We’re looking for ways to improve youth group, and we’d love your input! We designed a survey that is super quick and totally confidential.

We can’t see who the responses are from, and we’re not going to have our feelings hurt, so please be completely honest. We really value your opinions. Also, if there’s anything we didn’t ask that you’d like to say, go for it!

Again, the survey is confidential, but if you’d like us to know who it’s from, go ahead and throw your name into a comment section.

Thanks for your input. We really appreciate it!

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/QYV7XZ5

Matt

Hey everybody!

Just a quick note to let you know that this year’s Snow Ball is coming up February 11th. If you haven’t been involved with the Snow Ball in the past, it’s a cool, classy dinner and dance that we host for the adults in the church: basically an opportunity for us to blow their expectations for a “youth dinner” out of the water and make some money for winter camp. As you can imagine, it’s a lot of work, and there’ll be time slots up for grabs on Thursday – Saturday that week. The more you work, the harder you work, the more you’ll earn (plus it’s a lot of fun). We’ve got some great ideas lining up, and this year’s event is guaranteed not to disappoint! To sign up, or for an questions, contact Matt.

See you there!

It’s easy to pick out Jonah’s faults. After all, he’s got plenty of them, and they’re nicely laid out for us in four chapters. What is far more difficult, however, is being honest enough to see ourselves in Jonah’s story. Granted, we haven’t been puked up by a giant sea monster or brought the capital of a world empire to its knees in repentance, but we have resisted God’s direction for our lives. We have felt arrogance and unkindness toward others. We have resented God’s mercy on those people we don’t like, while expecting it in our own lives.

Jonah’s story is so powerful, not because of the immense imagery and supernatural events such as an immediately calmed storm and a sea monster capable of keeping a man alive in its belly for three days. It’s so powerful, not because of the instantly changed hearts of the Ninevites or the symbolism of Jonah’s fish with Jesus’ grave. It is powerful because it is our story. We read Jonah, and we scorn the willful blindness of this disobedient prophet, until the Holy Spirit graciously opens our eyes to the wickedness and rebellion of our own hearts, lining us up next to this selfish, unlearning prophet and showing us that there is not so much difference between him and ourselves.

May we approach this text with the readiness to examine and learn from the faults of God’s prophet, with the honesty to see our own character in his, with the willingness to flee those areas in which we fall short, with the humility to recognize our weakness and accept the help of the only one with any true power, and with the faith to share with Jonah the one thing he got right in the book, recognizing God’s sovereign power in our situation and his role as both source and substance of our only hope.

Matt

Last week at youth group we left Jonah in the belly of the fish. Having fled from his mission and his God, having endangered the lives of the sailors with whom he had gained passage, having despaired of life itself and having been hurled from the relative safety of the ship into the peril of the turbulent storm, Jonah experiences the unimaginable.

He is swallowed.

The darkness must have been impenetrable, the terror, paralyzing. Jonah, amazed to find himself still alive, must have determined that God thought a simple drowning too good for him. Instead, he was being drawn down to a far more hideous death, carried in the stomach of the fish ever deeper into the abyss. He would be crushed by the immense pressure of the sea, his skin scathed and blistered by the acid of the fish’s stomach, his breath stolen from him as whatever tiny pocket of air he had found depleted and he slowly succumbed to oxygen deprivation. The God whom he had deserted had now come back with a vengeance to find him, to torture him, to mock his weak, human desperation for breath and life and, finally, to leave him, lost forever at sea, never again to see the sun or even to receive a dignified burial.

But that’s not what we find.

Instead of despair, we find hope; instead of abandonment, we find commitment; instead of anger, we find gratitude. Jonah, far from stellar in the way he lives out God’s grace in his life, here gets it right. He recognizes that, though it must have been a horrific experience, the fish was the vehicle of God’s mercy. Though the fish represents suffering, it is also what God was using to bring Jonah back to himself.

In the belly of the fish, God was Jonah’s only hope. He could run no longer; the sovereign King of Israel and almighty Lord of the universe was inescapable. The only option open to Jonah was to abandon all pretense and run into the arms of the very God who had put him there, and that’s exactly what he does.

Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the belly of the fish, saying,

I called out to the LORD, out of my distress,
and he answered me;

out of the belly of Sheol I cried,
and you heard my voice.

Jonah understands that even while he is in the pit, and he feels like death is but a breath away, God is in control, and God is calling him. Through the crucible of his pain, God is calling him. God has a plan for Jonah, and he’s using this experience to bring it about. Job understands this, too in Job 13:15.

Though he slay me, I will hope in him.

