Gull Lake Camp Sunday: "Connected"

[0:00] You may have forgotten from last week because I wasn't here, but I'm your pastor. It's so fun to be back. As we were away last week, I was reflecting on the fact that this feels like home, and so I miss you when we're not here, and so it's great to be back this morning.

[0:19] Well, some of you may already be aware of this, and Pat did mention it, but Reverend Doug Moffitt passed away this past Thursday early in the morning. It was on May 2nd, and Doug faithfully served the Lord at pastorates here at Bramard in Edmonton, Trinity Baptist in Vancouver, First Baptist in Calgary, and High River Baptist. Doug also served for eight years as the executive minister of the BUWC, which is now the CBWC, and a service of remembrance will be held for Doug, as Pat mentioned, next Saturday, May the 11th, and it's at 11 a.m., if you want to note this, at Foothills Alliance Church in Calgary. Let's pray.

[1:06] Gracious God, we offer thanks for this day and for the opportunity to be here together in worship. During this time, may we be able to put aside the concerns of our daily lives, let go of all the demands that crowd upon us, and simply be present here to your spirit and your words. In the spirit of the psalm, may we truly be still and know that you are God.

[1:37] We offer you prayers of thanksgiving for life and all those things that make life good. In these early days of spring, surrounded by nature's blossoming beauty and occasionally hints and nasty reminders of winter, we offer gratitude, Lord, for the abundance and fertility of the earth. The wonders of nature take us unaware, and sometimes we forget to stop and smell the roses.

[2:09] But Father, in this season, we raise our hearts to you. Help us in our gratitude not to take this abundance and beauty for granted. Help us as we work to maintain the health and beauty of the earth for generations to come. Help us as well as we seek to make this good earth a safe home for all your children. We confess that though your earth is abundant, many of your children live in poverty and want. We know from your words through prophets and apostles that this is neither your will nor your purpose. Sustain us with the gift of hope as we work to do your will, so that all people might share fairly in the good things of your creation. Father, this morning we recognize the importance of camp ministry as a unique way of introducing young people to you and your truth, setting the foundation for a lifelong relationship that surpasses all others. This morning we particularly recognize the vital work of Gull Lake Center and their staff. Father, strengthen and encourage them as they prepare for the upcoming camp season. Bless them and encourage them and give them a constant reminder of your love for them and for the children to whom they minister. They are doing your work.

[3:51] We bring to you our concerns this morning, Father, for peace in our community and the world. We bring our concerns for the family and loved ones of our former pastor, Doug Moffitt.

[4:06] Give them peace and comfort as they adjust to life without him, while taking comfort as well and the knowledge that he is with you in paradise. Father, we recognize increased conflict this morning between Israel and Palestine in recent days, and we trust you in your power over that situation.

[4:33] Father, scripture tells us that while we may live in a troubled world, you have overcome that trouble. And the final victory is yours. In all these things, we ask for the strength to face the hard realities of our world, not to despair, but Lord, to stand with the vulnerable, the victims of violence and injustice, and those who live on the margins of society and life.

[5:05] Father, we bring to you our personal concerns for ourselves and our families, some of which we may not share with others openly. Father, there are health concerns and other issues in our church family.

[5:21] Some of us seek answers in our lives. Others are asking for healing. Father, we need your strength, your peace, your encouragement, not just this morning, but every day of our lives.

[5:41] Father, we pause to recognize again this morning that you alone are, wow, our God, and we are your people.

[5:56] We thank you for your provision for our needs. We submit to your authority over our lives. We bow humbly before you and recognize your grace, your love, and your kindness to us.

[6:15] Amen. Amen. Amen. Well, I'll transition from being weepy, crying, praying pastor to happy introducing Rebecca pastor. Come on up, Rebecca.

[6:28] So we have a very special guest with us this morning. It's a delight to welcome Rebecca Mahachik. Yes? Very close, very close.

[6:40] Kate, correct me. Mahachik. Mahachik. Oh, so close. I was determined not to get it wrong. I've been getting it wrong for months. But Rebecca is the program manager at Gull Lake.

