Youth Convention 2017

Psalm 23

A psalm of David.

1 The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.

2 He makes me lie down in green pastures,

he leads me beside quiet waters,

3 he refreshes my soul.

He guides me along the right paths

for his name's sake.

4 Even though I walk

through the darkest valley,[a]

I will fear no evil,

for you are with me;

your rod and your staff,

they comfort me.

5 You prepare a table before me

in the presence of my enemies.

You anoint my head with oil;

my cup overflows.

6 Surely your goodness and love will follow me

all the days of my life,

and I will dwell in the house of the Lord

forever.

I remember my first year at youth convention. I remember leaving that youth group. I remember joining another youth group several years later because my mom forced me to (totally out of my comfort zone, but totally worth it). I remember convention the two years after that.

This year was my fourth year at youth convention; my first year going as a youth leader...but this was also the first year that God REALLY moved me and spoke to me.

To start off, I haven't exactly been in the best mental mindset. From stress to sadness, I've been overwhelmed (not in the good way). I knew that pain was just a small part of my life that God could use. I was joyful knowing that He was going to work it out just like he always has. But I did not expect him to totally take my world and shake it up (in a good way) so much while on this trip.

Once our vans arrived to the hotels, our youth pastor told us who we were rooming with, and just like that we were on our way. I was put with 4 sweet girls that I did not normally communicate with. I was anxious thinking about it before hand. It was outside of my comfort zone to be with people that I didn't normally talk to. But just like he normally does, God put me outside of my comfort zone because He was going to let it benefit me, and the people around me. The second that we started walking to our rooms we were already in a full conversation, and it didn't stop when we got to our room. We talked continuously to each other, and I instantly felt relaxed and excited; looking forward to what God was going to do within this weekend.

This year's sermons were my absolute favorite out of all the sermons I've ever heard at convention. God put me there and used Eran Holt to speak healing and encouragement into so many hearts. The theme of the sermons was Psalms 23. On the first night of convention, Eran Holt talked about how he was dreaming the one night of being on a basketball team with Lebron James (or at least I think that was the player he mentioned), and how he so badly wanted to please him and pass the ball to him. He then mentioned Psalms 23:1 (see above). He asked who our shepherd was, and who the person was that we were trying to please. If we were trying to please other people then we were never going to be happy. The only way to true happiness is to make God our shepherd; when we do that we will need nothing else. From there he moved to Psalms 2 (see above). He explained that if Jesus is our shepherd then he has the right to make us do things; Jesus has earned that right. We can't provide for ourselves, we are sheep! Eran Holt then talked about the pain that we may be facing and said that we don't resolve it because it is so much easier to look at a phone screen than to look at what's going on in your heart. If you are looking for encouragement somewhere else, you're distracting yourself from the one who really matters. When we get to these moments of peace in our lives, it's not that we have an absence of problems; it's that we have the presence of God in every part of our lives! Don't ever mistake the darkness in your life as the absence of God. When you speak word of God into your life, it chases away the darkness. Feed yourself with God's word. Eran said that if you were to sum up Psalms 23 into two words then they would be 'with me'. God is with me.

Eran also made a reference to a bucket at the well. The bucket is not what we should be focused on. We shouldn't be striving the have a nicer, bigger, more colorful bucket. We shouldn't be looking for happiness in what the bucket looks like because it's not about the bucket, it's about the one sitting at the well, the one who can give you the life you're longing for. Let yourself BE the bucket that Jesus fills.

That night the girls and I were all in our rooms talking, and ever so slowly, what we were talking about got deeper and deeper. I got to the point where I was shaking because I was talking about stuff that I was so passionate about, and because we were also talking about the many amazing things that God has done. These 4 girls that I had never had full conversations with were suddenly so open with me, and were helping me to get stuff off my chest that I didn't realize I was bottling up. We stayed up until 3 am talking, laughing, close to crying, and it was one of the best nights of my life.

