Since school started for everyone this week, I thought it would be a good idea to talk about what the Bible has to say about our schoolwork at Youth Group this past Sunday. When asked what one’s favorite part of school is, I’ve heard many a middle schooler instantaneously respond, “Lunch!” Some young’uns love school and thrive in an academic environment, while others loathe the idea of schoolwork. Wherever you land in the spectrum of enjoying school, we need to have a Biblical worldview of the work we do.

If you were to take a gander at mythological stories of creation you’d see a very low view of work. The Babylonian god Marduke creates man to do work in the world so the gods don’t have to. In the Greek myth of Pandora’s box, Pandora is given a box by Zeus and is told not to open it. What does she do? Opens it, of course. Out came disease, death, decay….and work.

You may have bought into the American Dream, and so you say, “I like work because it allows me to do things I want to do. I’m hoping to retire early and enjoy life. Even if I can’t retire as early as I want, I’ll work so I can have a home and be able to go on vacation and have some fun.” Is that really a higher view of work than the Babylonians or Greeks had? Work just becomes a by-product, something you do to make money so you can then go do the stuff you really wanted to do in the first place. (idea stolen from Dorothy Sayers)

As a youth, the job you’ve been given is to be a student. You have to do it, and maybe you hate it. What’s the problem? Is work really bad?

Check out Genesis 1 and 2 sometime. Genesis 2:2 says, “And on the 7th day God finished His work that He had done, and rested on the 7th day from all the work He had done.” Or how ’bout Genesis 2:15? It says, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it.” Quick question, does work come before or after the Fall? Before. The Fall happens in Genesis 3. Work is in paradise!

In Genesis 1:27, it says that we’ve been made in God’s image (male and female). If we’ve been made in the image of our Creator, what should we do? Create! (and I’m not saying we all need to be artists…thank goodness for me)

“go back to the original Old Testament spot where the first couple, Adam and Eve, are given a job, and the first job was gardening. Gardening is a paradigm for all work. Now what does a gardener do? A gardener is not a park ranger, who just walks around and doesn’t touch anything. A gardener also does not pave over the garden. A gardener is someone who digs up the ground and rearranges the raw material of the soil to produce something that human beings actually need. What do they need? They need food or they need flowers for their physical or emotional needs. All work essentially is that. It is taking raw material and rearranging it to give human beings something they need.”

-Tim Keller, Hope for Your Work

In mirroring our Creator, our work should be creating order out of chaos. What’s an example of that? Well, if you create a business, you’re creating a product that wasn’t there before. You’ve rearranged materials to give people something they need. It’s order out of chaos. You’re imaging your Creator.

That’s fine and dandy, but what about a student going through the drudgery of 10th grade? Let’s take a look at some examples:

-You write a paper in your English class. What’ve you done? You’ve rearranged words and put them together to create thoughts and ideas. You’ve mirrored your Creator.

-In Art, you sculpt, paint, or design something. What’ve you done? You’ve taken different elements and created beauty and order. Order out of chaos. You’ve mirrored your Creator.

-In Science you learn about bodies and nature. From it we can heal and restore disordered bodies and make the orderly. You’ve mirrored your Creator.

-Maybe you’re a person who enjoys the friendships at school. Well, be a good friend then. Listen, counsel, give advice. What’ve you done? You’ve taken a disordered life and tried to bring order to it. You’ve mirrored your Creator.

-How about extracurricular parts of school? Take over as a leader on your sports team. You can create stability with your leadership. You’ve rearranged to create order. You’ve mirrored your Creator.

Why is it so satisfying to get a job done well? Because you’re imitating God in doing so. You have to work or you won’t feel human. Glorify God in your schoolwork, youth. As 1 Corinthians 10:31 says, “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”

Let’s quickly wrap this long post up with one more thought. The Bible is realistic about your work. We live in a broken world and that means our work is broken. Maybe school has frustrated you, made you feel inadequate, or caused you to be very proud (some are very good at school and very driven to dominate it). What do you need to do? Rest.

Let’s look again at Genesis 2:2. It says God finished His work and then rested. Now, you might be thinking, “Ok, I’ll just take breaks. I like breaks.” Yes, you need physical rest, but there’s more in there. In Genesis 2 God says it’s finished because He’s finished the work of creation. Thousands of years later, God in the flesh cries out, “It is finished,” as He’s hanging from a cross. The first time God gets rest because creation is finished. The second time Jesus cries out, “It is finished,” so we can get rest because He’s finished the work of redemption.

