait for the church year to begin again.  I need to be busy, specifically with ministry.  

As I was bemoaning this lethargy in last year’s journal I came to the sad conclusion that SERVING God seems to mean more to me than God Himself.  Pretty typically, at the same time that I am complaining against the boredom of late summer, I’m also neglecting to spend time in relationship with Jesus – reading the Bible, worshiping Him, and interceding for others. I’m longing to be busy DOING.   

The realization that working was more important than worship made me ask myself the question:  “What if you were to lose the ability to DO work FOR Jesus, would Jesus Himself be enough for you?”  In other words, where does my contentment lie?  Does it lie in the things I DO, or in Jesus Himself? 

Just to set the record straight, I know there’s nothing I need to DO to EARN a relationship with Jesus.  His forgiveness and the new life He’s given me are a free gift that His death and resurrection made possible for me.  All He wants of me is me.  If I can serve Him with my hands, or feet, or mouth, or life – GREAT.  But if I was laid aside through accident or illness or whatever, and could do nothing, it wouldn’t change His love and acceptance of me, because that has never depended on anything I did, but on everything He did.

As I ponder my question, I think back to the residents of All Saints AIDS Camp in Nassau.  They have a lot to teach me about contentedness in Jesus alone.  If you’ve read my previous blog about Miss Moxey, then you know she was very special to many of us.  You can imagine our joy to discover that she was still with us, living in the same little bungalow as she was two years ago.  We found her sitting up in her bed (which I don’t believe she ever leaves), looking just as frail, and, amazingly, just as joyful as she was when we left her on our last day at the camp back in 2009.  

Miss Moxey has nothing.  Her children don’t visit, and if the absence of recent photos is any evidence, they haven’t been in touch since we were there last.  She is still obviously sick, thin, and unable to care for herself.  Meals are brought to her.  Her tiny room is filled with a single bed and a long dresser with just a tiny path between for visitors to walk, and only one window in that very hot, humid climate.  But the moment you enter her doorway, she welcomes you in as if her home were a lovely mansion she could not wait to share.  

 

She invites you to sit on her bed and then she praises the Lord – that she can see, even though she can’t walk; that she can enjoy the view (which isn’t particularly interesting) outside her window, even if she can never get outside herself.  She invites you to read her Bible and rejoice with her over what was read.  

She refuses to allow you to tell her how much SHE blesses YOU when you visit and instead directs your praise right back to the Lord, the source of her joy and the One in whom she finds her contentment.  You might even be favored with a hymn or two to set her praise to music.  To spend time with Miss Moxey is to learn what true contentment really means.  It’s not about service, it’s about Jesus, and Him alone.

Then there is Garvin.  Garvin has cerebral palsy.  He is now 30 years old and has been a resident of the camp since he was 12.  Although he can be helped into a wheelchair, the entire week we were there he was confined to his bed.  Unable to use his arms, he has his meals brought to him and then someone has to feed him while he’s lying down in the same position he’s been in all day.  Some of us wondered how Garvin could bear so many years of this kind of confinement.  The only one who doesn’t seem to wonder about this is Garvin.  He is unfailingly cheerful and smiling and looking forward to his birthday in September.  I don’t know about Garvin’s faith, but I do know that Garvin’s life isn’t about doing either, it’s about being content in his circumstances.

And then there’s Arthur.  Arthur does manage to get onto his front porch to enjoy socializing with those who walk back and forth on the sidewalk that borders his home, but he’s confined to a wheelchair and that’s as far as I’d ever seen him go.  Arthur’s life isn’t about doing either.  Arthur is content to sit in his wheelchair and serenade all and sundry with his beautiful hymn singing.  I know it must bring great delight to the Father’s ears!  It certainly blesses all who pass by.

How grateful I am that I could observe such contentedness from those unable to DO anything that seems productive to my way of thinking.  Just being who they were they brought joy to me.

One day I may find myself unable to serve the Lord by doing.  I may find myself confined to a bed with nothing to do but look out a window.  Should that day come, I trust the Lord will bless me with the grace needed to be content to enjoy and worship Him alone and bring joy to those around me.   

