Date with God

I am still fighting this stupid blog. I am trying to setup a WordPress MU blog which will allow me to host multiple blogs from one installation. I did a test install in the past and it went swimmingly, but for some reason, now that I need it to work, the stupid thing insists on breaking. I will continue to fight this and I know I will eventually win out, but for the next few days this blog will be experiencing some weirdness … more than just the things I write.

Now back the the regularly scheduled youth night follow-up.

I have to admit, last night was unbelievable in so many ways. I concluded the series on Sex and Relationships with “I’ve messed up … so now what?” Through this I challenged students to seek God’s forgiveness and to know that He forgets our sin by His own choice. I then challenged them to move past that and to forgive themselves. I spoke about sins in our life that are completely addictive. I specifically talked about pornography in this but I also talked about other kinds of sin too. I also focused on the kinds of sins that happen to us and hurt us terribly. I spent a good amount of time talking about people who have been, hurt, abused, molested, and raped. None of my students have outright confessed that they have been through any of this to me, but I know that at least a couple of them have based on statistics.

I talked about how to confide in others and how we need each other since we can’t carry our burdens alone and then I spoke on living as if we have been forgiven. That is the thing that stands out to me in the story of the Fall. Adam and Even sin and then are immediately full of shame. It breaks their relationship with each other, God, and themselves. I think that God intends for us to live our lives like were were created to, without all these broken relationships and walls of separation. Most importantly He wasn’t us to give our lives to Him and begin living as if it were no longer our life but His. He paid the price for our lives so the really aren’t ours any more.

We had a time of prayer at the end and a lot of students responded to that. I had the students get into their small groups and the leaders prayed with them and they prayed with each other. It was powerful and God moved in a huge way.

I had a student that hadn’t been to the church in quite a long time. I had invested a lot in this student and felt hurt and betrayed to see them running off doing the wrong things. The student randomly shows up on the perfect night. The message was for all the other students but it felt like I was saying things to this one student over and over. The student hadn’t been since before we started small groups and so I had to put them in a group, but the leader was able to talk and pray and … it was just amazing to watch how God moved.

It blows me away to think of how God orchestrated it all. I have seen over and over the way He puts together events in seemingly small and unrelated ways to bring about His will. 6 weeks ago I was supposed to start this series, but my plans were broken because of the weather. I was frustrated because I already had another series planned out that I should be halfway through right now, but I look at the planned topics and I know that the sermon I wanted to be preaching based on my time table wouldn’t have been what God wanted this student to hear. My time table was thrown off and I was irritated, but God’s timing was perfect as usual. He picked this date and arranged for everything to be perfect.

Has God ever thrown all your plans out the window, made you angry, and then made you feel so foolish when His plans came through? What is that story?