September 2013 Anchor Article

Last month I had the privilege of attending the Jesus Culture conference in Los Angeles, Ca, with about 20 youth and adults from our congregation.  We joined about 5000 other people with the same desire, to come to know our Father God better and to grow in that relationship.  The privilege of worshiping with all these youth was like having a small glimpse into what heaven is like.  It was incredible.  The challenge and offer of this conference was the invitation to the youth of this generation to enter an authentic and intimate relationship with the God of this universe who has chosen that the most important thing to Him is relationship with man.  An incredible concept at best and impossible to attain or maintain through the door of religion – where the burden of achieving this goal is put on the frail shoulders of man.  The incredible reality is that this burden was not put on our shoulders but was shouldered by God Himself and it was made possible by his Son.  This reality made each of these youth sing with utter joy and amazement.  The call to utter abandonment of self and a wholehearted giving of oneself to that amazing Love was the invitation that each of us was given.  Each of us came back with a fresh experience of God’s love for us individually and a feel of equipping for taking this love to the world!!!!   Thinking about this with respect to children, my thoughts are that Jesus said that unless we become like little children we won’t enter the kingdom of heaven.  There are qualities of little children that are admirable to Jesus and we are to emulate those qualities if we want to enter the kingdom of heaven.  A couple of these qualities are that children give themselves completely to things and they keep trying till they get it.  They don’t make excuses for making mistakes, they just keep at it.  These attributes work well in the kingdom of heaven – so my challenge to myself and to you is to study children to not only teach them but to learn about the heart of God from them.  Let’s change our world.