The Inbetween

Today is the day I will call "The Inbetween". VBS is over and we leave for Student Life Camp on Sunday. So I will take this time to post more VBS pictures! We had over 450 helpers and children this week, WOW! I know in my crew, which was 1 of 3 crews of 4th and 5th grade girls I had as many as 12 children on one particular night! Thank you God for such an awesome week learning about how you never leave us, you constantly surprise us and even when life gets overwhelming you walk beside us!

VBS 2010!

This week is VBS here at Community Church, and what a whirlwind of a week it has been!

I have had the privilege of being the Crew Leader to Crew 31 (that's right 31, represent!) and I have the very best helpers (Ok I might be a bit biased, but that's alright!)

I realized the other day that with the except of 2 summers I have helped with/led a crew for VBS since I was in 6th grade. Crazy right?!?! I am 23, so that means that 9 summers of my life have been spent doing VBS! Hopefully I will be able to do many more, because I do enjoy it so much!

I just wanted to share some pictures from the week to give you an idea of what we have been up to. Please pray for God to really move in the hearts of these kids! What an exciting time and great way to kick off the summer!

Roots

Colossians 2:7 says "Let your roots grow down into him and let your lives be built on Him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness."

Now that is a lot to consider. 1 being... what are my roots? What am I deeply grounded in? 2 being...the concept of overflow, being Jesus to all I meet. 3 being the concept of thankfulness. Being truly appreciative of the love, grace, forgiveness, mercy.. etc that God gives us.

The verse before this one basically says " just as you accepted the Lord you must follow Him."

Merely accepting God is not enough, there has to be a radical life transformation. Many people try and fail at so many diets before understanding that it is a lifestyle change if they want to have any lasting effect on their body. This is the same with Christianity. If you want God to have a lasting effect made on your life, you have to change your life.

Am I saying that becoming a Christian means that you can't have fun? Absolutely not. But it does mean that you hold yourself to a higher standard, not so that you can brag about it but because you want to be Jesus to all that you meet. What does being Jesus even mean? Pursuing the heart of God, after you have decided to make that radical life change and intentionally reaching out to people. Jesus was all about relationships, so make your life about relationships. Basically to sum up the commandments its "Love God, Love People". I'm sure that most of you have heard this before but that's basically the condensed version. By loving God you love people and by loving people you love God. Making sense? The radical life change that we are commanded to undergo by God means that we are so filled with the spirit of God that we are noticeably different to all we come into contact with. We don't disrespect people, we don't sleep around and we don't have a trashy vocabulary if we are filled with the spirit of God.

So just a challenge to us all today. Are we so rooted in the essence of God that we overflow love? Are we so overwhelmed daily by the gifts that God gives us that we spend time thanking Him?