Last night's youth lesson notes

Spiritual disciplines Romans 12:2 says, Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. Shaun was your all American regular old teenaged boy. He loved to chase girls, play sports and have fun any chance he got. One day he was talking with a friend who invited him to church. He decided to go, and you know what it wasn’t half bad. So he went back and started to go pretty regularly. Then, he went to summer camp and accepted Christ. He was so pumped and so changed, and he went home and immediately changed the people he hung out with. He changed a lot of his habits and started living differently. Everyone was so proud of what he had become. Then, he started being given responsibilities at the church and became a leader. He would speak at on campus Bible study groups and led the discussion in his church youth group’s small group pretty regularly. Like anyone else, eventually the demands for his time started to interfere. He got a new truck, played sports and the demand for his time started to eat away at him. His truck payment was more than he could handle so he started working on youth group nights, and small group nights. Then soon he was working every other Sunday. Then he was so exhausted from his rigorous schedule between sports and his job that when he did get a Sunday off he slept in and used it as a day to catch up on all his schoolwork, sleep and other things. He slowly started to read his Bible less and less, then he was spending less and less time around his Christian friends. And eventually he got to a point where he didn’t know where to start to get back to church and back to where he once was. I know that as a pastor I am hard on people, but the only thing I want to leave you guys with is a REAL relationship with God. Not something you walk through the motions of or fake from time to time the REAL thing. If I was to die tomorrow, if you were to move away next week it is my job and my heart’s desire that you have a real relationship with God that can stand the test of time. Look around you, all of us have things that are vying for our time that shouldn’t be. All of us are involved in things that are taking us away from God(if only for a day) and those things are IDOLS. It may be work, it may be a sport, it may be your hobby, it may be sleep, or even school. Whatever it is, it is robbing you of your relationship with God and that for me as a pastor is a tragedy. Romans 12:2 Pattern of this world – this world is in a pattern, the world teaches completely contrary to the word of God. You have to change your allegiance and your daily routines in order to change your life. What is the key?- renewing your mind! Every day, starting the day off or closing the day out by renewing your mind. Giving God the chance to breathe something new into your thoughts, your attitudes and your mindset. Quote: "Be careful what you think it will soon become your actions, be careful with your actions they will soon become your habits, be careful with your habits they will soon become your character, be careful with your character because to most people that is who you are." Every year at new years millions of people celebrate a new start. They celebrate the chance to start all over, but let’s be honest new years is no different from any other day. You make resolutions, set goals and a few weeks later you forget them.Why is that? Because they are just the same things you wanted to do in December of the year prior and they usually involve no change in your heart or your mind. Now when I was a kid, I loved Go Bots and Transformers. I had thousands of hot wheels and matchbox cars but when these things came out I had to have them. The thought that a car, or truck or motorcycle could transform from that to a robot was just amazing to me, so I asked for them from santa and on every occasion I could. What is a transformer? It is a vehicle that transforms from it’s normal state into a robotic machine. Transforming is what we miss, we do just enough to let God influence us, and maybe even change us a little bit. But rarely do we truly give God enough consistency to let him Transform us. What does renewing your mind really mean?- putting new fresh thoughts in it every day, and allowing God to speak to you through your prayer life and through His word daily. Think of one area in your life where you tend to continue to sin. What excuses do you make to rationalize that wrong behavior? What is the lie behind that justification? Think of one area in your life where you tend to over react. Why do you over react and what lie is it that helps you rationalize and justify your over reactions? Think about your most dangerous temptations, those sins in your life that you just can’t quite seem to resist. What lie is behind them, how do you justify those actions? The answer to all of this is simple, spending time alone with God on a daily basis by reading your Bible, praying, and attending church on Sundays and weekdays are all a part of spiritual disciplines. We are all old enough here now that we have our own disciplines. We shower, we brush our teeth, we eat, we sleep, all of those are things that at one point or another we resisted. I remember as a young boy turning the shower on, holding my hand under the water and then wetting the wash cloth, taking my towel and ringing the wash cloth out into it so that everything was wet and it appeared I took a shower. Think about the rationality behind that, that is a lot of work to do, in reality it was more trouble than actually taking the shower was. We rationalize things in our minds in some of the most ridiculous ways don’t we. How about P.J., when we were potty training her it was a headache for sure. She would go into her bedroom, take her clothes off, put on a pull up, take the pullup off, attempt to clean herself with wipes and then hide the pullup. All this to avoid having to go to the bathroom in the toilet. How much sense does that make? That is what we look like to God, when He knows if we will just slow down, spend some time reading and praying each day, and go to church it would be far easier to live the Christian life. I promise you, those of you who play a sport you miss more church than you do practices, don’t you and you justify missing church, and there is no way to justify missing practices. Your actions are shaped by your beliefs and your attitude. If you have the right attitude about your relationship with God, about your Bible reading, and praying and church attendance then guess what, you will not fall and stumble nearly as often. And all of that is driven by the relationship. Quote: "Be careful what you think it will soon become your actions, be careful with your actions they will soon become your habits, be careful with your habits they will soon become your character, be careful with your character because to most people that is who you are."