181 Days -- Love Your Enemies: 092210

Tonight we continued our series on having 181 days to change your school into something that God wants it to be transformed into. The first step was for you to be changed by God, then bring God into everyday conversation, then to pray. Tonight we focused on the idea of how we treat others can transform our schools too. We read from Acts 9:1-19 in which a guy intent on killing christians is changed by God but loses his sight. A man named Ananias must pray for him to recieve his sight back, even though he didn't deserve it. But Ananias had been transformed by god, he had prayed and God directed him, and that prayer also brought about healing. Ananaias showed compassion and love isntead of fear and revenge, thus treating Saul better than he deserved. This changed the world, Saul ended up writing most of the NT and going on missionary journeys the rest of his life, just be cause Ananias allowed God to use him and he treated his enemy with love.

I give tonight: B
Favorite Moment: The Adam Johnson Story

See You At The Pole 2010

We are so proud of all of you that showed up for See You At The Pole 2010, a total of 41 people came to pray for their school, their fellow students, their teachers, their clubs and sports, and for their administration. Check out pictures at: http://spaces.msn.com/members/thetabyouth

181 Days: Pray -- 091510

Tonight we continued with our series about changing our schools over the next 181 days, until summer begins. We have talked about how we need to be changed by God first, then we need to start bringing God into the converstation, the next stop was to start praying. When we pray something starts to happen, God starts to change things. God does here us when we talk to Him, it creates a closer relationship with Him, but it also transforms the things we are praying for. We challenged you to do a prayer challenge for the week and look forward to seeing how each of you did with your challenge was we look to see God changing our schools into something great!

I give tonigth: B+
Favorite Moment: The Prayer Challenge Cards

181 Days: Bring God Into Conversation -- 090810

Tonight we continued with our series 181 days to change your school. God desires to change your school, the question is: do you? We had the first step last week of being changed by God, the second step is to bring God into the conversation. We read from 2nd Kings 5:1-14 in which a girl is taken as a slave (forced to be there), but she listened and cared about her master's husband's disease (he had leperosy). She truly believed in God's power, we know this because she spoke up and gave hope to Naaman by telling him to go to a prophet in Israel (Elisha) who could use God's power to heal him. Naaman went but almost refused to do what the prophet told him to (dip into the dirty Jordan 7 times) but she again spoke up when doubt crept in to him. He followed through by her encouragement and his body was transformed to diseased to brand new.

You are at school because you are forced to be there, but just like her you are there for a reason, because God wants you there. We need to look for opportunities to speak about God (looking for needs from people as well as just conversations that He could fit into). We must know and trust God and the only way to have that is to truly experience Him. When we do bring God into the conversation we must give soemthing real, speaking hope and light in hopeless and dark situations. Finally we must continue to name drop, it will be awkward at first, like learning a foreign language, but will become natural with practice.

If the girl had said nothing Naaman would have died from his leprosy, but she brough brout about transformation in him, just by bringing God into the conversation. You can bring transformation in your school by bringing God into the conversation too!

I give tonight: B
Favorite moment: Seeing so many who have been gone all summer

181 Days: Changing Yourself -- 090110

There are many good and bad things about the schools that we go to. If I were to ask you to list them out I would guess most of what you would say would focus on the physical dimension. But there are more important parts of yoru school to talk about: how people treat each other, bullying, addictions, how people talk, how people view and treat God, etc.... God wants to change your school into something great. He wants to help those who are hurting, take away loneliness, remove bullying, add kindness and love, remove addictions, and bring in godliness. He desires this transformatioan and is looking to you to change it over the next 181 days.

The first step to changing your school is changing yourself, but you can't change on your own. Romans 12:2 tells us that we need to stop being conformed to this world's pattern and transformed by the renewing of our mind. We need to stop acting like everyone else and viewing others how everyone else does. We need to start being transformed internally and then grow out what you do. Who does the renewing? The Holy Spirit. We have to turn to God and ask him to change us. Do you want to transform your school? It is time to allow God to change you!

I give tonight: A-
Favorite Moment: Deeper Restarting