Green Lake, A Place for Renewal, A Place for a Closer Walk with God

As I spend my last few weeks here in Green Lake this summer, I've been reflecting on how God has worked through this place to impact my life.  My roots here run way back to my great grandparents - Reverend George Greely and Pearl Louise Kimsey (grandpa's parents) and Harold and Bernes Edwards (grandma's parents).  They would come up to the American Baptist Assembly to vacation with family and attend conferences.  Then, during their young adulthood, my grandparents would visit Green Lake to attend conferences.

Fast forward several decades - God had a plan for the summer of 1983.  Quite a few years before that, my father, age 14, moved from Chicago up to Green Lake, Wisconsin with his family.  He spent his summers up through his college years working on the Assembly grounds.  When my mother began college, she and her twin sister spent their summers working at Green Lake.  To most it would seem like a coincidence, but I believe God used Green Lake to bring my parents into each others' lives.  A year later, He would do the same thing for my aunt and uncle.

I was first brought to Green Lake late in the summer of the year I was born (1992).  I spent childhood years at the Children's center, progressing through each color of door.  I spent summer vacations with family in Barbour House, Hobley Cottage, Oncken-Crum House, and finally our very own home, the Kimsey House.  I spent many summers attending Quest as a camper where my simple belief in God started to transform into a relationship with God.  For the past two summers I have been blessed to be on staff for Quest, and God has allowed our relationship to grow while also bringing new relationships into my life. 

Stepping onto the grounds, it is easy to be enthralled by God's beautiful creation.  But there is more going on here.  Looking at Green Lake's history and God's truth in scripture I find that Green Lake is alive with the presence of the Holy Spirit. 

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"See, I am doing a new thing!

It springs forth; do you not perceive it?

I am making a way in the wilderness

And streams in the wasteland."

Isaiah 43:19

When the Green Lake property was first bought, it was meant to be an upper end, country club type establishment.  People could buy and develop property which followed specific aesthetic requirements.  This was in the midst of the great depression.  As people were struggling to put food on their tables, they were also being urged to keep up with the Joneses. 

Then, in 1943, the grounds were purchased by the American Baptist church.  Dr. Kraft, the founder of Kraft Cheese was a forerunner in that purchase and re-purposing of the grounds.  Last year at Quest, Isaiah 43:19 was our theme verse.  We talked about how God can take things that are broken, or even things that are still whole, and make them into something new for His glory.  He can reach in to the driest, most desolate situations and bring something wonderful out of them.

He took a place that was all about worldly image and the drive to be defined by property and monetary value and made it into a place that reflects His image and His purpose.

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My Father's house has many, many rooms;
If that were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you with me
That you also may be where I am.

John 14:2-3

 

This passage is Jesus describing the place that He is planning on bringing us one day.  Heaven.  It is not just that He is bringing us to some place to be with Him.  He has put care, and thought, and intentionality into this place.  He has made a room especially for each of His children, and He has made it clear that there are many rooms - no specific number - just as many as there need to be.

The intentionality that went into the founding of the American Baptist Assembly is reflective of the Heaven-like intentionality.  Green Lake is a place where people can come for conferences and camps that focus on strengthening and growing a relationship with God.  It is a place where people can come with their families and friends to share time in fellowship with one another and with God.  

For me, Green Lake has been a glimpse of that heaven community - a place where a relationship with God is at the center, and His community grows out from there.

~SP

Quest 2013

These past two weeks have gone by very quickly, and Quest has now come to an end for the season.  I haven't had time to reflect on the past two weeks (which were both wonderful and revealed God's work in unique ways); Now it is time to look back on this summer.  Again, God has worked through Quest in amazing ways.  We looked at scripture this week that shows God taking our expectations and completely flipping them upside down.

Samuel is sent to anoint the next king from Jesse's lot of sons

 God instructs him to choose David...the youngest son, the small Shepherd boy

David is sent to slay a giant with a mere pile of stones in his hand

The smallest of stones and David's faith in God is exactly what it took to take a giant down

When David has the opportunity to eliminate Saul

David chooses grace, he lays his struggles in God's hands

As the staff arrives for a week of staff training we have no idea what we are in for in the coming weeks.  We plan worship services and work through Bible studies.  We have an outline, something close to a structure - and when the campers arrive it is quickly turned inside out.  God has a bigger plan - He knows what each student, each church group needs.  He has each conversation, each little moment ordained.  He takes each of our plans that derails and does something completely unexpected and beautiful with it.

