Lee Clamp shares a message about the boldness of Peter and John before the very ones that crucified Christ.  The Impossible Mission is accomplished through the boldness that comes through being empowered by the Holy Spirit.

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Tonight we talked about the downfall of Sodom.  Ezekiel 16:48-50 reveals that not only did Sodom fall because of great evil and immorality they also fell because they had an excess of food and were prosperous but did not help the needy.  Sounds a bit like a America doesn’t it.  Here are some quick facts about America.

Quick Facts about the US

• US produces twice as much food as is needed by Americans.
• 25% of the food that enters your home is thrown away.
• 40% of all food produced in America is not eaten
• Average American wasted more than half a pound of food a day.  That’s a quarter pounder for lunch and dinner.
• Every day restaurants throw away 6000 tons of food.  That is 12,000,000 pounds of food.
• Costs Americans $100 Billion annually

Yet 1 out of every 8 children in American go to bed hungry, and in our community there are 65% of the students on free and reduced lunch at school which means that there is a possibility that some of them don’t have more than a jug of milk and ketchup in the refrigerator.

Your child’s homework assignment this week was to 1) practice the two cookie principle.  2) Fast on Thursday. (You can guide them in this especially if they have diabetes or something that they take medications for that requires food.)

Here are a few questions to ask your teenagers.

1. What is the two cookie principle?
2. What was the story about the ice cream cone?
3. What is one fact you learned that really stood out about food waste in America?
4. What was it like to fast?

DNOW 09 was awesome!  Our theme was HE > i and emphasized how great God is and how small we are.  We desire to be telescopes…magnifying someone that is HUGE in order to give a better representation of who they really are.  Here are some highlights from the weekend.

• 85 teenagers welcoming JB Usher back in the Merge and having an electric worship time.
• Matt Elrod challenging us to have a proper perspective of God.
• Teenagers joyfully serving our school district with a variety of service projects at three schools.  They were awesome and finished more than was expected.
• Girls going all out in the flag football tournament.  I saw girls playing quarterback and catching touchdown passes.  The eighth grade girls/sophomore and junior guys took home the Toilet Bowl.
• Receiving a text from one of the leaders at 11 pm that a student got saved after the leader shared the gospel during one on one time.
• Parents being challenged on Sunday morning to pray with their teenagers, have God conversations with them, and read the Bible with them.  This must occur if we are going to raise up a generation that loves God.  Students recognize that parents are their number one influencers.
• My son (6) singing out during the worship.  He got to hang out with the big boys. 
• Kayla proclaiming to the church that she wanted Christ to be the Lord of her Life!

Thanks adults and leader for making this weekend a huge success!  Our students continue to amaze me.

I was on a sugar rush or something last night!  I just get jazzed up when we talk about living a missional life.  Our first encounter with Jesus was the story of the fantastic four, a group of guys that carried their paralytic friend to the foot of Jesus by literally tearing open the roof of Peter’s home and lowering him down.  Last night we discovered from Mark 2 that …

1. A missional life requires effort
2. A missional life is powerless without Christ.
3. A missional life ends in amazement.

Reflections

• Jesus always meets our needs in priority.  He first healed his spiritual need, and then his physical. 
• I wonder what Peter was thinking.  I bet he wanted to jump up and look at the Pharisees and say, “Bam!  Now what do you think about Jesus!  I’m on his team.  I wasn’t good enough to be on yours and had to fish.  But he chose me!  Who’s next?”
• If Jesus would have just healed his legs, he would have walked out of the house; but in 50 years he’d be dead.  Then what.
• I bet he is still dancing right now.
• Don’t waste your life.
• If he got up, he no longer could have been considered disabled!  He would not have been able to have others take care of him.

Parents, you could ask your child these questions to have some God conversations.

1. Tell me the story of the parayltic.
2. Why did Lee lay down on the stage?
3. What can you do to put forth more effort in bringing your friends to Jesus?
4. How can I pray for you?

Tonight we finished our series on Sacrifice with discussions of the resurrection.  We had a guest praise dance team from Rosemary Baptist church.  They were great.   Best of all, two students were saved from their sin!

