Shorebreak 2009

wow. So Shorebreak was a few weeks ago and, simply put, it was amazing. I don't think I have ever seen God working so much in peoples lives and it was great! It was also great to be back at the beautiful, amazing island of Tokashiki. I was so glad to be back there and it wasn't as hard going back as I thought it would be. I originally thought that it would be a little hard because the island is full of all these memories of Shorebreak 2007 with all these people I love and care for deeply but it wasn't. But I did think about them. :D But back to this year. We had 23 students total for our group and 6 staff! Out of the 23 students 11 of them decided to dedicate their lives to Christ which was truly amazing. I had been praying for this for a while and specifically for two people who I knew would be hard to get to do that but God was truly working. So we came back with 11 new brothers and sisters in Christ and I'm so excited for them! The best part of the week was probably seeing them stand up and make that decision. I was so excited for them and just overjoyed. The messages this week were simply powerful. Our theme was "Rise of the Kinematics." Kinematics is the study of motion without regard to it's creator. We talked about how in the world these kinematics are rising and how we need to stop it. People are living their lives without any regard to God. When Dereck gave his talk he said that they're like a broken toaster and they aren't working how they should. He said that man is ignoring God an are not functioning how we are supposed to so we are acting kinematic. But life is impossible without God and we are nothing compared to Him. And even though He is so great and so powerful and so just amazing he was a relationship with me, with you, with everyone. But in this relationship the spotlight shouldn't be on yourself but on Him. He needs to be glorified in our actions and every part of our life. But we aren't so perfect. We all sin. Like in Romans 3:23 it says "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." PJ said that sin is deceitful and its so deceitful that it makes us think that we want to sin and sins only objective is to kill us and as humans we can't do anything about sin. Sin is the 2nd most powerful thing in the entire universe but there is something more powerful. Ya know what that is? JESUS. Jesus died for our sins. He counquered death so that we may have life. And you know how we get this life? We believe in Jesus. Believing in Jesus, though, means not believing in yourself anymore. It means that you don't do anything- you just trust Him. In Mark 8:34-37 it talks about this. To do this you have to Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Jesus (Mark 8:34). It means saying no to your wants. Saying no to what you want to do because God has way better plans for us then we could ever imagine. And by taking up your cross it means dying to yourself. You give up control of your life and give it to God. And lastly you follow Jesus. In Mark 8:35 it says, "Whoever wants to keep his life will loose it but whoever looses his life for Me will keep it." If you keep your life then sin owns you and sin ultimately leads to death but Jesus sets us free from sin and gives us eternal, everlasting life. Even if you could gain everything you want what good is it if you loose your soul? How much would you take to give up your soul? If your life is priceless why would you keep it if you know that you're going to loose it? When we accept Jesus and become a Christian we receive the Holy Spirit. PJ said that not a lot of people really understand what the Holy Spirit is and it's true. I didn't really understand the Holy Spirit until Shorebreak. The Holy Spirit is a counselor and He's exactly like Jesus. He will also lead us to the true. He is with us and in us. The Holy Spirit is always there for us. Along with being a conselour He's also a teacher and He's going to use us. The Holy Spirit reminds us of what Jesus told us and He does that by taking the information we put into ourselves. By reading our bible the Holy Spirit uses that information to help us. The Holy Spirit also convinces people of sin, righteousness, and judgment. We testify and the Holy Spirit brings the results. If we know any spiritual truth it's the Holy Spirit who guided us into the spiritual truth and the Holy spirit tells us the truth that is from God. The Holy Spirit helps us to fulfill God's purpose for us on earth. When we become a Christian we go through this process called sanctification and it means to set something apart for it's intended use (or purpose). Romans 8:28 talks about how God works for the good of those who love Him and He has a purpose for us and He will use us. In Romans 8:29 it says that His purpose is to form us into the images of Jesus. The question isn't "What do you want me to do?" but "Who do you want me to be like?". Our purpose is to produce Jesus so that Jesus will come out of us. Jesus is the vine, we are the branches, God is the gardener, and Jesus is the fruit. God takes out all of our unclean or fruitless branches in our lives to make us more like Jesus but we can't bear fruit without Jesus. Bearing fruit is a result of what we need to do but God can't make us bear fruit. We abide in Jesus by knowing, trusting, and loving Jesus and we can't produce fruit without abiding in Him. This isn't impossible. He isn't asking us to do something impossible- it's just impossible without Him. Bearing our fruit glorifies God. Christianity isn't about following a set of rules like a lot of people think but about building a relationship with Jesus. PJ gave us a quote that said, "Christianity is not about how much I can do for God but what He can do through me as I trust Him." On the last day we talked about what our faith is based on. If our faith is based on experience it will be a weak faith. Your faith is only as strong as what it's based on. Jesus wants us to base our faith on God's word. So that is pretty much what I learned throughout the week through the lessons. That was taken from the notes I took but it's not all. God taught me other things too, though. God really showed me the power of the Holy Spirit and the power of prayer. It was also really cool to see Him working in our youth group. We can up with a really long list of things we want to do in our youth group. God has some great plans in store for Yokosuka and I can't wait. God is amazinggggg. :D Shorebrek was a great week and I was glad to be at the island. There was so much more that went on and you can ask me about it. We had team competition (Go Crunchbots!), rec, beach time, food, morning exercises, and just tons of fun! And the worship was pretty amazing. God is so good and I saw Him working on Shorebreak it was truly amazing.