Friday youth – spiritual fitness

[my notes from my session this week; P.S> how do you possibly get 13-15 year olds to understand why spiritual disciplines are good?]

So we recently asked you guys what would be a helpful topic we can focus on and you chose Christian living + understanding the Bible – so that’s what we’ll be doing until the end of the year.

I want to start with a bit of an activity –  I’ll ask a question and list a few answers, can you do a tumbs up if you agree with any of the answers? 
Ok, what makes someone a Christian?

Reading the Bible
Doing good for others
Being generous
Going to church
Praying to God
Thinking about God a lot..

Right, so I think people often get this wrong, that appearing all religious and goody-good means they’re saved. They’re all great things to do, but I’d say these are more about how you get closer to God or the kind of things you do as a result of faith in God. But choosing to follow God is a response you make to the gospel – by faith that Jesus Christ God’s son, came to Earth, lived in perfect obedience to God the Father, was punished on our behalf and after 3 days raised to life with the HS and by faith in Him we get to spend eternity with God. It’s that belief that saves us, not anything external .

 Now, I have 3 main points to make today, and the first one is this:
we do not earn God’s love and acceptance – He gives us those freely. The bible says we could never earn righteousness with God – we’re simply incapable. That’s the whole point of Jesus dying instead of us. And by believing in Him, we are made right with God. He looks on  us as though we’d lived the perfect life Jesus did. Not because of anything we do – purely because of Jesus. Once you really grasp this, and ask the HS to live in you, you begin to actually want to know more of God – and how do you do that?
Mainly through the Bible. Helpfully, God has inspired a bunch of people throughout history, to write out God’s story from various points of view and different textual styles.

There’s letters, history, poetry etc – so it can feel a bit challenging and overwhelming to read and  understand all by yourself, but that’s where church and youth group can be helpful.

Now, after a long introduction – we’re gonna talk about fitness!
We all know that exercise and eating well is essentially how you keep your body healthy and strong. Do you want to be physically healthy? Great, me too! Now, if you believe the Bible, and I do, it actually says that we have a spirit, soul and body. Who wants to read out 1 Thessalonians 5:23 for us?

Ok, if exercise and food keep me physically healthy, what about the rest of me? Spiritual fitness then, is basically doing what God says is good. And God has advice for how to live well – all through the New Testament really, we learn about how Christians should live. Loving people, Bible study, Prayer, Fasting, Worship etc.

I talked about good habits a few months ago, and this topic is similar in that it’s often tricky to get motivation to go out for a run or eat spinach or do something you don’t feel like. But building spiritual fitness into your week is how you get spiritually stronger and better able to face difficulty, stress, anxiety, and essentially learn how to trust God and spend time with Him and love Him. You’ll see that once you get going it’s actually a lot easier and even enjoyable!

So that’s my second point – spiritual disciplines are how you build a relationship with God and build the “muscles” of your character and faith.

It’s kinda like studying for a big test …
You prepare beforehand. And the more you work you put toward it, (one hopes), the easier you will find the test and you’ll probably get a better result. At the same time, if you dread the subject you won’t want to study for it, and will look for an excuse to avoid it at all.  Does that resonate with you?

Do you see, and that’s point number 3 – the goal is not the studying. Or even the test- it’s really about being able to use the knowledge in real life. Or, you train for a marathon before the marathon itself. But first you have to want to run a marathon. So you make space for training in your every day, even though you don’t always feel like it. So it seems that the main thing is whether you care, whether you think the effort is worth it. And I’m here to tell you, pursuing God is 1000% worth it. Practicing spiritual disciplines like reading the Bible and praying helps us know God more and in a sense hear from him – get direction, peace, joy and live well. So, that’s the type of thing we’ll talk about in the following weeks

baffled by grace, and how much difference 10 years make

I’d been in church for 10 years, a Christian Union comittee member, and had found myself tossing and turning all night, completely baffled by the gospel. I’d always quite enjoyed theology and felt like I knew more-than-most about the Bible. Yet there I was, wide awake at midnight after a Sunday evening session where we’d heard about a parable.

I know I was intensely contemplating the idea that it seems ridiculourly unfair, that I’d follow God all my life, make all these personal sacrifices and follow the rules.. and meanwhile, a mobster might feel a heart attack coming, and last-resort call out to God from the death bed “just in case” and be saved, and at the end of time both of us be awarded entry into Heaven.

