Archive for April, 2009

Who:  All Youth 6th to 12th Grade
What: Digital Scavenger Hunt – The Sequel
When:  May 17th, 3-7pm
Where:  Starting at the Church Office
Why:  Invite!
Cost:  $2.00 per youth

If you thought we couldn’t think of 50 more totally random things for you to get your picture taken with, you were WRONG!  Back for the 2nd year is our digital photo scavenger hunt!  This event is for EVERYONE so invite invite invite your friends.  it’s only 2 bucks and that includes pizza aftwards and sodas for everyone.  Teams will be made on Sunday, register by txting Gary, or email him at garyg@cccmooresville.com.

This was our first week of what I hope is a great 6 week series.  I really liked the Indiana Jones movies growing up because I loved the adventure and I loved the hunt for treasure.  I thought it a good movie to pair up with this series and call it the Quest for a Treasured Life.  Each week we will be looking at spiritual habits that if we use each will, will give us a treasured life.  Each week will focus on a part of the word HABITS.  The “H” is the first week and stands for Hang Time with God.

All through out the Bible we see people going off alone to speak with God, or to pray with God.  Just as communication is essential in any relationship, our communication with God is essential for us to grow our relationship with Him.  In this lesson, we taught the youth how important it is to take time to get alone, behind closed doors and spend quality time with God each and every day.  In fact, this is the model that Jesus gives us.  Even on the night of his arrest, He went off alone to pray.

I think that we sometimes get caught up in our busy lives so much that we don’t take time for what’s truly important.  The key verse for this entire series is from Matthew and says “for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also”.  If we treasure these habits, and our heart is with them, then we will have a spiritual foundation that will withstand any earthquake.  Just like building a house on rock.  My hope for the students is that they will take time from their busy schedule to really start communicating with God.  Through prayer, reading scriptures, and through journaling, I’m hoping that they find a connection and they can start to treasure this quiet time spend with our Lord.

As a reminder of this, we gave each student a leather journal to write in during this series.  Each week we will be giving them their journals and a scripture to read, and time to be alone.  We want them to pray, think, and write.  To communicate their feelings on paper so that they can start to communicate them with God.

Next week is the “A” which stands for Accountability.  It’s going to be a great lesson for the youth!

Gary

Well, I have to be honest.  It was really time for a new look at feel for the youth website.  The way we’re doing the website is also going to be a lot easier to update, will allow us to have much more blogging capabilities which I want to use after each youth group meeting and small group session.  In addition, We will now have the capability of putting our own vidoes on the site and streaming them as well as putting up MP3′s of any messages I give as soon as we start recording them.

Keep checking back often.   An even better part of this site is going to be the ability to subscribe to feeds so that you can be notified if a message gets posted, etc.

Last, but not least, we have more capabilities, and we will be saving money moving to this type of system.  I will be adding photos back as soon as I can get the chance. 

Welcome!
Gary

Ok, so most of you know that this past week I had a little bit of a heart issue and was in the hospital for a few days.   When things like this happen to me, I often find that it’s God’s way of slowing me down and I know I need to listen.  It also gave me some incredible prayer time.  What I heard from God was the question, “How healthy is your heart, Gary?”.  The question was not meant in a physical way, but in a spiritual way.  Althought I was in the hospital to have tests done on the muscle inside my chest that pumps blood throughout my body, God questioned my heart.  So, I felt led to speak to the youth about this, and here are some of my thoughts on what we learned this past Sunday. 

The lesson this week was on the condition of our heart.  We took a look at Matthew 13:1-9, the parable of the sower.  This parable, being the first parable that Jesus taught, tells of the condition of the heart in regards to God’s word.  Jesus isn’t teaching about this muscle in our chest, but rather about the combination of our feelings and our mind.  The heart is mentioned many times in the bible and it’s rarely talking about an organ, but rather this combination of thoughts and ideas, feelings and emotions and come together and form someone’s heart.  Pharoh’s heart was hardened after the hebrews left Egypt, but he didn’t have a heart attack, that meant that his thoughts, emotions, feelings were all stone cold, hard, unmoving.

So in this parable, we discover that there are four types of hearts.  The first is the kind of heart that hard.  As the seeds were thrown they hit the path, or a well traveled place.  The dirt was packed by carts, animals, people walking on it.  Such is some people hearts that are hardened and refuse to let anything in.  Do you know someone like that?  Someone who is hard to communicate with, someone who’s hard of hearing?  So when the Word comes to them, Satan snatches it away, much like the birds taking the seed from the path.  The second heart is the shallow heart.  I find myself having this issue all too often.  I ask someone how there day is going, only to expect a quick answer of “fine” back so that I can keep walking.  Jesus says that the shallow heart will allow things to grow only a little so that the roots are not enough to withstand pain or heartache.  Just like the sun scorches the plants that have weak roots, we tend to lose things from our heart that we don’t invest in and truly give good root.  The third heart is the cluttered heart.  Again, this is one of the convictions I received myself as I studied and taught this less.  This heart is one that has no room for things.  People put so much into their lives, they count on so much, they rely on so many things that sometimes, it’s hard to let God in to give His provision.  We clutter our lives with ipods, and cell phones, and tv, and xboxes and the list goes on, but how much time do we devote to letting God into our hearts?  The bible says in Matthew 6:21 that “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also”.  Do you treasure Jesus Christ?   Lastly, the good heart.  This is a fertile, good ground that would take the seed and let it grow, let it flourish and produce fruits beyond measure. 

I believe that we all have seasons of good hearts.  Just as a farmer needs to plow his soil to make it good for the seed, so too do we need to plow our hearts every so often to have good fertile ground for Christ to work within us, producing crops that will last forever.

Gary