Hang on! 5-24-01
What a great year we just had! Think of all that you accomplished by God’s grace, all the trials He saw you through, and another year of your education completed. God is good. Can we give him some applause? Are you still Crackpots? For Jesus! (See Gideon and the Crackpots, Youth Sermon)
I know you’ve heard me say it before, but I gotta remind you again, God hand picked 40 kids out of the Verde Valley to get a Christian High School education! He invested in you – the Bible classes – the chapels – the teachers who really care that you grow up to be the man or woman of God that He is calling you to be. He’s called you out to the front and started training you to be one of his leaders for the sake of His glory. That ought to humble you so low you’re sniffing carpet dust. I mean it! Think about it. Sovereign God who determines what will be from the beginning, the One who inhabits eternity, who blueprinted you DNA before time and space began has singled you out. I don’t think we are capable of really grasping what a privilege that is. That is as high a calling as it gets for a teen in the Verde Valley. I know there are Christian teens in the secular schools, and they have a call too. But you have that extra investment of the Word of God each day.
When I was growing up as a teen in Sedona, I can’t think of one other teen that was as serious about God as I was. Now that is not saying an awful lot, in fact it is a sad statement. I was often tempted and often gave in. I still am handicapped by what I allowed my mind to dwell on during those years. Do you hear that? I formed such deep ruts in my thought life, refusing to take every thought captive, that today, a number of times every day, I have to grab my thoughts and toss them to my Savior who is a consuming fire to that wood hay and stubble. Why am I telling you this? God let me go through that to tell you today to take your thoughts captive and make them obedient to...