Listen and Do
By Michael Chad Visca
God has been challenging us as a church over the past month with messages about becoming passionate disciples of Jesus. Consequently, our youth have been increasingly hearing His voice and are now doing their best to work out the messages they have heard all through their life.
As young people who are easily swayed emotionally, they’ve had to try to make sense of all that they’ve been hearing. They now desire that the past weeks do not remain as just a feel-good memory and nothing more. They’ve been asking themselves, “How do we live this out?”
After all, it’s happened before. We, as a church, are moved in heart and mind after a stirring worship gathering, conference, retreat or some other multi-sensory event.
Then what?
In one of our afternoon gatherings, we gave the pulpit to the youth. We asked them to share to the group what God has been revealing to them and what He wants done. An hour was not enough.
Some told of how they’ve tried to share the Gospel to their friends in school only to fall flat on their face. Others openly confessed of their struggle to actually believe in God; how they feel like hypocrites for being in church on Sundays and, as a result, ended up not bothering to pray or read the Bible. Some have experienced the joy of actually conversing with strangers who signified interest in learning more about following Jesus!
These were raw, open confessions of people who truly desire to follow Jesus wholeheartedly!
Let’s pray for our youth. They face a world very different from the ones we faced a decade ago. The battles for their souls are being fought daily and every second counts.
The harvest is plenty but the laborers are few. Let’s pray that God would raise up more people from among the emerging generation who will simply listen and do what God says.
22 Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. 23 Those who listen to the word but do not do what it says are like people who look at their faces in a mirror 24 and, after looking at themselves, go away and immediately forget what they look like. 25 But those who look intently into the perfect law that gives freedom and continue in it—not forgetting what they have heard but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.
- James 1:22-25 (TNIV)
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