Please take a minute to check out this short article on sexting. If you don't know what it is (mainly parents) you need to as it affects nearly 1 in 3 students as early as 12-13 years old. Understand that this is sinful and can be very damaging. There have been reported suicides as a result of sexting.
Nearly 1 in 3 older teens gets 'sexting' messages
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Monday, December 7, 2009
Christmas Parties!
Remember that the Middle School Storehouse Christmas Party will be held this Wednesday night, December 9 at 6:00PM. Bring $5 and a donation to a charity. There will be a Tacky Christmas Sweater Contest so come decked out in the worst one you can find! The High School party will be the following Wednesday! Be sure you are there to celebrate Christmas with friends!
Meltdown Student Conference
This conference is THE student event of the winter season! If you are not there, you will be missing out on a focused opportunity to meet God face to face. Check out the website for more information!
Meltdown Student Conference
Meltdown Student Conference
Taking initiative because of gratitude
(Author: Brandon Simpson)
God is supremely faithful. You do not need to look far to recognize it either. You can see the sunrise day after day, the rain falls to water the parched earth, we continue to have oxygen to fill our lungs. He is good to us. Yet, when Robert Robinson penned the words “prone to wander, Lord I feel it” he could have been writing down the chorus of our hearts. Aren't we so prone to wandering? So dissatisfied with our creator? How is this even possible!?
I have found over the years that my satisfaction with God is directly related to my proximity to Him. Paul admonishes the young pastor Timothy to discipline himself for the purpose of godliness (1 Tim. 4:7b). Note that our proximity to God is something that is in large part our responsibility as a Christ-follower. We are to discipline ourselves to seek God and to be godly. It is the natural course of a life that has been bought by the blood of Christ. In that life we find purpose, satisfaction, greater patience, love for others, selflessness, and a great list of other virtues. As we become too busy, or more likely too lazy to spend time pursuing God, we find that things move in the opposite direction. We are more easily discouraged, depression may begin to encroach on our once happy existence and we find ourselves drifting on our own power lost in space. That life is NOT what God intended salvation to bring. It is the result of losing in spiritual warfare, of failing to take up the full armor of God through daily pursuit of God in the Bible, in meditation, and in prayer. I'd like for you to consider this idea of proximity to God driving our satisfaction with Him as we dig into the experience of Isaiah the prophet.
God called Isaiah the prophet to tell Israel of their misdeeds and prophesy of one who was coming to save the world. He had a very difficult message to carry and yet he volunteered for the mission! Why did he do that? If we look in Isaiah 6 we can see his motivation. Isaiah saw God in all his glory seated on the throne of heaven. He saw the six-winged seraphim flying with two wings and shielding their faces and feet from the glory of God with the other two pair. They shouted the glory of God to one another as they were created to do saying, “Holy, holy, holy...”(Isaiah 6:3). God, majestic on his throne, shook the very foundations of the temple with his voice. Isaiah was overwhelmed by his finitude and sinfulness as he was exposed by all the light of God at once.
If you are a Christ-follower, you can try to understand how he must have felt by thinking back on your salvation experience. You were surely overcome by the Holy Spirit and by having some portion of the light of God shine on the darkness of your life, you found yourself wanting. It was a terrible feeling to know that you were hopeless and helpless to save yourself. Perhaps you thought how you were undone, that there was nothing you deserved in the presence of God but death. Then think that, compared to Isaiah, most of us were only exposed to a tiny bit of God when we first realized our guilt. Isaiah was crushed by his understanding of himself in the presence of a holy God. He was not worthy to be there. In fact, he believed that he was doomed because of his sinfulness. That must have been both the darkest and most glorious moment of Isaiah's life.
Thankfully for Isaiah (and for us) the story does not end there. Isaiah's reaction to his sin was correct. It is an abomination before God and should be our undoing. He was right to be broken before God over his sin. But God's immeasurable mercy and grace are poured out like a flood upon Isaiah as he sends a seraphim with a burning coal from the alter to cleanse Isaiah's sin. Isaiah's soul must have soared from the deepest of depths to the highest of heights in that moment. He knew how close he had come to oblivion and yet merciful God called him back from impending doom to save him from his sin!
Again, Christ-followers can identify with Isaiah, and it is important that we do. It is here, in his gratitude towards God that he finds the courage to follow Him. He knows himself, confesses his wickedness openly and finds God willing to forgive rather than quick to destroy. Think back to when God invaded your life on tsunami waves of mercy and grace. What joy! What peace! You must have burned with a fire in your bones to share this good news with everyone. Think then of the how that fire must have been stoked by being in the presence of very God. Here we see the natural and correct outpouring of a heart that has been touched by grace. Obedience. When God calls for a messenger in verse 8, Isaiah volunteers without thought for himself. Only God's will matters to him at that moment because of Isaiah's excitingly close proximity to Him.
