Big Questions

This semester we are in a series at YL Club attempting to answer hard questions students have about God.  Let me say this is difficult.  We are not God.  However, God is providing words, stories, and truth through the scriptures to guide us.  Last night I focused on the question:  Does God answer prayer?  I learn so much about who God is by stories, of my own life and the lives of others.  I shared the story of my back and power prayer being answered in that healing.  Along with the passage in Luke 18 of the persistent widow.  Also shared an incredible story of a former YL kid of mine and graduate of LSHS.  Check out her story here:  http://vimeo.com/64567340 Joanna also answered questions in an interview.   I asked her does God answer prayer?  Read her response below:

"That is a question I have asked myself many many times. Absolutely. Do I believe that it looks the way we want it to? Not usually. Wouldn't that be amazing if everything we asked to be taken away would do just leave? We have become a people of instant gratification. We don't see past the outcome that we have romanticized in our minds. But what we don't see is that the world is full of darkness and disease and sickness is outside of our Father. We wont be able to know why or how it all works bc we are not God."

Joanna's tumor has not grown in 3 years.  She is living for Jesus in a way that I find incredibly inspiring.

There was so much more shared.  I think kids walked away knowing that YES, God answers prayers but not always the way we think or expect.  We know that He listens.  He carries our heavy burdens.  He promises us to never leave.  He is beside us.  There is no wrong way to pray.  We can simply talk to God.  Ask, thank, listen, be still, pray for others, or even say sorry.  Prayer is powerful.

1 John 5:14 

This is the confidence we have in approaching God; that if we ask anything according to his will, he HEARS us. 

Family

I've spent some time praying and asking God what is the word you have for me this new year and this new semester.  Over and over  again I think of the word family.  I think of my life and my family.  I think of my son and husband and how much joy it is to call them my family.  I think of the delight it is to "share" them with others, to have YL alumni or leaders come around our table and eat with us, laugh at Otto throwing food with us, share conversations with us.  I feel God pushing me more to welcome in others into our own family.

If you ask YL students currently in LS what they love about YL they say it's...family.  I love that.  We want to be a place where the outsider feels like an insider.  Where students are welcomed into a family and feel wanted and accepted as they are.  Where they can discover at their own pace who they are and who Jesus is.  The verse that echos in my head daily is:
                                  
Psalm 68:6 God sets the lonely into families. 

I love our LS YL leader team.  I love our family meal before club where we fellowship together, laugh hard, and pray over our time with kids.  It is rich and full of goodness.  Each week there seems to be someone new who has wandered in and wants to be at the meal, who wants to be on the leader team, who wants to be in the family.  I'm thankful for those people.  We will continue to be a family to one another and offer the YL family to students.  We are glad to have kicked of this semester as a family. 

YL Leader Family (plus some YL friends :)