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As staff members we have the privilege and the blessing of working among students and their youth leaders.  We look at the students and see a reflection of what it was like to be in their shoes - to be coming to a place where God's love is abounding, where the hands and feet of a few college students are at work for His service.  As a camper it gave me a hope that God would be working in me, to bring me to a place just like those college students were. I praise Him today for His patience with me and His faithfulness.  The students are blessings in ways that they may not know.  Their willingness to open their hearts, to build a community with the other campers is evidence of God at work.

The youth leaders and other adults that take a week of their time are also a blessing.  They lead by example for their students.  They know and love their students.  They take the time to stop and talk with the staff, to lend a hand where needed.  They are a look ahead for the staff at what God is still doing in others' lives.

It is so important that the youth come up with their youth groups because they also go home with them.  It isn't possible to take the entire Quest community home at the end of the week, but it is important that they have a transferable community.  To plant what has started growing in another location so that it can flourish there.  

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Paul gives a beautiful commissioning in his letter to the Phillipians.  A dear friend and co-worker from last summer read this to the 2012 summer staff as we departed. 

"I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy  because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now,  being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

 It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart and, whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me.  God can testify how I long for all of you with the compassion of Christ Jesus.

 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight,  so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ,  filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God."

    

Phillipians 1:3-11

We are now called beyond this place that God has given us.  We are called to His service in other places of our life.  We we are called into other communities, to be the light that was nurtured here at Green Lake.  We can go forth knowing that we are loved by the people that were gathered here this summer.  We can go forth knowing that we are loved and longed for by a mighty and compassionate God.    

~SP

Jesus as the Atonement

Jesus is the bridge between us and God, the Father.  Jesus is the fulfillment of the law - the living word.  Jesus is the atonement for our sins.

A few weeks ago on a Thursday during camp, the day that we read through the story of Jesus' crucifixion, we took our students to Hopevale.  Hopevale is a chapel built in the woods on the conference grounds.  It is a replica of a chapel in the Philippines that was built by American Baptist missionaries.  They built the chapel there to help bring others closer to the God they knew.  Eventually turmoil arose in the country, and the missionaries were martyred.  They live on through the faith that they shared and through a few short poems written by the nurse that was with them.

These missionaries laid down their lives so that so many people could come to know their Lord and Savior better.

Jesus laid down His life, so that all people - those who had been, those who were there in the moment, and all of us who were to come - could know God.

We can never really put ourselves in Jesus' shoes (or sandals) so to speak - only Jesus, the Son of God, who was without sin, can atone for our sins.  But we can try to walk with Him:

Jesus was led to Calvary.  Before departing to that place a crown of thorns was placed on His head.  He was spat on.  He was called names.  Jesus was subjected to shame and embarrassment.  That is what sin does - it heaps shame on us until we are covered in its dirt, until we are marred and deteriorating.  Jesus took that on.

At Calvary, there Jesus was crucified.  Crucifixion works in this way - the hands and feet are pierced, wounding the body to pin it to the cross.  Jesus was held to the cross by our sin.  Our sins pierce us and pin us down to this world, and Jesus allowed our sins to do that to Him.   Death by crucifixion is at the hand of gravity.  As Jesus hung from the cross, the weight of His body bore down on His lungs - the weight of our sins on His back.  It was us who held Him there.

That is what we deserved.  That is what sin does to us.  It presses the life out of us.  It collapses us.  Jesus allowed our sins to crush Him.  He bore their weight.  He is the all sufficient sacrifice.  He is the all sufficient atonement for our sins.

He was laid in the tomb, and on the third day He rose again.  The wounds became scars.  Scars are evidence of healing.  Jesus was wounded by our sin and God healed those wounds.  They are the evidence of Jesus' atonement for our sins.

~SP        

Ephesians 2:13

"But now in Christ Jesus, you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ."  Ephesians 2:13

The theme for Quest this summer is Inseparable.  God is inseparable from us in our time of need, in our time of questioning, in our time of struggling with right and wrong.  God is inseparable from us in the time to come.

The student devotion book gives students this challenge each Monday morning: rewrite the words of Ephesians 2:13. 

Looking at the verse, I saw it in two distinct compartments.  The first being the statement that we were far off from God, our Creator.  The second is that what has brought us back to God is the blood of His son, Jesus Christ.

C.S. Lewis writes a beautiful passage in his book, Mere Christianity, about the transition between the biological life - the life in flesh - and the spiritual life.  We begin as created beings, in the image of God, but not of the same fabric or His being.  We live to die to the life of flesh and be born into a spiritual life - we become adopted.  Lewis distinguishes Jesus as being begotten - He is of the same fabric as God, yet limited in human form.

