Monthly Archives: May 2010

Last Friday we celebrated four years of True North at our Year End Banquet.  We honored our biggest and strongest Senior class ever.  We had a lot of fun watching videos and looking at yearbooks and eating good food.  But in my mind, the night was about worship.  It was a chance for us to stop and give God the glory for all he has done in this ministry.

I’ll be honest.  It is hard for me to think back on these four years of True North without getting emotional.  When I think of all the souls God has saved and the way their lives are changing I get excited from the inside out.  God has raised up a real group of on fire young people here.  And it is a privilege for me to serve with them.

The excitement I get from looking back makes me wonder what year five will be like. Who will rise up to take the Senior’s leadership role?  Who are the new students God will save and will become a part of our True North family?  I can’t wait to see what God is going to do next!

Because when it comes to God, I have complete confidence in him.  He has done things these last four years that will stand forever.  And I know he has even more in store for this next year than all I can imagine now.   God has all of the power now and forever to keep this ministry moving forward:

– And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.  To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen.

I love the description here:  The God of all grace!  He has definitely proven that in the past and I know he has all the power we need to fuel revival in the future.  This is our text for True North this weekend.  I’m excited to learn more about the God who called us to heaven and has the strength to take us all the way there.  Who will be at True North this weekend to give God the glory with me?  In fact, if God has worked in your life these last four years leave a comment and praise his name!

Does it ever seem like your life is just not that exciting?  Do you ever find yourself constantly wishing that you could be somewhere else doing something else with someone else?  I know the feeling. It was called my first two years of high school.  I spent most of my days at school in Texas, when I really wanted to be on vacation with my family and friends in California.  Don’t get me wrong – I did not hate life, but I certainly was not satisfied with it.

One thing I did enjoy about my junior year in Texas was my youth pastor Tyler Sultze.  He was a cool guy.  We would meet for breakfast every week at a restaurant called Taco Cabana.  Please do not confuse this restaurant with Taco Bell. This place is authentic. They make fresh tortillas right there at every store.  Put some eggs, bacon, and cheese on that warm tortilla and you’ve got a reason to wake up early for breakfast!

That’s enough about the breakfast tacos.  They were delicious, but they were not life changing.  What really changed my life was going through the book of Ecclesiastes and reading verses like this one:

- “There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?”

This passage directly contradicted my unexcited attitude towards life. God says that true enjoyment comes not from our circumstances but from him.  Instead of saying, “I could enjoy life if I lived there or was with these people,” I could say, “No matter what the situation, I enjoy life because I know the Lord.”

My circumstances did not change, but my attitude did!  While I used to view most days as a boring experience doing the same things with the same people, I now saw each day as a gift from God that I could enjoy. I learned to enjoy life for what it was instead of what I wished it would be.

So if you aren’t really enjoying this year of high school, I hope you are carefully reading through Ecclesiastes with us on SOTD.  I pray that you will see that if you start looking for satisfaction in your relationship with God instead of your circumstances, you will discover what it means to enjoy life.  Maybe Ecclesiastes will not just be a book that changed my life, but yours as well.

Last Saturday night, True North entered new territory.  We had our first ever Freshmen Fellowship.  And 38 of them came over to my house!  (To see them more clearly just click on the picture) But this wasn’t just any friendly gathering, we were there to discuss the secret to becoming a sophomore.

Sophomore comes from two Greek words that mean “wise” and “fool.”  Freshmen come in thinking they will figure it all out.  Sophomores have come to the wisdom that they are in some ways foolish.  At the climactic moment of the evening everyone raised their hand to admit they know there is more to know.  In essence, they were acknowledging their “noob” status and at that moment became wise fools.  They are now officially True North Sophomores!

This wisdom of knowing what we don’t know is what Agur teachers us in our Scripture of the Day: Proverbs 30.  He says,

“Surely I am too stupid to be a man.  I have not the understanding of a man.  I have not learned wisdom, nor have I knowledge of the Holy One.”

This may sound like Agur is just looking down on himself, but clearly he does not intend to stay foolish.  He goes on,

“Every word of God proves true; he is a shield to those who take refuge in him.”

Agur is going to seek what he does not know about being a man and knowing the Holy One in God’s Word!  And this is what I encouraged our new sophomores to do.  In fact, the next three years of their high school experience could be summarized in one word:

MATURITY!

This is exactly what we are designed to do here at church.  As the pastor, I am here to equip you to do the work of the ministry.  And you are to build each other up in Christ.  The goal is we will do this: “Until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ (

).”

So give a shout out of congratulations to our new Sophomores! They know they are “noobs” and are ready to do something about it.  May all of us at True North work together towards the goal of maturity in Christ!

“Oh sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth!”

At True North, we took this command quite literally last Saturday night at our student-led “Double-It-Up Worship Night.”  Not only did we sing some of our favorite worship songs, we also sang three original ones, two by David Van Workum and one by Shane McCuistion.  Each of the songs was beautiful and clear in expressing praise to God.

All in all it was a great night of worship.  Wonderful music and loud voices filled the Compass Room with praise to our God.  But why should we limit worship to one night?  After all, isn’t worship supposed to be a lifestyle?

Exactly.  Yes, the Worship Night was a great event, but the worship should not stop there.  Our whole life should show that God is “worth it.”  And every day we should “offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name.” (

)

How have you expressed your worship to God in the past week?  Maybe you should follow David and Shane’s example and write a song that expresses your praise to God.  Maybe you should set aside some time today to tell God how great he is or even to sing to him.

Some of my favorite times of worship with True North have been at Revival, and Revival X is only 72 days away!  But we do not have to wait until then to worship God.  Let’s make every one of them a day of worship!