• The resurrection is the crux of our faith.  Without it we are idiots for worshipping a “good” teacher who decieved us into believing he was God.
• Jesus appeared to a variety of people.  Check out 1 Cor. 15.
• You can fool a lot of people…but you can’t fool your mama!
• Mary was at the foot of the cross, and she was at the gathering of believers at the beginning of the church along with Jesus’ brothers.  She would know if he was an imposter and was not raised from the grave.
• The disciples testimony for me seals the deal.  There have been men that have died for noble purposes, but to die knowing that what they were dying for was a lie.  I think not.
• 10 of the 11 remaining disciples died a martyr’s death including Peter who was crucified upside down.  John’s the only one that made it out  alive, and even he was put into a pot of boiling oil!
• Two students talked to me afterwards about being saved from their sin.  Pray for Emmit and Katy.
• Whoever said Salvation was free is not telling the whole truth.  It will cost you everything.  It will cost you your life.  Give your life to Christ and die, and he will give you a new life.  One that is transformed.

Parents here are a few questions to ask your teenager.

1. Read 1 Cor. 15 together.
2. Why do you believe the resurrection is true?  (Because the Bible says so is too easy.)
3. Why is the resurrection of Christ so important?
4. Pray and thank  the Father for sending Jesus to the earth to take sin on his shoulders, pay the debt of death, and defeat death in the resurrection.

Well last night wasn’t the kind of night you leave from thinking, “I sure did enjoy that message. ” We have been looking at The Sacrifice over the past two weeks.  The first week was the Lord’s Supper and the reasons then and now for taking part in it.  This week was a focus on the sacrifice that was made for us by Jesus on the cross when he was crucified.  Kenneth Padgett spoke this week to allow me to join the preschool minstry for parent night with Caden and Connor.  He showed us the contrasting image of what scripture says about the King in his glory and the vivid images of Jesus being crucified from The Passion.  And to think that his love for us compelled him to be nailed to the very tree he created.  Here are a few thoughts and question to ask your teenager.

• It makes me sick to my stomach to watch The Passion. 
• I think everyone should endure watching The Passion by Mel Gibson during Easter.
• The Passion is actually G compared to the real thing if you can imagine that.
• Why did he have to endure great suffering and pain?
• Because your sin is deserving of death, he loved you, he endured the cross for you and to save you from that sin in order that you could become children of God, adopted into his family, your penal substitutionary atonement (google that one and find out what it means.)
• You can have the reaction that some students had, turning around in their seats and talking to those behind them, laughing and cutting up with their friends after watching something so repulsive…
• …or you can repent and believe and be born again.
• People wear the cross around their neck as a fashion statement. Madonna crawls up on one on her tour a few years ago.  I don’t think people understand the torture and humiliation that the cross was.
• I’m glad we have solid people around The Mix to not skip a beat when I am gone on Wednesday.  It was a joy to be with my children and supporting the preschool ministry for family night.  Trina and the gang did a great job to let us join in with them to see what they do each Wednesday and also challenge us to read the scripture to our children.

Parents:  Here are a few questions to ask your teenager about last night.

1. What is something that made you think last night at The Mix?
2. Why did Jesus have to die?
3. What does his sacrifice mean to you?
4. Have you repented of your sin and believe in or trust in God through Christ?

Have a great week!

I don’t know about you, but I live in a world where families are not passing down the truth of scripture to their children.  (Surely no one in my church of course!) Actually the reality of it is that only 52% of our students who meet on Wednesday nights NEVER have a parent that prays with them and 69% of our students NEVER have a parent that reads the scripture with them or challenges them to read scripture and then debriefs them on it.

Early in Scripture as he brought his people out of slavery he instructed Moses to tell them to diligently teach their children about the Lord and to love the Lord.  Deuteronomy 6:7. 

Many of you may not have a spiritual legacy to continue.  But don’t come down so hard on your parents, because chances are their parent didn’t teach them, and their parent didn’t teach them.  You may not have a spiritual legacy, but you can start one.  For those of you who are beginning a legacy, don’t just stop with your family.  1 out of every 2 children are growing up without a father.  Dad’s take one more on.

It is hard to break the cycle because children learn a pattern from their families and then repeat.  You can be a chainbreaker.  You can break in and release the chains that hold down the next generation and allow them to soar.  But it isn’t easy.  It will take work.  Are they worth it?

