"Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love." I Corinthians 13:13 (NLT)
Love is powerful. It’s what changes the world.
We’ll revisit love again in a few moments. But first we must talk about “faith”.
Faith is what we need to understand love.
Faith often is explained as this intangible force that we need to live. It’s hard to explain and even harder to identify.
I don’t know if that’s true.
Some of our High School students and a few adults just got back from LIFE Conference in Orlando, Florida. This is a denominational event that only happens every three years and was the first time EVER that the youth of Neighborhood Church in Chico have attended. This has typically not been a well-attended event by west coast churches. However, this 6-year God-given dream finally became a reality on July 4th, 2022.
So, to pray and believe (have faith) that God had called our group to go was no small evidence of faith. We had no answers about where the money would come from, no guarantees that pricing would work in our favor, and no idea about all that would be required of us that go.
That is the definition of a life of faith. Hebrews 11:1 in the ESV says:
“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
This hope isn’t a wish; it’s based on something greater. A person. It is God speaking a truth or experience into existence in our lives even before we’ve seen it or had it become a reality.
We see this throughout the lives of people of the Bible; Abraham and Sarah having a baby, David becoming king, Jesus resurrecting. If we walk with God, we can expect our names to be added to the list.
Our Journey of Faith
For us it started with a call, continued with small evidences of hope! Receiving grants for Cristo Salva students to cut their trip costs in half was the first evidence. Second, praying for large amounts of provision and seeing our church- young and old -financially stable and not so stable- give $2,000 more than the goal we set. It included non-believing relatives or unsuspecting acquaintances, donating to individuals to finance the rest of their costs. God was on the move to give evidence to what we had to have faith or hope was true.
We so often think that the end is seeing that thing God promised fulfilled or getting a trip financed, but as we learned, it is often really just the beginning.
LIFE Conference was full of moments of faith, learning that God was still or more at work now than when we first started. We listened to gifted speakers share about how JESUS is GREATER than our reputation, our privilege, our relationships and more.
Seminars were chosen on things God had been speaking to individuals about long before they arrived at Orlando. For example, getting answers to the questions we have like “How come when I read my Bible it seems like my anger gets worse or the temptations get stronger or I start to see how messy my life is?”
Carlos Whittaker, one of our session speakers and a social media influencer, gave a holy divine answer explaining it this way:
These struggles or strongholds are like cobwebs…no one really likes them and they often times just hang out in the corners of a room. We sometimes ignore them and sometimes we use something to get rid of them BUT, wait long enough and they always come back. Why? The answer is simple: you have a spider in that room. Kill the spider, and the cobwebs disappear permanently.
He challenged us to get quiet and ask the LORD to reveal to us a spider, by name, that has been bringing specific cobwebs into our life. A prayer of faith. Faith that God loves us enough to actually tell us. That evidence came for a number us in the group through a word or sentence written in our journals and a prayer of freedom.
Romans 5 says that faith eventually produces hope and that hope comes because of real love seen between God and individuals.
“And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because He has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with His love.” -Romans 5:5 (NLT)
We saw Love Manifested in Real Ways.
We spent a day serving the Orlando area at a local elementary school. We painted, pulled weeds, etc., meeting and working alongside other youth ministries in our district to “show the love of Christ” to the school staff.
We had multiple students have powerful encounters with the Lord…through prayer for physical healing and personal breakthrough, in their friendships or with comparison issues.
We had a student feel prompted by God, and respond to the call, to enter into full time ministry in the future.
One of our students wanted to show that he loves God right back by being baptized! After feeling prompted to be baptized, we talked with this student’s parents, and baptized him in the hotel pool in front of about 200 friends and strangers. It was an awesome experience for our entire group to be part of this special moment.
Many of us made commitments to be more conscious of how we love others in our daily lives through what we support or don’t support: clothes we buy, to coffee we drink, things we speak out against like brothels or porn related material. This came through participation in some walk-through “experiences” that were challenging and emotional that taught us about things like missions and human trafficking.
And Love includes Fun!
We experienced the love of God through having fun together! We played in a volleyball tournament (we came in 2nd place), and strategized together in an Escape Room. We swam together, ate meals together, and even enjoyed a day spent at Disney World together.
There was so much more the Lord did, but there is not enough time or space to share it all. From all of us who went to all of you reading this we say:
Thank you church family for supporting us financially and prayerfully. We pray that you are experiencing the faith, hope, and love of God wherever you call home and do daily life.
We invite you to come worship with us Sunday morning at 10:00 a.m. in the Dome.
You can also live stream our service on Facebook and YouTube at 10:00 a.m..
If you missed last Sunday's message from our summer series "1000 Names: #13 The Good Shepherd", click here.