[6:52] Rebecca has been in a role at Gull Lake since 2016. And she, like me, transitioned out of a regular career from life in Calgary as a registered nurse to ministry at Gull Lake.

[7:06] So please join me in welcoming Rebecca this morning as she shares. Well, good morning.

[7:16] Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning, friends and future friends. It's incredible to be with you here this morning. It's incredible that Doug Moffitt was the pastor of this church.

[7:28] I speak with Andy all the time. He'll be speaking at camp this summer, who's Doug's son and his grandkids. Two of them will be on staff. One will be in LTD this summer.

[7:39] And the other one will be coming as a camper. So it's pretty remarkable. So I already feel like family just coming into this church, knowing the vast connections of camp. But thank you for having me. Thank you for the invitation, Kent.

[7:50] Thank you for the warm welcome, Pat. And thank you for the ways that you love and care for camp. We get to be in the same denominational family in the CBWC.

[8:02] Family is a big word. And I don't mean that lightly. It has so very much context. One doesn't call just any one family. So thank you for being part of our family. Thank you for loving on us, for caring for us, and for trusting us with what is most precious to you, your kids.

[8:20] I get the joy of being with you here today. I get to represent Gull Lake and share a little bit of what is going on at camp these days. But far greater than that, I get to simply share with you as somebody who deeply desires to follow Jesus well.

[8:34] And so as I get to share a message with you, it is an honor to be here with you. I get to stand before you as someone who is a fruit of the ministry, someone who's grown up at Gull Lake, and as now a minister of Gull Lake.

[8:46] So this will be my fourth summer serving full-time at camp. And it will be my eighth summer seeing camp in action, which is crazy. I keep joking that I'm far too young to be sounding this old.

[8:59] But Gull Lake has been a very real part of my story and journey. And so I trust that this gives you a glimpse into the powerful impact of the sacred space of camp. So let's pray. God, thank you for today.

[9:12] God, I thank you for who you are. I thank you for how deeply you know each and every one of us. I thank you that you know us and you care for us. God, as I see little kids dancing, it reminds me of how you watch us.

[9:26] I pray that we would walk in a deep knowledge of who you are. And God, I just pray that you would speak through me today. That this would be an encouragement to our greater family of church.

[9:39] Yeah. God, we just invite you to be ever-present with us here and now. In Jesus' name. Amen. So I'm just going to play a quick camp video here for you. So if you've never been to Gull Lake, or if you've sent your kids or your grandkids, this will give you a little bit of an insight into what a day in the life of camp looks like.

[9:57] Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.

[11:02] Amen. Amen.

[12:02] Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. So hopefully that gives you a little taste of the energy and the crazy of camp.

[12:56] So I'm going to start off by saying I never ever intended to fall in love with camp. As you can see, it's a pretty easy place to love. But I didn't actually want to. I fought against this for quite some time.

[13:07] And I didn't really know, I didn't really want to carry the weight of camp. I knew that loving it meant a whole lot more to sign up for. So now that I've spent eight years, I have a whole place in my heart dedicated just to that place.

[13:21] And camp is simply a medium. It's simply a piece of land. And that's about it. But it is also holy ground. It's a space that was set aside for the powerful work of sharing the gospel and raising young people as Christian leaders.

[13:36] So Gulling was founded in 1920 by Dr. C.C. McLaurin with a two-fold vision. So the first was evangelism, and it was created as a space to share the gospel.

[13:47] And the second was leadership development. And Emma is actually an LDD at camp right now, which is really exciting. So we get to continue being part of that. And so 99 years later, we are still living the two-fold vision out.

[14:03] Did you catch that? 99 years later. We are nearly 100 years old. In 2020, we're going to have our 100th anniversary. So we have a huge celebration coming up with that.

[14:15] That is nearly a century of legacy. I simply wish I could visually see the legacy of camp. The impact of what 100 years of ministry in that place looks like. I know how deeply this place has impacted my own life.

[14:28] It has rocked me in every way. And I get the privilege of seeing this firsthand have the same powerful influence in the lives of so many others as well. So I simply get overwhelmed when I think about the impact that that place has had and the way that it's shaped the trajectory of people's eternities.

