May 3, 2018
Last night we spent our time working through Ephesians 5:1-17, in which Paul tells the Ephesians to “be imitators of God.” There are three main ways he calls on us to live: Walking in Love, Walking in Light, and Walking in Knowledge. To be brief, Paul calls us to walk in love sacrificially, as Christ sacrificed himself for us as a fragrant offering to God, which is contrary to a worldly view of love which is often self focused. In small groups, we specifically discussed ways we could improve at loving sacrificially, choosing to lay down our rights for the sake of others, at school or at home. Paul also calls us to walk in light, which exposes the darkness around us. We talked about how walking in light is to exalt God, instead of exalting idols, which tends to put a spotlight on our heads, especially when we’re surrounded by darkness. Paul also calls us to be lights that draw darkness out of others. Briefly, we talked about how there are right and wrong ways to be lights… we don’t want to be laser beams that fry people and cause them to flee, but instead soft lights, that expose darkness with gentleness and grace, with speech that is seasoned with salt as Paul says in Colossians 4:6. Lastly, Paul calls for us to walk in wisdom. Rather obviously, this correlates with the things that we put into our minds, and the things we spend our time on. Less obviously, this correlates with the people that we’re around on a daily basis. We spent time talking about choosing to be around wise people, instead of foolish people, and the positive impact that that has on our lives as God’s children. Our goal is to be an imitator of God in all things, and Paul clearly gives us careful instruction on how we should walk that we would please God in our actions, words, and with our time.
Next Wednesday is review and game night. We’ll be finishing our study on Ephesians in the next couple of weeks. Importantly, May 30th-June 13th I’m planning to do a mini series on Redeeming Sex with the youth group. We’ll be splitting the students up by gender, and covering a couple of different topics that the Bible speaks to regarding purity. Students as young as 10 are now constantly faced with sexualized images, and sexualized jokes, not to mention confusing teaching on sexuality in general from schools, and I really want to help them carefully evaluate what the Bible says about it. Just want to keep you all informed on what we’re doing!
Categories: Youth Ephesians, Youth Night Updates