Eran Holt spoke to my heart once again the next morning. Friday morning he talked about Psalms 23:3 (see above). He discussed with us what a good shepherd was. A good shepherd restores us, picks us up, and doesn't remind us of all the stuff that we did wrong. The shepherd wants to help us walk a certain path. A theme that Eran went with during that sermon was how we get to heaven. There are not several ways to get to heaven, the only way to get there is to go through Jesus Christ. You can't be wrong about Jesus and be right about God at the same time. He talked about two big differences between Christianity and other religions. The first difference is legalism. Legalism is when you have to do good things in order to set the bad free, but you're just never good enough. Jesus tells us that he loves us EVEN when we are at our WORST! The next difference is fatalism. Fatalism is the idea that everything has already been determined and that there is no hope of you being rescued. We should not be embracing the fact that we are who we are and just settling for that, instead we should be thriving to live more and become more like Jesus every single day, find ways to better yourself every day. Jesus says that there is hope because he can provide us with freedom and love, but he lets us choose whether we want to let him take control or not. Eran went on to give us reminders about Christianity being exclusive. 1) Jesus made the statement, not us. 2) Christianity is not the only religion that claims exclusivity. 3) Truth, by its very nature, is exclusive. 4) Jesus is inclusive to all, in every part of our life. Jesus is not the best way to our life, he IS our life. He came for us like no other religious leader would do, he is the WAY. God speaks to us through creation, conscious, comfort, conviction, and conversation. He wants us to get to heaven. At this service, Eran mentioned going into ministry and missionary work. He talked about giving up everything to let God use you, and that's what I decided to do. I am going to finish my associate's degree, but after that, I'm going dedicate my life to ministry and missionary work. As much as I love psychology, I can't help but think about what my own pastor told us a couple weeks ago: If you feel that God is talking to you, see if it agrees with the personality he has given you. I am a feeler, I get emotional very easily, and if I were to go into psychology/counseling, I would have to have that emotional part of me under control...but I don't want to. I want to be able to hear a beautiful story and cry because God is just so good! I want to be able to cry with people who are hurting! I want to empathize with those who are hurting, and help them, but psychology isn't the only way to do that. Wherever God calls me to go, I will go. I don't want to live this life for me.

The last sermon of convention was the one that shook me the most. Eran Holt talked about Psalms 23:4 (see above).He told us that when David was writing this that he was in a really dark place, and that he had gone through a lot of pain in his life. Eran then referred to David and Goliath in 1 Samuel 17. Goliath had come from previous generations not stepping up to stop him. David realized that one generation's compromise has the ability to become the next generation's captivity. One moment of weakness gives opportunity to a lot of regret. The thing that we think we can hold has the ability to hold us if we are trying to enter this battle by ourselves. Whether we want to be in the battle by ourselves or not, we never will be. We are not the only ones in the battle because the battle will get passed on to the people we love (in a negative way) if we don't gain control with God's help. Some of the giants that we face may be due to the giants that our family faced but did not fight. We HAVE TO FIGHT THE GIANTS. We are PLANTED, NOT BURIED. We are not abandoned in the valley, whatever the Devil is trying to use to destroy us is what God is going to use for better things! Eran then moved onto Psalms 5&6 (see above). We CAN win in the graveyard because it is our VALLEY, NOT our battlefield! The one note that Eran made that instantly put tears in my eyes is this: There's someone in your life that needs you to make it to the valley. We may know that person, that person may not even be born yet, but someone some day is going to NEED what we've gone through to help them with what they are going through...that is so so powerful. As Eran said that I had the urge to cry, but I just couldn't get the tears out. I told myself that maybe worship would help me cry, but I the tears still wouldn't come. Every year at convention, the speaker has us huddle together with at least one other person and just pray with them. I turned to one of the girls in my room, one of my best friends, and my little sister. We joined hands, and let ourselves be quiet for a moment, and then I started to pray. I was one sentence in and I started to cry...hard. I continued to pray until words wouldn't come out anymore. My friend and I went back and forth praying, and I felt my little sister rest her head on my shoulder. She knew about my pain, she knew about how I was struggling with certain things. She was there, through all of it. As we pulled away to sing more worship songs, my little sister looped her arms around mine and wouldn't let me go until we both decided to raise our hands in absolute surrender. From the moment I started crying during that prayer, I couldn't stop. I cried throughout the whole worship session, and when the session ended I felt peace. I felt happy. I felt better than I had in weeks/months.

That same night we all gathered in the lobby to share our testimonies. I spoke of leaving my major, and of the girls that I made connections with, and then I started crying. After I spoke, I couldn't help but continue to cry as I heard some of my best friends talk about their experiences. The changes I noticed in them within two days were all because of Jesus Christ. I spoke again, this time about there being someone in your life that needs you to make it to the valley. I talked about someone that I used to be friends with who took his life less than a week ago, and I told my youth group family of the value they have in Jesus, and the value they have in my life. I tried my best to stress the fact that things get better; I'm living proof of that. Once everyone who wanted to share was done giving their testimonies, several of my friends approached me to give me a hug. One of my students, who I had only ever said one sentence to, came up to me and asked me if they could give me a hug, and I lost it, again. It's amazing what God can do in such little time. I entered this trip with my original group, and left feeling closer to everyone.

As we got settled back into our rooms for the night, two of the girls in my room completely opened up to me about the struggles and pain that they'd been experiencing. They told me about certain things that I just couldn't help by get excited about because it was so obvious that it was totally a God thing! It meant so much to me that I was able to be the person that these girls came to and trusted. God showed me why I had to go through my most recent struggles; he showed me more of why I had gone through certain other things because I was able to USE them as I talked to my girls.

God called me outside of my comfort zone this weekend and just like always, he had a better plan for me than I could have possibly imagined.