Winterfest 2016
Group Devotional Ideas for Saturday Night – 3
The best devotional you can lead for your group is one that is tailor-made for them by you. Listen to the sermons and lessons and as you absorb what is being said at Winterfest, ask yourself, “What good question can I ask in our devotional that will allow my teens to process, unpack, and apply all this?” One well-worded, relevant question can take a long time for your group to work through.
You can always ask the question, “What have you seen or heard at Winterfest that really hit you?”
Listen attentively as each student shares their response. Make appropriate, reflective follow-up comments. Follow where it leads.
There are some discussion questions provided for you below. These questions are based on Jeff Walling’s Saturday night lesson and will provide good follow-up opportunities.
Discussion Questions:
Isaiah’s Cycle of Worship & David’s Dance of Joy Isaiah 6:1-8; Exodus 20:2-6; Psalm 100
1. What moments in worship do you find the most moving? Why?
2. Read Isaiah 6:1-8. When Isaiah saw a vision of God, he was moved to bow down and was frightened at how amazing God is. When do you find yourself awestruck with who God is? How do your respond to that revelation?
3. Seeing who God was moved Isaiah to confess who he was, which meant addressing his sins. Do you think of confession as positive or negative? How does honest reflection impact our worship? What keep you from honest reflection?
4. What is the result of Isaiah’s confession? When God “purified” him with a hot coal, he took away Isaiah’s guilt. How does guilt keep us from worshipping God with all our heart?
5. Isaiah volunteers to serve God after his worship experience. What are his words? How should worship lead us to say “Here am I. Send me.”? What might God be calling you to as you worship him?
Also included are five illustrations that may serve to “prime the pump” for your group discussion. Each has an application that fits with the theme of this lesson. These stories can be found in More Hot Illustrations for Youth Talks by Wayne Rice.
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Grandma’s Ham
Two young newlyweds were preparing to enjoy their first baked ham dinner in their new apartment. After unwrapping the meat and setting it on the cutting board, the wife chopped off both ends of the ham with a butcher knife, tossing the two small ends in the garbage can.
“Wait a minute,” said the mystified husband. “Why did you do that? Why did you just cut off the ends of the ham like that?”
“I don’t know. My mother always did,” answered the wife. “Maybe it helps bring out the flavor.”
Unsatisfied with this answer, the husband called his mother-in-law. “Can you tell me why you cut the two ends off of a ham before you cook it?”
“Well,” said the mother, “I’m not really sure why. That’s just the way my mother did her ham, and it was always delicious.”
As soon as he hung up he called his wife’s grandmother. “Grandma, we have an important question for you. Can you tell us why you cut the ends off of a ham before you cook it?”
“Oh my yes, dear,” answered Grandma in her quiet thin voice. “I cut the ends of the ham off so it would fit in my pan.”
Traditions shape our lives, but it’s important to know why we do them. “Because we’ve always done it that way” doesn’t provide enough meaning to keep our traditions from becoming stale and meaningless.
We may have received our worship traditions from great great-grandparents, but for us to offer authentic worship we want to understand the meaning behind the traditions. Jesus urged his followers to “worship in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24). If worship seems lifeless and dull to us, perhaps we’re just going through the motions instead of being empowered by the Holy Spirit.
Similarly, God welcomes creativity and fresh approaches to serving him. God wants to use you in ways that he has never used anyone before. Let God’s Holy Spirit lead you to take risks and try new ways of serving him.
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Oh God, How Long?
On a February day in 1988, a group of ministers representing nearly every denomination in South Africa gathered in a cathedral in Cape Town. After praying, they linked arms and marched toward the government building to deliver a petition to the prime minister. They didn’t get far. Outside the cathedral, a line of riot police blocked their path and ordered them to disperse.
They knelt at the policemen’s feet instead. The police arrested the ministers and dragged them away. One of these se-called criminals was Desmond Tutu. Like Moses before Pharaoh, his petition was refused. And like Moses’ story, this one got much worse before it got better.
Many years earlier, Tutu had gotten a delicious taste of freedom on a trip across the sea. He studied in London as a young Anglican priest, where life was a delightful shock. In South Africa every police officer was a potential enemy, empowered to detain a black person for any reason. In London the police were actually polite. Tutu walked the streets late at night just for the pleasure of not being arrested. In Hyde Park, he heard speakers expound on any issue, no matter how outrageous, while the police stood by—not to beat them and haul them off to jail but to protect them. Once, while waiting in a bank line, a white man cut in front of him. The bank teller told the man to wait his turn. Tutu was astonished. Such an act of justice would never have happened in his native country.
After returning to South Africa, Tutu began a long and painful battle for freedom. Over the next three decades, he preached and pleaded and protested for his people’s freedom. He struggled against the racist government on one side and those who sought freedom through violence on the other. He was the target of arrests, censures, slanderous statements, and death threats. He risked his life to save people from mobs of his own people who executed those they believed were government spies. The rising tide of anger raised the violence level on both sides until nearly everyone gave up hope, but Tutu refused to give up.
And ever so slowly, hope began to spread. Soon after his arrest, Tutu, now an archbishop, prophesied the outcome in a sermon:
We must say to our rulers, especially unjust rulers such as those in this land, “You may be powerful, indeed very powerful. But you are not God. You are ordinary mortals! God—the God whom we worship—can’t be mocked. You have already lost! You have already lost! Let us say to you nicely: ‘You have already lost, we are inviting you to come and join the winning side.’”
Five years later after many more struggles, bombings, and executions, black South Africans voted in their first national elections.