[14:46] So I get to give you a bit of an update on all the excitement going on at camp. Because there's a lot of it. And brace yourselves. Because there's a lot of it. And I find it very easy to talk about. So this summer, we are anticipating having over 1,100 kids come through camp.

[15:01] When camp is a full house, we have 150 kids in our care for their week-long camp experience. Where else do you get to spend that much quality time intentionally investing in kids without screens in front of them?

[15:13] We also have about 50 summer staff. There's about 75 LTDs in the program. So we'll have about 30 of them each week. And about 10 to 20 volunteers at a time. So we get to create space for 250 people, young people, to enter into a relationship with God, to deepen their relationship with God, and to become more like Christ as a whole.

[15:35] This past summer specifically, we had 182 kids come to know Christ as their own personal Lord and Savior for the very first time, as per our camper follow-up form.

[15:46] So 182 kids, which is just incredible. That is huge. Huge, huge. I paused to just simply notice the significance of that. Even if that was for one kid, that place is worth it.

[16:02] We get to welcome kids into the presence of God, into relationship with Him, and they get it. Sometimes I think that kids in their childlikeness, they get it more than some of our analytical academic brains do.

[16:15] There's something simply preventable being a child. In their innocence, in their vulnerability, in their honesty, there's something that they get as children. I think of an intercamper last summer who was about 10 years old that heard the gospel explained for the first time.

[16:30] And she came up to the speaker with eyes full of anticipation and asked the question, How do you make sure that you're part of God's family? I saw the speaker gently kneel down and meet this little girl's eyes and say, Well, it's actually very simple.

[16:44] Have you invited Jesus into your heart? And do you want Him to be the Lord of your life? The little girl responded, Yes, I pray to every word that you said. And she said, And did you really believe it?

[16:57] And the little girl lit up and said, Yes, yes, I really, really did. So the speaker said, Well then, welcome into Jesus' family. This little girl skipped off, beaming with excitement, to run off and tell her cabin and all of her friends that she met Jesus and got to be invited to be part of His family that night.

[17:15] So our eyes filled with tears remembering and seeing the work that takes place at camp is sacred and it's powerful. We get to reach young people in a very unique and a very special way.

[17:29] In a time where books are being published called Hemorrhaging Faith, talking about the massive rates that young people are leaving the church or not even entering the church, we live in a time where church is sometimes on the margins of our culture, where kids are consumed by screens, where loneliness, anxiety, depression, and depression plight the minds of young people, where the world of inferiority, comparison, and longing to be followed and liked buzzes in kids' pockets and every moment of that affirms an identity simply built on the approval of others.

[18:02] There's a very, very deep longing in our kids and our youth, but they are lost. They hunger and they thirst for so much more, yet they don't know where to find it. They're estranged to it.

[18:13] And if they hear of it, it's so rarely in a way that accurately depicts the heart of God as I know Him to be. So this, for my heart, is the reason that I want a career in nursing to go and be part of the work at Gullick.

[18:28] This past summer specifically, we had a full senior teens camp. That means we had 150 kids between the ages of 14 and 18, so that's teenagers. And 150 teenagers is a lot, let me tell you.

[18:40] But I hold my breath before that week. And if you are, or if you're a parent, or if you are a grandparent of someone that is this age, you know that these years can be tough.

[18:51] They are critical years in someone's life. They are searching for identity. And as you can see in our culture, we have a deep longing to live out an identity. I had the opportunity to pray with a senior high boy this past summer, and during the worship time, a staff member asked if I would reach out to him.

[19:08] He shared how it was put on his heart that he would have the strength to forgive his dad for years of anger and bitterness that he had built up against him. It was really quite profound to hear a 14-year-old boy pray like that.

[19:20] Camp is a place that I so evidently see the Holy Spirit encounter people in ways that bear fruit, very good fruit. So we are celebrating 100 years next year.

