So my excitement continues to grow as I learned this week we will be departing from Ft Lauderdale, FL on the tenth of January. Two months from now, WOW!!!
This past weekend I got to share the good news of Jesus Christ with about 150 middle and high school kids! The church I work with hosted an all night lock in on Friday to help raise funds for there short term missions trip this summer. It was a great time and everyone seemed to have a blast.
Because I am going on The World Race, and knowing my testimony, I was asked to share the gospel and my testimony in twenty minutes at 1:30 in the morning with these guys. Needless to say I was super excited for the opportunity. I have never preached the gospel on a lit stage before or in front of that many people, but He was there to guide me and reassure me the whole way. (We serve an awesome God!)
As soon as I was asked to speak it was as if the message wrote itself. I focused on man’s relationship with God, starting in the beginning and went on from there. I explained how man was made to simply walk in the Garden of Eden with God, to have a relationship with Him. I explained that God wanted to protect us from evil by hiding it from us, while still giving us a choice whether or not to know it. I shared how sin entering man changed that relationship with God (explaining what sin was and how the devil had been caste down from heaven because of his pride). How God loved us even in our sin, but because of sin we didn’t fully love and worship God anymore. We began to love and worship things of ourselves and stopped seeking our Father and His love. I finished with how God has restored our relationship with Himself through the blood of the cross in the name of Christ; then I shared my testimony.
That is the super cliff noted version of the message I gave, but I felt so honored to be able to share the relationship I have with God to these young men and women. In my heart I wanted to present the gospel in such a way that the message wasn’t emphasizing there eternal salvation (although I did mention it), but rather the restored relationship man has with God on earth, here and now! A relationship that will change the way they view the world and everyone in it. Praise be to God in the name of Christ Jesus our lord!!!
