Youth Congress Friday Morning; Danny Rivers

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Friday Morning
Danny Rivers

You are 11 years old sleeping on a blanket in your hut in South Africa. You’re dreaming of glory on a soccer field. You awake to the screams of your mother, local police force themselves in your house yank you and your brother out of bed, lead you out side. Your father rebels and is greeted with gun fire. Your mother is soon brutally attacked at knife point. The police take you and your brother to the river and make you throw your mother in the river. For the next 2 years you see things boys your age should never see (or any one at any age for that matter).

Over the years you’re forced to kill countless innocent villagers. Finally you get your chance to escape over the next weeks you travel hundreds of miles going throw trash cans for food and drinking rain water compiled in leaves. You go through villages that know who you are and won’t help for fear of what the police would do if they helped. You finally find the refugee camp to help you out. Your hungry, thirsty, stomach hurts. You stand in line for food you never get then go to look for doctor that‘s out of medicine. The feeling in your stomach you know is about to kill you.

Now picture you’re a 9 year old girl and it’s Christmas morning. You wake up and it’s just another ordinary day. Hunger pains, no presents, no tree. You live in inner city America poverty stricken and poor.
Now you’re yourself again. You walk outside to the parking lot of your local church just after an awesome youth service. There was singing, praising and speaking tongues the preaching was powerful. You go to the local Denny’s after church for dinner. You spot a homeless person huddled up at a bus stop, something tells you go give a couple of bucks for food or even you coat. You don’t you pass on by you eat you meal something keeps gnawing at you. You load up in the van and on the way home it hits you. There’s got to be something more. I’m in church living right, I know what to do and what not to do but there’s got to be something more.

These scenarios are all true. Probably the last one hits more close to home for some of you. Your comfy life is not the reality of life though. There is a real and hurting world out there and we need to stop turning a blind eye and a deaf ear. Apathy: “the absence or suppression of passion”. It’s lethal. If we don’t do anything we will die with everything else going on around us. You will not wake up someday and it clicks and all of a sudden you do something. It has to be a conscience effort on our part. Don’t just go to church, be the church. Take this outside these four walls.

The problem is we’re raising up a 2nd generation of Pentecostals that are arrogant and out of touch of the world around them/us. The Bible says in Matthew 22:37-39 (read me) the most important commandment but the second most important is “Love your neighbor as yourself” Do we really do this. I mean honestly, as myself? Really? To do this we’ve got to get past our fears and apathy and we’re going to have to sacrifice. (Sacrificing doesn’t tickle). We’re going to have to do things we’re never done before. We are the only representation these people will ever have of Jesus. I don’t want to hear the response “If Jesus is like you, I don’t want anything to do with Him” We are literally His hands and feet here on earth. Are they moving and reaching?

Sometimes the best kind of love is no string attached and for their benefit. We’re so worried about getting them saved that we look right past the need at hand. We live in a carnal world and people have physical problems (we know they have a soul problem but they might not be to that point yet.) If we minister to this need with out any ulterior motives that’s the ultimate goal is serving people serving God
Matthew 25:40 (read me)

This paragraph is for youth leaders!!! Let’s not get them all pumped up to save the world when our neighborhoods have so many needs cold, hungry and hurting. Let’s lead by example, take them down to a homeless shelter and pass out blankets or serve food. Lead by example. Don’t make outreach out of reach.

Show them what we CAN do.
HOW do we get past out fears:
1.) Realize it’s not about me
2.) Put a face, a name, an experience to the pain and suffering.

WHY should I do this?
1.) We all want our lives to matter. Have you ever been alone thinking there’s got to be more, what am I here for? Will my impact outlive me? If I die now would there be a hole or would life just go on? Would your impact be remembered on in other’s lives?
2.) The Bible commands it!!! Isaiah 58: 6-8 (read me)
3.) You can do this!!! Acts 1:8 (read me)

How much do we spend on food (eating out), cell phones, or clothes? How much time do we spend talking on the phone, playing video games, or surfing the web? We are the last generation before Jesus comes (or at least it looks that way) and He trusts of to run with the baton the last leg of this race.
1Corinthians 9:24 (read me)

Posted on October 18th, 2007 by Cameron
Filed under: General