[19:32] We are on the road to 100 journey. This means that we're reflecting back over the last 100 years of what's happened at the camp. It also means that we're looking ahead and strategically planning for the next 100 years of what is yet to come, trying to set ourselves up so we can continue to be a place of such rich ministry.

[19:52] We have a goal to get better and better and better every year. That matters to us. We never want to settle and run a status quo rhythm of running camp.

[20:03] We want camp to constantly be putting our best foot forward because kids are worth it and Jesus meets people there. We as a camp have a philosophy that we are called to be a blessing and we are committed to being just that.

[20:16] So we're in a very significant capital campaign right now. We're preparing to replace our 12 traditional cabins. So if you've been to the camp and you know the cabin role of the 12 cabins that face the flagpole, that's been kind of a landmark of the camp for 100 years almost now and we're going to be rebuilding them.

[20:36] But it's exciting. We're rebuilding them because we have a future and we are planning for generations of kids to continue coming through camp. So we're actually looking to raise 2.7 million dollars to complete this capital project.

[20:51] This is the buildings, it's the septic, it's paying off some debt and some future camp development projects like playgrounds and toboggan hills and things that make the camp continually better.

[21:04] So that's my passion rant about camp. I can go on for some time but I hope this captures what the deep waters of Gull Lake is all about. And yes, that is a joke. If you know anything about Gull Lake at all, you'll know that it is knee-deep for half of it.

[21:18] It causes real problems with our hopes often. So I'm going to step to kind of more into a time we're centered on the gospel here.

[21:28] So if you'll open your Bibles with me to Matthew 6 verses 9 to 13, I'd like to start there and we've already read through it in our scripture reading. So I don't bring a message of something you've never heard before this morning.

[21:41] In fact, I hope you've heard this message many times. But I pray that it resonates deeply and differently for you today. So this then is how you should pray.

[21:54] Will you read it with me? Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be your name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

[22:06] Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debt as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

[22:20] For yours is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen. So my question this morning is, what if we lived like we really believed it?

[22:34] Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. I'll say it again. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

[22:47] Can heaven and earth connect? Could we be experiencing little pieces of heaven here and now, on earth, if we truly believed it?

[22:59] This is something I've been wrestling with for the past number of years. So just imagine with me for a moment. If God exists outside of time, if he truly is alpha and omega, beginning and end, then the time of his return could look very different than our human minds anticipate.

[23:16] So this draws me to the question, could heaven and earth be connecting right now? Are there moments here on earth where we can experience the kingdom of God? Can we enter into it?

[23:27] Can we live in a kingdom-like experience here and now? Sometimes the moments I get to witness and experience at camp invite me to realize this. Moments where kids are laughing and dancing in circles and living the full joy of friendship and relationship.

[23:43] Moments where a child prays for their parents that they would come to know Jesus as they have just met. him. Moments where kids are sitting in hillbilly hot tubs, which is canoes filled with warm water, sitting under the stars, talking about all kinds of silly things.

[23:57] But they're also talking about all kinds of sacred things, asking big questions of life about God, about them, about why they're here. Moments where worship brings kids to tears as they feel the presence and love of Christ over their life in a way that gives them shivers.

[24:12] They say, I've just never felt this before. Moments where Memorial Hall, which is the chapel, is filled with the voices of kids singing songs of praise. I'll sit outside and you can just hear the chapel.

[24:25] Camp is a beautiful place and it's where beautiful things can happen. We have a philosophy at camp where mess is welcome here. The mess of humanity comes in, where broken relationships, hurting kids, fear, anxiety, depression, anger, it's all welcomed in.

[24:44] Kids can come as they are, but we trust that they will encounter God through their week of camp and those encounters never leave a person the same as when they came. Sure, it doesn't mean all their struggles are gone and washed away, but it does mean that they have an inner confidence that they are known and loved by the Savior of the world.

[25:03] What would our world look like if we fully lived in the active participation of the gospel, a story that continues to be told through our lives? If we saw our lives as an opportunity to move things back into right relationship the way God intended them to be, if we lived our lives restoring our relationship with God, with others, with ourselves, and with the world around us, are we living our lives radically sharing the good news?

