In February SOS, a local ministry that Jeremy and I volunteer at, is having it's annual Girls Retreat. They take their teenage girls to Still Creek Ranch and love on them and show them how much they are loved by their Creator. This year will be my second year going with them. The only difference is that this year I am going to be 6 months pregnant....... so wish me luck.
After last year's retreat I haven't stopped talking that 2013's retreat needed to be different for these girls or we were going to lose them. A little background information on me: i love youth ministry. They may get on my nerves, make me cry, laugh, and want to pull their hair out but I LOVE THEM. My heart has always wanted to see a generation want Jesus whole-heartedly with no reservations. I believe that there are tons of youth ministers with the same vision but do they really believe it? DO they really want that, or in the back of their minds do they think," we can try but, we all know these teens are in too deep." That's what the enemy wants us to think. I think a lot of parents push their kids in to church in hopes of "saving " them but in reality that just makes their hearts harder towards Jesus , and it won't be until THEY decide they need to change that they will. How do we get them there? Prayer, love, and a LOT of patience.
As I have been thinking about how this year's retreat could be different I have come up with a broad but such a profound subject these girls need to learn. They know that they are "God's Princesses." We all know that but do we all understand what that really means? Do we understand that with this title comes some stipulations but no requirements that would defile us as women or embarrass us to our core being? I believe these girls have been told by the world you can be a princess, but you need to please me when I want, you need to be a size 2, wear the less clothes the better, no one really cares about you they just want your body. and Love? What is that? only something that the world makes you think you get when YOU lower your standards. These girls have heard princess stories all their lives, Beauty and the Beast, Snow White, Little Mermaid ( my personal fave), and Cinderella. They see a relationship of a man a woman that is pure with obstacles but in the end they live happily ever after. That's what they grow up wanting , until the boy in 7th grade runs up and grabs her butt. Then Everything is shattered. Her dreams of being valued as a human being slowly start to slip away. Now she sees herself as just an object.
There is a story in Ezekiel that depicts Jerusalem as a woman in the story. It starts with a baby in a ditch with blood and the cord still attached to her. A man finds her and takes her in.He clothes her and cleans her up. He adorns her with jewels and shows her love. She becomes of age to be married and she and the man marry. They make a convenant to a each other, a promise to one another to love each other. ( What a love story huh) As tijme goes by she begins to slip away. she builds brothels for herself and pays lovers to come see her. She has the biggest most lavish brothels and as the Message Bible puts it makes it a place for her whoring. Her husband finds her and shows her everything shes done. How she's broken the covenant between them and given herself away after everything he has done for her. The best part is the end. He meets with her and says ( my paraphrased version of course) " I have made a covenant with you and you broke it. I promised to love you and you threw it away. I come before you now to say I want to make a new covenant with you. It will be a covenant where you will remember your past, you wont forget what happened. but with the new covenant , after I make atonement for you, ( after he fixes her problem cleans up her mess which is AMAZING by the way) you will speechless." The End
Can you imagine that for jus a second? Imagine every wrong you have ever done and how you have hurt God by your words and actions and how at times maybe you have turned away from him because you didn't feel him "near", imagine him cleaning up YOUR mess and saying hey, I am going to take it upon me to fix this for you and leave you speechless on what a change it will be. Which is EXACTLY what happens when we decide to live for him. He takes our world and turns it around and the change leaves in awe of what our Creator can do for us. I a couple that we met while at CFNI who you would never guess that they were at the bar everynight and weekend they got. They would leave their kids with family just to be able to drink and smoke. They couldn't give a rip about their kids. When we met them of course God had already taken over and this couple LOVED..... no no no ADORED is a better word, they adored their kids and if they would never have told me about their past..... I would have always thought they loved Jesus and lived for him all their lives. SPEECHLESS. It left me speechless. They remembered their past but saw what God did for them and their lives left speechless. HOW AWESOME!
That's what I want to do this retreat. I want the girls to understand were all going to have a past. Were going to have bad parts in our lives we want to forget and never relive, but once we let God atone it for us, or take care of it for us, our lives will forever be changed and be left speechless.
Maybe I needed to hear it more than the girls do but it's something on my heart that I couldn't hold in anymore This world has left woman old and young to think they have to be something that theyarent and all our Creator wants us to be is loved and cherished for who we are. No matter how hard it takes us to believe it ourselves. Were worth it.
much love,
desi
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