“Light Force desires to love God and love others by intentionally modeling a lifestyle devoted to becoming disciples of Jesus.”
Tonight I want to take a closer look at the part of our mission statement that says “intentionally modeling.” It’s a loaded phrase, and a phrase that we can all learn to ignore… or we can all learn to do it and watch God use it in powerful and mighty ways.
Let’s start off by taking a look at the life of Jesus. Last week we looked at Jesus’ mission in life and part of that was modeling to his disciples… so let’s take a closer look at how Jesus did that for a few minutes.
Mark 1:35-38
What was Jesus doing? Praying alone
What were the disciples doing? Looking for him, they found him in prayer
Luke 4: 42-44
What was Jesus doing? Praying alone
What were the disciples doing? Looking for him, found him. (See a pattern?)
Luke 8:1
What was Jesus doing? Traveling from town to town, proclaiming the good news
What were the disciples doing? They were with him.
Luke 9: 1-2
What was Jesus doing? Sending the disciples out to drive out demons and cure diseases
What were the disciples doing? The disciples were sent out by themselves
Mark 10:14-15
What was Jesus doing? Both welcoming little children to his side and showing the disciples that this is what they were supposed to be doing
What were the disciples doing? With Jesus, but needing to be taught.
John 17:6-7; 18
What was Jesus doing? Praying for the disciples.
What were the disciples doing? John was there with him
John 20:19-22
What was Jesus doing? Appears to the disciples, gives them the Holy Spirit to continue ministry
What were the disciples doing? They were together and were still looking to be taught.
OK… so now we’ve had a chance to look at this, now let’s try to digest what it means for us. Let’s make some observations from Jesus’ life about modeling.
– Did Jesus have accidental relationships?
– Did the people in Jesus’ life always understand what Jesus was doing in their lives?
– How did Jesus teach someone how to do a skill?
The test environment:
Often times in the land of computer repair and software development, you have to create a place where you can control all the variables so that you can test something before you give it to a customer. Some places call this a test environment and other people call it a lab.
When I worked in the business world, Ricky the programmer that was assigned to me, ran two sets of computers. He had his “real world” computers that were doing the daily business of my department. The program he maintained handled millions of tasks a day. It created all the workload for my entire department. If that one computer went down, literally dozens of people would be sent home and hundreds of thousands of dollars would be lost. In some ways, the very reputation of this massive computer depended on that one computer doing its job every day.
Now Ricky wasn’t just in charge of maintaining this one program and this one computer. He was also in charge of implementing changes to the program that would make the program run faster or make the work get to the workers in such a way that they could do their jobs more efficiently. So I would sit down with Ricky and tell him which projects we needed as priorities and which ones were pet projects and which ones were not important at all.
Now, if you know anything at all about computer programming… you’d know that most of getting a complex thing to work comes down to trial and error. Ricky would sit down, do an immense algorithm, scratch his head for a few days and then begin writing the program to make a change work. Then he would take his modification and put it onto an entirely different computer… “a test computer” that wasn’t hooked up to the network. If his new program didn’t work, it didn’t really matter since the work that the test computer created wasn’t our real work… it was just pretend work. He was free to experiment and be creative and try new things because it was like practice work. If it failed, his boss would just shrug his shoulders because there was no harm done.
But eventually, after a lot of trial and error and a whole lot of testing, Ricky would get a modification ready to go. Only after he had carefully tested his program did he ever put it into the live environment to be used by my department. Obviously, there was more pressure to perform… but Ricky would always have a certain level of confidence because he knew it worked.
This is kind of what Jesus was doing with his disciples while he was on the earth. Jesus kept his disciples in a test environment. They were close to their master. They could copy what he did and learn from him. And Jesus was modeling to them what they’d have to do in the real world after he was gone.
Back in our world:
This is the kind of thing that we are creating with Light Force. We want to help you see this time in your life as a time to test things out.
Most of you here know for certain that you have a relationship with Jesus. So the aim for you in the youth group is to learn some skills that you will need when you are out on your own in the real world. You need a safe place where someone can come along side you and show you how to
– Share Jesus with a friend
– Study the Word for yourself so you can learn and grow on your own
– Build relationships with friends that will last a lifetime
– Learn how to really encourage someone
– Learn how to pray consistently
This is your test environment. Feel free to experiment, make mistakes, ask questions, try new things, and get pushed into new things. Our leaders here are here to model that to you. And here’s the new twist… we leaders are learning ourselves how we can do that intentionally rather than accidentally. Feel free to ask us “Mrs. Dashe, why did you do that?” It’s OK… we want to be intentional that our role here as adults isn’t to baby-sit you, it’s to help you grow up in the Lord.
An example: Why are we offering an incentive for you to bring a friend on the Michigan’s Adventure trip? (Came from EQUIP, remember CPR?)
But there are some of you here tonight that have been doing this… that are frankly ready to do something else. To take the next step up.
– You are ready to be the person on the other side of it that is ready to intentionally model to others a lifestyle of chasing after Jesus.
– You’re already studying God’s Word on your own.
– You’re already praying regularly.
– You’ve already learned how to share Christ with your friends and have done it a few times.
– You are ready to get equipped to minister to your friends in a big way.
One of my biggest pet peeves is when I hear adults say things like “Light force is so important for our church because they are the church of tomorrow.” I usually smile and nod, but inside I’m thinking, “have you lost your mind… can’t you see that they are the church of today!
If there’s one thing that sticks with you tonight, I want it to be this penetrating thought.
Why are you here? Why do you live in this area? Why do you go to your school? Why are you friends with the people you are friends with? Why do you like the things you like?
Have you ever wondered that? Sure, you’ve made individual choices. You have your own likes and dislikes, etc. But you are who you are for a reason. If you know Christ and you have friends who don’t know Christ… it’s no accident that you are in their lives!
Leave a Reply