Video of some of our Student Testimonies from the Missions Trip!

Can't see it? Go here: http://andersonyouth.blogspot.com/2011/08/video-of-some-of-our-student.html

Recounting The Missions Trip And The Power Of An Eternal Love

Last week I was on a missions trip with 20 high schoolers through the Minneapolis-based missions youth ministry called YouthWorks.

I got little sleep. It was well worth it.

We went down ready to help change some people's lives. Little did we know the affect it would have on our own.

Somehow I've been entrusted to preach every week at my church. These kids come and they listen. Some of it penetrates their hearts and sticks. But they sit, hear, and talk a little in small groups afterwards. The putting-it-into-practice part comes when you are immersed in it. Rarely will one sermon on one day a week at church cause an immersion, especially when, for many of these kids, going to church is a fairly new concept.

But on a missions trip...oh, on a missions trip, you get immersion. You almost have no choice. You are thrown into it. On a missions trip, you get to see why the Bible compares a church to a body. Church was meant to do, to be active and be alive. To change other people's lives is to change our own lives is to allow God to move. To love one another is to love ourselves is to love God. When we are living this way, we are living at the highest level. We are living in 3 dimensions: Others, God, You. I can honestly say that many of these students have gotten more out of this week of missions than I ever did in high school going to a church camp (...though camp has its place. I love camping ministry. Let's make that very clear).

We were designed to create community and live in it. That's what this week was. We created community and we had no choice but to live in it. We were thrown into it. And at first it catches you off guard. You are doing life differently than what you've become accustomed to, what you've become used to.

And you don't know it yet, but you love it. You love things to be different because, though you don't know it yet, the way you were doing life before was very self-centered. It was not community-focused. It was You-focused. And You-focused is not active. A You-focused way of doing life is stuck, complacent, and desires only to satisfy You. We are not fully alive when we are You-focused. You love yourself before others and this never satisfies you, because you are only living in one dimension - You.

A little over halfway through the week, we began to look past ourselves. All the students received letters from a parent or guardian. And we had to look past ourselves. A lot of us felt undeserving of the love and encouragement found in those letters. So it caused us to look past ourselves. The rest of the week God opened doors to a new way of living. Doors to help us see past ourselves and discover that all people, young and old, poor and rich, of all cultures, backgrounds and races, deserve love if for no other reason than for the sake of love's existence itself. For, we have been changed by love when we least deserved it. Can't we offer the same to others?

And that's when we fell in love with one another.

The last night we washed each others feet; an act of service that made you feel the power of grace, putting you in the place of experiencing the odd combination of feeling both undeserved and honored at the same time. We prayed for each other, hugged and cried. The night ended in a group-hug prayer. We were literally one, leaning on one another, one organism, a body, the Church. Christ's presence, the head of our body, filled the room. Love overflowed in the form of tears and words of truth and encouragement from one to another. We could do nothing else but build each other up. To tear down would be uncharacteristic of the body of Christ. To be self-serving would be inappropriate. God's spirit is what revealed these things to us in that moment. Love really was the only answer. It all hinged on it. Everything mattered because of it. That was truly all that mattered. Love. That's it. Nothing more. For all else, pales in comparison to the Love that God has for us and that we have for each other when we find ourselves united by Love beyond our own understanding. A Love beyond what we are able to produce ourselves. A Love beyond a broken world. The Love that was present before sin, that creates out of a desire for relationship, community, and wholeness. A Love unconditional. A Love eternal.

This. Was. All. That. Mattered.

For God is Love.

My life is a medium to help bring about a bigger purpose; a purpose bigger than my own understanding, but a purpose worth living and dying for.
Blog Home | Twitter | Facebook | Subscribe to philwrit.es by Email