"God is at Work" RYM 2017

This was our youth group's first year to go to Colorado for RYM and it was amazing!

The weather, the food, the sights, the teaching, everything.
We had the best week. It was tiring, because there was so much to pack in to 4 short days (and 4 days of travel in a charter bus), but it was so wonderful!

I was so impressed with how beautiful Kansas was. The golden fields, the cool wind mills, just how far you could see because of how flat it was--I loved it!

...and then, we made it to Colorado--where everywhere you look is a sight to behold! 

We stayed at the YMCA of the Rockies, in Estes Park and it was such a nice campus. There was so much to do and everything was so beautiful. Pictures don't do it justice. 

These beautiful trees where everywhere

The sweetest baby pine cones could be found EVERYWHERE

Mama Carol's hair looking pretty in the wilderness.

We had so much free time each day, from 11 until 5. 

Our first full day, Tuesday, a few of us decided to take a small hike close to the campus. 

I think it's safe to say that it turned out to be a bit longer than we anticipated (we didn't know where we were going).

The brave hikers ;)

The following day, 4 of us from LPC took a hike with an RYM group to Eagle's Cliff. 

I like to think that I'm semi-in shape. Well, if you think you're in shape, hike Eagle's Cliff. This hike was so hard for me. It was so steep, no marked path, it was crazy!

While Maddie and I were still with the group, we ended up being the very last ones up and the very last ones down--but, we made it fun for one another!

This picture shows you how steep it was--it was like this most all of the way. 

You could see this fantastic view of Moraine Park while at the summit of Eagle's Cliff--one of my favorite sights that we saw. 

Finally made it to Eagle's Cliff! Woooooo hoooooo!

This view! 

It's crazy to me how tiny the trees look. 

Like little toy trees. 

Thursday, we all had a free day. We went and did a quick hike around Bear Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park and then we made our way to the "Open Air Adventure Park" and we spent the rest of the day in downtown Estes Park. 

Bear Lake was so beautiful. 

I love seeing all of the snow capped mountains!

While we were in Estes Park we had dinner at a place called "Grubsteak" and I had the best Yak burger topper with jalapeño cream cheese--it was delicious!

Our final day we went with the RYM group that hiked to Emerald Lake. 

Along this trail you encounter 3 lakes. It was a very apparent trail and made for a really nice hike. 

The first was Nymph Lake

The second was Dream Lake

The final was Emerald Lake and it was one of the most beautiful sights I've ever seen. The iced over lake, all of the snow, the massive mountains, it was breathtaking. 

Not only did we enjoy beautiful scenery all week but we also sat under the teaching of various people and it was wonderful. 

Here are a few of my favorite "take aways" from the week's classes and large group sermons:

If you know me at all, then you know Harry Potter books are my ultimate favorites--I was so pumped about this class "The Gospel According to Harry Potter"--(there's even a book about this topic that I bought and you can too by clicking here)! My favorite thing that Slim said was: "The things that we love most about about Harry Potter have nothing to do with his magic. His greatest accomplishments and the most moving parts of the story have nothing to do with magic. The parts we loved the most are his courage, sacrifice, and fierce love that is woven all throughout the series" I love this because it's so, SO true. 

He also zoned in on the fact that the major, over arching theme of these stories boils down to: the power of love (Harry and all of his people) vs. the love of power (Voldemort and his people). 

Then he went on to talk about Harry's scar and how that scar was an image of immense suffering & pain for Harry. It was proof of Lord Voldemort saying he was more important than little, baby Harry. Harry was protected by love and that was the downfall of Lord V and he couldn't understand it. Which shows us that scars can also serve as an avenue through which God can work. Harry's immense suffering was met with incredible sacrifice by his Mother, Harry was always protected by the love of another (sound familiar?) This love was the only power to kill the most evil wizard there ever was. Love is death. As Christians, we believe this, we know what this means. It is death to yourself to lift up another. Love says YOU over ME--Matthew 16:25 is what it sounds an awful lot like. 

Brian Sorgenfri was our main speaker and the theme for the week was "God is at Work, Even When it Feels Like He's Not" and let me tell you what, he knocked it out of the park. Our youth were just chatter boxes after each of his sermon's and it was so sweet to see The Lord use Brian's words to stir their hearts. 

These are a few of the things I wanted to be sure and document that he said so that I can look back on these later:

"The genealogy of Jesus calls us to patience--for 2,000 years, He was weaving the tapestry. We cannot judge God on our timeline. Our feelings of impatience are real but, they are not truth. We need to recall the 'patient pace of historic Christianity and realize that sometimes living a life for Christ oftentimes includes a life of obedience, not instant results. The genealogy also shows us that God is always revealing the beauty and the sufficiency of Jesus by using people like Abraham, Tamar, Rahab, David, and Mary. Through these people and their stories we see revelations of love and joy that will capture our hearts."