On the balcony of Cape Town’s city hall, before a crowd of 70,000 people, Tutu introduced South Africa’s first black president. “Friends, this is the day that the Lord has made, and we will rejoice and be glad in it. This is the day for which we have waited for over 300 years… Ladies and gentlemen, friends, fellow South Africans, I ask you to welcome our brand new state president, Nelson Mandela!”
In countless prayers during all those years of struggle, Tutu had asked, “Oh God, how long?” He finally got his answer.
When you’re at the end of your rope, and you feel life’s pressures weighing heavy on you, don’t forget you share much in common with saints who’ve gone before you. The same God who brought the Egyptians out of slavery and bondage, who brought South Africans out of tyranny and injustice, is alive and well today. The one who created this vast universe is in your life if you’re a believer, guiding and directing you in the direction he wants you to go. So be patient. Look to him. Look at your circumstances from God’s perspective.
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The Seagull
Imagine this scene: You are on the Florida coast. The sun is setting like a gigantic orange ball. It’s the cool evening on a vacant, isolated stretch of beach. The water is lapping at the shore, the breeze is blowing slightly. There are one or two joggers and a couple of fishermen. Most people have gone home for the day.
You look up and you see an old man with curved shoulders, bushy eyebrows, and bony features hobbling down the beach carrying a bucket. He carries the bucket up to the pier, a dock that goes out into the water. He stands on the dock and you notice he is looking up into the sky and all of a sudden you see a mass of dancing dots. You soon recognize that they are seagulls. They are coming out of nowhere. The man takes out of his bucket handfuls of shrimp and begins to throw them on the dock. The seagulls come and land all around him. Some land on his shoulders, some land on his hat, and they eat the shrimp. Long after the shrimp are gone his feathered friends linger. The old man and the birds.
What is going on here? Why is this man feeding seagulls? What could compel him to do this—as he does week after week?
The man in that scene was Eddie Rickenbacher, a famous World War II pilot. His plane, The Flying Fortress, went down in 1942 and no one thought he would be rescued. Perhaps you have read or heard how he and his eight passengers escaped death by climbing into two rafts for thirty days. They fought thirst, the sun, and sharks. Some of the sharks were nine feet long. The boats were only eight feet long. But what nearly killed them was starvation. Their rations were gone within eight days and they didn’t have anything left.
Rickenbacher wrote that even on those rafts, every day they would have a daily afternoon devotional and prayer time. One day after the devotional, Rickenbacher leaned back and put his hat over his eyes and tried to get some sleep. Within a few moments he felt something on his head. He knew in an instant that it was a seagull that had perched on his raft. But he knew that they were hundreds of miles out to sea. Where did this seagull come from? He was also certain that if he didn’t get that seagull he would die. Soon all the others on the two boats noticed the seagull. No one spoke, no one moved. Rickenbacher quickly grabbed the seagull and with thanksgiving, they ate the flesh of the bird. They used the intestines for fish bait and survived.
Rickenbacher never forgot that visitor who came from a foreign place. That sacrificial guest. Every week, he went out on the pier with a bucket of shrimp and said thank you, thank you, thank you.
The apostle Paul wrote, “For Christ’s love compels us…” (2 Corinthians 5:14). The word “compels” means literally, “leaves me no choice.” Paul is saying, “I have no choice but to respond to the love of Christ with my whole being—to say thank you, thank you, thank you!
When we serve Christ, when we share God’s love with others, when we come to church each week to worship him, we don’t do it begrudgingly. We do it with thankful hearts because we really have no choice. It’s how we say thank you.
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True Confessions
Three longtime friends were out fishing on a boat. After a couple hours without so much as a nibble, they were starting to get bored.
“I’ve got an idea,” the first man said. “Let’s be totally honest with each other and confess our worst sins. I’ll go first. I have a big problem with the sin of lust. I’ve been cheating on my wife for over a year. I just can’t seem to control myself.”
The second man said, “As long as we’re being honest with each other, I’ll tell you what my problem is. It’s the sin of greed. I just can’t get enough money, so I’ve been embezzling funds from my company for years. I just can’t seem to control myself.”
The third man said, “Well, my problem is the sin of gossip. Not only can’t I control myself, I can’t wait to get home!”
Confession may be good for the soul, but God is the only one who can forgive us. He does more than just listen; he also forgives, heals, restores, and saves you from the consequences of your sin. What’s more, he can provide you with the power you need to overcome temptation and live a holy life.
Go to God with your sins and believe in his Son, who died to set you free from sin’s power. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).
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All Is Forgiven
In his short story “The Capitol of the World,” Ernest Hemingway tells the story of a Spanish father and his teenage son. The relationship between this father and son became strained and eventually shattered. When the rebellious son—whose name was Paco, a common Spanish name—ran away from home, his father began a long and arduous search to find him. As a last resort, the exhausted father placed an ad in a Madrid newspaper, hoping that his son would see the ad and respond to it. The ad read,
Dear Paco,
Please meet me in front of the newspaper office at noon. All is forgiven.
Love,
Father
As Hemingway tells the story, the next day at noon, in front of the newspaper office, there were 800 Pacos, all seeking forgiveness from their fathers.
(From “The Capital of the World” from The Short Stories, Ernest Hemingway, Scribner, 1995.)
Are you like one of those Pacos? Carrying around a load of guilt, wanting forgiveness, but not knowing where to find it? Your Father in heaven, who loves you very much, has made the first move. Just as Paco’s father ran an ad in the paper, so God sent his son to die on a Roman cross.
“If I am lifted up,” Jesus said, talking about the cross, “I will draw all people to myself” (John 12:32). And along with all those Pacos who showed up at the newspaper office, you’re invited to come as well.
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