Youth Retreat!
I hope that this finds everyone well! I wanted to give everyone a quick update on how things have been going for Martha and I lately with InnerCHANGE. Two weeks ago we returned from a youth retreat we put on together with the San Francisco San Dimas InnerCHANGE team. Six youth from SF and Oakland ended up coming down to Santa Cruz for the weekend and we saw God moving in some really special and tangible ways. I felt like we had a motley crew of youth: a current gang member and his friend, the girlfriend of a gang member, two youth caught up in drug dealing, and one recovering from being an alcoholic, but God's peace was present the whole time. By the end of the weekend, youth who didn't really know each other were laughing and working together on different activities and encouraging one another.
The weekend was focused on encountering God and each youth left the weekend saying that they felt loved and had drawn a step closer to God. We did sessions on how to hear God's voice and how to recognize it in the midst of all the other noise we hear and another on our identity in Christ as opposed to what the world tells us our identity is. We ended by writing down on pieces of paper all the names or identities that other people or the world had put on us and kept them until we could burn them at the evening bonfire. We did a low ropes course to build trust and teamwork and deepen our relationships with one another. We goofed off by having a pie eating contest and bobbing for apples. We made a bonfire and worshipped God in song before we took the papers we had written on in the morning and threw them into the fire and symbolically said goodbye to our old identity and yes to our new one. Then stayed up late telling stories and jokes. To see these youth just laughing and enjoying themselves without having to look over their shoulder was a beautiful thing.
Throughout the weekend, there was space for conversation, which seemed to be what the youth relished in the most. They had a chance to be heard and not just be spoken to or spoken at. I am learning and re-learning how important it is for me to listen in the work of a minister. As I listen, I begin to truly hear where a person is and can then ask God to help me discern how to best speak into their life or if it best to just be quiet. By listening, I begin to understand what is truly going on in their lives and their hearts and they begin to tell us what they are looking for, hoping for, dreaming for. God has many faces and they begin to reveal, which side of God they need to meet at that moment. For some, they are lonely and they need to know God as the friend who will never leave them. For others, they have never had the love of a father and they need to know God as their intimate Father who will always love them and who calls them his sons and daughters. For others, it is even more. They are desperate to get out of drugs or alcohol and need to see Jesus as Savior, the one who has the power to set them free.
We finished the retreat challenging the youth to put on their new identity in Jesus. What piece of this new identity were they going to leave with and hold on to instead of continuing to believe in the old identity they had. One young man, who two years ago had been shot in the back and since then, has been re-learning how to walk, told us that he left really believing that God made him in his image that God has a plan and purpose for his life. One of the young women there told us that she left beginning to believe that she really is a child of God. One of the young men told us that he prayed that God would show him that he was real and afterward he felt a warm hand on his shoulder and a warm sensation moving throughout his body. Later that weekend he told God that he would give him his whole life if he would heal his brother's eyes. I am not vouching that we make deals with God, but I realize this is where some of them are and God still receives them as they are. For all of you that prayed for us, thank you very much. We printed and posted all of your prayers at the retreat and the youth were blown away by the fact that so many people were praying for them. As we sat around the bonfire, one of the youth began to seriously ask what it means to follow Jesus with everything that one has and not just do it half-heartedly. He called us a day after the retreat to tell us that he had prayed to give Jesus his whole life. What a joyful ending to a wonderful weekend for us. To see that God so touched and captured the heart of this young man that he wanted to fully follow Jesus was incredible and filled us with hope that God wants to and will continue to reconcile people to himself.
Blessings,
Matt