MOVE 2012 - Day 4

If God forgave you, why wouldn't you forgive others? Today at MOVE, we reflected and worked towards this, in the power of the Spirit. It's late and I'm tired, so I'll sum up the idea and a highlight or two.
When we are saved by God's grace, he erases a debt that we have no way of paying. No one will ever be perfect but him and good works only work to separate us more. So he spares us through the death of Jesus, if we accept the gift. But our brothers and sisters or even the lost owe us a small fraction of the debt we owed God. How can we demand that of them when he has erased our debts from the record? We can't and should not if we are saved.
Tonight we all wore white shirts with pieces of red paper taped to them. On the back of the paper was a situation or two we needed forgiveness in or to forgive. We were to seek out the person, or spend time in prayer and work to forgive or be forgiven. When we had, we took off the papers to be clean again.
I got to see so many great situations in our group get worked out by God's overflowing grace. I even saw friends and siblings holding hands on the way to the nearest trash bin to toss out these debts.

So much happened today and I regret I don't have the energy to share it all. Hopefully I get a chance to tell all you readers in person.

MOVE 2012 - Day 3

Today was filled with learning. Our morning speaker even piqued my interest by starting off his message with zombies. He brought up the "you've heard... but I say..." phrases in the sermon on the mount. These are phrases Jesus used to start subjects that contradicted their traditions. Jesus spoke less to these misconceptions and said they weren't going far enough. These ideas of blindly following rules are zombies. They resemble real godliness, but aren't. They infect our lives and ruin a chance we have at really being close to God by making us feel like we could get there because they aren't committed enough. We need to shoot them in the head.
Next we had group time in a local coffee shop and talked about dealing with temptation, etc.
After lunch, we split up for electives and each learned about something different. PB and I went to a video message by Jeff Walling. He talked about how crazy it is to love our enemies like Jesus commands. He made the claim Jesus didn't tell us to love our enemies as enemies, but to love them and not regard them as enemies at all!
Later, I got the chance to rematch Love Costs Every Thing (last year's documentary about the persecution of the church) and others saw it for the first time. I cried, like I do every time.
The evening speaker challenged us with Jesus' words about not judging. We are so ready to throw stones of judgement, but none of us have that right. Rather, we should hold that stone like an oyster would. When oysters hold stones, they turn into pearls. When we deny ourselves of judging others, we can find more value in loving them.
We took in a lot today and relaxed over the talent show, The Alternative. Good times, good times, good times.

MOVE 2012 - Day 2

What is being fatherless all about? That was a major theme today at MOVE. We started off our session discussing the beatitudes in Matthew 5 and continued constantly addressing God as our Father. After our encounter (morning session) speaker finished, we watched a documentary called "Becoming Sons and Daughters" by CIY about the fatherless generation.
The idea of a dad deciding he was done and voluntarily leaving his family is relatively new and prevalent in our generation. You may have heard that being raised by one parent is not a bad thing, but some statistics may have you question that.
* 63% of youth who commit suicide are from fatherless homes.
* 71% of pregnant teen girls are from fatherless homes.
* 85% of young men in prison are from fatherless homes.
These statistics are shocking and were the jumping point for the film. It followed a few stories of the fatherless or those helping them and how God helped them through struggles that resulted. A touching point for me was when a young man wanted to take a pastor's (last) name as his middle name because the pastor spent an hour a week with him, showing him what being a man was about. The pastor told this story and looked at the camera with tears in his eyes saying "are you kidding me?!"
We split into our various youth groups afterward and talked about the film. No one who spoke up in our group could relate, but we were all touched and had a greater sense of how good we have it.
As a personal story, I got to spend my lunch with just our pastor, Bill. I was encouraged by getting to know him more and realize how great a man of God he is. We are blessed to have him as a pastor. Praise the Lord!
Our evening session also focused on God as our Father. The speaker, Whitney, is a passionate speaker and clarified that God loves his children dearly. She used Matthew 6:25-33 to show us we need to trust our Father with everything. And we can believe this because Jesus said so. He would know, because he trusted his Father so much that he would follow his commands, even to the cross.
The topic brought up a lot of stories of trusting God from our students. They have seen so much already, but have been learning to trust their Father with it. Praise him for helping them do that, because they don't know how alone (as with all of us).
I am excited to see how God will continue work this week.

MOVE 2012 - Day 1

So this blog originated to follow my adventure and journey working for CIY MOVE the Summer of 2011. I'm happy to relort back at MOVE! But this time as a sponsor (read leader) of my church, Fox River Christian, and for one week only. But I praise God for bringing me back here with the students I love.
Today not much happened, as it was the first day. We drove in, getting Chick-Fil-A on the way, to Western Illinois University, registered, ate, and had a session followed by youth group time. Before the session, our leaders spoke to a minister from another church about how he saw issues may come to a head this week between some attendees with their church given the topics at hand. It was sweet to encourage and pray for a brother we barely know and to reflect on how God is sovereign and planned each of our attendance. Amazing!
At the session, our worship band encouraged students to worship their Father, not them as musicians, and to let any "craziness" in "rocking" be in praise to God and worship of him. Great reminder and it really helps us all to focus on why we're there.
Our message tonight was a video introducing the week's topic: the sermon on the mount. The speaker showed us his preparation for, and actual, riding of a bull. This is something that is dangerous, and you can't "kind of" do. One cannot expect to ride a bull completely safely or half-heartedly. He pointed out that if we take Jesus' teaching seriously, following him is much like riding a bull that way. We may and probably will get hurt and we can't "sort of" do it. We'll forgo our lives and go all-in.
Please pray for stamina, wisdom, and loving natures for our leaders Mike, Laura, Pastor Bill, and myself. And please pray for learning hearts, inquisitive minds, and openness to the Holy Spirit's work for our students.
Thank you.