Man, I can’t believe that almost another month has passed since my last posting. Bad blogger, bad!!! (slap on wrist)

Anyway, I would like to start using this space to write about several things, but I certainly hope that it will become a place that I can share about where I have been reading in God’s Word and how it is changing my life. I was sharing with the youth staff at our retreat a few weeks ago that it always builds up my faith when I can share with others about what God is teaching me, and so I hope this blog can serve in a similar fashion - to build my faith while helping to build others up as well.

We are going to start a new series in Luke on September 23rd called “I’ll Follow.” It is going to be a series that goes through the gospel of Luke, so I started reading through Luke to see how God would speak to me before we started teaching. What I read last week slapped me in the face and prompted me to take some action. I was reading through Luke 11 and came across a passage in which Jesus is giving the Pharisees a lesson in humility, and it spoke to me as if I were sitting at the table and he was talking to me. In verse 46 Jesus says to them, “woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not life one finger to help them.”

I started thinking about this passage more after this past Sunday. I was teaching both in The Rock and Epic and I asked everyone who brought their Bible from home to raise it in the air. Out of 180 students, there were maybe 20 who brought their Bibles from home. It really busted my chops - how are we not bringing our Bibles to church? I then proceeded to go on a short rant about how if we are to truly follow God the good shepherd we must be willing to spend time in His Word. But on Monday, I started thinking about that passage in Luke. Did I load our students down with a burden and then fail to help them carry it? I don’t really know - I don’t feel like I was adding any new “rules” to what the Bible already said; but yet I still felt like I threw down a challenge without offering any helpful ways for them to move ahead. So I decided to take action.

I am currently working on creating a Bible-reading plan/devotional/whatever you want to call it for students. When we start our “I’ll Follow” series, we will have an 80-day devotional that will take students through the entire book of Luke as we study it on Sunday mornings. But students can have a plan for Bible study reading and their prayer life; and my spirit can rest in knowing that I have at least “lifted a finger” to help carry this burden.