When I was a kid, summer was a time to take a break, relax by the pool, or get up to the cabin. However, for our church, this summer has been anything but time off. This summer has been an incredible time for God to work in the lives of everyone who attends, from our youngest children to our most senior church veterans.
As you are reading this, we currently have two teams out of town this week. Our students are headed to church camp for a week that promises fun, friends, and an incredible opportunity to spend time with God away from all the normal distractions. At the same time, we have a team in Peru working with Peruvian Partners, who have been long-term ministry partners of our church. These trips are in addition to our earlier students' trip to Wyoming to work with the Native American population, as well as our VBS, which just wrapped up a few weeks ago.
Any way you slice it, we have had a bunch of incredible ministry opportunities this summer to give our time, talent, and energy away. However, it is in this giving process that we also have received so much as a church. Each one of these trips, camps, and events are opportunities for us to grow deeper in our own relationship with Christ as well as bask in the goodness of a God that holds us all so dear. The power of these moments increases not only when we experience them ourselves but also when we come back and share our stories.
John 20:30-31 says, “Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
John wrote his gospel that we might hear the incredible stories of Christ and then that we might believe that he is our savior, king, and lord. In the same way, when we tell the stories of what we have done this summer, we also have the opportunity to point to the incredible person and work of Jesus in our own life that pushes us to go out into the world and live as a personal witness for him.
So, when our teams come back in the next few weeks, I invite you to speak with them about their stories. Hear what they were able to do and what God did, and allow those stories
to remind you that we serve a living God who animates us as he works inside our hearts to do incredible things in the world we share
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