God is Bigger than .....

What is God biggern than, is He bigger than the boogy man (for all you Veggie Tales fans). Is He bigger than your pride, is He bigger than your anger, than your disappointment, than your failures, than your successes. The last 2 days have been a period of time when I have had many conversations with people about the bigness of God and how He works in our world. In the past 2 days we have had 2 of our student's grandma's pass away and this morning an 8th grader from Mattawn passed away after collapsing at the baseball fields last night. Is God bigger than the pain of a student losing their grandparent, is He bigger than the excruciating pain of a parent losing their child way before it should happen. Is God bigger than the confusion of a student who lost one of their best friends?

I believe that He is. Over the last 5 hours as I have talked to friends, family, and teachers of the 8th grade student, I have been amazed out how God has brought together so many people in this family's life to be positioned to be the hands and feet of Jesus to this family.

So what is God bigger than, can we allow Him to be bigger than our pain, disappointment loss or do we end up fighting God because we don't believe He is big enough to handle the feelings we have? I know God is bigger than death, He proved that through His son Jesus and He give the opportunity to experience that power of a God that is bigger than death. Romans 8:38,39 -- Nothing - not the worst that this world can throw our way can separate us from God -- My God is bigger than ANYTHING that I deal with. I need help experiencing that.

When the Sky Falls In
There is a great old children’s story about the sky falling and how the chicken kept running around thinking that the world is literally falling apart on top of his head. This story hit me today. Over the last 24 hours I have a good friend of mine who has to have further testing on something that could be cancer and I got a call from my dad that my grandma has to go to a cardiologist and that her heart is starting to fail. My grandma believed in me even before I believed in myself and has taught me more about life and what it means to love God more than anyone else. After the past day of feeling like the world is crashing in, I realize that it would be really easy for me to run around, feeling like the world is falling apart and that nothing is going well and fall into a depression, in fact I used to do that a lot. What do you do when the world crashes in, what attitude do you have, do you get angry, depressed, numb, or create your own world with your own reality? For me when my world crashes in, my first instinct is to go run and hide, to avoid the reality of what I need to do and just pretend it doesn’t exist or that is doesn’t bug me. Over the last five years God has helped me deal with the world crashing in, what I like to call Satan’s attacks, in a whole new way. I have learned to battle, to rely on people, and to try to give it to God. Things don’t turn out perfect but it helps tremendously for me to realize when my world crashes in, I’m not alone.

MYTHBUSTERS:SEX SERIES#4
Last night we finished our Mythbusters series and I am tired -- not necessarily physically, but mentally. We had a great time in this series and we covered a lot of TRUTH in our series and we blew up a lot of myths that Satan throws our way. With that satan threw some stuff our way, discouragement, apathy, weird technical glitches, including my video camera self destructing and according to the great experts at Circuit City -- whatever happened is nonrepairable. Yet with all of this happenining, God showed up in some obvious and not so obvious ways.

Some of my experiences from this series -- Truth can hurt and is almost ALWAYS tough to apply to our lives especially if it affects things close to our hearts. Knowing Truth is easy compared to applying it. Just like as a kid I knew the Truth that if you went outside all day without a shirt on in the summer you would get sunburned, but every year I still did it and when I felt the pain of not being able to breathe because my skin hurt so bad I promised myself I would never do it again, but somehow every summer I would do it again. Pain is sometimes a great reminder of not living Truth.

If Jesus Showed Up As A Teenager Today
What would Jesus look like if he showed up as a teenager today -- would he rebel against the local church, the culture, maybe most importantly how would He show His love to the hurting world of today. Jesus did some amazing things when He was on earth, encouraged the downtrodden, healed the sick, reached out to the outcast, gave hope in hopeless situations. What would He do today. Would He be a leader, a jock, a member of the band, a 4.0 student who all the teachers love, a person getting in troubel for constantly challenging the mindset of "its always been done that way". How would He treat His friends, His enemies, the random kid at school who doesn't talk to anyone and looks weird. Woudl Jesus go to church, what would He say about church? Some really great thoughts to think about, most importantly to me is how would He show His love to the people around Him? How can you show His love to the people around you.

If Jesus Showed Up As A Teenager Today
What would Jesus look like if he showed up as a teenager today -- would he rebel against the local church, the culture, maybe most importantly how would He show His love to the hurting world of today. Jesus did some amazing things when He was on earth, encouraged the downtrodden, healed the sick, reached out to the outcast, gave hope in hopeless situations. What would He do today. Would He be a leader, a jock, a member of the band, a 4.0 student who all the teachers love, a person getting in troubel for constantly challenging the mindset of "its always been done that way". How would He treat His friends, His enemies, the random kid at school who doesn't talk to anyone and looks weird. Woudl Jesus go to church, what would He say about church? Some really great thoughts to think about, most importantly to me is how would He show His love to the people around Him? How can you show His love to the people around you.

MYTHBUSTERS: SEX EDITION WEEK 3

We had another great week this week as we looked deep into the whole concept of dating and what Satan is telling us about dating, boundaries, and the consequences. Satan throws a ton of myths at us about what dating is, what dating can lead us to, and how dating can lead us to places we never end to go to. The dangers of dating are emotional, physical, and mental pain that we can not put a price tag on and can not understand until we experience the pain. We talked about that for most people we want to just feel loved and feel that someone anyone loves us. Unfortunately in our world the three words of I LOVE YOU have been abused, misused, and over used. In our teen world so many people are willing to let our boundaries, our limits go, just so someone will utter the words, I LOVE YOU. We have to help people see, experience the power of God’s love and what that really means – no manipulation, no selfish motives, no conditions. We have to encourage our students, our world to see God’s love and experience it to the fullest.

So far in this series, we have had a ton of great conversation and have had a chance to think about a lot of myths that Satan throws our way. Something that I am surprised about is that for the first week in the student ministry here at Southridge we had more guys than girls in our middle and high school ministry. Out of the nearly 200 students we had over 100 of them were guys. Awesome stuff, wandering why guys are being attracted to talking about sex and the 21st century. What do you think?