I don't know if this is that important...

"I don't know if this is really that important..." That is the line that one of our students said to me last weekend. We are in the middle of this new series called "inVERTED" where we are discussing the hard saying of Jesus when He challenges His followers to live in a different reality that the world around us. This past weekend, we really dug into the concept of "loving our enemies" and it got heavy. It was an incredible night where we challenged the students to be models of Jesus' love by being kind to those people that have hurt them. It was one of those messages that even though I was giving it, it was wrecking me and my persepective of God and others. The realization that we should love our enemies is soley based on a reflection of Jesus love for us while we were his enemies due to our choices to sin and run away from Him. We are not to love to prove something, to gain something, or to fix something in someone else's life, but only because we are to reflect and mimic our faithful Savior, who never lets go of us, even when we let go of Him.

So when she said that that challange of Jesus didn't have a lot of relevance to her life, it really bothered me. I brought to my mind the question of how far we still have to go, and no matter how great of a job we think we are doing, we must continue to push and challenge student's to have a correct view of God and alsoa correct view of themselves in light of God's greatness. It's very easy to have a lot of student's come to an event, however its much harder to challenge those students to live in a way that follows Christ. We have a unique responsibility as youth workers to not be an activity center, not the YMCA and not just a social club. We are called to help student's become followers of Christ and bring His Kingdom to their campus and their world. And because of that, to stand out on their campus, student's need to learn to love their enemies. Not to quote spiritual messages from the Dark Knight, but 'the night is darkest just before the dawn,' so we must press on, through the challenges, through the student's reactions that 'this isn;t really that important' and love them enough to walk with them as they process the hard sayings of Jesus. We cannot back down from who Jesus calls us all to be, but we MUST be like Him, by loving those students who are hard to love, and walking with those students who aren't getting it long enough to help them discover God's incredible love for them that will transform their lives and attitudes!