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From our DCE / Vicar
Jason Bauer
(231) 392-4259
As Spring slowly approaches, we look towards the promise of Summer which holds some long awaited Youth trips. the Youth group has been working to raise the funds that are needed to make these trips a possibility. We are on the Way! In July we go to New Your to work with young people and people in need in the inner city. In June we go to Camp Matz to work with developmentally disabled campers.
In the furry of fundraising and planning it is easy to loose sight of the real reasons that we go on these trips. These trips exist to help us become better at sharing the love of Christ with people and get some real life experience doing just that.
Many people search for an answer to the question, "Why am I here?" They walk around acting as if there were no answer to this question. Well, there is an answer. Before Jesus left his disciples he said, "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." Matthew 28.
This is an incredibly simple concept. The "Therefore" at the beginning implies since you have seen that I am God, have all the power and died for your sins, Go! Tell Others! The main purpose of your life after you have become a child of God is to go and tell others of good news! In sharing the good news we do not go alone.
There is a story of told by the author Philip Yancey of a Dr. Paul Brand, who was speaking to a medical college in India on "Let your light so shine before men that they may behold your good works and glorify your Father." In front of the lectern was an oil lamp, with its cotton wick burning from the shallow dish of oil. As he preached, the lamp ran out of oil, the wick burned dry and the smoke made him cough. He immediately used the opportunity.
"Some of us here are like this wick," he said. "We are trying to shine for the glory of God, but we stink. That's what happens when we use ourselves as the fuel of our witness rather than the Holy Spirit.
"Wicks can last indefinitely, burning brightly and without irritating smoke, if the fuel, the Holy Spirit, is in constant supply." The Holy Spirit is at work among us in the word and in the Sacraments. The trips this Summer are wonderful opportunities to remove the distractions that plague our lives and receive and be refreshed by the gifts of the Spirit, that we may be about what Hecreated us to do!
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