Was Reading “Six Hours One Friday” written by Max Lucado.

In it he says…

“Six hours. One Friday.

Let me ask you a question: What do you do with that day in history? What do you do with its claims?

If it really happened…if God did commandeer his own crucifixion…if he did turn his back on his own son…if he did storm Satan’s gate, then those 6 hours that Friday were packed with tragic triumph. If that was God on that cross, then the hill called Skull is granite studded with stakes to which you can anchor.

Those 6 hours were no normal 6 hours. They were the most critical hours in history. For during those 6 hours on that Friday, God embedded in the earth 3 anchor points sturdy enough to withstand any hurricane.

Anchor point #1 – My life is not futile. This rock secures the hull of your heart. Its sole function is to give you something which you can grip when facing the surging tides of futility and relativism. It’s a firm grasp on the conviction that there is truth. Someone is in control and you have a purpose.

Anchor point #2 – My failures are not fatal. It’s not that he loves what you did, but he loves who you are. You are his. The one who has the right to condemn you provided the way to acquit you. You make mistakes. God doesn’t. And he made you.

Anchor point #3 – My death is not final. There is one more stone to which you should tie. It’s large. It’s round. And it’s heavy. It blocked the door of a grave. It wasn’t big enough though. The tomb that it sealed was the tomb of a transient. He only went in to prove he could come out. And on the way out he took the stone with him and turned it into an anchor point. He dropped it deep into the uncharted waters of death. Tie to his rock and the typhoon of the tomb becomes a spring breeze on Easter Sunday.

There they are. Three anchor points. The anchor points of the cross.

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I think all three of these have powerful lessons for our youth.

Life is not futile. Everyone seems to be looking for gloom on the horizon. The economy is on edge. Jobs are uncertain. The future looks difficult. And in this uncertain time, many youth are also uncertain of themselves. They wonder why they are here. Is there a reason for them to be here? Is there meaning in life.

Failures are not fatal. Youth make mistakes. We all do. It’s not making the mistake that is important, but learning from the mistakes we make. God has forgiven those mistakes and even the willful choices. Forgiveness is there for the asking. When youth fall, they need to get up, grab the hand of Jesus and keep moving forward .

Death is not final. That is powerful. Youth aren’t often concerned with death. But knowing that there is more beyond this life is important. That out time here is momentary compared to eternity. So with youthful zeal, make every moment count.

200 page e-book that explains everything you need to know when planning your very own object lessons. It contains 90 fully developed object lesson ideas and another 200 object lesson starter ideas based on Biblical idioms and Names / Descriptions of God.

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Youth, like all of us, are works in progress. And God’s priority is the development of our character.

“Bart decided to ask God to shape his character. He surrendered his own will to the will of God. At the time, Bart’s business floundered on the verge of failure. ‘Should I throw in the towel, or keep trying to hang on?’ Bart wondered.

“God replies, ‘You need to persevere.’ After we have done the will of God, then we will receive our reward. God’s will is for us to demonstrate to a hurting world how wonderfully His power can work within the person who perseveres.

“Certainly, there are days when we feel like we will die, or maybe even wish we could, but we keep going. Why? Why do we keep going? Because when we have done the will of God we will receive what He has promised.

“Will persevering guarantee we will succeed in the worldly sense of success? Is that what He has promised? Does it mean we will not go out of business if we hang on? No, but we can state emphatically that if we don’t persevere we will not succeed in any sense. Not persevering guarantees we will fail…

“Beyond succeeding in a worldly sense though, God wants our character to succeed more than our circumstances in such a way that our character eventually succeeds, for that is His highest aim, His will.”

Patrick Morley, “Walking with Christ in the Details of Life” Thomas Nelson Publishers

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“Grace is the unhindered, wondrous, boundless love of God, poured out upon us in an infinite variety of ways, not according to our deserving, but His measureless heart of love. Put together the most deep, tender love you have felt, multiply by infinity, and you will faintly glimpse the love and grace of God! To grow in grace means being planted in the very heart of this divine love, to put ourselves in His hands and leave it with Him; to grow as lilies and babes, with neither care nor anxiety…

The slightest barrier between your soul and Christ may cause you to dwindle and fade, as a plant in a cellar or under a bushel. Our divine Husbandman can turn any soil into the soil of grace the moment we place ourselves in His hands. He does not need to transplant us.

We need to learn the flowers’ secret; to grow, but only in God’s way, not hindering Him with our own anxious efforts. What the flower is by nature, we must be by an intelligent and free surrender. Self must step aside to let God work…

What a picture of life and growth far different from the ordinary life and growth of Christians–a life of rest, and growth without effort, and yet a life and growth crowned with glorious results.

We may rest assured, that all the resources of God’s infinite grace will be brought to bear on the growing of the tiniest flower in His spiritual garden, as certainly as they are in His earthly creation. The violet abides peacefully in its little place, content to receive its daily portion without concerning itself about the wandering of the winds, or the falling of the rain…”

Source: Hannah Whitall Smith “The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life”

200 page e-book that explains everything you need to know when planning your very own object lessons. It contains 90 fully developed object lesson ideas and another 200 object lesson starter ideas based on Biblical idioms and Names / Descriptions of God.

