Instagram Live With Emmanuel YTH

Spiritual formation doesn’t take a lot of time - it just takes a little effort

It is always a great time talking with YTH. You never know exactly how it will go. In this latest podcast with Emmanuel Youth, the conversation goes to helping teens to be consistent with their spiritual life, and, how that will impact their campus when they go back to school.

Let’s deal with teens and their spiritual health right now while being in the COVID-19 lockdown.

Meeting God Anywhere

In the book, The Secret Chase, by Heath Adamson, The story is told of the iconic photo of the vulture preying on a malnourished child in Africa. The photo has a huge story behind it.

The New York Times purchased the photo and the young girls story was shared with the world. In 1994 the Pulitzer Prize was awarded to Kevin Carter for the shot. But the rest of the story gives us a very important lesson. After the shot was taken, Kevin Carter recounted that it was a significant tipping point in his life as he sat down underneath a nearby tree and wept after taking the photo.

We don’t know what happened to the young girl in Africa in the photo. But we know that Kevin Carter committed suicide and left a note that said “I am haunted by the filthy memories of killings and corpses and anger and pain.“

As Kevin sat there in the Sudanese desert he prayed. But, as far as we know, although he was moved to action in a humanitarian way and his efforts no doubt raised global awareness as few have done, he never took the next steps into a relationship with God.

As I talk to students and leaders about their spiritual lives, I am reminded of the verse in 1 Thessalonians 5.17 when Paul says that we should “Pray without ceasing.” This commitment and decision to pray is what enters us into a relationship with God. And prayer can take place anywhere.

Turning Bedrooms Into Prayer Rooms

If we can get our teenagers to do a few simple things, they could turn their bedrooms into prayer rooms. I believe if a teenager can win their bedroom they can win the world!

Set a specific time for devos -This will help you run your day and not let your day run you. Having a set time of study, prayer, worship, and other spiritual disciplines will transform your life. We do not tend to want to pray. It must become a self discipline created by patterns.

All of us need practices to protect our principles.

Create a prayer wall, journal, or online diary - Many years ago I started journaling and have kept my journals through the years. I love to go back and read them periodically to see what I was going through and how I dealt with it. In a similar way, I use my YouVersion app for my journaling and study notes. You can also create a prayer wall of requests and answered prayers that you can see daily progress.

Theme days - It helps me to have a theme day each week. Let me explain. Every day has a specific topic that I pray for that whole day. That gives me a chance to have my mind think through an entire day on a topic and pray more thoroughly.

Heres how it works for me:

Monday I pray for myself, Tuesday I pray globally, Wednesday I pray for youth and the church, Thursday I pray for America and our nation, Friday I pray for my family, and on the weekends I pray for whatever events I might be at.

Worship moments - Every week in your bedroom you should be creating personal worship moments That are unforgettable. This could be revolutionary. Even to this day the two greatest worship moments of my life were not in a corporate setting. I’ve been in some of the best corporate worship settings around the world with some of the best worship teams and movements. But nothing compares to personal worship when you commit yourself to it.

Tag teams or circles - Accountability helps. You can create a circle of friends or just one friend and work together at this. This could be a group chat or hey single person that you speak to on a regular basis. There are plenty of apps for this – FaceTime, zoom, WhatsApp, or video DM. Take turns calling each other and sharing what God is showing each of you. After a few weeks of doing this, it will become an unstoppable pattern that you look forward to each week.

Changing After Tragedy

One of the things I’ve noticed with tragedies or iconic events is they often have a short impact personally but a longer impact on society. What I mean by this is often times laws or even our ways of life will change after a tragic event. But then things go back to normal personally after just a few months.

After 9/11 we saw soaring church attendance. From September until March after the terror attacks church attendance went through the roof. Only to return back to normal just a few months later. In a June 2011 study done by Jeremy Uecker of the Sociological Spectrum, it was suggested that the terror attacks exerted only modest and short-lived effects on religious and spiritual change.

In research by Barna, Duke University, and FOX News, it was found that church attendance spiked briefly after 9/11 and then returned to its normal numbers just 5 months later by March 2002.

We cannot let this happen in the wake of the coronavirus and COVID-19 lockdown.

Finally

I’m sure we all understand that in the 1st century more miracles took place in the marketplace than in the temple. More miracles took place in the mountains, at the beach, in a boat, or at the home of Jesus. This is a great lesson to be applied to our students right now. God is no less in the home or their bedroom or on a walk with them than He is at the YTH ministry.

With just a few of these disciplines you can create a more regimented and disciplined devo life and intentional time of spiritual formation that will be lasting and not simply short-lived.