Please remember that it's our youth retreat at the church this weekend! Check your email because I'm sending out all of the details today. Students were asked to sign up by yesterday at the latest but if some of you forgot, please message me ASAP! Parents, we need a few drivers for Lazer Tag - if you're able to drive that would be great and you can play for free!
Anyways, on to the good stuff...
This Sunday, Pastor Stef preached on Ephesians 1:1-10 (click here to read it). What I find interesting about Thanksgiving is how often we list off the things we're thankful for (house, food, family, friends, x-box, not having school on Monday, God) and never stop to 'unpack' what it means to be thankful for God. During our En:Counter teaching time on Sunday, the youth and I went through this passage verse by verse to really reflect on what God has done for us, and what specific things about Him we can be thankful for. We came up with a list of 29 different points!
This Thanksgiving, we discovered we aren't just thankful for God: plain and simple. We are thankful for God: wonderful, perfect, gracious, kind, loving, and complex. Here is our list:
- God chose us to do his great works (verse 1)
- We have a church to go to (1)
- Grace and peace is available from God through Jesus (2)
- God is a complex Trinity of Father, Son, and Spirit (2)
- We can have a relationship with Jesus (3)
- God gives us spiritual blessings through this relationship (3)
- God made the world (4)
- God loves us (4)
- God chose us individually (4)
- We are faultless and holy in God’s eyes because of Jesus’ sacrifice (4)
- God knows us better than we know ourselves (4)
- God wants us in his family for eternity (5)
- We are pleasing to God because we know Jesus (5)
- God has a plan for us (5)
- We are allowed to praise God (6)
- We belong to God, not to the devil (6)
- God will always give us grace and forgiveness (6)
- God humbled himself by sending Jesus to save us (7)
- God overflows with grace and kindness towards us (7)
- God gives us freedom even though we don’t deserve it (7)
- Through God we can have wisdom and understanding about life (8)
- God has shown us his plan (9)
- God’s plan for us is for his own pleasure - it’s that great (9)
- His plan is mysterious because he is so complex (9)
- Jesus will have ultimate authority over everything (10)
- One day earth will be perfect (10)
- We will be able to go to heaven (10)
- We don’t deserve eternity but we will get it because of Jesus (10)
- God works in his own timing even if we can’t see it (10)
Looking forward to the weekend where we will be learning more about our awesome Creator! From the desk of
Amanda
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