Crazy ten year olds...

WWME #5: Culture... be careful how you program your mind!

Eventually we become what we imitate and admire.



You would be foolish to try to argue this point.


That which truly captures our imagination... the story which is the most compelling, that is the story and view of reality we write outselves into.

SO...


what we watch and experience online reflects a very likely tragectory for our hearts, and eventually our lives.



Here is the thing.

As much as parents, pastors, and other adults may try to shape our future, we are in many ways the primary programmers of our minds when we reach middle school.

We begin to choose who we will hang out with, what we will watch, what we will do with our time, what music we will listen to, and who will be our “american idol”

We choose all of these things, and then fill our brains with them to the point were it overflows and these things begin to come back out. Things as innocent as the word “like” but also dark things like negative behavior patterns and prejudice learned by watching the value system of the world played out on TV


If you are programming your future and your character, be really careful what you write into the code. It is a lot harder to erase than it is to just not put it in....

The Bible teaches many things about this, but I particularly love Romans 12:1-2

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is true worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Based on this, I had these three poings come to mind...
1. You have an amazing mind. (Eph1, Romans 12)
It learns by imitation and repetition

What you see you imitate... what you imitate you repeat... what you repeat you become... what you become is who you are.
STOP watching, imitating, and repeating things that you do not want to be true of yourself...

2. You are the main programmer of your mind... . (Romans 12, Phil 4:8, Eph 5:15)
Myspace... facebook... movies... experiences... internet... images... are all like a giant training video teaching your mind how to work.

3. Program Wisely... you are shaping your future... Romans 12, Psalm 119, Mark 12).

Be careful how you program it

So how can you program it correctly? Psalm 119 gives us great insight into this!

Psalm 119:9 How can those who are young keep their way pure? 
      
By living according to your word.
    10 I seek you with all my heart;  do not let me stray from your commands.
    11 I have hidden your word in my heart  that I might not sin against you.
    12 Praise be to you, LORD;  teach me your decrees.
    13 With my lips I recount all the laws that come from your mouth.
    14 I rejoice in following your statutes as one rejoices in great riches.
    15 I meditate on your precepts and consider your ways.
    16 I delight in your decrees; I will not neglect your word.

WWME #4: Friends... choose them well!

Choose your friends wisely...
 IF you don’t, you may find yourself not as much like yourself as you remember...



While we cannot choose our family, we absolutely choose our friends. This may not seem that significant, but who we choose to allow to have unguarded access and influence in our lives is maybe the one of the most critcially important choice we will make.



Surround yourself with the people who you would most like to be like, and the will rub off on you. Likewise, if you surround yourself with people who have negative attitudes, behaviors and vocabulary... guess what... you are looking at who you will become if you stick around long enough.


Who we choose as friends is critically important. In choosing our friends, we are choosing our future. We need to be nice to everyone, and even be friendly to everyone... but we need to think real carefully about the influence of our closest friends...


I think this verse sums it up well....

Provebs 4
13 Hold on to instruction, do not let it go;
guard it well, for it is your life.
    14 Do not set foot on the path of the wicked
or walk in the way of evildoers.
    15 Avoid it, do not travel on it;    
turn from it and go on your way.

Here were my main three points!

1. You will become like your friends... so make sure they are worth copying... (Eph 5:1-2, Prov, 4, 1 Cor 15, James 3:10)

2. Your friends will become like you... so make sure you are worth copying... (Eph 5:3-14, James 3:10)

3. Our Friends help shape us into who God wants us to be... (5:15-21)

PS... IF YOU WANT TO KEEP LOVING GOD, YOU BETTER FIND SOME FRIENDS TO ENCOURAGE YOU IN THIS...

World Wide ME: The Fam.

Its hard to live out your faith in your own family. 


More to the point, it might be the hardest place to really live for Jesus.

Why?

It really comes from a combination of long term conflict, proximity, embarrassment, sibling rivalry, and the natural authority struggles that are part of developing identity. All in all, for most people no one else will ever be as close as family, and no one will ever hurt you like family.


Especially for teens and pre-teens, dealing with family can be a major stressor.

They are hostages to their family in many ways.

Why do I say this?

Well...

their family controls where they live, what they watch, who the can be friends with, what clothes they get to wear, whether they get to have pierces ears or long hair, or get frosted tips. Students are in every way captive to their parents controls, and while this is God’s good design for protecting them, it creates lots of angst as they try to become their own people. In many cases, the biggest struggles come when students are either very different from their parents or very similar.

Add to this a rapidly changing body, raging hormonal and brain chemistry changes, and a social explosion of self awareness, and you pretty much have a perfect storm...

which is exactly what you find in most houses that have teenagers...

Yet... The bible give great council to both parent, child and sibling as to how to master their walk of faith in this turmultiotus yet beautiful thing we call family.

God's purpose in family is bigger than us... it is bigger than our parents. He has created the family to be the fabric of society... the glue that holds everything together...

Ultimately family is where the story of God is supposed to be passed from one generation to another.

While often it gets rough for parents and kids as they go through middle school and high school, keep in mind that God put you in your family to shape you, and them, into who he wants you to be.