That was almost 5 years ago now. There’s much error in my theology looking back, to unfold now. My view of God.. After 10 years faithfully attending church and youth and every summer camp and Christian conference I could fit into my calendar, my view of God was somehow still secular.

I’m annoyed at myself even now. But I suppose there were challenges I had to go through to really taste grace. I had to stumble and fall beyond anything I could’ve imagined, to the point of despising myself before I was ready to really listen.

How did grace not click for me all this time? I knew the gospel, I knew about the gospel, but really I did not think of it as “good news”. I remember feeling like I have to keep up a certain front, it was my thing – “the good, if sometimes edgy, Christian girl”. No boys, no drinking or partying – great, I can do that. I was serving at church and never missed a Sunday, I thought that’s enough. And by comparison I seemed a lot better morally than some of my school friends.. What else could God ask of me?

For a while, and then once I left my community pen, the real me began to emerge. Still somewhat restrained by instilled Christian morals, but definitely more “adventurous” until I eventually tasted the bitter taste of guilt and shame I’d only even heard about with judgement.

Somehow in all my devotional time, I had been gripping to the idea of self-sanctification. I remeber praying numerous times the sinners prayer because I wasn’t sure if by sinning I’d lost my salvation and I didn’t want to accidentally go to hell (there’s no one in hell who doesn’t want to be there, prefers it to obeying Christ, has conciously chosen seperation form God – the source of life). And even so not understanding how deep man’s sinful nature actually runs.

I didn’t see it that way at the time, but I was living as though I knew better than God, because I was going to be in control of my life. I knew no other way. I’d certainly pray for God to use me, speak to me, anything.. but all I seemed to get was silence. So that means I have to figure it out myself. How many times I prayed asking about direction, what my calling is, God’s perfect will for my life.. nothing.

I knew I was supposed to love Jesus and lots of people at church seem to have amazing experiences with God, and really hear his voice but I didn’t really feel that… They’d talk about having a relationship with Jesus – but I didn’t feel that, and so when my school friends would ask about my faith I didn’t really have a good answer so I’d automatically get defensive. Why would they want to become Christian, how could I play salesman, when all I understood of God’s goodness was other people’s tangible experiences and not mine?

See I had accepted Jesus only superficially and never really understood the good news of salvation.. never begun to live like it. I knew the stories of Samson, Jonah, David.. but only as stories, they didn’t connect in any way. Now all I see is connections throughout the whole of God’s story – oh, how absolutely marvelous!

I struggled for a long time with it, but accepting his love is the easiest thing. Not something to try and achieve somehow – just to accept. Surrender everything, because it’s all tumbleweed anyway and really embrace God’s mercy. Bend the knee, be honest with yourself – you don’t know-it-all, and you can’t make the Heaven cut by trying hard enough. We bring nothing to the table, it’s only through Christ’s perfect sacrifice that we are welcomed into His family.

why following jesus has to be a committment?

Because you don’t enter religion, you enter into a relationship. It’s like the vows.
“Forsaking all others”.
It’s your part into entering His covenant, all in, as you would marriage.

I’m also reminded of a song line,”God is jealous for me”.
If someone loved you so much that they gave everything for you, gave their life, having no assurance you would ever love them back.
There’s no way to respond to that half heartedly. You either fall (and be caught) in complete love and awe.
Or turn away.
But there is no way you accept it just a little.

the heart of evangelism – as I see it

You know the feeling when you found a song that you instantly fell in love with, the one that spoke to you personally and touched your heart. Listening to it is like a spiritual experience, so intimate you don’t want to share it with anybody. Just you and the song.

It went something like that for me.
Except I was changed by it, in that I was overcome by love, love for everyone. I literally felt it in my stomach. And it was because of that love that I (tried) to tell everyone, my family, my friends, people I had just met..

Of course, being a new Christian I didn’t have the right words, I didn’t even have any doctrinal knowledge. I just knew that I had found something real,  that I was changed and I couldn’t even describe it. I loved people like I never had before and that’s why I wanted to share with them that intimate and indescribable experience I had had. I wanted them to have it too.

That’s what Jesus is for me, that’s why I want to encourage you to explore Him. So please don’t make evangelism about Bible-bashing people into faith or telling them they’re going to Hell. It’s Jesus who will draw them to Himself, with love and grace and mercy.