Until you believe Jesus Christ did all the work necessary to gain you God’s unwavering love and approval, you’ll never find rest — and never be free to work. When you get that rest, you can see that work does matter because God’s created it. Also, you don’t have to work to exhaustion and forsake everything for an A+. The kid who struggles with grades, has trouble making friends at school, and is woefully unathletic but knows God through Christ has a better basis for identity and value than the star high school quarterback with all his adoring fans who doesn’t know God through Christ.

“If God is God (and He is), then small with Him is better than big with anybody else.”

-John Piper

God matters to your school. The Gospel frees you from the view that schoolwork is bad, and it also frees you from making schoolwork an idol. Your identity isn’t a letter grade. You can now find joy in imitating your Creator because you’ve rested. Rest so you can work.

Now go do your homework.

Youth discipleship groups are back up and running this Wednesday, August 24th from 6:30 to 8 PM at the church. This week will be laid back since everyone just started school. Dinner will be served, games will be played, and hang out will ensue.

D-groups will happen every week at the same time and place. There are 4 different discipleship groups – Middle School Girls, Middle School Boys, High School Girls, and High School Boys. The idea is to spend time in a small community getting to know your peers and to be discipled by a leader. That means modeling prayer, studying God’s Word together, catching up each week on what’s going on in life, offering advice, building relationships, playing games together, grabbing dinner together, etc.

If you’ve heard about d-groups and always wanted to participate, now’s a great time to jump in. Contact me with any questions.

As the youth studied the Gospel of John on Sunday nights at Youth Group, one thing that kept coming up was the miracles Jesus performed. When we studied Jesus’ miraculous feeding of the 5,000 and his claim that He is the Bread of Life, we noted that miracles did display Jesus sovereignty and Lordship, but they weren’t primarily naked displays of power. More specifically, they show what He came to use His power for. They tell us His mission and how we can be a part of it. They tell us that He came to deal with sin and the effects of sin, namely suffering. Every single one of Jesus’ miracles comes against some type of suffering, which means that God isn’t content with the way the world is anymore than you or I are. Jesus feeds the hungry, heals the sick, opens the eyes of the blind, fixes the legs of the crippled, resurrects the dead, and even calms storms. Every miracle is an assault on injustice, disease, decay, and death.

When John the Baptist is unsure if Jesus is really the Messiah, Jesus sends this message back to him, “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them.” (Luke 7:22) He comes to deal with suffering; the blind see. He comes to deal with uncleanness; the lepers are cleansed. He comes to deal with injustice; the poor have the Gospel preached to them.

If we just think of miracles as proofs of Jesus’ power, then we’re only going to think of them as an interruption to the way things usually work. However, if we see miracles as signs of the Kingdom, we see that Jesus isn’t temporarily interrupting the natural order of things, but temporarily restoring the natural order of things.

Jesus comes and shows us that this isn’t how things are supposed to be. When He feeds the hungry, He’s reminding us that God designed a world without children with swollen bellies. When He raises the Centurion’s son and Lazarus, He’s reminding us that God created a world where brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, husbands, and wives don’t die and leave unbearable heartache. He’s not just pointing back to the Garden of Eden, but forward to the new creation.

Here’s an interesting article that definitely hits on what I believe should be true — parents have the primary role of evangelizing and discipling thier children, not the youth ministry.

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2011/08/11/family-first-in-youth-discipleship-and-evangelism/

Even in our youth ministry’s vision statement we say, “…In our discipleship of the youth, we hope to partner with parents to model the Gospel and develop future leaders of the church who put their faith, hope and assurance solely in the doing and dying of Christ….” We are part of a covenant family, so I think there is a need for different voices to speak into the lives of our teenagers, just as we have a need as adults to live and learn in community. However, the youth leaders should never be the primary voice in the lives of the youth. That’s the parents role.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:
“…parents should never presume that the church will do the work that is primarily theirs. Relying on a youth pastor or church mentor to serve as the primary gospel-shaping force in the lives of our children will actually almost guarantee the failure in that task for even the most gifted and godly youth leader. How can a youth pastor realistically encourage a high school boy to read and study the Bible if that boy has never seen his Christian father doing the same? In the context of the local church, the effective youth pastor seeking gospel growth in the lives of students reinforces, strengthens, and bolsters a gospel work that has sprung out of—and been nourished already within—the context of a Christ-centered home. While parents should see their evangelism and discipleship of their children as primary, they should not be hesitant to involve other mature Christians in these activities in the lives of their children in order to further the work they have started…”


Feel free to shoot me an email or talk to me in person about how the youth ministry can better partner with parents and equip them for the work of raising their children. Youth years are hard, and I want to be there as  a resource to all the parents. Let’s work together for the glory and exultation of the name of Jesus Christ.

