Youth

Last night we kicked off our youth series on making God famous with our lives. The world tells us to do the opposite, use what you have in God to make yourself famous. We talked about 3 little words we have to remove from our vocabulary(especially teenagers). Those words are I am only. In the first chapter of Jeremiah, Jeremiah is confronted by God and told that he is going to be a great prophet and that God had great plans for him before he was even knit together in his mother's womb. Jeremiah's response was, I am only a child. Later in the chapter God physically removed those words from the mouth of Jeremiah and he went on to be one of the greatest prophets of the Bible. What took him to that point was the very second he allowed God to remove, I am only, from his vocabulary. So then, I ask you, how often do you use those 3 words or ones similar to them. Things like: I'm only a kid, a teenager, one person, a secretary, mechanic, custodian, grandparent, etc., etc......
We have to get out of excuse mode before we can be used by God. I know I already shared my newfound favorite baseball player Josh Hamilton. He plays for the Texas Rangers now but I want you to read his article that appeared in ESPN the magazine a few years ago. It's awesome to see how he got rid of those 3 little words, and became a walking testimony of God's power in our lives. He states several times that his story isn't about baseball, no one even talks baseball with him in passing conversation. It's about hsi battles with addiction, life and most importantly the power of Jesus Christ to overcome those things in his life.
Here's teh link if you get a chance to read it :http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2926447
You can cut it and paste it in your browser.
Have a great day and thanks for reading!