In the meantime, I need to practice finding my contentment in Jesus alone.  If the Apostle Paul, and Miss Moxey, and Garvin, and Arthur can learn it, then I guess I can too.  I will have all of August, and the rest of my life, to do so.  May I learn the lesson of contentment as well as they have, and may my contentment give Jesus joy.

MAKE ME AN ADVOCATE FOR JUSTICE - Mission Trip Reflections - Part 2

After 64 years, I think there are some things I’ve learned about myself.  One of them is that I am not typically a visionary thinker.  Sometimes, in response to prayers for direction, the Lord has given me a glimpse of His heart about something and, as a result, has used me to bring a ministry into being, but those times have been more the exception than the rule.

Mostly, He has led me to carry out someone else’s vision, or continue a ministry begun by someone else.  I’m comfortable when things are already in place and I can just pick up where the previous person left off.  I might make changes, but mostly my gifts seem to be more suited to maintaining and strengthening the status quo.  

In my teaching, I’ve also discovered that I love detail.  So much so that I can get bogged down in a passage of Scripture just contemplating the meaning of a word, or forming a practical word picture of a concept so others can understand it more easily.  However, when it comes to getting an overall aim for an entire chapter, I can easily get lost in the detail of the trees and overlook the forest.  

So when the youth pastor who led the senior high mission’s trip sat us down before we left and asked things like, “So what do you hope to gain from the experience (of being on a mission’s trip)?”, I could only think in terms of ministry to individuals.  I thought of things like: the blessing of encouraging individual students, praying with people, showing compassion to the residents of the AIDS camp, etc.   They were all I could really come up with.  I thought only in terms of going and doing and had very little expectation that the Lord would give me any kind of big picture view from the experience.   I was wrong.

It began to happen first when I spoke to Felicia, a missionary who, along with her husband Tim, left the US about a year and a half ago and moved to the Bahamas to minister full time to the residents of the All Saints AIDS Camp.  She was talking to me about why they came and she said something that the Lord would build on through other things to give me His bigger picture.  The impactful statement she made was that what started out simply for them as a ministry of compassion to the people of the camp had now become a justice issue.

Justice issues have come to be more in the forefront of Christian thinking these days than they ever were in the past – or at least the recent past.  Evangelicals are typically wary of them out of fear that in an effort to address them we might water down the gospel, or forget it all together.  Sadly, I have been one who has thought like that.  

God has gifted me to teach the Bible, so never, ever, would I want to neglect the gospel message.  I firmly believe the Apostle Paul when he says in Romans 1:16: “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.”   The gospel alone is the only source of true hope for this world and the next – something just feeding people, or bringing fresh water alone, will never accomplish.  But, as a result, I (and many of my fellow evangelicals) have erred in the direction of neglecting altogether the physical needs of those who cannot care for themselves and have left the responsibility to others.   

Felicia’s comment helped me see the narrowness of my view.  She WAS bringing fresh water and compassionate care into the lives of the residents of the camp in the name of Jesus – but that wasn’t all she was doing.  She was also, of necessity, standing in the gap, not only in prayer but in action, to deal with negligent government agencies and camp leaders, to bring justice to the camp residents who can’t fight for it themselves.  Suddenly, I could SEE what I was blind to before.  It wasn’t enough just to bring the gospel, or to offer compassion in the name of Jesus.  The Lord just might want to use me to bring justice as well – to advocate for those who are powerless to speak in their own defense, as were the residents of All Saints, who were probably even oblivious to the injustice to which they were being subjected.

Another wake up call for me came out of a conversation I had with Tre, the construction supervisor for Next Step Ministries.  Tre (Theresa) was telling me that when she wasn't working all summer in the Bahamas, the rest of her time was devoted to forming a non-profit agency based out of Florida to provide fresh drinking water here in the US.  I naively asked, “Where in the US do people NOT have fresh drinking water?”   I’m ashamed to say that I could not conceive of a place in this country where fresh water was not a given.   Tre lovingly and non-judgmentally set me straight by pointing out that for Native Americans living on a reservation in New Mexico and people living in impoverished areas of  Appalachia, fresh water was far from a “given”.   How could I be so blind and ignorant to the justice issues in my own country?

Not coincidentally, before I left for Nassau a friend gave me a book entitled, “Good News About Injustice”, by Gary A. Haugen, the current president of International Justice Mission in Washington, DC.   Here is a portion of what I read this week that has had an impact on me as well.