[25:29] The news of grace? The news of redemption? The news of forgiveness? News that there is a God that cares personally and intimately and selflessly for each and every one of us?

[25:40] News that we have the opportunity to be created anew, to be washed white as snow, to be restored from brokenness to wholeness in the eyes of God. When God first created, he looked at it and he said, it is good.

[25:56] It was in a place of shalom, divine peace. All things were in perfect relationship. I tried to imagine what this would look like to fully experience. I tried to picture what the Garden of Eden would have been like.

[26:08] I tried to imagine what heaven might be like. What it would look like to dwell in the presence of God all of the time. And then I remember, I remember that we were invited into this in the way that we live our lives.

[26:22] And I remember a very dark world seeking a story like this. And then I pause and I wonder, am I awake to it? Have my eyes been open to seeing through the lens of Jesus?

[26:35] Could I actually be experiencing that in my day-to-day life here and now? Could I live my life dwelling in the presence of God? So at camp, we run a three-year leadership training and discipleship program, LTD.

[26:50] So Emma is one of our LTDs. It's exceptional. It's actually one of the things that we do best. And we've really come to focus on the curriculum on the heart of the gospel. We study it, but we also trust that it will infuse into the lives of our students.

[27:06] I'm really passionate about leadership, and so I pray that my own walk and my own journey speaks of this message that we teach at camp, that my life tells the story of the gospel. So in level one, we ask the question, what is the gospel?

[27:19] And what does the gospel mean to you? In level two, we talk about what it looks like to allow the gospel to permeate into our lives. So we talk a lot about the spiritual disciplines.

[27:32] And then in level three, we talk about the invitation to actively participate in the gospel and that we get to live into a story that's continuing to be told. So our theme for this summer is connected.

[27:47] As you are likely very aware, we live in the world of Wi-Fi with screens, internet, information, connection, all of the time. In one sense, our world is far more connected today than it ever has been in human history.

[28:00] I see this when my grandparents look at me at all the crazy wonders of the phone. In another sense, we've also lost all understanding of what it means to be connected. This next generation of kids, as you know, is growing up with technology that is probably beyond imagination for many of you.

[28:17] When you walk into a public access spot, you know how to search your phone and see how many bars of connection you have. You'll often even get a little pop-up message that says, you are connected.

[28:27] There's this extreme false affirmation of being connected. Young people experience this through creating a following on social media.

[28:38] So they live for likes and for loves and it's often in the form of an icon on their phone. So there's a huge deficit in our world. A deep longing for connection exists.

[28:50] A much deeper connection. A connection to the heart of God. My brother just introduced me to Google Assistant. I don't know if any of you have it, but you can essentially ask Google anything.

[29:02] It hears, it responds, it tracks information. It even talks back to you. It can book things in your schedule, it can get directions for you, it can call people in your contact list, it can make orders online.

[29:16] Phones are essentially listening in all the time. I have mixed feelings about that, but it's made me become far more aware to this lived reality that we are far more connected to the world around us than we ever realize.

[29:29] All parts of our life connect. So I'm really not your typical camp person at all. Sometimes I pause and have to retrust my steps to remember how I even landed here.

[29:40] But I realize that God prepared me for this role through a very metaphoric experience through my training as a nurse. I have a very clear memory of the day God led me off of what I had mapped out as a life course.

[29:53] It was a trust journey and it caused me to have some of the hard conversations with God. It's the clear moment that I realized the weight of what I believed. That the knowledge of what I had been trusted with was not mine to keep.

[30:05] It was a gem and I was trusted to carry it. So I have been nursing for a number of years and I actually continue to keep it at part time in Red Deer and I ended up working in palliative oncology.

[30:19] So palliative care is end of life and oncology is cancer. So between working at summer camp and being on the beach with kids dancing and having fun and working at the end of life I've learned a lot this past year specifically.

[30:33] If there's a story in the Bible that I really connect with it's Peter. The moment that Peter locks eyes with Jesus and he invited him out of the boat. Do you love me? Do you love me?