Our pain is God’s way of getting our attention. C. S. Lewis writes in The Problem of Pain (ch. 6),

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

Jonah’s fish was a massive sea creature; your fish is your suffering, whatever form that may take. Just like Jonah, you may be suffocated by it, oppressed by it, crushed under its weight and see no way out. Just like Jonah, it may be the result of your own sin, or, unlike Jonah, you may have done nothing to deserve it. Nevertheless, it is also what God is using to bring you back to himself. Your pain is God’s call to you. Your fish is your suffering, and your fish is your rescue.

Jonah made a choice in the belly of the fish to call out to the only one who could save him, and you have the same choice open to you. Will you run to the God who can save, or will you sink into the abyss of your suffering?

Matt

Q: Why did Judas betray Jesus?

A: Judas betrayed Jesus for a number of different reasons on different levels.

• At the surface level, he was paid. Judas received 30 pieces of silver in exchange for leading the chief priests and Romans to Jesus. We know that Judas was a thief and was using his position with Jesus to find ways to benefit himself.
• At a deeper level, many Bible scholars believe that Judas was a Zealot, meaning he was looking for an opportunity to violently overthrow the occupying Roman force. When he discovered that Jesus was not the political, militant messiah that he was expecting, he turned against him.
•  Ultimately, Jesus came to Earth to die, among other reasons. This was the plan all along, and in order for it to happen, someone had to turn him in to the authorities.

Q: This is for Joey. Why does lady gaga want to sit right down where she belongs in the corner of my bar with her high heels on?

A: (Joey) Next question please.

Q: I just started my “journey of faith” and it’s been pretty rough. Will it get any easier for me?

A: Yes and no. As Christians, we will always struggle with temptation and doubt. These will never fully go away, but as we mature in our faith, the Holy Spirit will empower us and strengthen both our lifestyle and our trust in God so that our relationship with him grows and becomes closer.

Q: For Holly: How did you deal with insecurities as a teenager?

A: Disclaimer: Holly answered this much better last night than I can, but I’ll recap some of what she said and throw my own two cents in. In our teenage years, we experience a huge amount of insecurities and self doubt, but the truth is many (if not all) adults continue to struggle with these issues to some extent. The fact of the matter is that we can’t be comfortable in our own skin until we really grasp the reality that we are children of God, because he chose to make us his own. We are endowed with dignity, honor and worth because God loves us, and compared with that our issues about complexion or weight or height or social awkwardness or whatever we struggle with should be really small. I realize that’s easy to say, but it’s true. We have to be secure in our identity as sons and daughters of God before we can be secure in anything else about ourselves.

Q: My relationship with God has been put last because of all the crap going on in my life. Besides praying, going to church and being a holy person, how do I grow closer? Will he ever fully forgive me?

A: Praying, going to church, and trying to live a holy lifestyle, along with regular Bible reading, are definitely essential in developing our relationship with God, but they are not enough on their own; they have to be paired with a genuine love for Christ in our hearts. Also, it is incredibly important to remember that working on our relationship with God takes some work. It’s in some ways like working on our physical fitness. In the same way that going to the gym once a month or doing a pushup every other day is not going to dramatically change our physique, half-hearted prayer or Bible reading will not change our spiritual lives overnight. Community is also critical. When we are in relationships with others, we can grow together with them. They can hold us accountable and encourage us. As for forgiveness, Christ’s atonement is big enough to cover any sin we could commit, and if we are genuine followers of Christ, he will both forgive our sins and help us to sin less frequently.

Q: Jeus is awesome. Do you agree?

A: Assuming that “Jeus” is a typo (the questions were texted in) answers were provided based on the following interpretations:

• Jeus = “Jesus” with an s missing. Yes.
• Jeus = “Juice” badly misspelled. Yes.
• Jeus = “Zeus” with j replacing z. No, but his stories are fascinating.

Q: How do we deal with a death that happened many years ago and still affects me each and every day?

A: There is no “quick-fix” for something like this, but we know that God uses death and pain to help us grow and to teach us about himself. We can, however, take comfort in the knowledge that death is not permanent, and we will one day be reunited with other believers. Over time, God can bring healing in the midst of our pain, but we will still miss loved ones who have died. Whether someone was a Christian or not, we can honor their memory by using their death to understand the importance of having a relationship with God now and sharing him with others.

Q: To Holly: Me and my friends are in our own little group but some of them are fading away. I’m scared to lose them and I really don’t want to. What do I do?

