51 Weeks

Mexico Day 5

I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For

You did it!  You made it all the way through the week.  What a week it was…living in the desert, building homes by hand, getting to know people in a way you never thought you could in just one week.  Take a moment to yourself.  Forget about the others that are sitting around you.  I want you to think about the last five days.  Write down a few thoughts in the space below.

What did you feel for the family that you were building the home for?

Think about your parents.  How is your relationship with them?  Has this week changed anything regarding that relationship?

What about you?  How are you different after this week?  Did you find what you are looking for?

When you fully commit your life to God, when you tell Him that you cannot do things on your own, that you have done things you know He doesn’t want you to do and that you want Him to forgive you, things start to happen.  When you tell Him that you want to know what it means to be a follower of Jesus and that he is the only way you can really achieve eternal life, then you have arrived.  It’s been a long journey, and it’s been painful at times.  But you have arrived.  You are still crooked, but you are crooked for God, not for yourself.

2 Chronicles 7:14 (New International Version)

14 if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

Romans 10:9-10 (New International Version)

9That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.

Questions for Group Discussion

1. Share some of your thoughts that you wrote down today.

2. What is one of your favorite moments of the week?

3. What do you want life to look like when you get back to the United States?  What can help you achieve that?

Mexico Day 4

Waiting On The World To Change

Imagine for a minute that you were in charge…in charge of “things”.  Whatever.  Your household.  Your classroom.  Your entire school.  The United States of America!  Seriously, imagine that you are in charge.  What’s one of your first thoughts?  If I start thinking about things in this way I usually start off by thinking how I would change things, how I would make things better.  It usually starts off in my head with a thought like, “…if only I was in charge, things would be different.  Instead of how it is now, it would be…” and then I could trail off into how life would look. 

It isn’t uncommon to think this way.  No matter your age you are no doubt aware of the upcoming Presidential election.  We’re already seeing the candidates all over the place, telling us that if they were in charge, this is how things would look.  Each and every one of them assures us that if we just have the courage to elect them, life will be good.  No, not just good…great!  Life will be great if they are in charge.  Things are going to change.  And so you wait.  You sit and wait for things to change, for things to get better.  You also wait until the day that you are in charge, because from that day forward, things are going to get look different…

Problem:  that isn’t the approach that God tells us to take.  Well, not entirely.   It’s missing a step.  You see, God does want each and every one of us to change the world, but with one important thing that must happen first.  You have to give up being in charge.

Yikes.

That really sucks, doesn’t it?  I mean, you’ve been waiting your whole life to be in charge!  Everybody you know is telling you how you can become a better person so that you can take control of situations, so that you can be the boss of the company, so that you can be class president.  You are constantly being told how to get ahead, whether it is through the best possible grades or by getting a summer job.  It all comes down to you…or so we are told.

God takes a different approach.  Why?  Well, he’s the one that is in charge.  He’s the boss.  He calls the shots.  But he’s about the best boss you’ll ever have, because instead of Him cramming stuff down your throat, he lets you decide whether or not you want to let Him be the boss.  We know already that we want to be in charge of ourselves and do whatever we want (see that Romans verse back in day 2), so now we have to decide that we aren’t doing a very good job with ourselves.  We have to let God know that he is in charge, and we’re okay with that.

Yikes again.

Here is the cool part: when you do get around to letting God call the shots, he will tweak the way you see things just a little, and he will actually help you to make changes, the changes that you have always wanted to make.  Not because you are in charge, but because He is!  This tweaking (or change or transformation or whatever you want to call it) is pretty cool.  Read this story:

Genesis 32:22-28 (New International Version)

Jacob Wrestles With God

22 That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two maidservants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23 After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. 24 So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. 25 When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. 26 Then the man said, "Let me go, for it is daybreak."
      But Jacob replied, "I will not let you go unless you bless me."

27 The man asked him, "What is your name?"
      "Jacob," he answered.

28 Then the man said, "Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, ^[a] because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome."

Jacob wrestled with God, and God tweaked him forever.  He changed his name, and he changed the way he walks.  Change isn’t a bad thing, especially when you have been waiting for it for so long.  Here is the good part though, so pay attention: even though God changed several things about Jacob, he still used the person that Jacob was (stubborn, among other things…who in the heck challenges God to a wrestling match?) to change the world.  He used Jacob and all of his crookedness to make the world a better place.

This is what God wants from you.  He wants you confused and geeked out and introverted and goofy and obnoxious and shy…he wants all of those things, every crooked inch of you…but he wants you to let Him be in charge.  Why?  He loves us, and he wants our lives to be full of joy.   When you wrestle with this concept, letting God be in charge, and you let Him win the wrestling match, things change.  Tomorrow we’ll talk about what God will give us when all of this happens.

