Wednesday, March 09, 2005

Whatever...

My Job gives me the incredible privaledge of accomapnying young people on their journeys through life with God. I see them grow and struggle as they work out how to apply Jesus to their lives and gaze on in wonder as they are visibly transformed by God's Spirit.


And so often I here that this is the 'whatever generation'. The apathetic, disinterested, not bothered, unconcerned generation. A generation of passive individuals who watch as the world passes them by without caring one way or another what is going on around them.


And I try and balance this view with what I see God doing in and through the young people I know and work with. This group who God is using and transforming. These young people are anything but passive. The young people I see daily are activists, radicals, revolutionaries, and reformers. A passion has stirred within them that doesn't let them settle for the way things are just because that's the way things have always been. They wont accept rumours of spirituality they want to experience the reality of it for themselves. They want to know God as intimately as the people in the Bible and they are willing to pay the cost and step out in faith to follow where Jesus leads them. They are not perfect and are often a hurting, broken, lonely, self promoting generation. They are a generation who are surrounded by a corrupt and sinful world - maybe as never before - but it is out of this darkness that God is bringing His light. I see Him raising up young people who go against the norms of their 'whatever' culture. Sometimes they slip back into it, but the passion within them pulls them out of their slumber and cries Wake Up O Sleeper, rise from the dead and Christ will shine upon you.


This generation are the Change Agents and Grace Givers. A new generation that God is raising up to make a difference in this world as they bring justice, hope, grace and Jesus to people without these things. I have watched astounded at their boldness as they have followed God in faith stepping out into Woking park, Wetherspoons pub, Woking high school, The Big Apple, Kenya, Thailand, Fiji, India, Manchester, Liverpool and shortly South Africa to bring Grace. They don't always know what they are doing but have a sense that God will use them if they go. And what's more they aren't satisfied with what they've done so far because they have this instinct that tells them that they can know Jesus better if they continue following after him and stepping out in faith.


My prayer is that this generation keeps seeking God and only Him. That God continues to use them and transform the world through them. My prayer is that they realise that God is using them and blessing them as they don't conform to the world around them but are transformed by God instead. I pray that God will keep moulding them as clay and that they will be a generation who know God as Father like none before, who call on His name and strive to lay hold of Him...


Isaiah 64:7-9 (New International Version)


No one calls on your name
or strives to lay hold of you;
for you have hidden your face from us
and made us waste away because of our sins.


Yet, O LORD , you are our Father.
We are the clay, you are the potter;
we are all the work of your hand.
Do not be angry beyond measure, O LORD ;
do not remember our sins forever.
Oh, look upon us, we pray,
for we are all your people.

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