SUNDAY JUNE 5, 2011It is easy to grow discontent with the way things are when we look at the outside and think what we have doesn’t measure up. What makes us the kind of church, the kind of youth group that is having the sort of impact God desires us to have?
Jesus told a story. Stories have the potential to open our eyes to certain truths we would have otherwise missed.
The younger son “wasted his money in wild living” (Luke 15:13 NLT).
“A great famine swept over the land, and he began to starve. He persuaded a local farmer to hire him, and the man sent him into his fields to feed the pigs” (Luke 15:14-15 NLT).
“The young man became so hungry that even the pods he was feeding the pigs looked good to him. But no one gave him anything. When he finally came to his senses, he said to himself, ‘At home even the hired servants have food enough to spare, and here I am dying of hunger! I will go home to my father and say, “Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, and I am no longer worthy of being called your son. Please take me on as a hired servant”’ (Luke 15:16-19 NLT).
When the younger son was a long way off, his father saw him coming.
“The older brother was angry and wouldn’t go in. His father came out and begged him, but he replied, ‘All these years I’ve slaved for you and never once refused to do a single thing you told me to. And in all that time you never gave me even one young goat for a feast with my friends. Yet when this son of yours comes back after squandering your money on prostitutes, you celebrate by killing the fattened calf!’” (Luke 15:28-30 NLT).
“We had to celebrate this happy day. For your brother was dead and has come back to life! He was lost, but now he is found!” (Luke 15:32 NLT).
Tax collectors and other notorious sinners often came to listen to Jesus teach. This made the Pharisees and teachers of religious law complain that he was associating with such sinful people—even eating with them! (Luke 15:1-2 NLT).
Those people the Pharisees considered unworthy, unholy and unlovable were the very people Jesus welcomed into His presence because they mattered to Him.
To illustrate the point further, Jesus told them this story…” (Luke 15:11 NLT).
The point Jesus was trying to make with all three stories concerns how we respond to those who are lost. What if the Pharisees had their way and God operated like they wanted Him to? We should all be challenged to be the loving father to the people who come into our youthgroup, but also to the people we encounter every single day.
What if people knew this was a place unlike anywhere else—a place where we follow the loving father’s lead? Being a youth group that impacts the world is about having the heart of the loving father.
Bottom Line: How we love others determines what type of group we really are.