New Adventure....

Last night I posed to the Youth Group, which I am the youth minister of, the idea maybe the reason why we feel that Scripture is out of date, doesn't relate to us, and is boring and pretty much worthless is that we are doing it wring. I know this sounds weird, but maybe we can try to even look at Scripture from the inside out.

Maybe the reason we feel this way about scripture is because we are making choices in our lives and then trying to see how scripture fits within it. Maybe we can turn this inside out and take scripture and try to live our lives out of it.

Here is an example:
Say you read Mark 12:28-31
" 28One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?"
29"The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' 31The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these."

This is commonly referred to as the "greatest commandment." My struggle is that I have read this way over 100 times, but I don't think I have ever really sat down and tried to live out what this would look like. How can I love my neighbor as myself? Does it mean literally $1 for $1? I spend a dollar on myself I spend a dollar on someone else. Does it mean that ever minute I spend trying to get a head on life, I spend one minute trying to help someone else get a head?

And what about the first part? How can I love God with well basically "everything I've got?"
I don't know what this looks like? Can I really do this?

I think that the church would benefit greatly from looking at scripture in this way. As Christians, and I include myself in this, we sometimes get so caught up in reading the most scripture or having the longest devotional time, but my new goal is to get caught up in the effectiveness of my devotion. Does it change my life? Does it change how I interact with others? Does it change how I rely on God? Does it change me, so that I might change the world?

Within all of these struggles, I found that maybe concentrating on a verse for a longer period of time would help me focus on what it would look like to live out a verse.
My fiancee (I can't remember if the guy or girl has two "e"s) and I sat down and worked out a meditation for an entire week based on a verse. This is posted on our youth website at http://www.crossvillefumc.net/This%20Week/ThisWeek.htm
Feel free to check it out and even join us in trying this new adventure, trying to live out scripture in our live today.

I will keep you updated on how this goes...