A: We didn’t get to this question last night, but I’ve asked Holly to respond personally to the person who asked it. What I would say is that as we get older and our personalities change (especially as adolescents), we will find that friendships also change. This is painful, but it is also normal. Most (not all) adults that I know have a different set of friends from when they were in high school, but there are also friendships that can transcend all these changes. My best advice is honesty with your friends. Let them know that you value their friendship and are willing to put in the work to make it strong.

Q: Why do spiders crawl into your mouth while you sleep?

A: Because it’s warm and moist. Don’t worry too much about it though; spiders are proteiny. Mmm, spiders.

Q: Most of my closest friends are Mormon. They don’t try to change me, but it’s weird because they talk about their religion alot. (Not really a question, sorry)

A: If them talking about their faith makes you uncomfortable, try telling them (politely) that it makes you uncomfortable or, better yet, try talking about your faith with them. Good starting points: Jesus as fully God and fully man or the Bible as our only supreme source of information about God. (Not really an answer)

Q: Humans don’t know or even understand things about life so how do you show or tell them because humans need to experience to understand things?

A: First off, I have to disagree with a couple parts of your question. Humans can understand some things about life, even though they can’t understand everything. Also, experience is a fantastic teacher, but it’s not the only way to understand things. For example, I’ve never been hit by a car, but I understand the physics involved and I’m confident that it would hurt a lot, and I’d like to avoid it. I’ve never been to China, but I believe it exists. I was born in 1982, but I don’t doubt that Hitler and Stalin and Churchill and Roosevelt lived and were involved in WWII. I can’t get inside my wife’s brain, but I believe that she loves me. None of these things are based in experience, and even some things that people have believed based on experience (such as the earth being the center of the universe) have proven to be wrong. What we’re talking about here is a philosophical category known as epistemology, which is the study of how we know what we know, or how information comes to us, and there are four major ways that we know about things.

• Innatism. Innate knowledge is something that we simply know as humans. I would argue that some basic rules of logic are innate, such as the law of non-contradiction (if A equals B, then A cannot not equal B).
• Empiricism. Empirical knowledge is what we learn through our senses. The color of a stop sign, the taste of barbecued ribs and the feeling of plunging into an ice cold lake are all learned empirically.
• Authority. Authority is the method we get most of our information from. If I tell you that “there are four major epistemological categories” and you believe that I know what I’m talking about, you will accept that as new information. Most of what we know about the world is this type of information.
• Intuition. Intuition is probably the weakest source of knowledge, but it is a source nevertheless. We might make an assumption about someone’s intentions based on their behavior. This is intuition. It’s not solid or trustworthy, but it can help us get along in day-to-day life.

The only one of these that really describes learning through experience is empiricism, and frankly we can’t learn everything through direct experience. Even if you conduct your own scientific experiments, precisely and painstakingly measuring and weighing different substances, your information is partly based on authority. You are trusting that your instruments are accurate and that their designer knew what they were doing.

Q: Did you get a new phone?

A: Yes.

Q: To Joey: I feel like I want to take my friend under “my wing” but I don’t know if I’m confident enough. What can I do about it?

A: We didn’t get to this question last night, but I’ve asked Joey to respond personally to the person who asked it. What I would say is that, again, honesty is going to be key here. Your approach will obviously need to depend on what it is that you’re hoping to coach them about, but make sure that they know you care about them and that you’re being a good resource by checking with others who are wiser than you to make sure you’re giving good advice. Be reliable, accessible and consistent. Maintain their confidence, and if you don’t know an answer, tell them you’ll find out, and then follow through.

That’s it! Hope that helps a little. Again, feel free to comment if you want to add to my answers or add to the questions.

Matt

In case you didn’t get the memo, FUEL is going to Sky High in Bellevue September 23rd.  We’ve got a room for 20 booked from 8:00-10:00, so you’ll need to meet at the church at 7:00 and be picked up at 10:30 that night.

You’ll need a release for Sky High and a permission slip for church.  Also, don’t forget your ID!

Get signed up before it’s full!

How come God doesn’t seem to answer my prayers?

We talked a little bit about this on Sunday night, but the fact is we don’t always know why God works the way that he does.  The Bible says that he hears us, and part of faith is trusting that he has good plans for us, even when we don’t see it working out in our everyday life.  Also, there may be other factors at play.  God’s plan is a lot bigger than we can see, and so sometimes we pray for one solution to a problem when God’s solution is better but looks totally different.  My youth pastor always used to tell us that God will always answer your prayers, but a lot of times the answer is “wait”.

How do I listen to God?

