I must confess, I am having a hard time getting to these blogs. I thought that it wouldn’t be too bad to sit down and write one every day but it isn’t easy to find time to just sit down and write. When I do find the time to sit down to catch my breath my eyes start to grow heavy. This just shows that we are staying busy, the good type of busy though. Today’s theme was scrubbed. In morning Bible study we are pointed to the story of Jesus washing the Disciples’ feet, in John 13. From this story we received three main points. First, if we are Christians then we are, like it or not, servants. Second point is being a servant requires humility. And lastly, being a servant requires action. This last point of requiring action continued into our night time Bible study and worship. We looked at Colossians 2:13-15:
“When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.”
Dustin, the camp pastor, put emphasis on the word dead in the first sentence. It was not like we needed CPR to bring us alive, we needed a miracle to bring us to life. Dustin continued to walk us down the road of salvation, emphasis on continued. Dustin has been a blessing this week to me and all of us here. He is able to communicate things that the students have heard a million times in a easy way that they get. Students will be like, “Oh that is cool” or “I didn’t know that” And I’m like well I have said it in our small group and Steve has preached it hundreds of times. I just love that the students think that there is something special about camp, when in fact, they can grow at home as much as they are growing here if they were just in the Word 5 or so times a day, and had morning and night worship services, and got rid of all of the distraction that this world has to offer.
One thing that I hit me hard, and all of our students, were the statistics. The latest data says that there are approximately 1.5 billion Christians in the world, although lets not let this number fool us because we know that in this category are people who falsely proclaim to be Christians, this includes Jehovah’s witnesses, etc. Now you might be thinking that that is a huge number, and is it but when you consider that the total population in the world is estimated at 6.9 billion people we see that there is a devastating problem. There are about 5.4 billion people who don’t know the love of Christ. Again this number is too big to even think about so lets break it down. If you stood the 5.4 billion people side-by-side it would make a line that is 2.9 million miles long. That line would wrap around the earth 125 times. Now do you imagine that number? That is the number of people who don’t know Jesus as there Lord and Savior. These are the people that are going to hell. Yes, I said it hell. I know we try to get away from the fire and brimstone preaching but you can’t deny the truth of the gospel.
So what does this mean for us, the students, the parents, the Christians? It means that we need to stop being Pew Fillers and start serving. As the Frank Sinatra song says it, “Start spreading the news!” Everyone is called to be a missionary. Some are called to leave and go to India, where we Skyped an orphanage that J-Creek is help sponsor, these family opens their home to about 200 – 250 children a day, and they tutor the children before school and then after school they work with the students, teach them about Jesus, and love on them. Thursday night we, as a camp, will be taking up an offering for this orphanage. This family gives the children one meal a day in the afternoon and that is the only meal these children will get all day. Some people are called to serve in Senegal or China. But others still are called to serve right where they are planted, in their schools, at their jobs, in their neighborhoods and communities. So lets stop being a church of the served and start being a church of the serving.
Ok, well like I tell my students at school, I can tend to chase a rabbit until the rabbit becomes too tired and dies. Students are growing and learning. They are upset that there is only one more day left at camp. I would encourage parents to ask your child, when they get back, about their spiritual life. And don’t settle for just, “It’s good.” Make them tell you what they learned, they can do it because we make them do it for us several times throughout the day. I ask that you pray for these students, in that they will continue to be on fire for Christ but not that it will be because of a Church camp high but that it will be because Christ has changed them this week.
I know that I’m a day off in the blog but I will sum up Thursday and Friday on Friday night when we get back. There won’t be time for updates tomorrow and I think I might try to take a 10 minute nap before I have to go to supper, but I’m not getting my hopes up!!!
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