West Main

It is a special night. The air is crisp and you can FEEL the life in it. Some strange sort of “electricity” seems to be permeating all things. Smiles abound. Faces look alive. Colors seem brighter. Voices seem clearer. All things just seem VIVACIOUS! It is clear to me that this is not your ordinary evening. This worship service is NOT going to be like many others. There is a presence here, weaving its way between hearts, minds and lives. Tonight is about community. It is a shared experience. It is real. It is truth and it is life. The Holy Spirit is doing something.

We all have experienced such an event. For me, it is at the end of every summer at a place called Faith Quest. Within the walls of Camp Yamhill is where I always experience God in such a real and profound way every Labor Day weekend.

This gathering is an annual gathering of High School teens from the Pacific Northwest. It has become very special to me. I find myself trying to figure out what it is about this event that reaches so deep into the recesses of my soul. Faith Quest stirs something. What is it?

After much reflection and thought, I think I know what it is. It is the freedom I see in the kids! They are what move me. They are what excite me.  They are the “it” I was searching for. I am so encouraged with the kids and the way they express themselves and worship at this wonderful place. It is such a joy to see a place where teens in our brotherhood can be real. A place where they can open up and let go. A place where they can worship any way they want and not worry a bit if “someone is watching.” It is a place where the “freedom in Christ” is truly and clearly displayed to me. Watching 400 kids jump and dance in joy is life changing. Watching their hands pierce the dark night sky, raised to God in praise, and watching their faces and their hearts being worn on their sleeves in joyful adoration ... THIS is what takes me to that special place. This is my “mountain top experience.”

It is a special and rare place that can bring this out in today’s disconnected youth culture. It is hard to get a kid to worship with all of their being. My teens express themselves there in a way they would never feel comfortable to do back at home. MUCH credit should go to the directors and staff for breeding such an environment as this. GOD is lifted. GOD moves here.

We leave Friday to go once again. Please pray that our group will be safe and will find God in a special way.    

– Pannell

YOU CAN CONTROL NOTHING ELSE

Is God present in your life? If God is present in your life, then is he an active presence in your life? How do you discern the movements of God in your life? Do not many of us tend to think that if something good happens in our lives it is God blessing us? But what about the bad things we experience in our lives? Is God responsible for the bad things as well?

Consider these words from Ecclesiastes (7:14): “When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider: God has made the one as well as the other. Therefore, a man cannot discover anything about his future.” What kind of bad things is God making in our lives? Are we charging God with evil here? James says, “When tempted, no one should say, ‘God is tempting me.’ For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone” (1:13). The Apostle John declares, “This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5).

God is not responsible for the evil we experience in our lives for there is nothing evil within God. So what does Ecclesiastes mean, “God has made the one [good times] as well as the other [bad times]”? Are we to make a distinction between “bad times” and “evil times”? Some translations of Ecclesiastes say, “adversity” rather than “bad times.” Does God making adversity in our lives make us feel any better about such difficulties in our lives? When facing adversity do we think to ourselves, “Oh, God created this adversity in my life, so it is all good!”? “Adversity” does not seem to offer much more comfort!                                              

The last part of the Ecclesiastes verse may offer some help: “Therefore, a man cannot discover anything about his future.” The issue seems to be about control. We all want to control our futures by increasing the good times and limiting the bad times. No one wants to hear that their future holds adversity!

The movie, The Lord of the Rings, contains a dialogue between the characters Gandalf and Fordo that touches upon this theme of controlling the outcomes of our futures. Fordo despairs of his adversity saying, “I wish the ring would never have come to me. I wish none of this had happened.” Fordo’s wise wizard advisor counsels, “So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”

The Apostle Paul also speaks to controlling the times we live in when he says, “From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us” (Acts 17:26-27).

Whether we live to see good times or bad times is not for us to decide. Life is not about our controlling what does or does not happen to us. Life is about having a relationship to God, regardless of the good or bad that happens to us.   How the times we live in all work to achieve God’s purposes is beyond our capacities. As Ecclesiastes says of God, “He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end” (3:11). The only real question is: How will you use the time you have been given, whether good or bad, for a relationship with God? You can control nothing else. 

–Terry