God sends Jesus to bring us, the created beings, near to Him.  Ephesians 2:13 tells us that this is done through the shedding of Christ's blood.  So the next question is why His blood?  What is the significance?

I think of the term "blood brothers."  A blood brother or sister  is someone who comes from the same bloodline as you.  My brother, David is my blood brother.  In earlier days, friends who felt so close to one another, felt a seemingly familial connection, would sometimes make an oath or a covenant to establish their brother/sisterhood.  This often consisted of each person making a cut on their finger and holding against the cut on the other person's finger - an exchange of blood.

Through His blood, that is what Christ does for us.  He says, come and be my blood brother, my blood sister.  Come be adopted by my father.  He is saying that we have the freedom and the opportunity to be born into that same heritage of faith.  He wants to bring us near.  He wants us to be of the same fabric.  

Christ has brought us into brotherhood with Him.  That is why His blood has been shed.  He wanted His father to be our father.  He wanted us to know our Father.

~SP

Consuming Fire

A devotion given at a camp fire on Wednesday July 3, 2013.

When I was 10, I had hair that fell to my hips.  Rapunzel length locks that I treasured.  Christmas Eve that year was just like every other Christmas Eve.  We end the service at my church by candle light, singing Silent Night.  Small candles are placed in paper rings to prevent the hot wax from dripping down onto your hands.  I stood next to my father and held the candle gingerly with both hands.  My eyes were focused forward into the dark as I sang out the words to Silent Night.

My father, always keeping an eye on me, looked down to see that I was being careful with the burning candle.  In the loudest whisper he shouted my name "Sarah!"  With one quick stroke, he took his hand and whisked my hair behind my shoulder.  When I had realized that I was about to burn off all of the hair on my head, I took all the breath that was within me and blew the candle out.

In that moment, I began to develop a fear of fire.  Fire was something that destroys.

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In the Old Testament, the book of Exodus, we have this beautiful image of Moses approaching the burning bush.  Exodus 3:2 says that Moses "looked and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed."  With intense curiosity Moses nears the burning bush.  And then God reveals Himself to Moses through the bush.  He identifies Himself as the God of Moses' forefathers.  He identifies Himself as the I Am.

In the New Testament, the writer of Hebrews deems God to be a "consuming fire." (Hebrews 12:29)  It would seem that these two passages are a contradiction.  In one passage, God presents Himself as a non-consuming fire, but in the other He is directly called a consuming fire.  

If we look at the word consume differently in each situation, we can see that the authors are getting at the same idea.  God is a consuming fire in the sense that when you allow Him to ignite within you, you are completely consumed by His love and grace.  He is not a fire that consumes and destroys, but allows the one within who He dwells to thrive.

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What can fire do?

Fire can save a life.  It can provide warmth for body heat.  It can provide heat to cook food.  Fire can light the way.  It can light a lantern; it can light a hearth.

Fire can build a community.  People gather around a fire in fellowship.  That is a Godly fire.  That is a fire that continues burning, but does not destroy the things it touches.

There are fires in this world that do destroy.  They come in all different forms.  Sex.  Drugs.  Desire for acceptance.  Money.  There are countless names for those fires.  

We have choices.  We can choose what fire we ignite.  We can choose what to light our hearth with.  The Godly fire will not perish us.

~SP

           

Jesus as the Fulfillment

Matthew 5:17 reads: "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets;  I have not come to abolish them, but fulfill them."

The first five books of the Old Testament are known in Jewish tradition as the Torah - they are the books of law.  Sometimes in Christian tradition, we refer to them as the Pentateuch.  God hands down His law to us through Moses in the Old Testament.  The law is what we are called to live by.

We know, through human experience that we sometimes have problems following the rules.  We break the law and we make new ones to add to the ones that we've broken, to make them more clear, or to make them more rigid.

Why isn't it easy for us to follow the law...I think it is often because we think we know better for ourselves.  We think that if we edit the rules, and spin them to suit us, then we will be better off.  But relying on our own understanding often leads us to destruction.

Jesus came to turn that around.

Jesus came and said "watch me."  Not necessarily with His words, but with His actions.  That is a fact: Jesus was a man of action.  He truly lived out the law.  He took what was on paper and made it into a lifestyle.  He calls us to do the same.

Jesus fulfilled the law through the example He set for His people.  Jesus was more of a do-er than a don't-er.  That is an admirable attitude.  It is an attitude that can take what is on paper and breathe life into it.  That is what Jesus did.  He took the scriptures - lifeless without Him - and animated them into a lifestyle.