Since last August the youth have been looking at the Gospel of John on Sunday nights. We’re finishing up this week, so I thought I’d post a few thoughts from the past year that I’ve shared on the youth blog – youthatccc.blogspot.com. Back in June at Sunday night Youth Group we looked at John 15:1-17. Here are some of the thoughts we gleaned from the passage:

In the passage Jesus says in v. 1, “I am the true vine.” He talks about how He’s the vine, God the Father is the vinedresser, and we (Christians) are the branches. By faith we are connected to Christ and can draw on Him for life, love, significance, hope, change, etc.

One of the points Jesus makes to the disciples is that those who are connected to the vine will bear fruit. Just to be clear, us bearing fruit doesn’t get us connected to the vine. After all He says in v. 16, “You did not choose me, but I chose you…” But let’s not miss the 2nd part of that verse, that says, “…and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit.” Also, v. 2, “Every branch in me that doesn’t bear fruit, He takes away.” Again, this isn’t saying you can lose you salvation. It’s not saying if you don’t do enough good stuff, God will discard you. It is saying, though, that if there’s no fruit (change, character growth) in your life, you never really were connected to the vine (Jesus) because as James 2 says, faith without works is dead.

Think of it this way, imagine an apple tree with a bunch of beautiful, ripe apples on it. Do the apples have some sort of innate power to make the tree alive? No, but they do show that the tree is alive. In the same way, bearing fruit as a Christian doesn’t make you alive to God, but it shows you are. So, in no way is the passage saying you are justified by how much fruit you bear or that God’s love for you will rise and fall depending on how much fruit you bear. Absolutely not. However, it is saying that those who have a real, vital connection to Christ will bear fruit.

A big question is how does one change, grow, and bear more fruit? One blog post will not be enough to give a satisfactory response. However, I will point out one thing from the passage. One word that Jesus repeats 8 times in the passage is “abide.” He says to abide in Him (v. 4), abide in His word (v. 7), and abide in His love (v. 9). Let me just expound briefly on one of them here – abiding in His word.

How do you abide in His word? Here are some ideas – read your Bible (not just for information, but to meet God. Dwell on it.), listen to preaching and teaching, get in a d-group or community group, talk to others about God’s Word (community is key), memorize it, apply it, live in it, obey it. When the Word of God (Scripture) gets in you, it shapes you.

Think for a moment how much a TV show or movie can shape you. Has that ever happened to you, where you get caught up in a really funny show or movie? What happens? You go online and look up quotes from it, watch it multiple times, write parts of it on your friend’s facebook wall, use it in conversation, etc. It really starts to shape you. It even shapes how you see the world. (Ex: “Oh, that person’s like Dwight Schrute from The Office.”) It’s silly, but true that it shapes you. Do you abide in God’s Word as much as TV shows? (Fyi – at this point I’m preaching to myself) If a TV show can shape you, how much more do you think God’s Word can?

“I am the vine” is the last of 7 “I am Statements” that Jesus makes in the Gospel of John. Let’s use those as an example. What if you were to abide in those statements? When you’re starving for significance, your mind would go to, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger.” When you’re forgetting who made you, you’d dwell on Christ saying, “Before Abraham was, I am.” The eternal creator and sustainer of all things has loved you and come and died in your place! When you don’t know what to do, you’d think about “I am the light of the world.” When you are feeling like God doesn’t care, you’d hear the words “I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” When you feel like finding your own path, you’d be struck anew with “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Abide in God’s Word. Also, abide in Him. Rest in Christ’s finished work on the cross. Abide in His love. What’s your vine? What do you draw on for life and significance? Is it your job, social status, family, athletic ability, money, smarts, friends, goodness? Or is it Christ, the vine? Let your connection to His grace fuel your growth. Let v. 13 & 15 encourage you, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends…No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.”