Haugen writes about John Gregg Fee, the evangelical founder of Berea College in Kentucky, whose conversion to Christ moved him to take up the slavery cause in his day.  Haugen writes: “It was while (Fee) was on his knees in anguished prayer that he confronted the costs of discipleship.  (Fee said) ‘I saw that to embrace the principle of abolition and wear the name was to cut myself off from relatives and former friends’, but he prayed, ‘Lord, if needs be, make me an Abolitionist.”

How good and gentle the Lord is to remove the blinders from my eyes and help me see what I did not see before.  The Lord HAS given us Christians the role of standing in the gap for those who can’t represent themselves – in addition to sharing the gospel with them, and showing compassion in Jesus’ name.

With a much better big picture view of what my role as an evangelical Christian could be, the focus of my future prayers just might be more like that of John Gregg Fee: “Lord, if needs be, make me an advocate for justice within MY sphere of influence.”

Isaiah 1:17  “Seek justice, encourage the oppressed.  Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.”

MISSION TRIP REFLECTIONS - PART 1

 I arrived home yesterday from a week long Bahamas mission’s trip with the senior high students of our church where we served at All Saints Camp, home of residents with HIV/AIDS.  I know I will have more to say as I have time to think, and pray, and talk with the Lord about the experience, so these are just my first impressions.

Several things come to mind right away.  The first is that we have the MOST amazing bunch of teens at our church!  

At first glance, they’re really no different from other teens.  They care about their appearance, they want to fit in with their peers, and they’re not especially comfortable with being different.  

 Sometimes they don’t realize that it’s their own facial expression or body language that keeps their peers at arm’s length.   

They have anxieties when it comes to new, untried experiences, while at the same time, are surprisingly willing and courageous about trying something new, especially when no parent is there to say, “you can’t do that!”.    

They really care about people, whether they are little children growing up impoverished, with very little positive attention from their adult caretakers, or sick and disabled people who are prisoners of their circumstances and in need of compassion and a human touch.  They can also be unintentionally oblivious to the same needs in their peers.

However, below the surface can lie an amazing capacity for spiritual depth, perseverance, hard work, love, sacrifice, selflessness, and a willingness to change, that is best seen living 24/7 with them on a mission’s trip.  

 The same teens that have a hard time keeping their rooms clean or keeping up with their laundry, broke sidewalks with sledge hammers, others worked all day, for 5 days, in the hot sun high above the ground, to put roof shingles on a new home.   

They mixed cement with shovels, loaded it into a wheelbarrow, and then, with a running start, pushed the filled barrow up a long hill to get it to a sidewalk in progress.    

Some faithfully labored away painting a home or a fence, many times in the hot sun.  One girl who stepped on a nail early on, worked all day scrapping paint splotches off a porch (I did this for about 15 minutes before stir craziness made me move on to a different job).  One crew worked all week, getting filthy dirty, demolishing a house and then carrying all the wood down a hill to a smelly dumpster.  

The same teens that complain about what’s for lunch at home, ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches every single day for 8 days – washed down only with increasingly warm water - WITHOUT complaining.

The same teens who would never think of volunteering to pray or lead the family in devotions at home, led THEIR PEERS in lunch time devotions.  Although we shared the week with a group from Minnesota, it was our MEFC kids who were the first to volunteer to lead the lunch time devos in 6 of the 7 work crews.  I was SO proud of them!

Another first impression was God’s amazing faithfulness.   

Quite a few of us had been on the last mission’s trip to All Saints Camp two summers ago.   Our church was the only one there that week, so it was a very special week of bonding as a group and really getting to know one another.  This time around, we knew we’d be sharing the week with a group from Minnesota which was going to be about as large as our group.  That gave us some anxiety. 

We wondered how that would change the experience for us.  Would we all work well together?   Would OUR group be able to bond when we had to share experiences with the other group?  

We wondered how this trip would compare to our last?  Were our expectations so high that we might end up disappointed?

Those who hadn’t been on the last trip had their own anxieties.  They’d heard about the difficulty of the work and the hot, humid climate, so they were anxious about whether they’d be able to physically keep up.

In the end, we should just have trusted in God’s encouragement to “have no anxiety about anything” because the God we serve is a good and faithful God, and He more than met our expectations and dispelled all of our fears.   

