Arise with Hope and Vision!

This summer has felt as if someone is punching me in the face over and over again. I feel unrecognizable. This veil of frustration covers my face so thickly even I cannot see. I ask God for wisdom and receive more strife. I ask God for patience and find more resistance. I ask God for grace and find more unforgiveness.

Youth work is a thankless job. I don't mind that at all though. What bothers me is that I feel so discouraged. How can I be discouraged when God reigns supreme and victorious?

This summer the high school students lack hope and vision. They cannot see their own potential. They are unwilling to accept the love of Christ. They fear their own greatness. They see any attempt at boundaries and accountability as some sort of ploy to hold them down. Every standard is a conspiracy to dismember their youthful freedom. Why can't they see that they are allowing themselves to be chained to stones and cast into the ocean? Their disregard for standards will most likely be the demise of their actual freedom.

It is clear to me that God redeems, but even so He still allows us to feel consequence. We cannot avoid the truth of our choices.

In the evening when I get home I am drained. I am exhausted because I feel so much. I am so sad, so angry, so frustrated, and so passionate... I cannot bear to see them act so callously with their lives, but they cannot see the gifts they possess. I want them to instantaneously see in a moment of revelation and grow up, but that is not how it works.

I lay awake thinking and asking God for the next thing to say--for the next prayer to pray--in hopes that they might wake up and together we might rise up.

As a generation they hold so much power, but they suffer from the same youthful complacency that we have all encountered. We can have so much power and yet never touch it, and never see it come to fruition.

We are creating a generation that can talk using internet intelligence about issues, but that cannot act with historically grounded intelligence on issues.

Oh that God would wake this generation from their slumber. Oh that they would cry out in lamentation and mourn the lost. Oh that they would stand up out of their lament to by God's power act in Christ-like victory.

Oh that we could encourage them and not see them filled with anger when faced with accountability. Oh that we could be one in mind and purpose in the Lord. That we could cry out as one to the God of Israel and in the power of the LORD step forward in a spirit of truth. That we would as one people rise up as Children of the Light--together.

They are our Oaks of Righteousness. They will rebuild the city. Together we will rise up out of the ash heap--they needy, the poor, the disenfranchised, the overworked, the discouraged, the wayward youth, the lost soul, the thirsty, the hungry, the prostitute, the embezeller, the tired, the searching, the happy but not joyful--unmasked and revealed--together we will rebuild the city.

Oh God will set us free from complacency. Give us a hope and a vision.

Let your servants not weep and suffer the singe of discouragement in vain. Let your servants rejoice for the joy of the LORD is our strength. We know this momentary discomfort is nothing in light of the cross and what Christ has done.