YEC 2012 thoughts

I’m in the Blue Cypress Hotel on the last morning of YEC 2012 in Arlington and I am praying that on this last day students would take a step of faith and trust God with 100% of themselves.  I know for myself that being Sold Out for Christ is the only way to attain the abundant life Jesus mentions in John 10:10. Anything less results in a double minded man or woman that is turn down continually by the flesh they cling too. 

In the midst of this desire for the students, I am prompted with our own “Fill the Chairs Campaign” in which students seek to tell everyone they can about Jesus, filling the empty chairs that are added to our youth room every week. What a daunting task to see another empty chair added every week regardless of whether they have filled it or not. But what a powerful image of our daily walk and the blunt reality that those empty chairs represent a real person, stuck in a bottomless pit of muck and mire with no hope of escape unless we introduce them to Jesus. He’s the only one strong enough to pull them from such a place and we should know this so well. We should know because we too were once stuck in the pit without hope until someone introduced us.

What a poor example of love it is to think that we were pulled from the depths of sin and upon our stepping on the solid rock we walk away knowing others are still trapped. How could we be so cold, so selfish?

I am beyond convicted that I have been too complacent in evangelism, too lazy in my pursuit of Jesus, too distracted by the flashing lights of sin. I have been like a moth to a flame. I am being burned by the desires of the flesh.

But that is the past and like all those in Christ, through confession and repentance, Jesus has removed that shame and replaced it with a genuine love for those around me. I too was with them but now I become, “all things to all people that we [I] might save some.”

May God continually shake me from the lullaby of sin to be awake and ready for God’s purposes.

This may be jumbled but its early and I have been up with teenage boys far too long.