We lost no luggage.  

 All of the injuries (and there were some) were minor.  

The Lord gave each one a strength beyond his/her expectations, to work and work hard – persevering through the working conditions, the climate, the inexperience, the sunburn, the blisters, and the bug bites – to lay one stretch of sidewalk, complete one roof and nearly another, completely demolish one entire building and dispose of the debris, nearly complete one beautiful handrail/fence,  touch up two homes with paint,  lay a cement parking lot and begin a gazebo, and to visit residents visibly ill or disabled (not many of the teens had ever done anything like this – yet they were amazingly compassionate and caring).    

The Minnesota group had more boys than we did, so when we mixed the groups we were able to have a better balance of guys and girls in the work crews and so were able to handle jobs together that would have been much harder alone.  

The Lord did bond us – not only to one another as the MEFC youth group – but also with the Minnesota teens working in each work crew.  The good-byes at the end of the week were genuinely sweet and sincere because a real love and appreciation had formed between us (even though those Minnesotans say "pop" instead of "soda"!).  Who but the Lord could have done that?

My last first impression is one I’ve often expressed when we talk about the subject of fellowship and experiencing the unity of the body of Christ.  Typically churches try to foster this unity by planning dinners or programs designed to mix us up and get us talking with newcomers.  They work to a degree, although often we end up sitting with the people we know and not the ones we don’t.   However, between Vacation Bible School and the mission’s trips I’ve had the privilege to participate in, I’m now a firm believer that it’s SERVING the Lord together that fosters the deep bonding and experience of unity for which our hearts really long.  

There is a joy, a sense of purpose, a determination to work hard and together, that happens when we are serving that I just have not found in any other way.  When we work side by side we’re also able to appreciate one another’s gifts and unique personalities as we see them in action and affirm what they bring to a project.   

We get first-hand experience of what being the body of Christ really LOOKS like when each member is using his or her unique gifts.  We SEE that we really DO need one another in order to do what needs doing.  We can’t SEE those things if we’re just talking about what the body of Christ IS and not participating in it.

After a long week of work, Saturday was our free day, and it was a wonderful day of being together.  As we rode back to the retreat center where we were staying, I was enjoying the cool evening breeze through the bus window, listening to the kids singing and laughing, and I was thanking the Lord for them because I have come to love and appreciate each one.  

I feel so blessed that at this stage of my life the Lord has given me such wonderful opportunities to serve Him that I never did in the days when I was WAY more physically able to do them.  He has a great sense of humor!  He also has helped me realize that until He calls me home, there will always be ways in which to serve Him in His kingdom.  

And He has given me hope in the next generation and SUCH anticipation that He has great things in store for those teens as their faith in the God who has been so faithful to them this week uses them in the building of His kingdom!      

More to follow. . . . .

So How DO We Prepare for a Mission's Trip? - Nassau Here We Come

Four summers ago, at the age of 61, I volunteered to be a chaperone for the senior high youth group’s mission trip to New Orleans, Louisiana.  It was my first mission’s trip EVER and I was VERY excited!

I had left the ministry of Bible Study Fellowship that winter so while I used to be busy in the summer, finding leaders and preparing to train them, I suddenly found myself facing a long summer without all that activity.  So when I heard that the youth group was looking for a chaperone, I “heard” the Lord speak clearly to my heart saying, “Dot, this is for YOU!  You’re free to do that now”!  So I volunteered.

I remember meeting with our youth pastor and having him ask me all sorts of questions, like:  

How do you think you’ll get along with a group of teens?

How will you manage in the high heat and humidity of Louisiana in the summer?

Will you be able to keep up with the high energy of teens?

I remember thinking about each question and then truthfully, giving the same answer:  “I don’t know, I’ve never done it.”   For some reason, despite those noncommital answers, our youth pastor took me anyway and I stepped into the unknown.

There were many reasons why I found that trip difficult.  I didn’t know any of the teens beforehand, nor did I really know any of the other adult chaperones, so there was a time of real relational awkwardness for me and it lasted much of the trip.  I was a chaperone, but what that meant, I wasn’t really sure, so I felt uncertain of what I was supposed to do or not do.  It was a time of feeling my way but it was also a time of getting to know the teens and adults better.

