4/23/23 - Spaghetti, Ice cream fruit rolls ups, and trusting Jesus!

Good morning parents!

Last night our middle schoolers ate spaghetti, put ice cream in fruit roll ups, and talked about how we can trust Jesus more!

After some fellowship and food we settled down for prayer requests and prayer. The lesson for the evening centered on Thomas, and his doubt of Jesus’ resurrection. and Jesus’ response to his doubt. With such a strong theme of trust, we took a moment to do a quick trust exercise with some of our students.

I had four volunteers sit arranged in a circle, so that their backs faced another student's knees. If that is hard to picture, don’t worry! We took some pictures!

If this activity is done carefully, every chair can be removed, and each person will be supported by the legs of the others. If even one link in the circle falls, the entire circle crumbles. Each person is required to trust not only the person they are leaning on, but every other person in the circle as well.

After that we spent some time talking about how much we trust people, why we trust them, and what makes someone trustworthy. It's fairly easy to trust someone who you know well, or when the stakes are low, but it's very hard to trust someone who you don’t know or the stakes are higher.

We turned to John 20, where Jesus appears to ten of his disciples - all except Thomas. Thomas is a lot like us, and he struggled to believe his fellow disciples when they told him that Jesus had appeared to them. Maybe he thought they were hallucinating, or playing some kind of cruel prank. His response was that he would only believe if he were able to put his fingers in Jesus’ hands, and his hand in Jesus’ side.

We can be a little like Thomas sometimes, and doubt is something that often causes young believers to feel shame. Just a few verses later though, Jesus responds to Thomas’ doubt with incredible grace. Jesus does not shame Thomas, but immediately invites him to touch his hands and his side. Jesus wanted Thomas to be able to trust him, and took the time to prove himself trustworthy.

We broke into our debrief groups, and spent some time reflecting on how we trust Jesus in our day to day lives. Trust is something that is very hard to describe, but you know it when you feel it. We challenged students to recognize that Jesus was trustworthy, and think of ways that they can put their trust into action this week.
Next week is our last official youth group of the program year! We will have pizza, play games and reflect on what we liked and didn’t like this year!

There are still some summer events in the works but those should be on the calendar soon, and I will make sure to update the website with those dates once they are finalized!
Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful week!