Seeking Jesus... Day 7 Sat. Sept. 8, 2012

   After my second summer of Camp, I felt a need to continue my camp ministry even after the summer was over. For me I realized not only the importance of building relationships during the summer, but continuing those relationships during the year. So, to help in that, I decided to send letters to my campers during the year. I would send one in the Fall and one in the Spring. In these letters, I would let them know what I had been up to and share with them what was going on in my life away from camp. I would also offer some words of encouragement to help as they went through the school year. Sometimes I would get letters or other communications back from them, other times not. Regardless, of the result, it was another opportunity to minister and share Jesus with others and continue the important work that God had set out for me to do.

     I sent my fall letters out a couple weeks ago and today I received a letter from one of my campers from this past summer. I won't included his name, but I did want to share a little bit of his letter and how it has made me reflect today.

"I have started school and gotten off to a good start. When it comes to connecting with Christ though, I'm struggling. I agree with your point. When I'm at camp, I feel close to God, but when I leave camp and come back home, I begin to feel distant. At home, I am struggling to keep my distance between Jesus and me at a minimum. It seems like the only thing I can do sometimes is sin, like there's no other option. I struggle with sin every day and it's weighing on me. I need help getting strength from the Lord. How do I do that?

   We all struggle, don't we? How do we acknowledge those struggles? When I go to camp, I am always prone to be more open, honest and trusting of my fellow counselors. I can always lean on them. With the campers, we see campers come to camp with heavy hearts, struggling with a variety of issues. There is this openness at camp where you can express your struggles and seek resolution to them. When we go back home though, we often carry those struggles with us, or maybe we come to camp to escape those struggles and sin and when we return home, we are thrown back into the middle of things. 

During the year, I work at a local church. When I'm working with the youth group, I don't see the same struggles that I see at camp, I don't see those same battles that I see at camp. I feel like they are there though. Sometimes I feel that when we go to church we have to put on this act, we have to "have our stuff together". We can't let the struggles that we face or the sin that we battle leak out of us.  But that's not right. We shouldn't feel like we have to have it all together to come to church. We should be able to come to church, broken and in need of our savior and able to express that.

I think though it's difficult for young people and even adults do be that open. Sometimes it can feel uncomfortable to do so. For young people, they are still learning how to express their emotions. Often they have this perception of how they are supposed to do so, but it is often the world's view and not the way God intended. Adults can struggle just as much with this same thing. Often they may feel like they have to have it all together too because they have to be strong for those around them.

But I feel we must have a certain element of vulnerability in ourselves. If we have that vulnerability then God is able to creep into our lives and change us. Others are also able to support us and be that hope through our struggles.