My Jesus Journal

Youth Convention 2017

Psalm 23

A psalm of David.

1 The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.

2 He makes me lie down in green pastures,

he leads me beside quiet waters,

3 he refreshes my soul.

He guides me along the right paths

for his name's sake.

4 Even though I walk

through the darkest valley,[a]

I will fear no evil,

for you are with me;

your rod and your staff,

they comfort me.

5 You prepare a table before me

in the presence of my enemies.

You anoint my head with oil;

my cup overflows.

6 Surely your goodness and love will follow me

all the days of my life,

and I will dwell in the house of the Lord

forever.

I remember my first year at youth convention. I remember leaving that youth group. I remember joining another youth group several years later because my mom forced me to (totally out of my comfort zone, but totally worth it). I remember convention the two years after that.

This year was my fourth year at youth convention; my first year going as a youth leader...but this was also the first year that God REALLY moved me and spoke to me.

To start off, I haven't exactly been in the best mental mindset. From stress to sadness, I've been overwhelmed (not in the good way). I knew that pain was just a small part of my life that God could use. I was joyful knowing that He was going to work it out just like he always has. But I did not expect him to totally take my world and shake it up (in a good way) so much while on this trip.

Once our vans arrived to the hotels, our youth pastor told us who we were rooming with, and just like that we were on our way. I was put with 4 sweet girls that I did not normally communicate with. I was anxious thinking about it before hand. It was outside of my comfort zone to be with people that I didn't normally talk to. But just like he normally does, God put me outside of my comfort zone because He was going to let it benefit me, and the people around me. The second that we started walking to our rooms we were already in a full conversation, and it didn't stop when we got to our room. We talked continuously to each other, and I instantly felt relaxed and excited; looking forward to what God was going to do within this weekend.

This year's sermons were my absolute favorite out of all the sermons I've ever heard at convention. God put me there and used Eran Holt to speak healing and encouragement into so many hearts. The theme of the sermons was Psalms 23. On the first night of convention, Eran Holt talked about how he was dreaming the one night of being on a basketball team with Lebron James (or at least I think that was the player he mentioned), and how he so badly wanted to please him and pass the ball to him. He then mentioned Psalms 23:1 (see above). He asked who our shepherd was, and who the person was that we were trying to please. If we were trying to please other people then we were never going to be happy. The only way to true happiness is to make God our shepherd; when we do that we will need nothing else. From there he moved to Psalms 2 (see above). He explained that if Jesus is our shepherd then he has the right to make us do things; Jesus has earned that right. We can't provide for ourselves, we are sheep! Eran Holt then talked about the pain that we may be facing and said that we don't resolve it because it is so much easier to look at a phone screen than to look at what's going on in your heart. If you are looking for encouragement somewhere else, you're distracting yourself from the one who really matters. When we get to these moments of peace in our lives, it's not that we have an absence of problems; it's that we have the presence of God in every part of our lives! Don't ever mistake the darkness in your life as the absence of God. When you speak word of God into your life, it chases away the darkness. Feed yourself with God's word. Eran said that if you were to sum up Psalms 23 into two words then they would be 'with me'. God is with me. Eran also made a reference to a bucket at the well. The bucket is not what we should be focused on. We shouldn't be striving the have a nicer, bigger, more colorful bucket. We shouldn't be looking for happiness in what the bucket looks like because it's not about the bucket, it's about the one sitting at the well, the one who can give you the life you're longing for. Let yourself BE the bucket that Jesus fills.