The Youth Center Closes

After more than 5 years serving the youth of Villarrica, I believe it was God's will that we close the youth center.  This has been one of the hardest decisions I've had to make in my 13 years as a youth pastor.  To answer the question why, is to take you on a spiritual journey.

About 3 months ago at a spiritual retreat for the missionaries here in Paraguay, the Lord began to convict me of my lack of intimacy in my relationship with him.  Over the course of the previous year I had let activity in ministry slowly become a replacement for an intimate walk with the Savior.  Because so much of what I let define me are my activities, I was deceiving myself by thinking buisiness was Godliness.  At the retreat I finally became contrite and submissive enough to hear what God had been trying to ask of me all along.  The speaker at retreat gave each of us a little card called, "My Convenant" which challenged us all..

MY COVENANT

Lord I give up all my own plans and purposes, all my own desires and hopes and accept Your will for my life.  I give myself, my life, and all, utterly to you to be Yours forever.  Go on and on filling me with Your Holy Spirit.  Use me as You will; send me where You will;  work out Your whole will in my life at any cost, now and forever.

I wish I could have said, I had been living such a covenant, but I had not been.  I knew that I needed to change some things and so I began to pray and seek His will.  Through many confirmations the Lord lead me to close the youth center and re-examine all that I have been doing here in Paraguay for the last few years.  One of those confirmations came one morning as I prayed and read the Scriptures in my devotion time.

"If a man abides in Me and I in Him, he will bear much fruit, apart from me he can do nothing"  This verse is found in one of those particularly difficult passages to understand, and I don't claim to have the ultimate word on its interpretation, only that the Lord used this verse in my life in a particular way.  The words "much fruit"  and "nothing" were those to which the Lord drew my attention.

Where was the fruit from the youth center ministry?  Since it's opening there had only been a handful of young people that had made a commitment to Christ.  This was fruit, but not "much fruit".  I believe now that this is due to the fact that I was doing almost "everything" apart from Him. 

When the youth center was founded it was done so with much prayerful consideration, and dependence on the Lord for His direction, but somewhere along the line I let routine become the guiding voice and I let self confidence replace a dependence on Him.  For these things I am deeply repentant.

I'm trying to live out a surrendered life and ministry to Him once again.  I'm asking the Lord, what's next, and waiting on Him.  I do know this; that the "Lover of my soul" wants a deeper relationship with me.  And I do know that the secret to fruit bearing in ministry and in my walk with Him is in direct proportion to my yieldedness to Him.

May we all continue our journey with the Lord Jesus with the freshness and utter dependence on Him that we lived out when we first came to know Him.