1. It gets better – moving away from temptation is difficult at first
2. Get baptized
3. Attend church and read your Bible
4. Don’t expect God to fix all of your problems, you need to help, too
5. Try your best to live it out
6. Get rooted in church and find accountability. Find people to help your morale
7. Grow spiritually

After we had our list, we went through each item and discussed what they meant by them and why they would give that piece of advice. I then went back through the list and asked the group if they were doing each item on the list. That kind of stung, but they got the point. It’s not enough to know what to do, we actually have to do it.

I did not use any biblical references for this exercise, but there are plenty to go with it. I just wanted them to get slapped in the face a little bit by the reality that they need to be taking these steps they would recommend to others.

That was one of the best weeks we’ve had this year. Part of it might have been because we had this conversation at Dairy Queen over Blizzards.

Last night my adult small group had Thanksgiving in March. It was amazing. Turkey with all the trimmings. Matt, our leader and chef, always does such an amazing dinner for us, but this week he went to the extreme; and so did I.

During the dinner I began to have what’s a more frequent episode. My esophagus doesn’t always work like it should. The corresponding pain in my chest is both scary and excruciating. This time it caused me to go to the ER.

I was only in the ER for about an hour. The pain subsided on its own after I coughed up a couple rounds of turkey. Afterward they gave me some paperwork and told me to schedule some tests in a couple of days.

As I reflect on this experience, there are a couple of parallels I can make to the sin cannundrum. I will for sure work this in as illustrations when I teach. After all, I’m sure the bill for last night’s ER visit will be quite high. Might as well get my money’s worth from the experience, right?

1. Pain can be life saving, even though we do anything to avoid or ignore it. The sharpest pain I felt last night was when my body was creating the fluids around the turkey. This fluid was necessary for it to propel the turkey back up my esophagus and out of my mouth. Each time this happened, I had an amazing peace and comfort afterward.

When we go through pain caused by sin in our lives, God will do what it takes to surround that sin with discomfort so we will get it out of our lives. Some cope with it by going through denial or soothing the pain with other means. However, we only block the path toward health God is trying to lay out for us.

2. Both times I’ve had this esophagus issue in the past couple of months, I’ve been eating turkey. Guess wht I’m pulling out of my diet. Even if turkey isn’t the cause (nobody knows the cause of esophagus spasms), I’m going to take an educated guess and “expel the immoral brother”. Between removing a food I love from my diet and repeating last night’s pain, I’ll choose not eating turkey again… Unless we find another trigger causing this.

The nature of addictions is to endure the pain and damage it causes to us physically and relationally. Instead of coping with issues by masking them, we need to turn away (repent) from those things that destroy us. Only when we do this will we finally have the peace and rest I cherished last night in the ER each time my body rejected the foreign objects that were killing me.

3. Get this at any cost. When I was experiencing enough pain, I went looking for an open urgent care, but eventually went to the ER. I didn’t care what the visit would cost, I just wanted help.

As they say in recovery, your only as sick as your secrets. When the pain of your secrets outweighs the fear of being found out, a person will get help. My first response was not to seek help last night. I originally went home hoping the pain would pass on its own like it has in the past. As I sat in my recliner ignoring the pain, it began to intensify and I began to search for solutions.

When I got to the ER and told them I had severe chest pains, nobody judged me for having them, they just admitted me as quickly as possible and helped me work through the pain. I realize each pin requires a different response. In this case, they didn’t ave to fix me. They just had to help me understand the pain and low me a place to let it pass. They Los talked to me about doing further tests.

The bottom line to this third learning is when I hurt bad enough I got help without fear of the steps needed to take to get healthy. I knew where I needed to go and that it might have a high personal cost. I was willing to accept both realities and got the help I need. Now I’m on a new path and committed to removing the source of pain from my life.

If I went out or a turkey sandwich knowing what I know now, that would be insane. I know that will lead to amazing pain. Yet, many people are eating turkey sandwiches every day (whatever that represents in their lives). They might know the truth, but it hasn’t set them free. I’m choosing to be set free from the truth that doing something foreign to God’s design will cause pain so that I’ll fall back in line with his design for life.

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Let me start with a caveat: I don’t take every piece of pity-party bait students post on Facebook. Every once and a while, however, if it’s unusual for a student to host a pitty party, I’ll sometimes post an encouragement.

I post this pic as an example of a simple way to narcissistically humorously boost the kid up a little with a comment.

Today VolunteerYouthMinistry.com turns 3 years old! Woo!!! Made it passed the terrible 2′s. Realistically, year 2 was a very light year for this blog, but that doesn’t mean nothing was going on. I was just too busy to write about it.

The latest project I’m working on is starting a silk screen company to help raise money for missions. I also want to use this company to teach students business skills and a trade. It’s a whole new level of student ministry.

You can check ou this project as I develops on Facebook

You can check out the blog here – ShirtsForMissions.com

What’s cool is I already ave. strong client base. I’m probably near my printing capacity. However, the money raised in the first few months will all be used to increase capacity to so we can expand our ability to reach the goals. Please pray for MissionShirts.com!

Here’s a link to the blog post he’s referring to

I’m very appreciative for the words of encouragement. I hope to be back to blogging soon.

On another, but related, note – I have a huge announcement coming soon. Hopefully it will be beneficial to your ministry.

Parker Stech has a great heart for youth ministry and is one of the most creative guys I know. This makes for some amazing, memorable and effective youth ministry moments. Check out his blog to steal ideas, pick his brain or marvel in his twisted-ness.

Jessie was only 12. Why would she die and why would we have a memorial service? Memorial services aren’t a new concept. They have graves dating back to ancient times. It’s something we’ve always done, but why?

I could go into a deep research project on this, read several books and scour the web. The answer, I think, is probably quite simple and the reasons are probably multiple – and I don’t think they all have to do with the dearly departed. I believe God is up to somethings much bigger. Here are a few that I imagine:

• Funerals help us remember we our time here on earth is limited
• We’re forced to wrestle with our own connection (or lack of) to God (more than 100 people committed their lives to Christ at tonight’s memorial)
• Reminders that life is more about what we give than what we get are plentiful
• Through a funeral, we are able to make a connection to each other on a deeper level. Grief, along with honoring a life, mixed with being confronted with our eventual demise and eternal destination, opens the door for life to get vulnerable and deep in community. That can be a very good thing
• Funerals make us want to be better people and live our lives the way God intended

If you and/or your office, youth ministry, club, etc, would like to pitch in or learn more, please visit The NEGU Foundation website by clicking here. NEGU stands for Never Ever Give Up.

Click here to download an order form

- One of our students made a year-in-review video
- We did a trivia game about facts from The Landing
- We gave away T-shirts as prizes and explained the importance of wearing them to help other hurting students become aware of The Landing. I encouraged the group to purchase them or the lanyards to help get the word out
- The band played an extended set
- We had 2 students read the 12 steps with their biblical comparisons (from Celebrate Recovery material) to review where we’ve been in the last 12 months
- We acknowledged all of the leaders and applauded them like crazy
- We handed out the long-awaited 1-year key tags – the highlight of the night!

We took a picture we took of everybody on stage behind a paper banner that read “The Landing Year One”. We burned the banner outside after small groups in the fire pits to symbolize leaving stuff behind (even old victories) and striving toward what’s next so we don’t stagnate or go backward. Before burning the signs we did a little open share time around the fire. People voluntarily shared what they were leaving behind and what they were striving toward. Then we all had s’mores.

FANTASTIC way to cap off a great year!