Continuing to Collide..Collide with Ourselves

At youth group we are doing a 4 week study called "collide", next week is week four. We have talked about Colliding with god for 2 weeks, we talked about colliding with ourselves this week, and next week we are talking about colliding with the world. At the end of focus tonight ( PCC's youth group) we were challenged by marc chewning to "fast something for one week" he wanted us to give up the time we spend doing that activity and use it to give to God. So... i have decided to give up facebook :(. i know it will be a challenge and i will prob. go crazy, but its what im addicted to, so i need to give it up. I want to see if i can somehow live without facebook and maybe when im "allowed" to be back on i wont want to be on as often or for such long periods of time. During this week i will be writing about my facebookless experience and next tuesday i will write a big note and have it on here. I challenge you to fast something too. it doesnt have to be facebook, but give something up for a week and see how you turn out in the end......

Collide Continues

Continuing the Collide series last night, our student ministry slapped on some face paint to create their very own wrestler masks! Names of wrestlers included anything from “The Kitten” to “Muffin Top Dominator”. No matches occurred, but we can rest assured that it would’ve been a pretty brutal series of combat. Wrestling with God was our focus.
The most entertaining game we played that night was where all the boys would link arms in a circle together, while the girls struggled to pull them apart. As you can imagine, it got can get quite aggressive. But the boys held out well in the course of a few minutes. When it came to the girls trying to stay together, well…it only took under two minutes for our “strong” boys to separate each girl from the other. Nonetheless, the game was a lot of fun! Worship had a similar set list to previous FOCUS nights. To fit in with the collide theme, the song “Collide” was performed by our usual worship leaders (Sarah Brawley, Elijah Schiarelli, Matt). A more recent favorite which many of the youth has gotten into is “Desert Song” by Hillsong. Every new time we sing this tune, it has a more powerful meaning to us. Each person has seemed to memorize the words “all of my life, in every season, you are still God, I have a reason to sing, I have a reason to worship”. The enthusiasm of getting to know the Lord better is beginning to shine.
Angie Frame taught a very important lesson that night about wrestling with God. She asked, “What is worth staying up all night?”. Ofcourse, many of the students answered, “sleepovers”, “video games”, “movies”, etc. Frame agreed these were great things to stay up for. However, is struggling with God worth staying up all night for? Referring to the story of Jacob Wrestles with God in Genesis 32:22-32, we learned about how Jacob’s troubles were not with people, as he had blamed them on all along, but they were problems he had with God Himself! In this story, Jacob wrestles with an angel all night, and Jacob exclaims, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” So after a night of tiring wrestling, the angel names him Israel for he had overcome his problems with man and God. From there Jacob received a blessing.
What’s important that Angie really brought our attention to is the fact that the connection with God is not always going to be through singing worship songs and such, but rather He will see our commitment by how much we sacrifice for Him. Our time. Would we still praise God the same way when he greatly challenges us? God is not always a pocketful of sunshine, His ways are mysterious and sometimes we go through darkness in order to see His light. Whatever we all may be going through now, God has it under His control, and we can be thankful for the struggle and the happiness. Jacob was blessed because he fought until God answered his cry. Angie was suggesting that, hey, if we choose to take serious time out of our lives to comprehend the Lord’s ways in our lives, and keep battling for an answer, then God will be pleased that we have overcome our challenges. We will be rewarded for our devotion
Same as last week, the message might’ve not been the most comforting, but it is an important lesson to absorb as a Christian. In this case, as a young Christian who is yet to experience more life in the eyes of God.

Collide Begins

Sunday night our new series, Collide, began at FOCUS. The idea for this series came from one of our seniors, Elijah Schiarelli, and he kicked us off with a passionate message. Students entered to a playlist of songs about colliding, and then we watched an introductory video created by our very own Sarah Brawley. We ventured outside to collide with a piñata, and then students and adults collided with one another as they were tied up in groups for dodgeball and soccer. Joseph Freeman showed us a video about an evangelism linebacker which was hilarious! We played Trainwreck, a long-time favorite FOCUS game in which we collide with one another as we race for open seats and learn interesting bits of information about one another—like who’s the only person to have dated two Brawleys.

Sarah Brawley led us in beautiful worship, including “Sweetly Broken,” a song about being sweetly broken and wholly surrendered to God.

One of Elijah’s points in his message was that when things collide, they break. The same happens when we collide with God—we break, but that’s good. Brokenness is a good thing, and that’s difficult to wrap our minds around. When things—cars, washers and dryers, refrigerators—break, it costs us money and convenience. In essence, brokenness is bad. But not when it comes to us and God. Elijah pointed out that when we, with our ambitions, our pride, our agendas, are broken, we are most accessible to God. When we collide with God, we break, but that means God gets to put us back together. That means God puts our priorities, our attitudes, our goals, our ambitions, our dreams together so that they reflect his perfect will for us. Being broken usually involves pain on our parts, but it’s good, healthy, growing pain. Two members of the crowd Sunday night, one adult and one relatively new student, courageously spoke up about their own experiences of making poor choices and then coming to God in states of brokenness.
Elijah also made some bold statements that he felt led to say. He called students out by proclaiming that if they were offended by something said during the Collide series, they should go to God in prayer to see what he was trying to say to them. He said that it’s not okay to intentionally sin all week and then show up at church and FOCUS knowing you’ll hear all about how God loves you and forgives you. Elijah reiterated that God does love us and is willing to forgive us, but that we also have a responsibility to live lives that will please God. He called students out to a higher level of commitment to God and a Christian lifestyle.
The other messages in this Collide series will also call students to collide with themselves and their world in bold, radical ways. The church’s current series is called, “You Can’t Handle the Truth,” but I wonder if that phrase may more appropriately name the current FOCUS series where students are speaking bold, difficult truths from the Bible. Our student speakers, Elijah, Sarah, and Marc Chewning, feel that it’s time to step up and proclaim a Gospel that isn’t always a warm, fuzzy blanket, but a Gospel that calls us to follow Jesus 100% in selfless, sacrificial, and seemingly unusual ways. If you’re ready to hear something different, then come join us for the rest of Collide.