Reform and Refresh

Some wise words from my lovely weekend down on the south coast:

• Our life with Christ is an exchanged life - his becomes ours, but we also have to give ours over to him.
• God calls us to go deeper in our relationship with him...we can't get so full of what we have that we don't continue to dig deeper.
• We must be desperate for Jesus.
• What we are is what we reproduce, not what we say. We need to model the Word of God for our young people.
• Who is our parish? Is it only our church members? Is it the community around the church? Is it our town? Who then are we responsible for?
• Faith has moved mountains before and it can again!

Wow...what a weekend I just returned from. I was at a YouthWork conference, the largest conference for youth workers/pastors in the UK. There were about 2000 of us youth workers there. We spent all weekend learning, meeting others, attending seminars, worshipping and being in the presence of God. I have not felt that full, that energized, that refreshed in a long time. I came back to my home first in excitement to be back (I missed it!) and secondly, eager to start work again so I can use what I had learned.

The whole weekend was called Reform and we were digging deeper into reforming ourselves and reforming our youth. We cannot reform our young people until we reform ourselves and that involves reading his word, meditating on it, seeking his guidance and pushing our relationship to the next level. As one of the worship leaders wrote in a song, we are to be concerned with what God wants us to be concerned with. She wrote:
"Break our hearts for the things that break yours."
Justice. Equality. Love. Mercy. Kindness.

One thing I really took to heart this weekend is this: We are all made in God's image; we are all "good" in God's eyes...and that should make us feel special. We are God's children and we are wonderfully made. How great is our God.

Peace be with you.
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