Take 8

Advent United Methodist- Simpsonville, SC (basically Greenville)

We had our first little session tonight with the kids..it's mostly middle school age which is always very energetic and random..we kind of feel like professionals at this point with just getting the schedule set up..etc.

Tonight I gave the message on this: read it if you have time...it's pretty relevant to any age group


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How does knowing God make your life different?

My entire life I labeled myself a Christian. I believed in God, I went to church, I tried to be ”good”. I knew not to lie, steal, cheat, etc..
The character part of being a Christian was always enforced in my life by my family... I mostly think for their own assurance that their kid was not going to be some corrupt hoodlum running around doing bad things.
But what was never really stressed to me or really even acknowledged from my point of view, was how different a life knowing God should look compared to others that do not know God. How different MY life, my own life that I was living, should look.

A lot of people in the world consider themselves Christians. They might go to church once a year or maybe even once a week. They might pray when something really really bad happens in their lives. They might give God a passing thought when something great happens. But how are we, as Christians, supposed to impact lives if our own look no different than that of the ones we are trying to influence?

One of my favorite books in the bible is 1Peter. I’m not really sure why. Maybe because it has a sweet shortness about it that gets straight to the point. But in 1 Peter there is a verse that says “If the righteous (meaning us, Christians, believers, followers of Jesus, etc) are barely saved, what will happen to the godless sinners?”

This verse hit me really hard last summer because I realized my life not only would look no different without God, but that my life was not helping anyone else’s life get closer to God. And that is a problem. Besides loving God, our purpose to is to share the love of God with those that don’t know it. And how can we do that if we aren’t even living in God’s love..or if we pretend we are by calling ourselves Christians but not letting God change our lives. He desires so desperately for us to allow Him to change our hearts and for us to know our first Father. Our Protector. Our Savior. Our Lover. and our Best Friend.

in Zephaniah 3:17 we are told “For the Lord your God is living among you. He is a mighty savior. He will take delight in you with gladness. With his love, he will calm your fears. He will rejoice over you with joyful songs.”



Who else promises you this? It’s for real. and It’s amazing. And because we have this promised to us, we should find peace in stressful situations. We can keep our joy in really sad times, when the world brings hard things against us to make us second guess who we are or what we should be doing with our lives we can just stop. and know that our identity is in God’s kingdom and is not this world’s to define.

As Christians we are meant to live lives that non-Christians don’t understand. They should be confused, amazed, and skeptical by the things we say our God does in our lives.
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This was actually pretty hard talk for me to give tonight... We found that a girl from our very first week of Crossfire (at Kolomoki Camp in Blakely) had gone through something seriously traumatic. Her father killed (by shooting) her mother, her brother, attempted the same with her (thank you Jesus she is ok) and then went on to kill himself. This girl is eleven. And her world just got turned over and dumped out. My heart is just hurting for her and for what she didn't deserve and is having to deal with alone. All I can think of is how do you get over something like that when you are eleven years old? How do you help someone with that? It's simply just draining me at the moment to think about this precious little girl I saw so carefree just a month ago now having to sort out the why's and how's and every other unanswerable question that is going through her head. Please just...pray for peace in her heart...her name is Emily.