Be a Chainbreaker.

I facebooked one of my students today to ask them a question.  I didn’t expect for them to get back in touch with me until after school.  They instantly responded.  Facebook sent their cell a message, they checked their cell then responded…from class.  Not sure what the teacher was talking to them about, but I can tell you she wasn’t paying attention.

We call it multi tasking now, but it is becoming more and more impossible to stay focused on one task to completion.  Cell phones, internet, streaming video, twitter….It causes you to constantly be connected but is a huge source of distraction.  To be the most connected generation, we are disconnected to the creator of the universe.

Try this for a day… Put your phone on silence and check it at lunch and at the end of the day.  Now everytime you think about texting someone, talk to God.  I know what you are thinking, “How can I talk to God if it is not dinner time?”  1 Thessalonians teaches us to ^pray without ceasing.  We have no problem texting without ceasing.

Don’t allow distractions to lead you to destruction!  Take time this week to focus! 

Tonight was awesome!  We have over 100 students who came together and prayed.  So many times in our churches we talk about praying more than we pray.  So tonight we got our students together and walked through the Lord’s prayer with them in order to teach them what Jesus was talking about when he taught his disciples to pray.  Students were in groups of 8 and sat on the floor and just prayed through Praise, Daily needs, forgiveness, and protection from evil.  It was an awesome time.

Here are a few reflections

• During the praise time, it was difficult for some to think of 5 minutes worth of words to express their praise to God.  This is difficult unless you are thinking about this all the time.  In the church we have been guilty of minimizing the greatness of the God we serve.
• Sometimes we treat God like Santa Claus.  Someone we talk to occasionally and the only reason we talk to him is to give him a list of things we want.  Like God didn’t have anything to do and was waiting on a list from us.
• God is already at work, we have the priveledge of joining him.
• Students wrote their prayers on the walls on butcher paper.  Some of the prayers were very transparent.
• www.poverty.com blew our minds as we were thinking about our own daily needs.  Teenagers in America include ipods and cell phones in with their daily needs!  While we prayed over 500 children died of hunger around the world.
• There is a fear of praying out loud for many people.  I believe that fear spawns from the fact that many of them are not praying silently and don’t even know what to pray for.
• Parents are you praying with your teenagers??  52% of our teenagers said that you never pray with them!  Our teenagers need you to teach them how to pray.
• ⁴ Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.^a ⁵ Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. ⁶ These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. ⁷ Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. ⁸ Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. ⁹ Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.  Dt 6:4-9.
• Could we be raising a generation that does not know the things of God nor how to communicate with him? 

Each week I will attempt to offer some commentary on the nights events with this piece to let you know what is swimming around in my head.  As I settle down from a marathon of catching up with Lost (DVR is my friend), I am thinking about tonights Dodgeball tournament/hang out time tonight.  Here are a few thoughts.

• It is not good to be slow on the dodgeball court
• I did not have the opportunity to smash a high school student in the face as that was against the rules. 
• For some reason the only teams that ever believe that the contest was judged completely fairly are the winners.I enjoyed my talk while watching the dodgeball games with one of our female students who is having a struggling time with their family.  My heart goes out to teenagers who have families that are not exactly modeling Christ like behavior.  The cool thing is that if we are adopted into God’s family, he is our father, and he never leaves us nor turns his back on us.  WOW!
• You don’t always have to have a formal Bible study to teach about God.  In fact, sometimes the best conversations happen in the informal times when you are hanging out and in the lives of others.  Last night I gave a mini sermon on forgiveness.  Lawson happened to hear it so she has to repreach it to you!
• Every Wednesday night I ride by McDonalds on my home and see in the window adults hanging out with teenagers and laughing!  These adults are having more fun than the teenagers.  I’d love to be there too, but my little boys are waiting on Daddy to tuck them in and tell them Tommy and Johnny stories. 
• I love our students.  They are awesome!
• I love our adults just as much.  They are mostly parents, normally have put in a 10 hour work day, and invest in the lives of teenagers when they could be watching Lost.
• Rhett Sapough was a beast in his teams first match as it was three on one, and he was able to dodge and smash his way back to a victory.  The Sexy Men ended up the winners and claimed the belts.