This past year has been referred to by my wife and I as “the year of the stand”. We have had to make several hard decisions this year in all areas of our life (faith, family, ministry). We believe that each of these decisions are squarely within the will of God, however standing firm in those decisions has been tough at times.
One of the decisions involving our ministry that was very difficult for us was the decision to leave the youth camp we have been rooted in since 1998 and I had been on staff with for 5 years. I felt God leading me away from this camp. I obeyed despite the facts that it was not my preference and that I would likely offend people who I care deeply for.
This week at camp the speaker led a break out session for adults each morning. One of those sessions dealt with obedience. Take a look at his points, I found each one to be evident this week.
Obeying God Doesn’t Always Make Sense As I mentioned before, changing from a camp that I help to build over the years to a camp that I had little control of, went against my natural instincts.
Obeying God Makes You Look A Little Weird Leaving a camp because of a principle belief not shared by many of my friends made me look a bit strange. To be fair, weirdness is kinda my thing.
Obeying God Leads To The Blessings Of God This is the biggie. As a result of our obedience, God blessed. We brought 50 students and 9 adults to camp. 19 of those students received Christ as their Savior. That is amazing! I believe God is not finished blessing. The faithful excitement within our group is unlike anything I have seen in all my years of youth ministry. If we continue down this path, God is going to use our group to do big things within the Kingdom. I can’t wait!
Partial Obedience Equals Total Disobedience I believe with all that I am, that if I had not been so stubborn in my obedience to God on this issue, that God would not have chosen to bless us in the way that he has.
I encourage any of you reading this to be bold in your obedience to God. He is faithful to bless our obedience.
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