[30:45] Peter, do you love me? Our life is simply an opportunity to live in awe of God and to be the hands and feet of Christ himself. So I'll get you to actually turn to Matthew 25 verse 31 with me and there's a story Jesus tells about the sheep and the goats.

[31:03] So Matthew 25 When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him and he will separate the people one from the other as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.

[31:21] He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. Then the king will say to those on his right Come, you who are blessed by my father take your inheritance the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world for I was hungry and you gave me something to eat I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink I was a stranger and you invited me in I needed clothes and you clothed me I was sick and you looked after me I was in prison and you came to visit me Then the righteous will answer him Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you?

[31:56] Or when did we see you thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in? Or needing clothes and clothes you? When did we see you sick or in prison and look after you?

[32:07] The king will reply Truly I tell you whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine you did it for me. I love standing in awe of the life of Jesus.

[32:20] It is powerful. Jesus was so incredibly counter-cultural He almost did the exact opposite of what every human instinct wants to do. I don't know how someone can hear the story of Jesus and not be moved by it.

[32:36] We just recently came out of Easter and I'm still living in that space imagining myself there imagining myself at the foot of the cross connecting with Jesus both in his death and in his resurrection.

[32:49] Working in palliative care has shifted my understanding of that. So I'm going to invite you back into the space of Jesus because I think that the act of Jesus being on the cross is a direct moment of when heaven and earth met was through the direction of the cross so heaven and earth intersected with one another through the life of Jesus.

[33:11] So I think there's something incredibly powerful Jesus came to communicate to us through that. If you've ever wrapped your head around the seven last expressions Jesus has on the cross as he's dying you'll realize there's some extreme power there and there's some extreme implications for our lives I believe as well.

[33:31] So I'm going to read Jesus' last seven expressions for you and share a little bit about how that's connected with my life and how we're invited to have that connect with all of our lives. Father, forgive them for they know not what they are doing.

[33:45] That's Luke 23 verse 34. There Jesus is he's hanging on the cross he's in absolute suffering and pain he's barely able to speak words he knows he has a deep and a pure knowledge that his life is being sacrificed on behalf of others he's been betrayed beaten and is near the end of his life dying a horrific death on behalf of us on my behalf and yet his words notice his words Father, forgive them for they know not what they are doing and he begs God to forgive the people that are laughing and are scoffing and mocking him at his feet I can't help but stand in awe of this moment at Jesus' life if he came to reveal the heart of God it is so far beyond comprehension so how does this connect with my life our lives we all see our world we've seen a little bit of a mess we've created for ourselves and we are the people at the foot of the cross are we called to ask for forgiveness on behalf of our brothers and sisters perhaps for greater than that perhaps we're called to receive this forgiveness can we receive what God extends to us you can't give something that you haven't received yourself so how do we live as the kinds of people that have the capacity to extend grace so radically such a radically undeserved favor to others do we truly get what happened there the next expression

[35:20] Jesus shares today you will be with me in paradise Luke 23 43 who did Jesus come for he came for sinners he came for the sick he came for the lepers the prostitutes the thieves the vulnerable the liars the cheaters he came for the people on the margins he looked at them and as he was crucified even next to them he said see you in paradise who even is this man I cannot comprehend him so how does this connect to my life I always thought through nursing that it was all about helping people and probably if I was really honest with myself I thought it was about fixing them so that they could return to life and carry on they break their arm they come in we fix it we send them back but I realized I was very wrong in my thinking here I've come to care for people in some pretty rough circumstances

[36:20] I've cared for families that are grieving the loss of a child I've cared for alcoholics detoxing from alcohol I've cared for people overdosing on drugs I've cared for people who have attempted suicide I've cared for people who suffer from schizophrenia and have caused extreme self-mutilation because of the voices they hear I've cared for people who have just been informed that they had cancer I've cared for people who have just delivered a baby that was apprehended at birth I've cared for people in their last breaths of life that are filled with anxiety for their families and their finances so I've got to care for a lot of people in the margins and I realize that that is the place that God identifies with people He identifies with people in deep places of pain so we get to welcome sinners into relationships with God as we are welcomed into relationship with God we get to welcome people into a place of paradise to live in the presence of God forever another expression of Jesus on the cross behold your son and behold your mother as Jesus dies he looks at his mother and at the disciple whom Jesus loved

