Incredible Chapel Experience

So I was at my old alma mater on the 12th because I was asked to be the speaker for chapel. I was floored when I was asked because I never thought I would ever want to speak in front of people, let alone a bunch of kids. Well God changed all that years ago. I was so excited about this opportunity and prepared for it well I thought. I had been thinking and thinking and planning and rehearsing different aspects of it over the last 2 months. I spent the night before putting together the slides for the accompanying power point. After all we live in the tech era and teens today in school have adults lecturing them all day long (with some teachers I know there is a TON of interaction), so I knew that they needed something a bit different.

There is so much to say, so much truth that kids need to hear from God’s Word and I only had a half hour to cram all that truth into. All the last two months I had narrowed my time down to two main topics. I love the title of the series by Simply Youth Ministry called “Life Hurts. God Heals.” but I don’t have the series, so I used the title and was going to go in that direction. The other topic was going to be……ummm…..ok see now I forget since I waited this long to write about it J Oh well. It’s all good.

I was all set and when I got there I got my laptop set up and ……now I remember, our identity in Christ and just how powerful a resource the Holy Spirit is in our daily choices and lives with a focus on the power of prayer and actually get some of the kids to pray before the end of chapel…..anyway got my stuff all set up and I had forgotten one thing, my introduction. ARGH. Meaning, I had to make a connection with the kids first before they would remotely listen to me. THANKFULLY, most of the high schoolers knew me already, thanks to my sister and my few years of coaching boys junior high basketball and jv soccer. So it was the junior high kids that I had to establish a bit of who I was and why I was even the least bit interesting to listen to. Well the night before I had polished my yap down to about 28 minutes since I had about a half hour IF they sang some songs. Again that was without the introduction…..so I spent about 4 minutes there and was so off track with a thought I had to share from my heart as a big brother with Kate’s friends, teachers, and teammates…..good thing she wasn’t there yet or she would have been soooooo red with angry embarrassment J So that took another 2 minutes. Yeah….uh oh is right!!

So here is what really happened with MY plan…..only 2/3 of it happened. I had also prayed that if there was anything that A kid or others needed to hear instead between the time that I am done preparing and actually start speaking, that God would totally just guide my ADD mind to what He wanted that person to hear. Weeeeeeelllllllllllllllll HE DID JUST THAT. I had no intention of talking about Job….but I went there as it fit in well anyway with the LH.GH. section. I was able to get them thinking about who they were in Christ…..if they even had that relationship with HIM in the first place. Played a bit of a game to get them looking at themselves and learning about how God wired them uniquely, showed them some absolutely mind blowing pictures of space taken by the Hubble Telescope to show just a itsy bitsy glimpse of how big and powerful and creative GOD IS, some macro photos from some site to show how detailed oriented GOD is as well, and brought it home to them showing them that this same HUGE GOD that created all this and keeps it all in order, cares and loves each one of them more than any other work of creation.

I was able to play the song “Who Am I” in the background of part of my little talk to help drive the point home that we are HIS because of HIM. Thinking about the words just now (again) I am amazed at how well that song fit the talk. After all, who are we that the God that made all the galaxies (yes there are many out there that we are able to see for the first time since their creation) would care to know our name or number the hairs on our head as the Bible says? Simply astounding.

Well God just not only blessed my preparation, but He totally took over it as well. I LOVE WHEN HE DOES THAT…..especially when He lets me remember what I actually said, lol. Did I go off track a few times, well duh, hello, this is Tim here. But God was working and brought me back on track without jumping around. I had a 6 minute video (Lifehouse – Everything Human Video/Skit) that I was going to share with them at the end right after a story about an artist/carver who takes an ugly tree section and works it into a majestic eagle carving, pointing out that we are the tree (in our sin filled pre-relationship with Christ life) an Jesus is the artist seeing the eagle in each of us because He made us and gave us life. If He didn’t have a purpose for our being alive today, we just simply wouldn’t be alive today. I was able to get that point in but without the story and the video as the bell rang.

So God totally moved and helped me wrap it all up in 2 minutes with a salvation prayer and offer to the kids to write down on some cards if they got saved just then and if there was anything they wanted me to pray for for them no matter on the level of significance as God cares about all. I got many cards left there with requests on them.

I was so pumped about speaking to such a large group of kids about God, that I had no clue how fast time was going by. Now I usually would have been sweating up there, but it was cool enough in there that I wasn’t sweating the least bit until after the kids had left the room and I was under the gun to gather my things and get going so the elementary kids could have their chapel….oh well.

I WANT TO DO THAT AGAIN, AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN and I even asked the person who asked me to do it if I could come back. She was thrilled and said that she would let me know. The only hint I got as to when that may be wasn’t til the spring…….that is soooooooo far away from now. Oh well, I was thankful that they had chapels booked up so far in advance. Shows fantastic planning.

So I have to talk with my boss / cohort in youth ministry at our church and ask him to let me speak on a more regular basis (than 1-2 times a year) because I was sooooo out of practice that was the only thing that I was genuinely concerned about with my speaking and ability to put this all together.

Now based on the general nature of the prayer requests of these kids…..I am thinking right now that I am going to focus much more on the “life hurts, God HEALS” area. I am incredibly thankful to those that gave me some great encouragement after chapel was over before they had to leave for classes. I was told that there was a couple of teens and one in particular that had been on the hearts of a few of the teachers lately for their salvation. They said that this was what many of these kids had to hear, and it fit so well with my friend Wayne Morgan’s message about identity in God. Praise the LORD for taking over an ADD mind and mouth and using His creation and Word to reach teens.

To use Way of the Master Radio’s Todd Friel’s sign off:
Until next time, GO SERVE YOUR KING!