You see, we are most willing to serve God without thought for ourselves when we are in close proximity to Him. We cannot help but love Him more deeply and sacrificially when we see Him more clearly. God is infinitely lovely and worthy of sacrifice! It is my hope that knowing this will drive you into the Bible to seek Him out where he waits for you! That in finding Him there you will know the true and lasting joy of obedience to the Father because of your great gratitude towards Him for all He has done and continues to do in you.
God is supremely faithful. You do not need to look far to recognize it either. You can see the sunrise day after day, the rain falls to water the parched earth, we continue to have oxygen to fill our lungs. He is good to us. Yet, when Robert Robinson penned the words “prone to wander, Lord I feel it” he could have been writing down the chorus of our hearts. Aren't we so prone to wandering? So dissatisfied with our creator? How is this even possible!?
I have found over the years that my satisfaction with God is directly related to my proximity to Him. Paul admonishes the young pastor Timothy to discipline himself for the purpose of godliness (1 Tim. 4:7b). Note that our proximity to God is something that is in large part our responsibility as a Christ-follower. We are to discipline ourselves to seek God and to be godly. It is the natural course of a life that has been bought by the blood of Christ. In that life we find purpose, satisfaction, greater patience, love for others, selflessness, and a great list of other virtues. As we become too busy, or more likely too lazy to spend time pursuing God, we find that things move in the opposite direction. We are more easily discouraged, depression may begin to encroach on our once happy existence and we find ourselves drifting on our own power lost in space. That life is NOT what God intended salvation to bring. It is the result of losing in spiritual warfare, of failing to take up the full armor of God through daily pursuit of God in the Bible, in meditation, and in prayer. I'd like for you to consider this idea of proximity to God driving our satisfaction with Him as we dig into the experience of Isaiah the prophet.
God called Isaiah the prophet to tell Israel of their misdeeds and prophesy of one who was coming to save the world. He had a very difficult message to carry and yet he volunteered for the mission! Why did he do that? If we look in Isaiah 6 we can see his motivation. Isaiah saw God in all his glory seated on the throne of heaven. He saw the six-winged seraphim flying with two wings and shielding their faces and feet from the glory of God with the other two pair. They shouted the glory of God to one another as they were created to do saying, “Holy, holy, holy...”(Isaiah 6:3). God, majestic on his throne, shook the very foundations of the temple with his voice. Isaiah was overwhelmed by his finitude and sinfulness as he was exposed by all the light of God at once.
If you are a Christ-follower, you can try to understand how he must have felt by thinking back on your salvation experience. You were surely overcome by the Holy Spirit and by having some portion of the light of God shine on the darkness of your life, you found yourself wanting. It was a terrible feeling to know that you were hopeless and helpless to save yourself. Perhaps you thought how you were undone, that there was nothing you deserved in the presence of God but death. Then think that, compared to Isaiah, most of us were only exposed to a tiny bit of God when we first realized our guilt. Isaiah was crushed by his understanding of himself in the presence of a holy God. He was not worthy to be there. In fact, he believed that he was doomed because of his sinfulness. That must have been both the darkest and most glorious moment of Isaiah's life.
Thankfully for Isaiah (and for us) the story does not end there. Isaiah's reaction to his sin was correct. It is an abomination before God and should be our undoing. He was right to be broken before God over his sin. But God's immeasurable mercy and grace are poured out like a flood upon Isaiah as he sends a seraphim with a burning coal from the alter to cleanse Isaiah's sin. Isaiah's soul must have soared from the deepest of depths to the highest of heights in that moment. He knew how close he had come to oblivion and yet merciful God called him back from impending doom to save him from his sin!
Again, Christ-followers can identify with Isaiah, and it is important that we do. It is here, in his gratitude towards God that he finds the courage to follow Him. He knows himself, confesses his wickedness openly and finds God willing to forgive rather than quick to destroy. Think back to when God invaded your life on tsunami waves of mercy and grace. What joy! What peace! You must have burned with a fire in your bones to share this good news with everyone. Think then of the how that fire must have been stoked by being in the presence of very God. Here we see the natural and correct outpouring of a heart that has been touched by grace. Obedience. When God calls for a messenger in verse 8, Isaiah volunteers without thought for himself. Only God's will matters to him at that moment because of Isaiah's excitingly close proximity to Him.
You see, we are most willing to serve God without thought for ourselves when we are in close proximity to Him. We cannot help but love Him more deeply and sacrificially when we see Him more clearly. God is infinitely lovely and worthy of sacrifice! It is my hope that knowing this will drive you into the Bible to seek Him out where he waits for you! That in finding Him there you will know the true and lasting joy of obedience to the Father because of your great gratitude towards Him for all He has done and continues to do in you.
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