When the next year came and the youth group was going to a camp for people with HIV/AIDS in the Bahamas, I volunteered again.   This time around, knowing what caused my anxieties and awkwardness the previous year, I did a lot more praying.  I also made time to meet with each of the girls going on the trip - to get to know them, to find out how I could be praying for them, and to pray WITH them as well.  That went a long way toward helping me to prepare relationally.

Once again, I wasn’t really sure what my role would be as the oldest member of the team.  I knew that in my mind I wanted to work right alongside everyone else – but my 62 year old body would never have been able to keep up with hand mixing cement and then breaking up an old, and laying a new, sidewalk.  Nor would I be able to be very hands on in the carpentry needed to frame a house.   So once again my preparation was to pray.   I began asking the Lord to reveal to me when I got there just what my role should be.  I was there to minister – to our team and to the people of All Saints Camp – but what that would look like I didn’t know, so I was counting on the Lord to reveal that as we went.

As things unfolded, the Lord provided a very practical way to minister to our team.  Since they were all working very hard in the hot Bahamian sun, I made the rounds among the work crews all day filling water bottles and encouraging everyone to stay hydrated. At lunch, I'd remind them to reapply sunblock. I also held all the cameras, so when someone was busy working, I’d take his/her camera out and take their photo to show the church and their family back home.

If that was all the Lord had assigned to me, I would have been satisfied to do it, but He surprised me by giving me a prayer ministry as well.  

Prayer is very important to me.  The Lord taught me its importance through some really difficult life experiences that drove me to my knees in utter desperation.  Prayer (and the reading and studying of God’s Word) has become a life line in my relationship with Jesus.   

When I left Bible Study Fellowship, where I learned to pray, and where so much importance was put on prayer for the success of the ministry, I grieved the loss of the prayer partnership I had there.  So the Lord spoke to my heart and led me to approach individual women for the purpose of introducing them to the joy of praying together for one another.   So prayer became not only my own personal life line to God, it was also a way of bringing others into the presence of God as well by praying for them one on one.

So it should not really have been a surprise that when we reached the Bahamas the Lord opened the door to praying with others there as well.   One of the leaders of the group that ran the missions trip from the Bahamas was struggling with giving the devotional messages at night, so I asked how I could pray for her – and then did.  When one or the other of the teens got up and was obviously struggling with exhaustion and not looking forward to facing another hard day of work – we prayed.   One of the guys had volunteered to lead the devotionals in his work group every day and the Lord helped me see the potential in him for spiritual leadership – so we prayed about that.  Another day we visited with one of the residents and prayed.  Prayer, something so precious to me, became the primary ministry the Lord had prepared for me there.

In just 5 days we leave again for that same camp in the Bahamas.   This time around, there are more of us – 24 in all – leaders and teens.   Another group will be there as well, which wasn’t the case last time.   It may change the dynamic.  Quite a few of the teens coming have never been on a missions trip before and they have no idea what to expect – and maybe wonder whether they’re up to the challenge.  Others of us went last time and had such a blessed time we’re wondering whether our expectations will be too high and we’ll be disappointed by this one.

We want to be prepared – physically, emotionally and spiritually, but not one of us knows what the Lord has in store for us there. How DO we prepare?

Preparing physically is probably the easiest.  We pack, we bring water bottles and disinfectant wipes, we make sure we drink plenty of water all day once we’re there, we apply and re-apply sunscreen, we get to bed early.  

But how do we prepare emotionally for the things we haven’t yet seen or experienced?  Like walking into a small cottage smelling heavily of urine to visit someone in the last stages of AIDS?   Or dealing with the grief that tugs at our hearts when playing with small children whose parents have a deadly disease that may leave them orphans.   What do we say to the mother whose children haven’t seen her in years because of her disease, or encourage the one woman with some nursing experience who takes care of everyone else when she’s sick herself?

How do we let go of the things that annoy us about our team members so we can work together in unity?

How do we loosely hold onto our expectations so we can experience the joy and surprise of watching the Lord do something NEW?

How do we prepare spiritually to BE the hands, and feet, and lips of Jesus, to the residents of the camp, to the staff of Next Step Ministries, and to our own leaders and teens?   