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“Security is the name of the game. Especially is this true in our relationship to God. To try to hang on to God is very tiring and very precarious.

I saw a good illustration of this in 1943 when I was a seminary student and pastor in Mountain View, California. I was walking to church on Sunday morning with my frisky, three-year-old son, Don. He was holding my hand as we walked along together. Then, without warning, Don missed his step and went sprawling on the sidewalk.

He was not hurt, but to avoid this happening again I took a firm hold of his little wrist. Sure enough, his boundless energy caused him to stumble several more times before we got to the church. But now the outcome was altogether different. When he would stumble, I would hold firmly to his wrist, and he would swing back and forth till his feet were back on the ground. What a difference it made when the father was holding on to the son instead of the son holding on to the father.

Our heavenly Father is not only the Divine Seeker, he is also the Divine Keeper. We are the recipients of both the “Divine initiative” and the “Divine tenacity.”

If my security is only as strong as my human faith and strength, then I am in real trouble. All of us are prone to sinfulness and stumbling. We all get tired trying to hang onto God, too pooped out to feel much security or peace. Our security is in God’s grip, not in ours…

Our security is not man-centered but God-centered. Our security is in a Christlike God. He is the ‘Peace-keeping force” in our lives.

Lord, help us to ‘let go and let God.’ ”

Source: Donald Russell Robertson- “Dear You” ISBN 0-8499-0677-6

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“Do not say, ‘I am a youth,’ For you shall go to all to whom I send you, And whatever I command you, you shall speak. Do not be afraid of their faces, For I am with you to deliver you,” says the Lord.” Jeremiah 1:7-8 NKJV

“God promised Jeremiah that He would deliver him personally–‘your life shall be as a prize to you…’ (Jer 39:18). That is all God promises His children. Wherever God sends us, He will guard our lives. Our personal property and possessions are to be a matter of indifference to us, and our hold on these things should be very loose. If this is not the case, we will have panic, heartache, and distress. Having the proper outlook is evidence of the deeply rooted belief in the overshadowing of God’s personal deliverance.

The Sermon on the Mount indicates that when we are on a mission for Jesus Christ, there is no time to stand up for ourselves. Jesus says, in effect, ‘Don’t worry about whether or not you are being treated justly.’ Looking for justice is actually a sign that we have been diverted from our devotion to Him. Never look for justice in this world, but never cease to give it. If we look for justice, we will only begin to complain and to indulge ourselves in the discontent of self-pity, as if to say,’Why should I be treated like this?’ If we are devoted to Jesus Christ, we have nothing to do with what we encounter, whether it is just or unjust. In essence, Jesus says, ‘Continue steadily on with what I have told you to do, and I will guard your life. If you try to guard it yourself, you remove yourself from My deliverance.’ Even the most devout of us become atheistic in this regard–we do not believe Him. We put our common sense on the throne and then attach God’s name to it. We ‘do’ lean to our own understanding, instead of trusting God with all our hearts (see Proverbs 3:5-6)”

Source: Oswald Chambers “My Utmost for His Highest” (An Updated Edition in Today’s Language edited by James Reimann)

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Scripture: Revelation 2:1-7

“For the churches in Ephesus and Laodicea, the problem was the problem of spiritual passion…What began as a wholehearted commitment to Christ and His work gradually cooled. We don’t have any of the details, only these fragments of history from Revelation, but we can picture it from our own experience.

I remember the first time I saw Ruth. With me, it was love at first sight. I can still remember the excitement I felt. I remember the first time I held her hand. I remember the thrill of the first kiss, our eyes shining with love for each other. I remember my stomach churning, heart pumping, blood boiling during our honeymoon and for years afterward. First love is wonderful. But the first flames of physical passion inevitably change.

Our love has been one of commitment. The word ‘love’ is an active, not passive, verb. It should not be confined to the physical. It is a lifetime of commitment. Ruth and I can sit on our front porch on a summer’s evening and hardly say a word, but we are communing with each other. Their love was only physical. The first flames of the honeymoon inevitably went cool, then the day-to-day routine settled in. The passion of first love died, and with the passion died the practices associated with it.

Remember that moment you first heard of Christ and believed in Him as Lord and Savior of your life? Remember kneeling at a parent’s bedside, at a local church altar or in the quiet of a redwood retreat, or coming forward in an evangelistic crusade? Remember joining the church and feeling the loving arms of a Christian community reach out to receive you? Remember your baptism and the joy you felt in
this act of faith…

Christ was calling the Ephesians and the Laodiceans away from respectable, comfortable, passionless, lukewarm religion. He wanted them totally committed to Him, wholeheartedly available. He called them back to the holy passion and the joy of the first love. They had settled instead for mere theological respectability and material comfort. He wanted them alive, depending, risking, passionate again. For it is in the ‘first love’ commitment that they would find the strength to face the horsemen.”

Billy Graham – “Approaching Hoofbeats of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” 1983, Word, Inc.

200 page e-book that explains everything you need to know when planning your very own object lessons. It contains 90 fully developed object lesson ideas and another 200 object lesson starter ideas based on Biblical idioms and Names / Descriptions of God.

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