The End!!

Welp...time for another post.
A lot has been happening this week since returning from Honduras. Since returning from the mission field, I have not slept in past 7am and I have not taken any naps. Needless to say, don't try to call me tomorrow.
We had a very motivating night on Wednesday at Epicenter. Matt Lawson brought the heat (it's baseball season...get used to the metaphors). Matt challenged our students, coming off of our mission trip, by asking "What in the WORLD are we doing???" He encouraged the students to start thinking about playing a larger role in the great commission. Matt used Matthew 24:4-14 as his passage. In this passage, Jesus is asked about the end times. Now, Jesus does give us quite a few signs of the end (which I think we tend to get all caught up in) but the last one is the one that should hit the Christians right between the eyes. Jesus talks about famines, wars, earthquakes, and people hating each other. I did some research for Matt to include in his message. Did you know that there have already been 20 earthquakes in 2010 alone? I made a list of all the wars or battles that have occurred since 1990 and it took me a page and a half on Word...single spaced! As Matt said, we can check off everything Jesus says are signs of the end...except one. Verse 14 says "This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to ALL the nations, and THEN then end will come." We are nowhere close to checking this box off. I encourage you to visit www.joshuaproject.net to get a better idea of how many unreached people groups are out there. Sure all these other things are happening (and Jesus calls them "birth pangs") but man...we are dropping the ball on getting the gospel to the nations! I can't remember who this quote belongs to but "why are we so focused on His second coming, when half the world hasn't even heard of His first?" Oh. Snap. Talk about putting your life into focus.

The reason I'm rambling on about this (other than just coming back from a mission trip) is that our students and students of other youth groups in our area, are combining to spread the gospel of John to over 12,000 students in the Cherokee and Cobb county schools. 12,000!!!! That's incredible! Check out www.thelifebook.com to learn about the process. Basically we are challenging our students to hand out free copies of the book of John to all of their classmates during one week. The response last Wednesday night was awesome. We had tables spread out all over the auditorium with signs for their respective schools over them. The kids flooded to the tables to grab 3, 5, or even 15 copies to pass out to their friends. Start in your backyard...then expand the borders. I can see a fire developing in these kids.

Ok. I hadn't even planned on talking about that but I guess that is the beauty of having a blog! I really wanted to mention a prayer request. After Epicenter on Wednesday nights, I will be meeting with six guys for a mentoring/bible study time. We started meeting this past week and it was great. The six of us have committed to read through the entire New Testament by Christmas. I upped the ante a bit on them by challenging them to read the entire Bible. I told them that I wouldn't challenge them to do it if I wasn't going to do it myself. So, by Christmas, I hope to have read the entire Bible. We downloaded a personal reading plan from www.youversion.com that allows you to edit the dates of your specific plan. Starting next week we will be diving into the book of Hebrews. I gave the guys the option of doing an outside book study or just simply diving head-first with no abandon into the scriptures. They decided as a group that they wanted to study Hebrews. Pray for us as we begin with Chapter One next week. Here are the names of my guys so that you can pray for them regularly:
Justin
Brantley (AKA: B-Rant from a previous post...)
Jacob Y.
Jacob K.
Chase
Nick
Hopefully I will have one more guy join our group. He is currently playing baseball for his high school but the season ends in 2 weeks so hopefully Connor will be joining us as well.

That's about it for me today. This is simply what God has laid on my heart and I'm just writing it down!
I'm headed to my first Braves game of 2010 here in a few hours so I may do a sports blog post tomorrow...keep your eyes open