Youth Blog

So, we’re coming to the end of our Art of Connecting course.
To Recap:

My Story - we each have a story of our own, the overall story of our lives and our testimony of how God has been active and how we have met with Him.
Their Story - all of our friends have their own stories to tell, the experiences that they have had in life, the lessons they have learned and so on.
God’s Story - History is His Story, we know how throughout the ages God has connected with His creation right up today where He connects with us and wants to connect with our friends.

My Story is connected to God’s Story, but also to Their Story. Therefore if I go deeper into God’s Story - getting to know Him better and letting Him transform my life - and deeper into My Friend’s Story - building up our friendship, being there for them - then I will inevitably draw Their Story into God’s Story too.

To me, this leaves the simple question - how’s your art? Because art requires effort. An artist can’t half heartedly hold paint and a canvas and hope to see a masterpiece appear. They have to make a real effort.
How much effort are you putting into deepening your connection to God’s Story?
How much effort are you putting into deepening your connection to Their Story?
When you put your effort into these two things, you will be able to step back and see the finished picture - God knowing them, them knowing God.
Let’s look forward to, and put effort into, these masterpieces

I have recently become aware of a band called Bluetree and I have found out a few things about them, but one thing that has particularly stood out to me is the band’s name and the meaning behind it. During an interview with a representative of the Christian Music Community Cross Rhythms, the lead singer Aaron Boyd explained where the name came from and I wanted to share it with you:

“Bluetree stands for standing out. The whole concept of that is that, if you’re walking through a forest, everything you look around at is pretty much going to be green; green trees, brown branches, brown bark: you know, that kind of thing? But if you saw this tree that was bright blue and everything about it - leaves, branches, bark - was blue, it would stand out and you would stand and look at it and take notice of it. As Christians, Jesus Christ has called us to be salt, be light, in this world and really make a difference. So we want to go around and inspire kids to stand out whether that is in church or school.”

So I guess my thought is, when people see us or think of us, do we seem like a blue tree to them? Something that stands out as different in a world where everything else is the same. Because that’s what Jesus calls us to - salt, light in the darkness, a city on a hill.

Because I would love to be described as a blue tree like this

[There will be a copy of their album ‘Greater Things’ added to the CD Library, so if you would like to have a listen, it will be there from Sunday. And it delights me to have found out that they will be playing at Adoration :-D]

I just want to share with you about a couple of friends of mine.

Back when I was in school I had a good friend called Bob (that is actually his name :-P). We travelled to school on the same bus and were in the same year, etc, and so we built up a good friendship and would chat a lot. Now, Bob would throw at me every argument he could come up with against God and want to know what the answer was. Fortunately, this wasn’t in a way that meant he was attacking me and it was rather in a way where he wanted to know more and understand how to others saw it - he went on to study RE/Philosophy at A-level. But he wouldnt accept the answers as such, he would always come up with another reason that it was wrong. When he came along to an alpha course at my church he sat in the talk and took notes on all the things that came up that he wanted to challenge. Over the few years that this went on it felt like I had gotten nowhere. Since school has finished we have kept in touch and seen each other here and there, but obviously not to the amount that we used to.

So imagine my surprise and joy to recently discover that, because of conversations with a friend at uni and people at her church, he has now become a Christian! I was gobsmacked to find this out, and I found it hard to believe - to be honest I found I was the skeptic in this case! But when we were speaking recently he was telling me about how he got chatting about God with a woman on the train and prayed for her then and there! How impressive is that?! I don’t know about you but I would find that a daunting idea, and here he is, the guy I thought would argue his way away from it forever, doing things for God that I find scary. It’s so cool.

Another friend of mine, a girl in the year below me who I also knew from the bus to school and who, to me, barely ever seemed interested in Jesus, has also recently become a Christian.

She has a background in the Greek Orthodox church, so any discussion of religion and she would have said she was a Christian anyway. She knew I was a Christian, but we hadn’t ever really managed to get into any sort of real discussion on Christianity. A couple of years ago she also got quite ill and it still affects her, and so she tells me that she used to think “God can’t exist because why would He punish me like this?”

So it was great to have a conversation the other day and find out that she’d really had these discussions with Christians that she knows through uni, she’d attended an alpha course after Christmas, and had realised that whilst, actually we do deserve a worse punishment, God loves us and has saved us through Jesus. She now can’t help telling everyone she meets about Jesus, and is fired up to see all of her friends come to know him too. The girl I could hardly ever talk to about God cant stop talking about Jesus. The girl who, to be honest, I found it hard or embarrassing to mention my faith to is fired up to tell everyone she knows without hesitation.

Both of these are people that I used to pray a lot for whilst seeing nothing happen, and people that I thought were hardly ever likely to become Christians. And they have surpassed me, both of them.

So be inspired. You may feel that you are seeing little fruit whilst you are in school, but be Jesus to people, and pray for them continually and faithfully whilst you are in the now. Even if it seems like nothing is happening I want to encourage you to keep being salt and light in your school - dont worry or be disheartened if it seems like you’re getting nowhere, because you dont know what difference it is making, or what seeds you are sowing.

And you never know, at any time they could turn around and quickly out pace even where you are in your walk with God.

So, considering how we’ve been thinking about staying connected to God - a little illustration to hopefully encourage you.

In a way, God is like mobile phone signal. “huh?” Ok, bear with me on this

The thing about mobile phone signal is, depending on where you are your level of signal goes up or down, and the quality and ease of phone conversations does too. And depending on where you are, you can find it harder or easier to talk to God.

Think about being somewhere where you have full phone signal. There’s no interferance on the line and hearing the person on the other end can be as clear as if they were literally stood next to you. The line connects really quickly, so there’s no waiting and you know that they can hear you as well as you can hear them. You are unhindered in your conversation. If you are at somewhere like Soul Survivor, etc, it can be like you have full phone signal - speaking to God can seem so easy, like he’s right there next to you, you know He hears everything you say and it’s like you can hear Him speaking back.

What about somewhere where phone signal is moderate? You can have a conversation with someone but the line isnt quite as clear, the line may have moments where you cant hear the other person properly or they can’t hear you fully, but mainly you can have a good phone conversation. This can perhaps be like our every day life at church or youth meetings - we can have full on conversations with God, even if it’s not as intense as at those festivals.

Then there’s low phone signal where conversations can feel really tough. Maybe there are times at school or work or wherever when it’s hard to even bother praying - it works, but it’s harder to do.

But even if you have no signal, you should be able to phone through to emergency services. And how true is that with God? Even in the most dire of circumstances, if you feel you are in the hardest place to talk to God, that connection is still present. You can get in touch with Him no matter where or when - it doesnt matter if it doesnt sound like the clearest connection, or it isnt in the easiest place, you can always get in touch with God. Always. With mobile phones there are places that you do fully lose signal (tunnels, etc) but thats the difference with God. There’s nowhere you lose touch with Him.

So I guess the final thing to say is, how much are you using your mobile phone to God? If we know that signal is always available to us, although how clear it is can vary, then how much are we speaking to Him? Signal is one thing but for a phone conversation to happen, we have to actually have the connection made and the phone to our ear - we have to be purposefully talking.

Cause here’s one last thought - He gives you unlimited minutes