Monday, April 4, 2011

Last Night At Contagious

We had a great time last night at Contagious. We read our latest letter from Remilda, our Compassion International child, she is doing great and is excited to be sponsored by our youth group. Remilda is 13 and we chose her because we thought it would be cool for the students to sponsor a kid in their age range. I was dreaming last week: How cool would it be to take a group of students in 5 years to the Philippines to meet Remilda?

We continued our "Letters from the Mailbox" last night. "I have screwed up. How do I learn to forgive myself?" We took a look at the life of David in our POD time. We learned from Nathan's confrontation with King David. 2 Samuel 11,12 and Psalm 51 were our texts.

We were challenged to face our guilt and own up to what we have done wrong. The next step is to have a real gut check, many people say "sorry" very flippantly without meaning it and we have to get a real understand of our sin. Next we must make ammends with God through confession and with others who we may have also impacted in our sin. After making amends we must turn away from our sin (repent) and head the other direction. Finally since Jesus died on the cross for all our sins we must accept God's forgiveness and embrace his grace. Since God has forgiven us and views us as "spotless" we should rest in that fact and forgive ourselves without digging up our sins that were buried at the foot of the cross.

This past weekend I was able to attend the After Prom party our community hosts at the YMCA. It was fun to hang with the students for a couple of hours. As I get older I'm quickly realizing my days of late nights and all nighters at student events are over. I was tired all day yesterday, a sign of old age.

Today is Monday and I'm tired. I usually work on Mondays but I know that to do so today would be a big mistake. I need to re-energize spiritually, emotionally and physically. I hear stories of guys in ministry burning out because they don't take time to re-energize. I don't want to be "that guy". My day started off with some time in the Bible, breakfast with my kids and a Bill's Pastry glazed donut, a great start to my day.

No comments:

New Site is up and Running

My new web site which now hosts my blog posts is up and fully functional. You can check it out at andylawrenson.com . There is also a ...