HOW can you help your family to experience the love of Christ in a more meaningful way?

What behaviors of yours might cause your family to be a hard place for others in it?

The Great Day of Service!

The Great Day of Service

Saturday, April 19th

Cost: $10 includes Lunch, T-Shirt, Transportation, and Supplies

This day is an awesome chance to bless our community and to experience the joy of serving.

Get Registered here!

"My King" by S. M. Lockeridge

I first heard this portion of a S. M. Lockridge sermon when I was a student at Moody Bible...

Since then I tracked it down and have used it on many occasions with students...

This is my favorite Video presentation of it. I even like it better than two different ones I have made on my own. Right now, I am thinking a lot about how to make videos like this.

Hiding out in the church...

When I was in youth group, I loved playing hide and seek in the church. The church i grew up in was a giant 5 story building that was built in the 1800's and had secret rooms and compartments all over the place, so it was super fun to find great places to hide.

My friends, Jason and Jim-Bob and I were hiding one day and we decided to hide out in the attic above the highest story of the church. This was great fun, except that Jim-Bob was a giant... he was about 6-5 and weighed around 300lbs. SO after much pushing and pulling we managed to get him up into the little trap door for the attic, and crawl up ourselves. The space in the attic was tight and the air was very still. We could hear everyone looking for us for a long time... eventually we heard them right below us...

My heart raced when I heard someone say, "I bet they are up in the attic!"

Thinking quickly, I jumped onto the trap door, and pulled Jim-Bob onto it as well. When the seekers tried to open it, it would not budge... our combined weight of 480+ pounds was not going anywhere.

"It must be locked, so they can't be up there" was what we heard from below.

We had done it... we had escaped capture in the church... We had hidden out, and even though people had a vague idea that we must be there, they were unable to get through our clever hiding ploy. As it turned out, they looked for us for almost an hour, then gave up and went on playing a new round...

I think this is a great metaphor for what happens in church all the time...

People come into the building, but because of their own fears, they put on masks and hide. At first, the church tries to "find" these people, but quickly bore of the effort and give up. So for so many people, they remain visible in the church, but their true suffering and pain is masked and hidden. They are hiding in plain sight, but everyone is moving to quickly to notice. It is like they are inches away physically, but there are entire areas of their life that no one knows about and no one care about...

This is a tragedy.

Are you hiding out in the church?

Are your friends Hiding out?

Often the people we think we know, might have deep pain that they are dying to share with someone, but no one has time to "look for them"

WorldWideME: Who are you at Church??


God has known from the beginning that humans need friendship. We need other people to truly thrive. After the fall, humans put on masks in the form of clothes, and tried to hide from God. They actually thought they could do it... Hide from him... but he searched for them and found them. He is still finding us today. We try to hide, but we need to be found by God and by other loving humans.

We need community to survive, and as much as we want to hide our sins, struggle and insecurities from the watching world, the lonelyness of hiding is actually worse than the shame of being found out in our secrets and shame.

God created the church to be a community where everyone could be found and everyone could be loved... Are we the type of community that finds and loves everyone?

Peeps: Explosive Peer Pressure (3 of 5)

Phil has had a rough couple of weeks, but he is back and now he has a girlfriend. Chicklet is awesome, everything that he wants in a marshmallow companion... but Phil still does not know how to get a handle on peer pressure
Once again, Phil gives into peer pressure with explosive results.

Peeps: Loneliness can make you stupid (2 of 5)

Being a Marshmallow peep can be challenging... especially when it comes to making new friends. See what happens when Phil tries to make a new friend

Phil finds out first hand that sometimes loneliness is not as bad as having friends who are stupid.

WWME 1: Are You World Wide?

During this series we are going to be exploring that multiple personalities that we each have... we may not realize it, but so often we adjust who we are to fit into our surroundings...

We learn early on to wear masks to protect ourselves...

Our masks may put on a face that portrays: confident, happy, christian, cool, tough, collected, smart, pretty, rich, etc...

We put them on to fit in and to hide what is really going on inside...

Often we also wear different masks in each different part of our life... or.. in the different worlds we live in...

Most of us act differently when we are at Home... or Church... or with our Friends or when we are online or watching TV.

Often we develop a different personality for each of these "worlds" we live in. They develop sorta independent of each other... they are compartmentalized. This leads to an accidental hypocrisy where how I live in one of my worlds, discredits what I say I believe in another...
So here is the question... which one of those personalities is really you?

What gets lost when we pretend is who we really are... and we are the first ones to lose it... and sometimes we never get it back.

Jesus said...
MARK 14:30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.'

He is not simply interested in who we are in Church-world... Jesus is with us all the time... and he knows the true "ME" even if i am not sure who that is..


Interestingly enough... this series gives us a great chance to explain our names and logos....
We think that God wants us to help students to navigate their whole life... not just church.... therefore we want to be at the "NEXUS" or centerpoint of where all these worlds collide. IF you look at the Mosaic and Nexus Logo's, both were made to reflect the different worlds of our students...

Peeps: Making New friends is hard. (1 of 5)

Sometimes it's hard to make new friends. Phil the peep and Francis the puppy look like they are going to be friends