If you did not get an information sheet on Sunday night you can download one by clicking the link below. Please be sure to read over the information on this sheet – it is important.

• Download the Info Sheet and Packing List

If you have not filled out the standard {2:42} permission slip and medical release form, please go the the forms page and print those out as well. Have them with you on Friday when you arrive at Danny and Laura’s house at 6 p.m.

If you have any other questions, please feel free to leave a comment below.

The Jesus Creed for Students is the youth version of Scot McKnight’s book The Jesus Creed, and it centers around Jesus’ statement that the center of Jesus’ ethic was the command to love God and to love others.

Happiness and the Jesus Creed

For most people, the one thing they’re seeking in life is happiness. Happiness–while desirable–is often centered around getting what you want. The best guess of the youth group was that happiness is related to getting what we want about 98% of the time. I think they’re right. But is “getting what we want” the one thing that’s most important in the Kingdom of God?

According to McKnight, to be blessed rather than happy is a far more worthy goal. Which begs the question, “What does it mean to be blessed?” I posed that question to the senior high students. When we thought of people who are “blessed” in our life, we thought primarily of people who seem to “have it all together.” People who are smart, and well off, talented, and generally able to do whatever they want. A few people came to mind who were blessed because they had persevered through trials and hardship, and these few people point us toward the people who are blessed in the eyes of Jesus.

Looking at Matthew 5:1-12, we looked at the people who Jesus names as blessed. The poor in spirit, those who are mourning, the meek, people with a hunger and thirst for what is right and just, who are merciful and pure in heart, who pursue peace and endure persecution in the name of Jesus and his kingdom. For Jesus then, to be blessed is not be happy because we get what we want, but to be the kind of people who remain faithful even when life presents us with temptations and struggles.

So how do we become that sort of person? How do we live to be blessed by God and not simply to be happy? That’s where the Jesus Creed comes in. When we live to be people who love God first with every fiber of our being, and who love others as ourselves, we cultivate the soil of our heart in order the the spirit’s fruit can blossom in our lives. In a sense we begin to train our unreformed “fleshly” selves to listen and act more readily to the leading of the new heart that Christ has given us.

For our group, that means we are committing to be people who recite the Jesus Creed daily. When we wake up and when we go to bed, when we leave our house and as we go about our day we have agreed to recited the following:

Hear O Israel, the Lord our God the Lord is One.

Love the Lord your God with

all your heart,

all your soul,

all your mind,

and all your strength.

The second is this

Love your neighbor as yourself.

There is no commandment greater than these.

I’m excited to see how this will shape my own heart and life, but more importantly how it might shape the heart and lives of the teens of {2:42}.

How about you? Would you commit to follow us as we study the Jesus Creed and recite throughout your day?

How do you think it might shape your life differently? 

1. When you wake up.
2. When you go to bed.
3. When you leave your house.
4. Whenever it comes to mind throughout the day.

The Jesus Creed is:

“Hear O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is One.

Love the Lord your God

with all your heart,

with all your soul,

with all your mind,

and with all your strength.”

The second is this:

“Love your neighbor as yourself.”

There is no commandment greater than these.

-Mark 12:29–31

If you want to read ahead and have your own copy of the book, next week’s we’re studying chapters 3 & 4!

We have been working to gather details and information to pass along to everyone who is going to the Pine Ridge Reservation this summer. On Thursday, April 21 we are going to have a meeting at 7 p.m. where we will give you what information we have thus far and answer questions for parents and trip attendees.

I thought it might be helpful for everyone if we knew what questions people have already. So if you have questions, please ask them this week. Either post it in the comments below, or send me an email, or give me a call. This way, I can be putting together a more effective meeting for the 21st. Here are some topics I already have written down for us to discuss.

• Fund Raising Information and Schedule
• Your Current Trip Balance
• A Preparation Schedule
• Work Details

This is your chance to add to our agenda. Pass this along to your parents if you’re a student, or to other family members who you know are going on this trip. I’m excited pass along to everyone the details as they have developed to this point.

Joe

PS. Don’t forget to post the things you can do to the Jobs Board at church so that people in the church can put you to work and help you raise money for the trip.

• When do you stop eating? On Friday, after your lunch, you are doing eating until 6 p.m. on Saturday night when we break the fast together.
• When should I show up at the church? We’re meeting at the church at 6 p.m. on Friday and spending the next 24 hours together.
• What do I need to bring? Please bring clothes, sleeping gear (sleeping bag, pillow, etc), and toiletries as well as a bible and your collection envelope.
• Do I need to have a permission form? Yes, please download the general permission form and fill it out for the Famine. Bring it with you on Friday.
• What are we doing this Sunday at youth for the famine? We are going to prepare things for the coming Famine. We’re going to pray for our efforts to raise money and talk about the plans for the weekend. Rather than having a small group of people planning it – we’re going to work together to create our weekend event.

