Tonight’s Storytime story. From Darling Downs Christian School. Watch it HERE.
Tonight’s Storytime story. From Darling Downs Christian School. Watch it HERE.
Here is a Medium Resolution Photo, but if you click the link you can download the high resolution photo. Can you find your campsite?
It is fair to say that Youth is an age where dating is very important. Pastor Meshach enthusiastically shared the answers his youth gave when he asked for some of their best pickup lines last night. Lines like:
“you must be from Tennessee, because you are the only 10 I see”
“Heaven must be missing an angel”
“Your feet must be tired, because you’ve been running though my mind all day.”
But then he told the youth that the best one he had been told was
“I walk up to them and say, can I pray with you?”
He then suggested the ladies should respond to a mans offer to date with a unusual location.
“If a man ask you for a date ladies, you should date him at Church, let me meet the whole family”
If BAE don’t pray,
don’t play,
push them out of the way.
This Greco/Roman idea of Love is based on this little baby with wings, and has darts, and shoots them at people, and they get all these feelings, and fall in love. But the Youth Tent were challenged that this form of Love is not reliable and is not a true form of Love. This over emphasis on feelings is hurting our relationships, and preventing us from experiencing love itself.
Biblical love is the act of the will, with emotion, responding ON BEHALF of it’s object.
From this statement the Youth Tent were shown that Biblical Love is a choice.
Jesus modelled this love in Gethsemane, where emotion was present when he prayed, if it be possible, take this cup from me. But he CHOSE to LOVE, He chose to say, “father not my will be done”
The object Jesus was demonstrating the strongest possible love you at that very moment, WAS YOU and ME. – Pastor Meshach
In desperate need of a restroom Joseph finally found one, only to be met by a staff member who firmly told him that this was an exclusive club for members only. And she denied him entry.
This rejection weighed on him for weeks.
Weeks later he happened to be in the same airport with the president of Andrews University. Who invited him to go back to his place of rejection. Joseph was not excited about this, and was doing his best to not be seen by the staff. The same lady however spotted him, and very sternly informed Joseph that he was not allowed to be there without paying the membership price. Bringing all that rejection back again.
However the president of Andrews told her, “This is Dr Joseph Kidder, today his is my plus one” Then the entire premium airport lounge was opened up to him. The woman’s attitude to him changed, and she offered him everything available, full food, facilities, nothing was too much to ask for Joseph, and it would be done.
But Dr Joseph brought this message home by telling us that, as with the story of the Zacchaeus, Jesus says of us, that we are his plus 1 in the kingdom of heaven. We are not there on our own merits, but because Jesus claims us as his plus one, we have full right to enter the kingdom.
Emotions can be defined as “energy in motion” and “the relationship between emotion and health is turning out to me more interesting and more important than most of us could have imagined” … “all are psychological states that affect our health just as clearly as obesity or physical fitness. And the brain as the source of such states offers a potential gateway to countless other issues and organs – from the heart and blood vessels to the guy and the immune system.”
But those present were told that these emotions are something we can and must self-regulate, and how God designed us to have he ability to self regulate our emotions in times of stress and joy. The workshop was filled with exactly how to do that.
Emotional health is time oriented, if we are living in the past, and then projecting those experiences on the future, our emotions are being controlled by something that is not ourselves, but if we anchor the now in Jesus, and experience his peace, and his power, this cycle can be broken, and we start to experience the freedom of living in and trusting the “I AM” not the I WAS or the I WILL BE, but the God of NOW.
The Adventist Councillors Association meeting yesterday gave great insight into over reactions. The anger response being out of proportion to the action that has caused the over reaction is always indicative of things that happened in your past, and past trauma. It’s not only about those circumstances that caused the reaction, but the Passion Ruling Reason response comes from things that happened in the past that are unresolved. Jenifer Skues shared that this is a incredible insight into your emotional health, and counselling services can help you to process the past, so over reactions become a thing of the past. Not just a technique to control them, but a way to have healed from them so they don’t control you anymore.
One of the main ways of controlling the emotional roller coaster is the brain / heart connection. If you can bring you heart rate back down, your body will react to the situation of stress differently, allowing you to think about the best decision instead of just reacting. This is achieved primarily by the two things closest to your heart.
These two simple things will allow you to calm right down and become centred, allowing time to think of Jesus and his power in the situation. Participants in the Emotional Rollercoaster workshop were instructed to practice this in times of calm, so they will be ready at a moment of stress to use it.
Peter Beamish has been married for 40 years. Just before the marriage workshop he turned to his wife and asked.
“Do you think we have a good marriage”
she replied: “I think we do”
“Why do you think we have a good marriage”
she replied” “It’s because you’re away so much”
This was not the ago boosting answer he was expecting. but Paul Bogacs used it to as an illustration to demonstrate that a good marriage isn’t about marrying the right person, or Good Luck, but that scientifically there are some easy things you can do to make your marriage great.
It is a difficult statistic to measure, but Paul suggested that although the rate of divorce is difficult to measure, it is closer to 1 in 3, 33%-38%. Much better odds of the marriage working than tossing a coin to see.
It is more about behaviours and choices than compatibility,
You don’t have to do this perfectly, anything small can make a long term difference.
If you missed this workshop, watching it during your afternoon siesta in the tend is highly recommended.
