Hiding

Alright, get your "Awwwww"s out of the way

I've known my son for less than two months and I can't imagine sending him somewhere on purpose in order to die and save a bunch of people that were evil and full of sin.  How can one love sinful people so much?  As I teach our students about Easter, I was amazed how little they knew.  I thought I would just have to review and fill-in-the-blanks to their already learned knowledge of the holiday.  When asked about what Easter is all about, one kid actually answered, "Bunnies?"

Last week, we made bracelets with five colored beads to signify the gospel story. To make it even easier to remember, I modeled it off of our summer day camp cheers. Green means God loves me. Blue means that all people are sinful. (Most bracelets I've seen use a black bead for sin and a white bead for purification which makes sense but is not a great message to these kids).  Red means that Jesus died for me. Clear means he forgives our sin when we receive him (not a camp cheer). And finally, yellow means that we need Jesus to be our best friend in order to grow.

This past week, we utilized some donated resurrection eggs which are basically a dozen plastic eggs with objects inside that tell part of the Easter story.  The kids hunted for the hidden eggs, we brought them inside to open, and then we unpacked the story.  If I can remember correctly, these were the twelve objects:
A donkey
Silver coins
A wine cup
Praying hands
A leather whip
A crown of thorns
Three nails
A spear
Dice
A linen cloth
A stone
A completely empty egg

I'd say the parts of the story that really had the kids attention were the whip, the thorny crown, the nails, and the spear.  Each detailed description of how those things played a part in Jesus dying really helped the kids understand a little more about Jesus' suffering. The kids felt it unfair that Jesus got crucified when he didn't even do anything wrong. I pray and pray that these kids learn more and more about their own sin and how we need to repent and turn around from it.  So often, they blame their sin on other people (who doesn't?) or justify the wrong they've committed (again, who doesn't?).

I'm thankful for the opportunity to share the gospel story with kids who have never heard it before.  I sometimes wrongfully assume that they've heard this all before at church or at our camp, but they are kids and this is sometimes hard to grasp.  When I wanted to use John 3:16 to help them understand why God had Jesus die for us, Key'Ahrah's eyes lit up and recited it word for word.  "For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." This love God has for us might seem crazy to us because we may feel unworthy, but God loves those he has made.

First John 1:7 I memorized in Boy's Club in elementary school.  The words were written on the board and slowly erased to build it in our fresh memories.

Romans 6:23 I memorized, again, in Boy's Club in order to enter the swimming pool at our lock-in at the YMCA.

One morning in college, I woke up super early, walked to Lake Mendota, sat there for a couple hours and memorized Psalm 103 because earlier that week I heard God tell me to open up to that chapter of the Bible without any understanding as to why. (It's a good one.)

Not too many other verses jump out to me as to when, where, and in what circumstances I learned them, but throughout my life, God has been depositing, hiding his word in my heart in various ways, even if those ways were in order for me to fulfill my desire to swim. Since last fall, God put the desire back in me to memorize scripture; however, writing on postcards just didn't seem the way to go for me.  There's a website, scripturetyper.com, that has helped me learn scripture at a very quick pace.  This is more bragging for the website rather than for me, but I've committed 157 verses to memory so far.  It's been amazing the circumstances where I can now bring up passages, combat temptation, claim a promise, hear a command, understand my identity, know of the character of Jesus without the need for a physical Bible.  I believe that in thirty years, I'll look back on the day I started on this website and point to that as when my spiritual life put on the gas and accelerated.

Psalm 119:11 says, "I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you."  This act of hiding the word is something valuable that I've already seen God doing in my life.  I hope you check it out, even for just fifteen minutes, because then you might be hooked. I recall when Jesus was in the desert for 40 days, he probably didn't have scrolls readily available to him, and yet he used scripture to combat those temptations from the devil.  In Matthew 4 when hungry and tempted to turn stones to bread, Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 8:3 saying that man cannot live on bread alone but on every word of God.

I hope that as you read scripture that you occasionally commit it to memory.  I do want to make it clear that memorizing and studying scripture will not on its own bring you closer to the Lord.  It may increase your knowledge of the word but it doesn't guarantee that your heart wants to spend time with Jesus.  When you read, listen.  God may be trying to speak into your life through his word and through the example of Jesus Christ.  Today, on Good Friday, Christ died for us.  Just a few scriptures that come to mind about this:

Romans 5:6-8--"For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person--though perhaps--for a good person one would dare even to die. But God shows his love for us that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

John 5:12-13--"This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends."

1 John 3:16--"By this we know love, that he laid his life down for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers."

I'm excited for Easter, to be able to have conversations with children about Jesus, his love and their sin.  My parents are currently on their way down to Jacksonville and that's also exciting too.  God used them to give me physical life and Jesus gave me spiritual life.  As I look at Maximus, I pray that God would be a strong part of his life and that Jesus would open his heart and create a vacancy there.