How do we prepare?  We pray.  We pray in advance for the strength and grace of God every day, all day.  We walk by faith in Who God is and what He has promised in His Word.  We depend on God’s grace.   We CHOOSE servanthood and selflessness - with one another, the other crew that will be there, the staff of Next Step Ministries, and the residents of the camp.  

When we look back at the likes of Joseph (Genesis), Moses (Exodus), Peter (gospels), Paul (epistles), and a host of others, we see that when we choose to walk by faith, the Lord is faithful.   

How did they manage when unjustly thrown into prison, when leading a group of ingrates through the desert, when persecuted for having been with Jesus, when beaten for preaching the gospel?   They trusted that those whom God calls to a task, He also faithfully equips.  And they kept their eyes on the big picture, just like Jesus did.


We read that in the New Testament book of Hebrews, chapter 12, verses 1-2:

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles , and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.  Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God."

WE may think that building houses, or laying sidewalk, or entering the home of someone in the last stages of suffering from AIDS, or letting someone else shower first, or letting go of an annoyance, is beyond our ability – but it’s never beyond God’s ability to enable us.  

So how am I preparing for what lies ahead next week? 

I’m praying now for every aspect of the ministry.  I’m praying for everyone going and for the concerns they expressed.  I’m praying for what the Lord has in mind for me, and for all of us - and I’m waiting to see what He will do with 23 people, plus me, who are fully committed to Him and wanting to serve HIM above all.

THE BODY AT WORK - Reflections on Vacation Bible School

We just finished a week of Vacation Bible School at our church.   Vacation Bible School is one of the highlights of the church year for me.  I have lots of reasons.  First, it’s TONS of fun!   As an older adult who loves having fun, I really get into the upbeat songs and the hand motions, even though I can’t seem to sing and do the motions at the same time and I probably look ridiculous (adding to the fun)!   I LOVE watching 150 kids from 6-11 years of age just being kids:  active, exuberant, curious, energetic (even in the early morning!!), creative, and thoughtful.  I love watching their parents watching them when they come to pick them up.

I also love reaching out with the love of Jesus to so many families in our neighborhood who don’t even go to our church.  This year we had 100 of those families represented!   Whoo hoo!  We love their kids, we provide great activities, we tell them about Jesus, we throw a great barbeque at the end, we have an awesome slip and slide for Water Wednesday – and many of them come back every year – and are hugely disappointed when their kids are too old to continue.   We pray that the impact of the week will extend not just to the kids, but to whole families.  

For the last 3 years, I’ve worked in “service projects”.   Every day we created a project that was given away – this year it was topiaries for Meals on Wheels recipients, birthday greeting cards for elderly residents of a local nursing home, thank you cards for our military personnel (we even had a Navy guy come and tell the kids how much the cards are appreciated), no sew blankets to a crisis pregnancy center, and on Water Wednesday we served the VBS staff by washing their cars.  I think it’s never too early to teach our children how to show the love of Jesus to others through selfless service.  I always hope and pray that what they learn making service projects in VBS will be the start of a lifelong habit of serving the Lord by serving others.

Since the kids all move from room to room for Bible stories, crafts, service projects, games and snack, I didn’t know what was going on in the other rooms, but I’m confident it was quality stuff, organized by very capable, organized volunteers, some of whom take the week off from work to do VBS!   

But the thing I love most about VBS is watching the Body of Christ at work, especially the younger ones among us.   All of the workers are from our church, and most are adults, but having a day time VBS makes it hard to find enough non-working adults for staff, so we rely heavily on our kids – junior and senior high kids, and college kids home for the summer.  The older ones among them work as crew leaders with the responsibility of shepherding a group of kids through the day and getting to know them.  Others work as crew assistants, or helpers in crafts, or service projects, or games, or snacks.  Some led the worship and skits.   Some worked with the pre-schoolers or helped in the nursery with the children of staff members.  

Okay, so imagine yourself on the first full day of summer vacation.  What did you want to do most of all?   SLEEP LATE, right????   Well, Imagine all these VBS helper teens and young adults, the first full week school is over, choosing to set their alarms so they can get to church by 8:30???  No, really, they actually DO that, and they LOVE it – well, maybe not the getting up early part – but certainly the VBS part.

