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.