hey hey.
i haven’t had the time or capacity to write much recently. a bit sad, but over the past week, i got to write and speak at my last younglife club with my favorite people. and while i hope that this blesses you, my purpose in posting my notes is in remembrance of how sweet it is to create out of Grace and not perfection.
so here it is. word for word, a little messy, with notes just for me, even my guided prayer to say to myself before i began. enjoy!
open my heart, my mind, my lips, Jesus. fill me with your calming Presence, beckoning us towards peace. slow my breathing, my mind, my heart before you, Father. teach me to serve you here. in perfect faithfulness, you have done such a wonderful thing, something planned long ago.
hey, friends! i’m so excited that you’re here tonight! if we’ve never met, my name is sydney, i love Jesus and i’m a senior at ghs! woohooo! i’m super excited to graduate, *super excited to be done if were being honest.
after i graduate this semester, in the fall, i’m taking a gap year and will be a part of a missions program. so over nine months, i live in four different continents, and will get to meet lots of cool people and do lots of cool things! over the past six months or so, i’ve been fundraising for it and telling people about it. i’m very excited, but also can feel very nervous about it! everyday i think about it like, this is the craziest thing i’ve ever done.
i’ve only ever lived in gainesville all my life, i get nervous about meeting new people and doing new things, the total that i’ll need to fundraise for it is about $16,000, i haven’t had an particular training for what i’m doing, and i’m putting off school for this… its all just absolutely wild to think about and i can feel really anxious about it at times.
but, over the past week, i’ve been reading a story that has really given me some assurance and hope for the future and calmed my anxious thoughts, so were gonna dive in tonight.
i’ll start with a bit of background…
in the past couple of weeks, my friends madison and annie have shared about this guy we know, Jesus, out of these books that we call the gospels, and we’ve been talking about what He did and all that it means for us. i hope that you’ve been enjoying it as much as i have. i just think that the gospels play out like a movie, its so interesting.
so to recap, here’s the gist: like if it were on netflix, you click on the show, and it’d be all like “previously on the gospel”: this special dude named Jesus, who is fully God and fully man in one being, God with a bod, comes to the earth from heaven and turns everything upside down in the best way possible.
He’s giving the blind their sight, the lame, people who were crippled or paralyzed, are walking, healing people with disease, the deaf are hearing, the dead are being raised back to life, all this crazy stuff, people are being touched and changed by how special Jesus is.
and at the end of His time on earth, Jesus offers salvation and goodness to everyone through the cross and His resurrection, like madison talked to us about. what He does is He reconciles us to God, brings us back to our Creator, our Father.
Jesus builds this bridge between the separation that was once between us and Him, right? and now, we no longer have to strive to mend that gap ourselves, all that we have to do is delight in Him and enjoy everything that Jesus is and the gifts that He gives us, and He calls us to love Him with all of our heart and soul and everything we are, like annie said.
and thats a wrap on season one of the gospel! so tonight, i’m gonna talk about what i like to think of as season two of the gospel…
so we pick up in a book called acts, right after these books called the gospels, is acts, and at this point, Jesus has resurrected, after He’s spent a lot of time with His group of friends, given them some tools on how to go forward, and He’s gone back to heaven like He always talked about. and His group of friends, His disciples, listen to Jesus words and their aim is to become like Jesus and do what Jesus did.
so in this story, in acts chapter four, two of His disciples and really close friends, peter and john, are out and about, doing what Jesus often did, speaking to people about their salvation, how Jesus saved them, and extending it to them as well. like we’re sitting together now and on monday nights and talk about Jesus, peter and john did a similar thing. so that’s where we pick up.
*you can read with me on the screen, we’ll pause every couple verses…*
so, on top the disciples speaking to people about Jesus, miracles were happening too: even when Jesus wasn’t there physically, He was still healing people and changing them forever,
and the more that peter and john and their friends did this, the more people they attracted. here, it says that they numbered about 5,000 at this point. now, this was something that they had never seen before, no one who had come and spoken in their area came and spoke and attracted people the way that they did. and so some questions arose from the leaders of this area.
in verse 7, it reads “They stood Peter and John in the middle of the room and grilled them: “Who put you in charge here? What business do you have doing this?””
??
what they really were asking is what ruler is this powerful? how is he succeeding the way that he is? how is he pulling off all these miracles?
now, the answer that they probably thought they would say was someone like alexander the great or a high priest in the church, those people, emperors and kings, were the most powerful people at the time.
but in verse 8, peter answers the leaders, it says “I’ll be completely frank with you—we have nothing to hide. By the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the One you killed on a cross, the One God raised from the dead, by means of his name this man [the man that they healed] stands before you healthy and whole. Jesus is ‘the stone you masons threw out, which is now the cornerstone [or the foundation].’ Salvation comes no other way; no other name has been or will be given to us by which we can be saved [or be healed or do these things], only this one.””
Jesus was the last answer that they were expecting. He was born in Nazareth, a place that was considered inferior and laughed at, He was beaten and ridiculed and died such a horrible death. but peter says it was only the power of this Jesus, who resurrected in such glory to bring blessing to all of the earth, that could bring this salvation and these miracles.
and in verse 13, it says the leaders were in awe of what Jesus was doing through them! they marveled at the boldness of peter and john in sharing this.
it says “They couldn’t take their eyes off them—Peter and John standing there so confident, so sure of themselves! Their fascination deepened when they realized these two were laymen with no training in Scripture or formal education. They recognized them as companions of Jesus, but with the man right before them, seeing him standing there so upright—so healed!—what could they say against that?”
??
they were in awe of the great things that these men did this and how spoke so well! but immediately following how astonished they were, its says that they realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men. kind of insulting.
but then, they realized that they had been friends of Jesus.” that’s it. simple. these men that had done such amazing things in their community, with no education, no special training, who genuinely had no qualifications for the miracles that they were doing, had simply been with Jesus. that’s it.
there are a lot of times that i feel the same way that these leaders see peter and john. just ordinary, nothing special. in about six months now, i’m going to travel the whole wide world, and i can sometimes feel a lot of pressure because i’m just ordinary and i feel unqualified.
but looking at Jesus through peter and john, i can rest in knowing that i don’t have to be more than i am. sure, peter and john were uneducated, sure, they were ordinary people, but what was most important was that they were friends of Jesus.
and the same goes for you. you don’t have to be any more than you are. there are absolutely no qualifications for being Jesus’s friend. you don’t need to be popular enough, or smart enough, or beautiful enough. you are more than enough to Jesus, exactly as you are, here and now. right here and right now, there is friendship to be had with Jesus!
maybe this semester, you’ve started to get to know Jesus as your friend and aren’t sure of what this new relationship looks like, or maybe you don’t know Jesus yet but you’re curious about Him. i hope that tonight and going forward, you realize that you don’t have to be more than you are. you don’t need to be older or special or be put together or have everything figured out to know Jesus. you don’t have to be any more than you are because Jesus changes everything. He wants to spend every moment of every day with you, just because He loves who you are. right here and right now, Jesus enjoys being your friend. and if there’s anything that i’ve learned thus far in my life, its that friendship with Jesus changes everything 🙂
now, if you don’t know what friendship with Jesus looks like, i encourage you to ask one of these awesome leaders about what it looks like and what they enjoy about it. and you can ask me! i’d love to talk more about it, but for now i’m gonna pray us out and we can hangout some more.
