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Blast To The Past
It was a wonderful, beautiful time this week and while you get the picture of it, I was a
little disappointed that there were no pictures of adults eating the mac and cheese. We would
have loved that, but anyway, what a blessing. The theme of the week was “God’s Love” and
obviously each day had its own topic. Before we begin, let us pray.
Father Lord, thank you so much for your leading in our lives. Thank you for
everything you do. Thank you for this week, what was experienced and while it
was fun, while there was good food and good company, Father, but mostly you
were there and that’s truly what VBS is all about. We are so grateful for your
presence and we pray for your presence to be upon us right now as you lead us in
our time as we grow and learn about you. Thank you Father for everything you
do for us. Thank you for this Sabbath moment of worship. We pray these things
in the precious name of Jesus. Amen!
The topics of each day was God’s Love and then God’s love is incredible; God’s love is
faithful; God’s love is invincible and God’s love is unconditional and God’s love is real. Those
were the thoughts. When we talk about God’s love is incredible, we went through the story of
Moses and the burning of the bush and if you remember, God used Moses or called Moses to
lead his people out of Egypt. And in that time we learned about Moses that he was this great
prince of Egypt, if you will, a great man who could do many things. He didn’t feel he was
qualified and prepared to lead his people out of Israel, so we learned that God’s love is
incredible.
One of the things is that he would give Moses the power to be used. And something we
know is incredible is that Moses may have had his deficiencies, and don’t we all. We all have
our deficiencies, don’t we? We all fall short of God’s glory in some way or another, but he used
Moses anyway and to our young people and to the rest of us, no matter what your faults are, you
can be used of God, because while we may fail, God’s love is invincible. He will never let you
down. And while we may even think, while we’re doing God’s work, we think we may feel like
we’re failing in God’s work, the big picture is that we believe in God’s eternity that we’re never
gonna fail and that we will live with him for eternity. So he’s invincible over sin so we’re set
free with that. The verse of the day was: You Lord are forgiving and good, abounding in love to
all who call to you. Psalm 86:5. He is forgiving, he’s good, he is full of love. We have a
wonderful God.
The next day was, God’s love is faithful. And in that time we talked about Rahab. We
talked about her faith. One of the things that is amazing about this story is that Rahab
recognized the power of God. She knew, living in Jericho, that Joshua’s God was going to
overtake them. She knew that, she knew who this God was and she had faith in this God. She
hid the spies with the promise that they would spare her. Then she had to let them go and she
had faith in them.
The other thing that’s more important than our faithfulness to God in this story is God’s
faithfulness to us. Rehab was the center. She had made her mistakes in life, but God spared her.
That’s a beautiful story in itself, but it goes further than that. God spared her and her faithfulness
in God prevailed. When you go into the first chapter of Matthew, Rahab’s story is revealed in a
deeper way. Through Rehab she is a descendant of Jesus. Here is this lady who lived her life
full of sin and God’s faithfulness is so great and again, no matter what we do, mistakes we make,
not only that God will save us, but God has a great purpose for our lives. The verse of the day
was: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail,
they’re new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. That’s pretty powerful to think about.
God’s compassion never fails, it’s always with us. We always talk about faith and our need to
have faith in God. We don’t think about God having faith in us. He had so much faith that he
sent his son to die for us.
The next one is God’s love is invincible. And we went through the story of David and
Goliath and it was really good in our discussion where we talked about what it would take for us
to go and stand up to a giant. And all of us would like to think we would do that, but let’s be
honest, we probably wouldn’t. But then I put it into context in a different way. What if someone
was doing something to someone you really loved, hurting someone that you really loved, would
you stand up to that giant at that time? If someone was doing something to my child, heaven
forbid, I would have to intervene. I believe I would have the courage to do that. But what’s
beautiful about this story is that God’s name was being trampled on. He saw that God’s people
were not defending God and looking at our lives I saw perspective and it just makes me think,
man, if I wouldn’t stand up to the giant for God, maybe my perspective is off. Maybe God needs
to be more involved in my life. Maybe we need to be more aware of how awesome God is, for
us to stand up for him.
The other thing about David was his having courage and we learn it here in 1 John 4:8.
This is my favorite verse in the bible. It says: There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out
fear because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. So
the motivation for David is, he had this love for God and he didn’t have to fear this giant. You
all have giants in your lives. We all have things that we are afraid of, but with our love for God
we don’t have to be afraid. With perfect love there is no fear. That was day three. It does seem
like one week each day.
The next one is God’s love is unconditional. It’s a beautiful story of a woman washing
Jesus’ feet. And we know that story. And here’s the story of a lady who has made her mistakes.
A lady who has done so many thing wrong in her life. She comes into this room and people
were judging her, but she didn’t care. She endured this humiliation, being around this crowd that
is judging her and humbled herself, because she didn’t care what anybody else thought. All she
wanted was her Jesus and to be forgiven. And Simon was wondering what this was all about.
And Jesus uses this illustration that someone who has this great debt would recognize how much
they’d been forgiven and they’d be rejoicing in the Lord.
As Christians, some of us grew up in the church, had been around, thinking that we’d
been with God this whole time. We get a little delusional thinking that we have it all together
and we start to wonder, maybe I’m doing alright and we don’t really realize our own sinfulness
and how much, truly God has forgiven us for so many things, for everything. To put it into
perspective, we look down at her because of her lifestyle, but it really is a reflection of how we
need to humble ourselves as well and be grateful for what God has done for us. The verse was
Romans 5:8. It says: But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still
sinners, Christ died for us.
Then we have God’s love is real. A great story in he bible in Acts, where Peter was in
prison, chained up. He wasn’t truly worried about his circumstances even thought that meant he
would probably be killed. He was sleeping at the time, but all his church members, all his peeps
were praying for him all night long. And during that time a miraculous experience happened
where he was freed. He just walked out of the prison. In our discussion we see that this was a
real experience, a real miracle that happened. Miracles happen every day whether you know it or
not. We sometimes like to compare it – didn’t see the Red Sea divide today – and we’ll say, well
miracles don’t happen, but they do, they happen every day.
God is real, otherwise what are we here for. We’re worshipping a God that is real. And
the illustration of that is that God changes things. That’s how we know he’s real. When we
come into the presence of God’s love it changes things. Think about in your life. Has there been
a change in your life. That is where the rubber meets the road in our spiritual life. It is to make
God real. We don’t even have to make it, we just recognize God being real in our lives. The
verse we used was: You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your
freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. Galatians 5:13.
The beauty of this is, a lot of times we are looking at making God real in our lives. We
look at it as, how is God real in our lives? But what we’ve learned at this moment is, we have a
part to make God real for the people around us. He has set us free. He set Peter free. We are
free from our own sin. We’ve experienced the love of God; we are free and we can recognize
the reality of God, but there is a world around us that don’t know the reality of God, so he uses
us to make it real for them. Again, you my brothers and sisters were called to be free, but do not
use your freedom to indulge the flesh. Rather serve one another humbly in love. That’s our
petition today.
That’s really what this is all leading to. God is incredible. He is faithful. He is
invincible. He is unconditional. He is real. And where do we go with that? That’s what this is
all about.
Let us pray.