So often we think of our junior and senior high kids and young adult college kids as on the fringe of the church.   They have their youth groups and their college age groups and that’s where they stay and do their own thing.   Maybe they volunteer for nursery now and then.   In our church, VBS has been the only ministry in which they are consistently engaged in important places of responsibility and are a valuable and integral part of what goes on there, and they rise to the occasion!  Sometimes I don’t want to work, I just want to watch THEM!  VBS is a great place for adults to identify the gifts God has given our kids and encourage them to develop them.   It’s also a great place to move aside and give a teen an opportunity to do the leading under your supervision.

Having had the added blessing of going on several missions trips as a chaperone with our senior high group, I’ve grown to love a lot of teens!   Sometimes I’m blown away by their evident love for the Lord lived out in a commitment to doing the hardest, most demanding work, without complaining.  And they are amazingly compassionate, loving, and caring with the people to whom we minister.

In 1 Corinthians, chapter 12, beginning with verses 12-13, the Apostle Paul compares the Body of Christ (which includes all those who profess a sincere faith in Jesus) to the human body.  He says:

“The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts.  So it is with (the body of) Christ.  For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body – whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free.”  May I add, "teens, or young adults, or older adults" too?

The presence of the Holy Spirit in each of us, given when we trust in Jesus, makes us an organic whole, His body.  Paul goes on to describe how each of the members of the body is important to the whole and has unique gifts that contribute to the body’s spiritual health and working in unity.

It’s exciting to me to see the Lord developing and encouraging the spiritual gifts of these younger members of the Body of Christ.

I can’t wait until next year’s Vacation Bible School, but I hope we don’t have to wait that long to include the younger members of our body in the overall work of the ministry of Jesus in our desire to be the church.  Our church is launching a new vision in the fall.  I hope that some of the things we plan in our efforts to be "A Christ-centered community of good neighbors" will include lots of opportunities for teens, young adults and older adults to work side by side for the kingdom.  

Wow, the possibilities of what we'll learn from each other and accomplish for the glory of God and His kingdom just might exceed our wildest imagination!

RUNNING ON EMPTY OR FULLY SATISFIED?

We just arrived home from a week’s cruise to the Caribbean with our family.  If you’ve ever been on a cruise or spoken to people who have, then you know about the food.  It’s fabulous!  Every morning we woke to a huge breakfast buffet from which we could choose omelets, eggs in just about any way we liked them, bacon, sausage, fresh fruit, pastries, an assortment of cereals and juices – and even GRITS, which I love, but can only get in the southern United States.  Sad but true, isn’t it, all you fellow grits lovers out there?

Lunch was more of the same – salads, a sandwich bar, hot “themed” entrees (like Asian, American, Caribbean, etc.), fresh fruit, an assortment of cakes and pastries, 24/7 ice cream machines, and on and on.   Both meals, by the way, could also be eaten in the formal dining room where you could be served by a very friendly wait staff.

There was also a buffet dinner every night, but we gathered as a family in the dining room where one of my sons in law ordered TWO shrimp cocktails every night, and we feasted on a variety of appetizers, entrees, and fabulous desserts unlike anything we have at home.  

If by chance, you were hungry in between meals, there was 24 hour pizza and deli service, afternoon tea, an evening buffet, and even room service.  And there was also an evening sushi bar, just in case. . .

The funny thing about all this is that we could have a HUGE meal of whatever we wanted, walk away from the table full, and then several hours later do it all over again.  It was immediately evident that when it comes to food, we’re never really fully satisfied.  No matter what or how much we eat, the truth is, in just a few hours time we’re going to be hungry again.

There are some good spiritual parallels here.

Food isn’t the only thing we hope will satisfy us.  There are plenty of other things.  For some it’s a fit body. . .a well paying job. . .financial security reflected in a substantial stock portfolio. . . .the pleasure afforded by vacations, or shopping, or drugs, or alcohol . . an ivy league education. . . a home of their own. . .a relationship. . . . toys like cars and boats and bigger houses and motorcycles and the latest technology, and probably a host of other things that could be listed. 

What about you?   What are you looking to for your satisfaction?  How about listing the top 5, or maybe the top 10.

Let me ask you, are those things living up to your expectations, or are they just leaving you hungry for more?  

