An unexpected challenge to my faith…

Last night I had the opportunity to speak to the youth group at First Baptist Ellisville, which is in West County. I expected this to be a typical suburban youth group, but I was completely blown away.

First, the reason I was asked to speak was because the subject of their weekend event was Justice. The students initiated this opportunity to learn more about what justice is, God’s heart for it, and how we are called to live it out in our world. Did you catch that—the students wanted to learn more! All around the room were large banners the students had made, each with an issue of justice such as Human Trafficking and Child Soldiers, and the countries where these injustices are presently ongoing. After the previous night's talk, the students spent time praying about each of these issues. We ate a meal of only rice as a reminder of the suffering of many around the world. They spent Saturday morning serving with several ministries in the area, but the more amazing thing is that they serve in this way at least once a month. In spending a few hours with these students, I could tell that many of them had a true zeal for the Lord.

To top it all off, they were an engaging audience that responded to the injustice that has been done in East St. Louis, and, hopefully, to my challenge for them to live as people who cultivate God’s character within them and fight for those who cannot fight for themselves. Their youth minister (whom I embarrassingly had called by wrong name 3 times in my talk—see below!) told me they were going to send our ministry an honorarium. I obviously was very thankful, but even more thankful to have simply been around these youth for several hours yesterday. What a challenging reminder of how we are to pursue the Lord and live out of His character!

(Okay, here is the story. His name is Dustin. Our pastor’s name is Darrin. I called him Dustin all afternoon, until somehow our pastor’s name came up in conversation. From that point on, I called him Darrin…until he pointed out my mistake after I finished my talk. Unbelievable! He laughed it off, but I felt like a total idiot!)