Move

I said in my last post that I would be leaving for Camp in a couple of days. I just got back yesterday afternoon but since I was so tired, I couldn't really articulate very well what happened. I still may not be able to put into words everything that happened at camp, so I will just give an overview and hope that it gives you a small picture of what happened from June 21-June 29th.

The theme of our camp as you may see from the image on your right was a faith to Move. We focused on having a faith to let go, the faith to go into the unknown, a faith to wait, and having faith to its fullest. We focused on the story of Moses from the time God appeared to him through the burning bush that wasn't consumed until Moses presented the Israelite people with the Ten Commandments. We did a lot of the in depth Bible study in our small groups. For High School it was Coed and combined people from different cabins, and for Middle School it was whoever was in your cabin. We had worship in the morning and night led by Michael Boggs, and the message was by Chris Brooks. We also had a rec time everyday, three hours of free time where they could ride jet skis and Pontoon Boats (with an adult leader), go on aquacycles at the beach/lake (That's were I was most of the time...making sure kids weren't doing anything stupid), go to the pool, play on the rec field, go horseback riding (only available one day for each camp), or just relax and hang out with people near their cabin.

My experience was very good. For High School, I was paired up with a friend of mine named Troy. We joked around about this because our personalities are almost exact opposite. The High School camp can be best described by one of our leaders. "They came together in groups, but they left as one." There was great unity in this camp like I haven't seen before. There were some great and honest conversations, and it went very well.

I have been looking forward to Middle School camp because that is where my guys are right now from my Lifegroup. Want to know something cool? I had the same cabin I had last year! It was great to continue to build those relationships. The Bible Studies for me I felt were more in depth and personal than those of the past. There was more intention for prayer as well as practicle hands-on activities toward learning the concept than before. If nothing else, it forced them to think about some things that they believed. The greatest part of this group at camp was how honest they were about where they were. I had a conversation with practically all of the guys in that cabin about where they were in their faith. The openness of them and their willingness to take a deeper look led God to do some great things inside of them. I can say with confidence that the question has been answered about what they believe, now it's a question of will they take the next step in developing what they believe into a relationship.

For me, I knew coming into this that I really had to prepare myself or I would get burned out very easy. So I was very intentional with making sure that didn't happen. Because of that, camp was a lot easier than it was the year before. You can ask any High School or Adult leader that was there...it was pretty exhausting, but it was worth it.

I'll leave you with a couple of illustrations that I liked from Chris Brooks about faith.

1. Do you have a sneaker faith or a suit faith? (i.e. do you bring it out on special occasions, or wear it all the time)
2. When you think about yourself as being the light, do you imagine yourself as one of those lights you have to crank to power up (which is from your own power, only lights up a little bit, and is misused)? What about the flashlight you only use for emergencies? Or are you plugged into a power source?
3. Are you a God Wrestler? Or are you a Poser?

Thanks for reading, and have a great rest of the day!