"Sometimes pain and suffering are permitted into our lives because our Father wants more for us. He is the Great Master. Pain makes us realize that something is wrong and in this passage (Luke 8:40-56) pain sent Jairus and the woman to Jesus-if it hadn't been for their pain, they may not have come to Him. Our pain and suffering could be exactly what keeps me near to Jesus--in ways that we wouldn't otherwise realize. What both Jairus and the woman wanted was something different than what they got. The woman wanted to go unnoticed and yet He stopped to talk to her-what He wanted was for her to know that He accepted and loved her and Jairus wanted his daughter healed and Jesus let her die because He wanted resurrection  for him and the daughter. When we suffer, we lack wisdom. The beginning of wisdom is the fear of The Lord. The beginning of foolishness is fear of anything but The Lord and to think that anything else can hold our lives together or tear our lives apart. Could Jesus love us enough to not let us set our security, love, and happiness on things that are passing away? You don't know Jesus is all that you need until He is all that you have. For Jesus to heal someone, He loses something. The way that He heals us all was through GREAT pain and true suffering. When we are confronted with people who also have wounds/scars, we know they understand where we're coming from. Our Jesus has wounds. He knows. He's been there. He's had it all. He paid it all. HE KNOWS. He even knows what it feels like to ask God to remove something, and have Him not do it. When you have wounds and realize that Jesus has wounds--shared suffering--can we believe that most of the time, Jesus uses suffering to bring us to Him."

"Sin and Failure. John 21:1-17. What is Jesus' work through failure? He uses it to humble Peter in this passage. If we have confidence in ourselves before God and our ability to be the best of ourselves, we will miss Jesus. Our confidence should be in His mercy and when it is, He will always be there. He uses sin and failure to bring us to repent. The only way we will repent is if we are convinced that Jesus is for us and that He will never, never leave us. Jesus applies grace to the greatest places of our shame. So the question becomes 'What do I do with my failure? Do I repent? or do I say 'I can handle it?''--one of these leads to sorrow that leads to death-both Peter and Judas denied Jesus-one repented and the other one had sorrow that led to death. When we bathe in the sorrow of our sin, that is sorrow that leads to death. Peter took his sorrow to Jesus and repented and at the cross, he received mercy and realized that he could never, ever disrupt Jesus love for him. Which means that our joy is connected to how we see Jesus. He is the Savior of SINNERS. We have this picture of who we think we should be: our imagined selves-and that's the "me" that I believe Jesus loves and at some point, I must realize that Jesus died for the real me and not my imagined self that I hope to be. He is NOT surprised by the real me. Jesus wants to be with sinners--because of my sin and shame, Jesus is more amazing than I thought."

"Weakness. Judges 3:12-31. We feel like weakness and losing is never what we want--but, what if what feels like losing, is when God is really at work in us. The Hidden Weakness (vs. 12-17). The most dangerous sins in our lives are the things we are not worried about--possibly even the good things, the great things--the things that make us feel like "I've got this"--they keep us from crying out to Jesus. Weak Salvation (vs. 15) It is almost laughable that Ehud is who killed Eglon the ruler in this passage. But, God oftentimes seeks and saves those who are deemed 'nobodies' and He makes them heroes. The genealogy of Jesus, as we saw earlier, is almost laughable because of the lives of some of those people. When Jesus showed up in the flesh, even He appeared 'normal' and weak, even. If you are a Christian, it's not because you were better, it's because you were weak and helpless-which makes God even more amazing. We just don't believe this--we believe that our weakness is what keeps Jesus away and it's NOT. Salvation comes to us in weakness, it seems to be too easy for us--it's too crazy that all we must do is COME--all we must do is state our need. The weakness and humiliation of Jesus is what saved us all. Weak living (vs. 26-27) Salvation is FINISHED--all we must do is rest in it and by that, we've won the battle and that looks laughable and weak to the world. If weakness is how salvation came into the world--and that's how the world will change, through weakness and sharing in our weakness together--through our brokenness. 

What if repenting to people is what changed them? It looks like losing because we don't seem righteous but, God's kingdom is marching forward. Suffer with people. Cry with people. Stay weak. These are the things we need to do-these are the things that look weak and laughable yet, the Kingdom of God is moving forward."

"What would it look like in every day life to believe that God is at work, even when it feels like He's not? If you look at the earthly life of Jesus, you see what may look like the back of a tapestry--messy, jumbled, doesn't make much sense. He was human in every. single. way that we are except, He was without sin. The Son of God was no more or less human than us when He came into this world. Jesus, The God-Man, He had to have holiness but He also had to come and save His people by hanging on a cross--like a criminal would and He became wrapped in MY sin and YOUR sin and took the fury of God's wrath for US. Jesus was so in love with his people, you and me, that he wrote Himself into this broken, sinful world to come and save us. I, you, make His heart full and that's why He came. It's NOT my feelings or my circumstances. Because of the messy back of the tapestry, we have the front--a beautiful masterpiece. What does it look like to live by Faith? "By Faith, I choose to live by what is true, no matter how I feel, asking God to make what is true to feel more real to me than what I feel." What if my focus in the foreground is Jesus--then, He suffers with me, cries with me--and that doesn't change my suffering but, it may change how I see it and I can believe that my suffering has gone through the gentle hands of Jesus and that He will carry me through. It can't be because He doesn't love you and it can't be because He doesn't care. We look at Jesus through our shame and it makes us feel like He doesn't want us...and that couldn't be further from the truth! When we reveal our greatest shame to God, He doesn't pull back, He comes even closer and He pulls us in and He walks with us. When we see what has been done to us through Jesus, we can know that He hates what has been done to us even more than we do but, we must also realize that He is the exact opposite of the awful things that have been done to me. If we are in this messy tapestry and know how beautiful the other side will be--it will shape our entire lives. The future that Jesus has in store for us means that all the "back of the tapestry" mess is helping to make me more like Jesus so that when eternity opens and we reach the gates of Heaven, I will be radiant, beautiful, and with Jesus forever--this is what He's doing with us. This is what's happening through the "mess" and when it feels like He's not there."

As beautiful as Colorado was, it's only a taste of the eternity that is promised to us in Jesus and what exciting news is that?

God is at work, even when it feels like He's not.