What a joy it is to serve the Most High God!
I hope that as you read this all is well with you and your assurance is sure of your relationship with God. Today I want to share with you a few things that happened this weekend that quickly reminded me we live in a world full of hurt and sorrow. However even in the times of sadness there is hope in the Lord.
Friday night I was driving home from work and I was so tired. You know I remember when Friday night came after my wife and I first got married. We would always go out to eat and get a movie and relax. Now on Friday night we barely can hold our eyes open by 8pm. This Friday night was a little different because it was the first Friday night that I did not have some type of obligation since the first week of December last year. So as I was driving home I thought man I wish I didn’t have anything to do tomorrow because I would just sleep in and do something I wanted to do. However that was not an option because I had planned for our youth group to go downtown and feed breakfast at our soup kitchen “Feed My Sheep Ministries”. I was thinking “man why did I sign up to do this”? Nevertheless we had to be there at 7am so it was going to be a long day!
Saturday morning 5:45am, I get up and cut may hair (not a very long project if you know what I mean). 6:30am I am out the door on my way downtown. I have no idea what to expect. I am embarrassed to say this, but I have never done anything like this. A few minutes after I pull up kids begin to show up and we are all barely awake. Then the lady who is going to let us in and coach us pulls up and the fun began. Now Newport is a small town and all the time I have lived here I never thought there could really be a huge need for this but I figured it had some value. Man what a wake up call. We live in our small little worlds and we dare to get uncomfortable. The first time something makes us uncomfortable we get all mad and offensive. As we began to prepare the food and our kids woke up I began to see something that gave me a whole new outlook on the real world and the world to come.
Before we got started I wondered if I should have gave the kids a pep talk. I questioned myself, but then I saw the coolest thing. Our host told us that “we begin to serve at 8:30am, they can have all they want and we serve them as if they were at any restaurant in town”. Our kids began to show an excitement. You could see it in their eyes they kept looking at the door just waiting for somebody to come in. They had been cooking and stirring and washing dishes and now they want to serve.
Now I have to pause for a moment: Christ wants us to want to serve. We need to be stirring and prepping and cooking in the kitchens of our heart. If we do that then we will stand at the door of the world and hope that somebody comes in so we can serve them!
Before you knew it was time and people began to come in. The first folks were elderly and they were so quiet. Four of our teenage girls ran to them. It was funny to watch them all try to serve at the same time. Then I heard guys in the kitchen say “no I will fix them a plate you can do the next one”.
Now I must pause again: What if our Church arguments were about who was going to serve for God next. Think about the pathetic things Churches argue about and here are teenagers arguing over serving somebody food!
These kids served like that all morning. We saw severely elderly people, a few families with small children, but the one etched in my mind was the young girl who sat by herself and had sores all over her from the use of meth. She was so sad and I could not help but to think how she probably has no idea that Christ loves her with perfect love just as she is. It was so cool to see our young girls walk over to her and ask “her is there anything I can get you”?
By the way I didn’t do anything. I never gave them a pep talk or told them how to act. I just watched and learned. I found out that our little soup kitchen serves 25,000 meals per year. I also found out that the majority was to the elderly and disabled whom barley can afford to live and need one free meal a day just to get by. Of course several of the people who come in have lives that have been destroyed by drugs and alcohol. Then there are also those who are like our host. She had a turn of bad breaks in her life and lost everything. She came there because she was homeless and asked for help. Now she works there and helps others. I also discovered that in our county 50% of the residents are on some type of government program. Most of them rely on some form of outside assistance just to get by.
It was so cool to see these teenagers’ work and desire to help these people that came in. They prepared food for a boys home that houses 15-20 kids who have had their lives railroaded because of drugs. If it weren’t for Feed My sheep they wouldn’t have supper each night. Experiencing this made such an impact on me. I quickly realized the Church in America is missing the call in their on community, but we don’t stop there.
Sunday morning comes and our Youth group went to the nursing home. Each Sunday a group from our Church has a small service in the activity room of the nursing home. There were about 20 that came to the service. Our kids sung a few songs and then I read scriptures and talked about the scriptures. I couldn’t help but to think to myself as I spoke that I bet they have no idea what I am talking about, but I also thought they deserve to be treated as if they are scholars. So I preached Jesus and relied completely on him. After I was done we mingled with them and spoke to them. Again I was nervous at how our young people would handle this. They were unreal. They talked to them and listened to each one of them. I spoke with one lady who sat and smiled the whole time I spoke. She was dressed in very nice clothes. You could tell that this service was important to her and she wanted to wear her Sunday best. I told her how pretty she looked and she began to cry and told me “thank you so much for saying that”. As we were leaving there was a woman coming down the hall in a wheel chair and she asked “is it over”? I said yes we just ended and she was so sad and she said “I hope Jesus will forgive me, I tried to get here as fast as I could”. I felt so bad so I said can we pray together and we did. After I got done praying she told me that her husband died 16 years ago and her daughter was killed in the Smoky Mountains. She said “my mind just isn’t right anymore and I wish I could just die”. Then all of our teens came into the hallway and surrounded her. She just lit up when she saw all those kids. They all spoke to her and told her that we would be back and you could tell it made an impact on her.
You know somebody told me the other day that they were so glad God sent me to Lincoln Avenue because those kids really needed me. I am convinced that God sent me to that Church because I really needed them. I have learned a lot in the past few months. I doubt any of our kids to tell you where the Church is in regards to the current budget or what topics were in the last business minutes, but they love Jesus and they can tell you what the Great Commission is. They want to serve Christ and all they need is for somebody to show them what to do. Our younger generation has been robbed of innocence thanks to media and adulterated music and film, but the Church has not ruined them yet. I think we can break the cycle of typical dead works Christianity by allowing kids to serve. We are losing our youth today because they know what is real and what is a fraud. We need to provide them an atmosphere of real worship and seek genuine guidance from God.
What I saw this weekend was a group of kids who love Jesus and are not ashamed!
Jesus Saves,
RR
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