The best way to listen to God is to get to know his voice.  The best way to get to know his voice is to read the Bible.  For me, it’s really hard a lot of the time to tell whether something is from God or from my imagination.  A couple of “tests” for this are: does it line up with Scripture?  If not, it’s definitely not from God.  Is it something you would have thought of on your own?  A lot of times, when God is speaking to us, it’s something totally different from how we were thinking.  Finally, listen to older, wiser, Christian influences in your life.  Listen to people who you know listen to God.  You’ll hear his voice through theirs.

Many of my friends are Mormon, and one tries to talk me into going to church with her.  What do I say?

Be loving, be respectful, but also feel free to discuss the differences between what you believe.  As far as going to church with her, talk to your parents about it, but if you do go remember that what they believe is not the same as what we believe.  This is why it’s so important for us to understand our own faith clearly.  The better we understand the truth, the more easily we’ll recognize something that’s false.

How do I create a good relationship with God?

There’s a really cliché and simplistic answer to that: read your Bible and pray.  It’s cliché and simplistic, but it’s true.  God wants you to love him “with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” (Matthew 22.37)  That means getting to know him and living for him.

“He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
And to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6.8)

Is there FUEL during the summer?

Yes.  Sundays will continue as normal (but no youth on June 19^th), and Wednesdays will transition to weekly activities (volleyball, ultimate frisbee, swimming, etc.).

Can you turn the fan off?

No.  It gets super hot in that room without some kind of air circulation.

Is God a guy or girl?

No.  Jesus was a man, but God is beyond gender.  That being said, he does possess the positive attributes of what we would consider masculine and feminine.

If you have learned one thing from this group of students, what would it be?

I’ve learned so much from you guys that it’s hard to nail down just one thing, but if I had to it would be the importance of community.  My personality makes things like facts and figures and theological doctrines really easy to learn and remember, but the importance of having community in our group hit me a little over a year ago like a baseball bat to the face!  I see in this group such a need to belong and such a potential to become a place of belonging that I want to do everything in my power to strengthen this element of our group.

Are there any students that you have especially learned from?

I’d like to think that I’m able to learn something from all of my students, but there have definitely been some over the years that have taught me a lot more than most.  One thing I’ve learned recently from several students is that they change over time.  I can’t allow my first (or second, or third) impression of a student to “stick”, because by the time I’ve formed a solid understanding, they’re different.

When do we start doing volleyball again?

I need to work together with Joey on getting a solid date, but toward the end of June.

How can I tell people about God without feeling weird?

Your best tool here is your lifestyle: living in a way that glorifies God.  As far as actually bringing up your faith in conversation (in a non-awkward way), I find it helpful to relate to something more “tangible”.  Invite them to a youth event, mention something about church on Sunday or find some other way to work it into conversation.  That will open the door to talking more openly about your faith.  Most people will be pretty receptive and at least respect you for having the guts to talk about it.  You doing so may even give other Christians the courage to be more outgoing about their faith.

What should I do: I have a friend that is Mormon, and I don’t know what to do.  Should I talk to her or leave it be?

Be loving, be respectful, but also feel free to discuss the differences between what you believe.  Before you get into a theological debate, however, make sure you know your stuff!  The better we understand the truth, the more easily we’ll recognize something that’s false.

If we feel good with our relationship with God but not completely sure, how can we grow closer?

If you have a strong relationship with God, you should feel good about it, but you should never be satisfied in where your relationship is.  It should always be growing.  As far as how to grow closer, see above.

Which side of the family do you listen to if one half is Lutheran and they want you to believe them, but the other half is Christian they want you to believe them?

Lutherans are Christian, so you’re pretty good going with either one.  That being said, our church definitely has some positions on issues that would disagree with Lutheran positions.  You need to read your Bible, seek advice from older, wiser Christians, understand the arguments for both positions, and make your decision.  I’m happy to help you through that process on a case-by-case basis, just ask!

What do you do when someone in your family looses their faith in the Lord?

We talked a bit about this on Sunday night, but the best things you can do are to pray for them and share your faith through a loving, accepting lifestyle.  They need to know that you love them unconditionally, but that you also have strong convictions about your faith.  Let them know how important your faith is to you, and how important it is for you to share that part of your life with them, but don’t be pushy or bossy.  They have to choose God for themselves; you can’t force the decision.  I know that’s a lot easier said than done, especially when it’s someone in your family, but they have to have room to choose Christ.

Matt Honstain

May 15th      EXPECTATION (what do you want from a youth ministry?)
May 22nd     LETTER25 (why be a Christian? why be involved in church?)
May 29th      NEED.2.KNOW (what do young people need to hear?)
June 5th       WHO IS GOD (to you? to your culture?)
June 12th    CONTINUUM (what’s next?)

This is going to be an awesome time in our ministry, with some exciting changes coming up.  Don’t miss it!