Indescribable

I was able to go to Chris Tomlin’s “Indescribable” concert with Matt Redman and Louie Giglio. And I have to give a BIG thank you to my friend, Adam, for giving me and my wife free tickets to go! Thanks, bud, you rock! We had a great time talking with him and his wife Kristen about a whole variety of topics. But talking with him; hearing that absolutely amazing talk that Louie gave, which is based on his book ”I Am Not But I Know I AM” (which I plan on getting it and reading it soon); and just being in the presence of my indescribable God, got me thinking about many things. So follow the bouncing ball….. Louie was talking about how we need to invert our picture, because we see God as little and us as big when the reality is quite the opposite. When you look at the vastness of the universe and think about the fact that God says He holds the expanse of space in His hand, and He not only put every star in it’s place, but named them! And yet we somehow think we are bigger than God. So if God is really that big, then why do we have such a hard time trusting Him? For my daily Bible reading I use the ”Daily Walk Bible” and one day recently my reading was in the gospel of Mark. At the beginning of each daily Bible reading they have a little devotional type thing and this particular day was talking about the story of the disciples panicking in the boat as they were crossing the Sea of Galilea while Jesus was sleeping in the back. The author of this devotional pointed out that the disciples had no need to panic, because before they got in the boat Jesus said that they were going to cross to the other side, not go to the middle and drown. We need to trust Jesus at His word, but instead when the storms and problems rise up we freak out and forget what He told us. And how often do we do that? As we were praising God and singing songs like “Forever”, “Indescribable”, “Mighty is the Power of the Cross”, “How Great is Our God”, etc. I started thinking about how passionate I was for God. Which led me to begin to think about how I am a passionate person. For those of you who really know me, I am sure you are nodding in agreement. One of the other things that I am passionate about is student ministry. There is nothing I love more than touching the life of a teenager. It is something that gets my heart pumping and I get all jazzed up about. When I see a teenager hurting, I hurt; when I see one happy, I am happy; when I see them “get God”; I go nuts! But one thing that ticks me off more than anything, and Adam I were talking a little bit about this last night, is youth pastor’s who are not in it to be youth pastor’s. For some reason they see the position as a stepping stone or proving ground to move into a different area of ministry, or even worse, see it as just a job. I am so thankful for the youth pastor that I had because he showed me the importance of caring for student’s and how important it is to impact their lives with the life-changing power of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. And how did Dan show this to me? He showed it to me by caring for the unlovable’s in his student ministry, like ME!!! When he came to our church, I wanted nothing to do with him, but Dan loved me anyway and for that I am grateful. He showed me what God’s love was like for me. I know a young man, who can be an unlovable, that is going through a big trial in his life. This young man is failing in school, hanging out with the wrong crowd, getting himself into trouble, and struggling with the loss of his father over a year ago. And the sad part is that the youth pastor at his church is doing hardly anything to reach out to him. He told his mom that he was “mentoring” him and in the past 6 or 7 months has met with him only twice. Today, he had to go see his probation officer and his youth pastor didn’t even offer to go with him and hasn’t called him. Last week, his mom went into the hospital and the youth pastor not once called to check up on him to see how he was doing, but yet he his is “mentor”. BUT (and there always seems to be one, however, this is a good one!) there is a youth pastor who is planning on reaching out to him. This youth pastor only knows of this young man, because he has a friend that goes to his youth group and the youth pastor has seen him up at the high school. He recently told me that he is challenging his Tuesday morning student Bible study group to reach out to this young man. And all I can say is, “Thank God for causing this youth pastor to have a heart for students that a youth pastor should have and not just any students, but this young man in particular”. You know who you are and I say, “Thank you!” Knowing that there are youth pastor’s out there like this encourages me, but I am saddened by all the youth pastor’s out there that treat the ministry without the proper care it deserves. But to bring it all back full circle, I am so glad that we serve such a massive and HUGE God that cares about little ol’ us! God truly is an awesome God and mere words can not describe how awesome He is!