I am a meteorologist and a former youth leader at church…I have a lot to say on both subjects…and then some
With all that was going on, and the feelings that I have been processing through, I felt God asking me to work this one up. Part of this comes from a conversation at Celebrate Recovery (no details, just that we were talking about making amends and forgiveness, a couple of the chapters cover these) and part from some videos that I own.
We started off with an object lesson that included the students to take an Alka-Seltzer tablet in their mouth and then put 7up in there and try to hold it for as long as possible. Anger is like that isn’t it? It cause us foam at the mouth or we try to hold it in. When we do let it out we create a mess and it leaves a bad taste in our mouthes. Paul said in Ephesians, “In your anger, do not sin.” (remember that sin is separation from God).
What are we looking for?
We want to be free, healthy, and whole. We don’t want what somebody else did to you to determine your life.
So how do we react when somebody does something to us?
Revenge becomes our only hope, so we really aren’t free. Revenge is saying to God, “I don’t trust you to take care of this the way I want it to end.” However, revenge doesn’t satisfy.
So Forgiveness is the answer. The Cross is God’s sign of forgiveness to us. So let’s see how Jesus deals this.
Mark 3:1-6
Here Jesus – gets angry
– identifies with an injustice and not a selfish desire
– anger leads to an act of healing
Anger is the body’s reaction to your will being blocked.
People’s anger usually has nothing to with the person to whom it is vented.
The problem isn’t anger, but what we do with it.
What does your anger do?
Jesus in the “Sermon on the Mount.”- Matthew 5:38-41
Jesus quotes from Leviticus about an eye for an eye. Here’s a little background on that passage: There was so much revenge in Genesis to Exodus. Anyone who sinned against Cain would get back 7 times (Genesis 4:15) and later Lamech talks about being avenged seventy time seven (Genesis 4:23-24). So revenge had an escalating quality. You do something to me and I’ll do something worse. This went on until Moses when he limited what could be done. Don’t do more than was done to you. Now Jesus says to let God handle it and love the wrong doer.
So channel anger into healing.
So Paul talks about this many times. Here are a few: Ephesians 4:26-27, 31-32 and Romans 12:16-21 (and Paul quotes Proverbs 25:21-22).
In Celebrate Recovery, we learn to do an inventory of our hurts, habits, and hang ups. We search for where our anger comes from. Do you have the courage to search where your anger comes from? Do you want to be free?
There will always be things to complain about. People will always need your help.
Which will you choose? Being a slave to anger? or the freedom to heal?
An interesting thing has taken place while away from Facebook, I have been reading. Not just the blogs, although since my netbook has been underperforming, I have been reading books. I finished Youth Ministry 3.0 and am over halfway through The Year of Living Like Jesus. Wow, and I have rested! So I haven’t fallen asleep while reading either. Can’t wait for The Gospel According to Moses. That looks good too.
We have been seeing more of this at the youth group:
For today’s teenagers, it’s less about breaking down barriers than retreating behind them. Anxiety levels are rising among the young, thanks perhaps to a mix of political events and “paranoid parenting.” Recent surveys suggest as many as one in five teens now suffers from clinical depression. A typical teenager today exhibits more anxiety than child psychiatric patients did in the 1950s, according to the American Psychological Association. This is driving a trend for more conservative behaviors.
So what does it take to break down these barriers? Any thoughts?
via Old Is the New Young.
I sometimes get the feeling that we could be doing better in church, than we do, and it is easy for me to go off to the extreme if I see something that looks “cool”.
I have been tempering that as of late. I’m trying to moderate my initial enthusiasm for a program or speaker so that I can say how could this help improve what we are doing, and not this is the new way.
Josh Griffin who’s the High School Ministry pastor at Saddleback church pointed to a video about missional churches. The the link to Tony Morgan’s blog
about either/or thinking, when we should probably be both/and thinking. Either/or thinking, when it comes to church, usually leads to somebody else is doing it wrong. He gives this as the reason:
The problem, of course, is that we like to worship our methods. Our preferences are the priority. In fact, we shape religion around our preferences even if it means sacrificing the broader impact of our ministry. Why help other people when it might make us uncomfortable?
That has been my experience in my own life as well as churches that I have attended. We try to worship our methods at worshipping God rather than God himself. Kind of like what Paul says in Romans 1:25.
Embracing the both/and way of doing things, both ways of worship/discipleship/evangelism/mission will work in the context of the culture that they are immersed in. In that way, we all do church together.
With all of the things going on in my life, it is easy for me to be blinded to the things that God is trying to show me through my day to day routine. With the arrival of Remmy Rozaland McNamara, I feel the need to slow down and look at the things around me.
Remmy started things off with the pondering, did she take her first breath? or did she say the name of God?
Next, I threw a polemic out on Facebook chastising all of us, for feel good (lead by Hollywood) giving to Haiti. I had to explain to a young friend of mine that I wasn’t saying we shouldn’t be giving to help Haiti, but we do a terrible job at helping the poor of this country, and other countries. We can afford it. As I recently was reminded that 8% of the world owns a car. That the amount of ice cream sales in America for a year, we could drill wells and provide clean drinking water to everyone on the planet.
Don’t ask God to feed the hungry when you have plenty of food. We are saved to do good works, not do good works to be saved.
My thoughts then drifted to the vehicle situation, when at times I feel like the psalmist laments in Psalms 13:1-2 and realize that God owns it all. He will prevail, and I will remain open to how He is working in the world.
Things are stirring in my life, I’m not sure how this pans out, but it does seem that good things will happen.
Here’s to you remaining open to how God is working in this world, and that you keep saying His name, even if you don’t believe in Him.
Adam McLane over at Youth Specialities posed a question about a “youth ministry gap.” That is a gap between the youth ministry that is run by a paid staffer vs. the volunteer, and the differences between the two. He asks a good question about how do we bridge the gap. I left my two cents in the comments, but it boils down to linking the two leaders so that they help each other, so that they body of Christ comes together for the good of the upcoming generation.
Okay, maybe dread is a little strong, but the way we celebrate Christmas in the U. S. to me is just wrong. What I mean is this, the church fights about the wrong stuff with this “War on Christmas,” stuff, instead of the problem that is more insidious. Consumerism.
Henry Neufeld, a United Methodist blogger, makes the point that I have been feeling for a long time.
While we’re worried about losing the external trappings of Christmas, such as public trees and manger displays, the real war on Christmas is practically won already. Christmas has almost nothing at all to do with Jesus. This has been my opinion for many years. Christmas as celebrated in America, even in most of our churches, is about us and our economic prosperity, not about Jesus and his good news.
This is something that needs to be taken out of the church. It is hard to extract, but I think that if we extract this consumeristic view of Christmas, we may just get a revival in this land. I think that some of this is happening. It will be a slow process.
Read his whole post.
Nightline – Darker Side of Sin City This was pointed out to me by the XXXChurch people. There is a whole other world under Las Vegas. Wow.
Online Slide shows are a little hard to follow sometimes, since you don’t get the presentor with the presentation. However, I was able to get the gist of the this. Pretty decent. 
Thought I would pass this one along. We all struggle with this. I do. The problem is that we begin to see the people we despise as not human, so we think we can treat them as something other than what they are…a child of God.
