Jr. High + POP = God's Sovereignty

"Calvary SLO Jr. High 2010!" "Whoo Whoo"!

This is how Jr. High Group starts off now. It's pretty exciting, or at least more exciting than my preaching. But even more exciting than both of those was that I decided to surprise them with a movie night, with popcorn and gushers. Gushers for the one lactose intolerant kid! But before I put on the movie, I preceded to convince the kids that I was going to teach through the entire book of Leviticus in one night. They did not look too excited. And so as I do every time we meet, I asked the group if someone wanted to open us up with some prayer, and as previously, no one wanted to pray. SO being the opportunist I need to be, I used this time to talk about prayer. We talked about what prayer is...that it is conversing with God, it is praising God, it is reminding of ourselves of His promises. And then we talked about why they do not like to pray. There were the different responses that ranged from not knowing what to say to being ashamed from a past experience an so ensued another facet of the conversation, in which we talked about how it does not matter what people say because prayer is not about what others think of us, in fact Jesus instructs us to not pray so that we sound glamorous on the outside, and that He is after the heart. And so the kids prayed for the night.

So you're probably wondering what the heck does POP mean? If you know me, I like acronyms, hence my blog name, and hence POP. POP stands for Power Of Prayer. Because one of our kids, Ryan, had just had meniscus surgery a couple weeks before, and was finally off of crutches and at youth group on this night. During the movie, on his way back from the bathroom he fell on his bad knee and it hurt really bad. So we stopped the movie and gathered around and we prayed for him and his knee. Soon after his parents came to pick him up. But the next day, his knee no longer hurt, it was totally healed.

And so as i look back on that situation, I begin to see how God was sovereignly working. THat God would provide an opportunity to talk and address prayer, and then allow Ryan to fall on his bad knee in order to provide us with an opportunity to pray for him...applying what we had talked about. ANd then the next day Ryan was healed. I think God's purpose in us talking about prayer at the beginning of group, and His purpose in allowing Ryan to fall on his bad knee was to ultimately show us how He works in prayer, His power through prayer!

SOML

Sincerely,
JDV