The goodness of our God!

The goodness of our God was overwhelming this week. So many moments looking back that I could clearly see Christ working in my kids. I could see change in small yet significant ways.

One day due to a smaller number of youth we decided to combine the two girl groups and do the bible study together. I led it on Colossians 3:12-17 discussing the things that God desires for us to be, characteristics of a Christian. I also had an activity that I once did in a workshop with Liz Schouwstra which was filling in two mirrors, the first with things that I saw in my own reflection, good and bad. The second filling with the things we learned from the bible that God desires for us to be.
The girls completed this activity and then discussed the things that we have trouble being, things like being patient or kind and talked about how we could work on being these things more intentionally.

Honestly I did not think it went very well, it felt like they just went through the motions missing the main points wanting the bible study to finish so that they could go play. But it was later were I was smacked in the face with the reality of how God working in that bible study even when I couldn't see it.
A group of kids, mixed gender and age were all playing a game together, that alone was amazing, to see girls who normally don't socialize sharing in a personal joke! But it was during this time that one of the girls who had shared that she struggled with patience was getting quite frustrated with one of the boys and one of the leaders overheard her coaching and reminding herself to be patient and not to get angry, that my friends is God alive and active in this young lady!

I also had the opportunity to leader the entire group in bible study this past Friday evening. Earlier this week I sat down to start to plan and couldn't for the life of me thing of a topic to lead it on. I left it a couple days frustrated with the fact that there was nothing I could think of that was good enough. But then God places a burden on my heart to talk about carrying one another burdens. I must say that it must be frustrating and amazing to be a pastor and have the burden of coming up with things to preach on but then having God place things on your heart to preach on because it was such a cool experience for me. So I prepared the bible study.
When Friday night rolled around I was quite frustrated and burden with a few things myself. Try to teach a bible study on burdens when you feel weighed down is not a very  good place to be but again God is sovereign. My street leader jumped right in with helping and God moved. He opened their hearts to hear what I was saying and He moved them to respond with their own thoughts and ideas. Kids who normally remain quiet spoke up and shared burdens they were carrying as well as ways they could help carry others burdens. The amazing part is we could finish this discussion about burdens and how we can do things physically to help others by marveling over how Christ came and took from us the greatest burden of all which is our sin and how we don't need to be weighed down by it anymore!

 “Cast your burdens on God and He will sustain you, he will never permit the righteous to be moved.” Psalm 55:22