During the Second night of focus groups I was the lead in my group and one of the prompts we were doing involved getting the students to reflect on Pastor Garner’s sermon where he used the analogy of the word of God being a crucial part of every Christian’s diet.
In the sermon he’d noted that if Christians only feed on this word once in a while they can never grow to become spiritually fit. At the end of the sermon recap, I asked the students how that analogy affected their thinking.
And Sharon, one of the girls in my group said that during the whole sermon she felt like God had been speaking to her situation directly because she’d for the last 3 years been facing all sorts of negative criticism from her all-muslim family. She said that reading and feasting on the word of God daily is the only thing that kept her going during that entire time.
As we all sat their hearing her honest testimony and all the stories of faith that kept coming up that night, I kept seeing how all these young people were demonstrating such an active faith daily in their lives.
The way these girls were quoting scripture wasn’t shallow; they’d been broken and knew hardship on very personal levels but they’d not let their situations desensitize them. Regardless of what other solutions or options were available for them to consider, they’d learned to turn to the LORD and feed on his word.
Their response really encouraged me to keep pressing on to learn God’s word and to continue getting actively involved in all the activities that were happening because they are always opportunities to serve and bless these Kids.