Please let me know if you have any other questions. I hope you’re looking forward to loving others by not eating for 30 Hours!

Mostly I’m posting today to let you know that the summer calendar is available for download on our calendars page, http://242.nlcfonline.com/downloads/calendar. Check it out, download it. Let me know if you have any questions. There are some items that are not on the calendar – especially for Junior High Students – that are still in the works and we’ll let you know when the details are available.

Again, I’m hoping to update stuff more often and do some finishing work on the site really soon. In the meantime I look forward to everything we have going on in the summer and seeing everything that God is doing in the group.

Woo-ha!

Joe

Mark your calendars! May 15 is this year’s golf outing – our best fund raising event of the year. We’ll need people in the early morning and around lunch to help set up and tear down. Sign up in the lobby at church if you want to work the event.

Next week we will launch a web page where people who want to play in the event and get more information about sponsorship. Check back here for the link March 1.

Each day, over 25,000 children under the age of 5 die from preventable diseases such as malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea, and acute respiratory infections. Malnutrition is associated with over half of those deaths.

Each year, we at {2:42} are a part of the 30 Hour Famine, organized by World Vision, in order to help combat the destructive impact of hunger and poverty world wide.

This year we will be doing the Famine on April 23-24. Students pledge to not eat for 30 Hours and seek to raise sponsors for the event. We’ll spend the night at the church and also have a pancake breakfast for the community to help raise extra support.

Sign Up in the lobby at church if you want to be a part of this year’s Famine. You can also find the permission slips for the event on our forms page as well.

Right now it’s only 9:22 a.m. and I’ve only had my radio on for about five minutes and I’ve already heard at least 2 commercials that present a hidden message about what I am supposed to believe about sex and women. I would be surprised if someone could go a day consuming today’s media without hearing a message about sex, whether that message is in your face or whether it’s hidden. As disciples of Jesus, we need to answer the question, “Is this story we hear every day true?”

This past Sunday we looked at what Jesus said about sexual desire and how it’s related to God’s intention for our sexuality and sexual expression and we can only come to the conclusion that the story we hear day in and day out is false.
In Matthew 5:27-30, Jesus says the following:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.

Jesus makes a stunning comment about our sexual desire here as he equates our passionate desire for another person to whom we’re not married to adultery. This is a big deal because according to the Jewish Law (found in the Old Testament of the Bible) people caught in adultery are supposed to be stoned to death. Therefore according to Jesus, having lust in our hearts for someone is worthy of death? That sounds so harsh today, and yet we have to realize the ways in which God has designed our sexuality to function.

In Genesis 2:24, after having created Eve out of Adam, we are told that when a man and a woman come together as husband and wife, they are to unite in new and mysterious ways. Part of that union takes place in the act of the sexual union shared between the two, and according to Jesus to be burning after someone other than that person to whom you are wed threatens that union to the same degree that adultery does. If we take a look at our culture are we surprised by this? Pornography is only a click away in all our households, and objectifying images of women in our media send messages to both men and women that tell us that sex is really all about satisfying our own desire, not creating a God created union between two people. Is it any wonder then that as a culture we are experiencing so much confusion about not only sex, but love and marriage and commitment?

What we have to do is change our goal, change the very thing we are aiming at in order to find fulfillment for our desires. Imagine a great treasure stored in a case, and that case is set in the middle of the room. Everyone in the room has the choice to head straight to the chest without turning to the right or the left. If the chest represents God’s best for our lives, anyone who would focus on this would find themselves meeting at the chest, and there in the will of God meeting that one person with whom they can share theirs lives and enjoy the gift of sex that God has designed for them. However, if someone chooses to focus on chasing after sex or even chasing after person after person to try and find that special “one” they may never reach the goal God has for them. Our challenge then is to ignore the constant lies our culture tells about the nature and purpose of sex and desire, and instead focus on God, trusting that his will is good and worthy to be trusted.

What do you think? How hard do you think it is to remain sexually pure in today’s world? How can we support one another in our attempt to honor God with our bodies?

Here’s two things I know;

1. Valentine’s Day is approaching…
2. …and there are a bunch of teens hoping to go to Orlando, Florida this July for IYC 2010.

So, we’ve put these two things together and began planning another Parents’ Night Out fundraiser! If you are a family in the church and you want to be able to have a night out just drop your young–uns off at New Life at 5 p.m. on February 13th and plan on picking them up again at 9. Then go do, whatever it is you’re wanting to do! Enjoy the evening!

All we ask in return is that you make a donation of your choosing at the end of the night to help offset the cost of our trip to Orlando. There is a sign up sheet in the lobby if you are going to take advantage of this evening. Please let us know how many kids you have for us to watch and their ages, and enjoy the evening!

Sign Up Here