TEEN CHALLENGE

"Count your blessings, name them one by one..."     Don't take your meal today for granted...or the people who make it...or the house that you eat it in...or the Lord that allows you all of these things. Happy Thanksgiving!

      Sometimes little kids say crazy stuff- you know, something that makes everyone laugh super hard until someone manages to stop long enough to gasp out, "where did you get that from?". And the answer usually makes everyone laugh again, because their source was unreliable. It could have been a 4-year-old, or a kid's book, or a cartoon. We do this as teenagers too. No, I don't think that you get your beliefs from cartoons. But sometimes we get our ideas from the world- a highly unreliable source.      When Pastor Jerry Ross was preaching at Empowered Youth, he was talking about how we sometimes find these gray areas where we say the Bible doesn't say we can't...so we can. But where did you get that from? When girls want to change their dress standards, they didn't get that from church. When guys want to change their hairstyle, they didn't get that from their Pastor. Examine the ideas of what you want to do and determine where you got them from. Did...

The services were so good at E.Y. this year! (everything was so great but especially the services) So here's the link for them... Live Stream Empowered Youth 2024 – Fairhaven Baptist Church Pastor Jerry Ross, Pastor Randy Love, and Pastor Jerimiah Mitchell all preached great sermons. The singing and special music was fantastic. God really worked this week; people were saved and hearts were spoken to. Listen to any (preferably every) message and watch the play from Monday if you want a blessing.

     Sometimes I begin to think, "Why do I even have this blog? Who am I to tell anyone what they should do and how they can be better? No one actually learns from me- I'm only 16! It's not like I have a ton of experience!" But I believe that God gave me the desire to have this blog and that He wants me to keep it until He tells me otherwise. I was encouraged by this story in Exodus 3.  "And the  Lord  spake unto Moses, saying,  See, I have called by name Bezaleel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah:  And I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship,  To devise cunning works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass,  And in cutting of stones, to set them, and in carving of timber, to work in all manner of workmanship.  And I, behold, I have given with him Aholiab, the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan...

      "Where does it say that I can't do that? Show me the verse that says that is wrong." Not everything needs to have "thou shalt not..." said about it in the Bible to make it something that we shouldn't do.         There are things that we could do that aren't necessarily wrong. God does not condemn, but He does not encourage. But if something is not right, then it has to be wrong. There is no in-between with God. A lot of people excuse things they do, saying that the Bible doesn't say that they should not do it. But there is nothing to say that they should be doing it either. The Bible does not say, 'women shall not wear pants' but it does say that a woman should not put on that which pertaineth to a man. Now is when they say, "But there are pants for girls. They are ladies' clothes". But in Bible days pants pertained unto a man. There was no need for anyone to write that ladies shouldn't wear ladies' pants because ...

This month's devotional comes from Mr. Marco Davila from Heritage Baptist Church in Palmyra, N.Y. "So Moses brought Israel from the Red sea, and they went out into the wilderness of Shur; and they went three days in the wilderness, and found no water.  And when they came to Marah, they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they were bitter: therefore the name of it was called Marah.  And the people murmured against Moses, saying, What shall we drink?" Exodus 15:22-24 "And the children of Israel said unto them, Would to God we had died by the hand of the  Lord  in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh pots, and when we did eat bread to the full; for ye have brought us forth into this wilderness, to kill this whole assembly with hunger." Exodus 16:3 "Do all things without murmurings and disputings:  That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights i...