He'll Take Care Of It

He will, because He does. He really does. He takes care of it.

To me, tonight was no different than every other Thursday. I did the majority of my prepping the day before, like usual. Then, after staff meeting and sending out our church's e-news, I usually take a gander over to the mall and find a quiet little table at the coffee shop to finish some of the preparing for my talk, the games, and my adult leaders meeting. I'm thinking 'great I got time, I'm on track.' Then, I hear... "Phil!"...

Every Thursday I have highschool lunch with my students and meet some of their friends. I got hooked into a table where after the first lunch with them, their 'leader' guy said, "Phil, you are the first Christian that I don't want to shoot in the face." This helps you to understand this guy a little. A complete jokester. The guy is hilarious, truly has a good heart, but has had some bad representation when it comes to the Christian faith. This guy cusses a lot and the guys that hang around him drop the F-bomb with every other word. Many of the jokes come straight from the gutter, especially sexually. A lot of uncomfortable moments and many opportunities to steer the conversation. This guy has a girlfriend. He loves her, you can tell. But at the lunch table, a good amount of the jokes come at her expense. She nervously rolls her eyes and chuckles. He dominates the conversation. She hardly has room to speak...so she doesn't.

..."Phil!" It's his girlfriend. She found me at the mall. I'm working on the programming of tonight's Aftershock when she comes to my table and starts talking! I've never witnessed so much talking out of her and I loved it. She was finally free to be herself...and she kept talking. I started to wonder if I would get finished with what I needed to, but God said, "Listen to her, this is good. This is a divine appointment. I brought her here." We talk about her boyfriend, what it means for him to respect her. She spoke so highly of him and I believed it. She says he's not like this when he's not around those guys at lunch. He's trying to show off. I let her know that I think it is good for her to demand a little respect. She talks about how they are really beginning to communicate about that. A new semester started and now they sit at a different table and it's getting better. I got to connect and really begin to understand her. Her own self, her own person...and it was awesome.

This month's series at Aftershock is called "Uncensored." We are dealing with relationships and this week dealt with relationships with our peers. These relationships are healthy when we are working together, as a team, collaborating and leaning on each other for help. The relationships become unhealthy when we begin comparing ourselves to our peers. We become jealous of certain things they own or traits they possess. We plot ways to turn things to our favor. Sometimes we use others for self gain or to elevate our status. This is when we begin to measure certain things about someone or ourselves as more important than other things. We begin to measure what is actually unable to be measured. How can these outwardly visible things, like beauty, athleticism, humor, popularity, truly be measured? They are simply opinions. To say the way that one person is is better than the way that another person is, is putting people in inequality. It is raising someone to a higher, more praise-worthy position than someone else, or pushing that someone else to a lower, not-as-important status. When we don't see our peers in equality, our relationships will become unhealthy.

We then broke off into small groups where we explored it further into dating relationships. When a guy is pressuring his girlfriend to have sex though she doesn't feel right about it, he are putting himself at a higher level than her, thinking he knows what is best for the relationship. A dating relationship needs to work at a level of equality, of understanding and shared visions and shared goals. Never is it a healthy relationship when we use someone for self gain, as bragging rights to our buddies, to elevate us to a certain status, or even trying to make someone change at the cost of losing ourselves. Scales get knocked off-balanced, equality is no more. What could have been a healthy relationship is now left in ruins.

For real, the games did not work tonight from a programming standpoint. The kids truly seemed to have fun though. I failed to account for some things with the games, and it could have been an absolute bomb. Part of it was that I felt rushed before-hand. I ran out of time due to my conversation at the mall. I was a little unprepared...from the programming standpoint. Turns out, though, God takes care of it. The mall conversation was important, worth the games not being polished. And the conversations I had later were also very much worth it.

Afterward, a kid came up to me. He mentioned some things were going on with him and his girlfriend. The message that I gave (in my mind thinking: God gave. I'm nothing. I was unprepared.) went straight to the heart of the issue and really helped him through some things he was dealing with. From what I understand about him is that this guy grew up in a church where God was very distant, not very personal. I feel privileged to be a part of introducing him to this God who is more than a list of do's and don't's. All I could think to say was "Keep coming back, man. Keep coming back."

Still after that, another kid, who I can't wait to hone his leadership skills, comes to me and asks me to pray for him. He is in a new relationship with a girl and wants to take it slow and remain on equal levels with her. She is going through some things with her family. He asked if I could pray about them together and about her as she's working through these things with her family. How incredibly honored I feel that God has placed me in this position where kids see me as their spiritually leader and desire me to pray for them.

But, as we all know, I am nothing. I am only a vessel. God flows through this vessel, even with all of its cracks and kinks. These holes are the very places he fills with his strengths...and He takes care of it. That's all I could think of on the way home, 'He took care of it.' And He'll take care of it again.