To Christmas and Beyond!!

So the last week has been a busy one!  I was blessed to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas day with my mom and sister.   It was a wonderful time!   We attended a beautiful Candlelight service at my sister’s church on Christmas Eve and were able to focus on the birth of the Savior.  How awesome it is to be reminded each year of the True Light that brings light to every man coming into the world.   

It was so good this year to have a simple Christmas, close family, hot coffee, bacon, red velvet muffin tops, games, fuzzy socks, movies and Chinese food.  Christmas can end up being stressful sometimes because we try to create a warm, fuzzy feeling using fancy decorations, gourmet meals and elaborate plans.  I was so thankful this year just to relax with my family, to open presents, to laugh together and to enjoy one another without all the frills.

After Christmas I journeyed down to Laurelville, Pennsylvania for Winter Youth Conference.  I hadn’t planned on going this year, but thankfully the barriers that had stood in the way of me going moved aside and I was able to make the trip. 

I’ve been going to camp in the summer and Winter Youth Conference in the winter for a long time.  Both of those ministries have had a tremendous impact on my life over the years. The messages I’ve heard from godly men preaching the Word of God, and the relationships I’ve built with brothers and sisters in Christ from other churches have been tools that the Lord has used to work on my heart in many ways.  I am so thankful that the Lord has seen fit to allow me to be involved in camp ministry for so long and even though it wasn’t my original plan I was thrilled to be able to make the trek this year.

Winter Youth Conference consists of an incredibly focused time in God’s Word, fellowship with Christians for other churches in our denomination, times of corporate worship and prayer,  and of course crazy games of soccer, volleyball and extreme snow tubing.  This year the teaching was focused on prayer and the messages were drawn from The Lord’s Prayer.

“Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.  Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive or debtors and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom, and the power and the glory forever. Amen.”

It’s a passage I know well, at my church we recite it at least once a month, and I’ve had it memorized for as long as I can remember.   It was still such a blessing to meditate on those words.  To remember that this was the answer Jesus gave when the disciples asked Him how they should pray.  I have no intention of trying to write everything that I learned in six sessions of intense teaching, but I did want to write about a few things that struck me.

First, the privilege it is to pray “Our Father” I often take that for granted.  I breeze by that name for God in my prayers without a second thought.  It is extraordinary that the Holy Creator of the universe would teach me to call Him Father.  He not only allows me to call Him Father, but acts as a Father toward me.  He shows me compassion, He meets my needs, He gives good gifts, He is faithful to keep His promises, and He is consistent in all His actions.  To be able to address Almighty God as Father is wondrous and it was sweet to dwell on that thought, to taste those words anew and savor them. 

Another point that was extremely helpful for me to think on was the phrase “Your will be done” these too are words that often don’t impact me as I recite them or say them in my own prayers.  They don’t refer to the secret things of the Lord, the future He has ordained that I desperately want to know now.  They refer in this prayer to His will as He has revealed it in His Word.  The commands He gives like “Love your enemies”, “Thou shalt not bear false witness to your neighbor”, “Be content with such things as you have” all of those things He says in His word to do or to not do are His will for how I should live.  I pray for His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven and then I disobey His commands. How crazy is that?  In heaven His angels perfectly keep His commandments on earth I disobey His will constantly.  Praying for His will to be done is asking Him to help me to do His will.  To embrace His will, to seek to know His will from His Word, to love His law.  It’s a challenging prayer for me to pray because so often I love my own will and don’t want to turn from it.  Yet it is a prayer I want to pray. I want the Lord to work in my heart so that I become an instrument of righteousness He can use to do His will on this earth.

There’s so much more I could write about, and I may write more about this later.  I think this is enough for now.  The depth of God’s word never ceases to amaze me.  This section of the Word is so familiar to me and yet it still worked as a sword piercing my heart.  It was a blessing to hear God’s Word preached in the midst of some pretty awesome young people.  I am praying that God uses His word to work in their lives even more than He has used it in mine.