[37:30] John where he entrusts Mary into his care Jesus is dying he is not wrapped up in his own agony he is telling the people he loves and is leaving behind to love and to care for one another has Jesus entrusted people into my care or your care notice the gravity of that notice the love behind that notice the selflessness in that statement so how does this connect to to my life there is something about life in the hospital walking into rooms of people who are sick who are vulnerable who are hurting and who are dying that has awakened these verses for me behold this person my God my God why have you forsaken me this is an expression of Jesus on the cross as well so the question is did God ever abandon Jesus did Jesus experience the complete absence of God during his crucifixion was he filled with fear mistrust anger betrayal obviously that is an anguish filled cryo to his father perhaps

[38:45] Jesus is revealing the depth of the relationship he had with his father it wasn't long before that that he wept with tears of blood while spending time with God in the garden of Gethsemane then I thirst is another expression of Jesus there is much more to this statement than meets the eye at the surface Jesus words I thirst John tells us led to the fulfillment of scripture what scripture was Jesus fulfilling many say it's Psalm 69 verse 21 for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink so essentially Jesus was saying look what I am doing now was written centuries ago so Jesus fulfilled a prophecy by this very statement but also I believe that Jesus came to tell us that he was 100% human he died experiencing the very same symptoms I see people express at the end of their life God identified so closely with people and with us in human form through sending his son that thirsting is something that someone experiences at the end of their life will often give ice chips or a sponge for someone to suck on because they they're past the point of eating and drinking and so Jesus came to show us just how human he was through even these simple acts and then his final words

[40:10] Father into your hands I commend my spirit and it is finished famous last words Jesus fulfilled huge prophecy with these essentially what he was saying was I came to do exactly what was set out for me to do so how does this connect to our lives there is a reality that we came from dust and to dust we shall return we get the opportunity to live our lives knowing the truth Jesus came to live out the heart of his father here on earth and he's invited and entrusted us to do the same through the gift of the Holy Spirit in our lives so I'm going to close by just sharing a story that I came across in nursing and it's very funny I will often pray for patients before I go to work go to the hospital and I've asked God to open my eyes to see people as he does so I had never met this nurse and I was in her patient's room caring for this patient and this nurse comes in and it was the funniest moment she pauses stops dead in her tracks and says

[41:16] I love you I've never met this nurse before she walks into the room and those are her first words and I realized that God has the ability to speak to us any day all the time for me that was a moment because I was praying into the verse of when I care for these patients when I show up to these patients I'm caring for Jesus himself and so to have someone walk in the room and say I love you the moment she walked in and we've never met she was so embarrassed afterwards she was going off about how she would never say that maybe I should introduce myself for all these things it was a very funny moment and it realized that that was an affirmation to me that when we are caring for the least of these and when we are living life and when we see the people around us and we see how closely God connects with them when we see when heaven and earth connect through people we actually get to live into the kingdom of God here and now so I leave you with the question where is God speaking to you in your life and in your week how is the environment that you find yourself in developing you with a deeper understanding of who God is so in closing

[42:31] I invite you to live into the active story of the gospel and to share the very very good news that we get to know so pray for us God thank you so much for who you are God thank you for the life of Jesus thank you for the ways that you reveal yourself to us God I thank you for the environments we find ourselves in for the opportunities to be shaped and molded more into the way you intended for us to be God I pray that we would come to see the kingdom of God here and now that when we pray thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven that we would really believe that that we could step into earth and see it be a place that reflects who you are God I just pray for camp this summer I pray for this church and I pray for the Moffat family I pray that they would see the ways in which Dyke lived out the act of storytelling of the good news that he knew and I pray that we would all walk in that

[43:36] God I pray over these people I pray that you would make yourself so very known to them that they would come to know you better God I thank you for the blessing this church has been to the camp and I thank you for the blessing the camp is to many kids in Jesus holy and precious name Amen just invite the worship team back up