Questions for Group Discussion

1. If you were the President of The United States, what things would you change right away?

2. What is happening in your life right now that you wish you could change?  Do you feel powerless to make the change yourself?  What can you do to start fixing it?

3. What are some of your best character traits?  Some of your worst?

4. Have you ever wanted to change your name?  Change schools?  Change families?  Move to another country? 

5. Read 2 Corinthians 3:18.  What do you think it means to be “transformed into his likeness”?  What are some things that you can do to work toward this?

Mexico Day 3

Open Your Eyes

Based upon several years of experience in Mexico, I’m going to guess that while you are reading this you are feeling several things:

ü  Tired

ü  Sore

ü  Dirty

ü  Happy

Yes, you really can get all of that in one neat little package called “Mexico Mission Trip”.  Amazing, isn’t it?  It’s only going to get better.  Look around today, open your eyes to the beauty of what is here.

If you are old enough to drive you may have experienced something that I have had a problem with more than once.  I’m getting ready to go somewhere and I’m really in a hurry, so I go to grab my car keys from the place where I ALWAYS leave them, and they are not there.  Frantically I start looking around…in the kitchen, downstairs, in my pants pockets from yesterday…I look everywhere and they cannot be found. I start getting frustrated, probably blaming my missing keys on somebody else in my family, and keep tearing the house apart.  I need those keys!  It’s about that time that my wife will ask me if I left them in the car.  Of course not! Why would I do that?  And don’t you think I would remember if I did?  Of course when I actually do discover them still in the ignition of my car, I feel a little…ummm, stupid.  How ridiculous I was, I searched everywhere and the entire time my keys where in the most obvious spot.

I have heard so many people over the years searching for something…for truth, for comfort, for justice, for fairness, for love.  They search and search, sometimes hoping to find the answer in a funky Eastern religion, sometimes hoping to find the answer in other people.  However, I’m here to tell you that you don’t need to search high and low to find the truth.

Luke 24:30-32 (New International Version)

30When he [Jesus] was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. 31Then their eyes were opened and they recognized Him, and he disappeared from their sight. 32They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”

This bible passage describes a scene right after Jesus’ crucifixion on the cross.  He appeared to these two men, and they didn’t even recognize Him until after he was gone!  He was right in front of them the whole time, but they were so busy looking for other signs of Him, they were so caught up in their own lives, that they didn’t even see what was right under their nose.  They simply needed to open their eyes.

Yesterday we talked about sin; what it is and what its implications in our life can mean.  I think we probably agreed that sin exists in us no matter what we do.  We can try our hardest to not screw up, but it’s going to happen.  God says that he doesn’t dig sin.  In fact, he hates us.  That puts us in a tough spot.  So what can we do about it?

The answer is so simple, people look everywhere for it, but the entire time it is right in front of them!  All we have to do is open our eyes.  It says in the Bible that if we ask for it, God will forgive and forget our sins!

1 John 1:8-10 (The Message)

8-10If we claim that we're free of sin, we're only fooling ourselves. A claim like that is errant nonsense. On the other hand, if we admit our sins—make a clean breast of them—he won't let us down; he'll be true to Himself. He'll forgive our sins and purge us of all wrongdoing. If we claim that we've never sinned, we out-and-out contradict God—make a liar out of Him. A claim like that only shows off our ignorance of God.

Questions for Group Discussion

1. Write down some thoughts about your trip to this point.  Open your eyes to the people that you are building the house for, and also to the community around them.  What are some of your observations?  How is their attitude toward life?

2. Looking at your answers above, does this work against what your pre-conceived notions of them were before you started the trip? How does what you are seeing compare to what Americans (generally speaking) think of Mexicans?

3. What do you think about other religions in general?  Have you looked at other thoughts (Islam, Buddhism, Mormonism, etc) to try to find answers to life?  What conclusions did you come to, if any?

4. Is it hard for you to say “I’m sorry” to somebody when you are wrong?  Why or why not?  If somebody asks you for forgiveness do you easily forgive them?  Again, why or why not?  Think of a situation in your life right now where you have screwed up, or maybe one of your friends or family members did.  What would life be like if, when you came home from Mexico, everybody involved in the situation forgave everybody else?

5. The bible verse from 1 John tells us that if we ask for forgiveness God will quickly pardon our sins.  How does that make you feel?

Are You Crooked?

Consider what God has done: Who can straighten what he has made crooked? -Ecclesiastes 7:13

This is the verse that we are structuring all of our curriculum around this year.  I love the implications: God made you uniquely, no matter how crooked that may feel sometimes.  And guess what?  He wants you that way...every crooked inch of you. 

This is going to be a great year!