Awesome Night

Last night was awesome.
It all started at 4pm when the Jr. Highers showed up for their youth group. Last year we had about 5 kids each week. Now, I'm not a huge numbers guy, but we had 11 kids on the first night this year! It was awesome to see how excited these students were to be at youth group and how excited they were to hear from God.
Last night I posed this question to the students: How do you know that God is real? We had a great discussion which was based on the idea that because God wants a relationship with us, He has taken some pretty big steps to show us He is real. (Even though we aren't able to physically see him). -Romans 1:20
At 6pm High School youth group rolled around. We're doing a study this semester based on Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell. The whole premise for these students is to rethink their faith. Now, I'm not asking them to rethink having faith-instead I'm challenging them to make their faith in God their own. Make it a legit relationship, rather than just words.
We talked last night about how real faith is like jumping on a trampoline. There are a lot of ways we tied this in, but my favorite was the idea of joy. Jumping on a trampoline always seems to bring great joy to whoever is jumping. Faith in God should have this same effect.
Not only that, when people see someone jumping on a trampoline there seems to be this unstoppable desire to get on and jump with them. Shouldn't we have that same reaction when we see someone living the way Christ desires us.
As the night went on, the students got into small groups and then came back together as a large group to worship. It was great. Ethan did a great job leading the rest of the students. What was really great though is what happened behind the scenes. While the group was singing, Alaina came up to me and told me she wanted to start jumping. (Neat how she tied it in with the message). She shared with me that she wasn't a Christian but really was ready to be. It was awesome to pray with her as she accepted Christ last night. Afterwords the rest of the students celebrated with her and they started praying with her (unprompted I might add). God was definitely glorified last night.

Yes, it was an awesome night.

Oh, and did I mention the Bears beat the Steelers?

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