My guess is that they do satisfy – for a while – but then, like getting hungry, when we finally think we’ve reach the place where we’re satisfied, that empty feeling rises up again and we find ourselves needing more, or something else.   So we step up our workout for tighter abs.  We send out our resume for a better paying job.  We take another vacation, try a drug with a bigger kick, go out drinking more often, buy a new toy.   We enroll in school for an advanced degree.  We divorce our spouse in favor of a new relationship, and on and on.

David, before he was Israel’s king, and still wandering in the desert avoiding King Saul who wanted to take his life, said this in Psalm 63:1-5: 

“O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.  I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory.  Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you.  I will praise you as long as I live and in your name I will lift up my hands.  My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods; with singing lips my mouth will praise you.”

Not much was going well for David at that time in his life but he could sing God’s praises because it was in relationship with Him that David found his soul satisfaction and that relationship did not depend on favorable circumstances.  So long as David was looking to the Lord, his soul was satisfied.

The people of Israel were often just like us - dissatisfied, not interested in a relationship with God, not really seeing the need for Him.  God had chosen Israel to be His very own possession, set apart and holy.  He had chosen them to be in unique relationship with Himself.  Wow!  Imagine that?   

The Living, All Powerful, Creator God, Maker of the Universe, chose them to be His own people – not because they were better than any other people, but just because God is God and they were His choice.  He gave them an amazing and privileged assignment - to introduce Him to the nations around them – through their words, and worship, and godly lifestyle.  

The relationship was great for a while, and even though God kept His promises to them, eventually God just wasn’t enough for the people of Israel.  They took their eyes off Him and began looking for something else.  The nations around them seemed to be having a lot more fun, so instead of continuing in relationship with the God who loved them, the people of Israel abandoned the Lord and turned to the gods and customs of other nations, hoping that they might satisfy the way a relationship with God would.  But it didn't - and the consequences were disastrous.

Israel was no longer a light to the nations.  We might say that Israel began to “blend”, so that it wasn’t possible to tell them apart from the godless nations surrounding them.   And the funny thing was that the new gods didn’t satisfy them either – their worship of other gods in defiance of God’s command  just led them farther and farther away from the One who had chosen them to be His own.   

The Old Testament prophet Isaiah, sent to both the southern kingdom of Judah and the northern kingdom Israel for the specific purpose of calling them back into relationship with God, said this in chapter 55, verse 2:

“Why spend money on what is not bread and your labor on what does not satisfy?  Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.”

The Israelites had bread.  That bread may have been satisfying them physically, but they had leanness of soul.   God wanted to feed them with Himself so that they would find their satisfaction in Him – like the satisfaction of a wonderful, rich, and satisfying meal.  

But they would not have Him, nor would they listen to the warnings of Isaiah, and in the end, they went into exile.  The northern kingdom of Israel was conquered by the Assyrians and was never again a viable nation.  Only the southern kingdom of Judah and Benjamin would ultimately survive and return to Jerusalem. 

This would be incredibly sad and bad (and it was) had Isaiah left them with warnings of judgment alone, but he didn’t.  He left them words of consolation and hope by unfolding God’s promise of future blessing through the Messiah who would make it possible for reconciliation between the people of Israel and God.

God fulfilled that promise in the Lord Jesus Christ.   Jesus said in John’s gospel, chapter 6, verses 35, 48, 51:

“I am the bread of life.  He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.  . . . . I am the bread of life. . . the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die.  I am the living bread that came down from heaven.  if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.”

Jesus referred to Himself as the "bread of life", the “bread” that fully satisfies – as with the richest of foods.   A spiritual “bread” that doesn’t leave us hungry for more.  The bread that leaves us with “fat” souls!  

So if you find yourself on a continual quest for more, and better, and different - but still find yourself on empty, maybe what’s missing in your life is Jesus, the only One in whom you will truly find soul satisfaction - the kind of satisfaction you get when you've eaten the BEST dinner EVER.

Read again David's words from Psalm 63:

“O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.  I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory.  Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you.  I will praise you as long as I live and in your name I will lift up my hands.  My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods; with singing lips my mouth will praise you.”

If you're running on empty, do what David did - earnestly seek Jesus, thirst for Him, long for Him, consider that His love is better than life.  Find your satisfaction in Jesus alone and you will be truly satisfied.