This is the first installment on our 20X retreat to Silver Birch Ranch, January 8th-10th.
On Friday night at 5:00pm dozens of students and their human sized luggage began arriving at Hingham Reformed Church. By 5:30 two buses were filled to absolute capacity and on their way to Silver Birch Ranch, a huge and fantastic camp on Sawyer Lake in the north woods of Wisconsin. Once we arrived students were able to take advantage of late night broomball, tubing, and hanging out in the great canteen/snack bar/coffee bar area. Students also got checked into their cabins (which were really nice this year I might add).
We kicked off our first worship session with Coldplay's Viva la Vida then launched into a couple of games based on our theme, How NOT to Get Caught. Our leaders came out arms a blazing with dodgeballs as students tried Not to Get Caught and earn themselves $20 to Target. Of course enough cheated that we could not claim a winner. We then gave away $25 in canteen money to the small group who did best in our Famous Faces: Getting Caught edition game (we put up pictures of celebs getting caught in bad situations).
Here is the list of worship songs for our first worship time.
Take it All (Hillsong United)
Dancing Generation (Brandon Grissom)
Automatic (Stellar Kart)
The Stand (Hillsong United)
With Everything (Hillsong United)
Our first message focused on how not fun it is to get caught doing something wrong. I talked about some of the pranks I've been involved in or witnessed (including letting chicken loose in our high school) and while they are fun to pull, getting caught doing them can be bad. That's where the problem of temptation is. Temptation is doing something wrong in order to get something we want. It may be cheating on a test in order to get a good grade without studying, drinking to impress our friends, or causing trouble just to get a laugh. In any case we do what we know is wrong to get something we want. While we may get what we want we go against God to do it. The result is that far too many of us tend to disappear from following God because we are so caught up in temptation.
In modern folklore we have the Bermuda Triangle/Devil's Triangle. This is an area of the ocean where planes and boats seem to disappear without a trace at a way higher then average level. Theories abound for why that is (including alien spaceships hovering overhead kidnapping people), but the point is seemingly good people vanish without a trace. In the Bible there is a passage that outlines it's own Devil's Triangle: 1 John 2:15-17 (The Message)
Don't love the world's ways. Don't love the world's goods. Love of the world squeezes out love for the Father. Practically everything that goes on in the world—wanting your own way, wanting everything for yourself, wanting to appear important—has nothing to do with the Father. It just isolates you from him. The world and all its wanting, wanting, wanting is on the way out—but whoever does what God wants is set for eternity.
So often the world's three monster temptations, what the world offers, what the world does, and what the world thinks. We seem to want all of these things, and they tempt us so much that we tend to far too often go against God to get them. That leads to a big question: whose opinion really matters more to you: God's or your friends? God's or a celeb on TV? God or the popular kids in school? If we are to avoid getting caught up in negative situations we need to remember to trust God with all our heart, soul, and mind. With our WHOLE life.
Ok, mega long post. I'll fill you into some of our Saturday adventures later.
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