Rise Up @ Camp Evergreen - October 1 - 3 (This Post Was Going To Have Two Parts At First But I Feel I Have Written All That I Needed To About Rise Up)

The drive out to Camp Evergreen was a good one. It was a beautiful day for driving and once we got out of Saskatchewan and into Alberta we even got to go over a few hills so that was a nice change from our normal scenery out in Saskatoon area. Anyway as wonderful as the driving part of the weekend was that is not what I’m here to talk about right now.

Once we got to camp and all the staff and youth groups got settled into their rooms we played a few icebreaker games and then it was off to the first chapel session of the weekend. Our speaker for the weekend was Seth; an amazing guy that just really has a heart for God and sharing his love with youth. The worship over the weekend was lead by Jill Hagen (some of her music is on iTunes and I encourage you to look it up and take a listen). Hearing Seth speak and having Jill and the worship band lead us in worship were two of the many great things that I experienced out at Evergreen this weekend.

The theme that Seth spoke on this weekend was God’s love for us. It was so cool to see God use Seth to speak into the lives of the youth and the staff that were out there. He talked about how we as people think that we understand love, feel it and how we can’t even come close to understanding the power of the love that God has for us. “We have this idea of what love is and how it feels, what it looks like and then Jesus comes along and just completely blows that away with a love so strong and so pure that we can’t even come lose to grasping it” (Seth). I think that all too often we set these standards for ourselves that we think we have to live up to in order for someone else to be able to love us, for God to be able to love us. A lot of the time people are thinking ‘if I could just do better, if I was a little bit smarter or maybe better at sports …. Then maybe people would love me. If I could stop messing up the same part of my life over and over again then maybe God could love me. Maybe if I wasn’t sick….’ I see these people ever day that are down on themselves because they have it stuck in their heads that if they could just be better they could be loved; loved by their family, by their friends, by God and maybe they could even love themselves. I see these people every day. I see them at school, when I’m out with friends, at home and when I look in the mirror. Why is it so hard for us to look at ourselves and see how amazing, specially, wonderfully made and adored by God we are? We hear about how we need to be perfect from the time that we can comprehend words. When we see people that have a hard time loving themselves or we realize that we don’t feel like we love ourselves we look for something to blame it on. We blame God for not somehow forcing us to never mess up, we blame the media for telling us that we have to have the perfect body, we blame the people around us for maybe saying something hurtful or insensitive and when we run out of things and people to blame we blame ourselves. Instead of looking for something or someone to blame why can’t we just focus on the forgiveness that God has for us when we mess up and his amazing love that he will always give to us no matter what?  I want to challenge each one of us including those that feel like they are too broken to be loved by God to focus on his never ending love and forgiveness instead of all of the things that make them feel like not even God could love them.

All too  often we dig ourselves deeper and deeper into pits of despair, self pity and loneliness and then forget how to climb out or we get so down that we forget how to feel, how to love and we become numb. “People dig themselves into holes with their misery. They end up wanting to live in those holes and they get angry when other people put dirt in their holes (dirt being the love in this case) because they like their holes, they have learned to live inside of them. Climb out of your holes people!” (Dr. Greg House). Don’t you love it that I used a quote from House in here? I know I do! Sometimes I see someone down and depressed because they don’t think that they could be loved by anyone including themselves and God. When I see people feeling like this I often want to run up to them , give them a hug and remind them of God’s love for them and also remind them that I love them. I need to do this so much more than I do. For those of you that are reading this I want to challenge you and also myself to tell at least two people that they are loved by God every day. I know that doing this sounds kind of silly but I have found that sometimes it is just what someone needs to hear. Please comment on how this goes for you and it would also be sweet if you could share your thoughts on what I wrote. I really want to hear your thoughts and opinions!

So that is all that I have for Part 1 of Rise Up @ Camp Evergreen. I am still working on writing the rest and I hope to be able to post it here soon!

Don’t ever forget that YOU are loved!