If you have been following along, then you know that the Point Guards are a small group of high school freshman girls that I am mentoring. We are different from a Bible study, prayer, or accountability group. We are a faith adventure group. We meet monthly to report on the previous month’s faith adventure and to accept a new task. We follow the same structure every time we meet. This is a chronicle of our second meeting:
Dinner & Conversation
Two girls who hardly knew each other at our first meeting had such fun coming together again to catch up. I always am amazed at how teenagers are wired to create community. For dinner, I baked a frozen Stouffer’s lasagna, warmed some Italian bread, and made a salad. We had break-and-bake cookies for dessert. I already told you that gathering the energy to cook is not easy for me … and usually not worth it.
Report from Last Month
Oh, oh, oh!! Here is the fun part!! Remember, we had accepted the task to bring a symbol that represents our faith? Well, for weeks, I had no idea what I needed to bring to represent mine. The girls had experienced the same difficulty. Throughout the month, they had prayed and tried to hear God’s heart. By the last week, they knew exactly what to bring. The explanation of the thought process behind each symbol was extraordinary. And very personal, so I won’t elaborate here. Just know this: high school freshmen have a reputation for being a little flaky, but that is just a façade. I have found that they are people with incredible depth and candor. They are capable of much more than we think.
I do not mind sharing the explanation behind my own choice, pictured above. Day after day, I had struggled to find the appropriate symbol for my faith. Nothing seemed to express exactly how I felt about it. I prayed and didn’t feel led to anything for a while. Then, the week before the February Point Guards meeting, I knew.
My Faith Is Work Boots
This faith isn’t just decoration.
It’s not for comfort or talk.
It wakes each early morning and laces up the day.
It works hard and walks on, without wearing out, wearing down.
It takes on the terrain–
the rocky? the rugged?–
they’re nothing.
This faith, it never stops.
It guards my heel, it fears no muddy step, it faces pain and danger with a steel-toed kick.
My faith is taking me somewhere far,
it’s taking me somewhere high,
it’s taking me somewhere that nothing else could take me.
One thing I love about this photo is that my ring is on my thumb. That means lupus had bitten into my knuckles that day, and the ring wouldn’t slide over the swelling on my fourth finger. That small, personal fact needs to be part of the picture of my faith.
Faith Story
I thought back over my life to find a story that illustrated God’s building my faith through His Word. This was the story I told them:
When I was in high school, I had a stunning experience, when I truly sensed God’s Presence and felt Him speaking to me through His word for the first time. Beginning in about 6th grade, I had started looking at my horoscope regularly. I would read it in teen magazines monthly and in the newspaper daily. I thought there really was something true behind astrology, and I would feel encouraged when my horoscope promised something positive. I would even make some decisions based on what I had read. I kind of hoped God was leading me through the horoscopes, because I was always praying that He would. When I was in 9th grade, I needed some guidance about something, and I prayed about it. I often would use the Bible kind of like a horoscope or a Magic 8 Ball, praying for an answer, then flipping open the pages and plunking down my finger repeatedly until I found a verse that sort of fit my question. On that memorable day, I was sitting in my dining room. I remember the exact chair. I had asked God a question and then checked the horoscopes. I found nothing that helped ease my mind. So I played “roulette” with my Bible, and when I put down my finger, it landed on Isaiah 47:13-14, ” All the advice you receive has made you tired. Where are all your astrologers, those stargazers who make predictions each month? Let them stand up and save you from what the future holds. But they are like straw burning in a fire; they cannot save themselves from the flame. You will get no help from them at all; their hearth is no place to sit for warmth.” The sense of power that filled the dining room surprised me into stillness. For a long time, I didn’t want to move. God had just spoken to me directly through His Word, and I knew it. For the first time, I became aware of the remarkable difference between that REAL spiritual guidance from God and the counterfeit spiritual guidance I had relied on in the past. Horoscopes and predictions were not the places He wanted me to turn for help. Those were not the places He wanted me to draw comfort or warmth. He clearly was telling me not to have anything to do with any kind of magic or fortune-telling or astrology, so I made a decision never to look at a horoscope or accept any substitute for His guidance again. the primary way God builds our faith through His word.
Faith Challenge
I had hidden that month’s envelopes and small wrapped packages for each girl. Following the clues in my prepared “treasure hunt,” they had fun tearing through my house in order to find the presents. After tossing couch pillows and peering behind shower curtains, they found that the presents had been sitting on the chairs beside them at the dinner table. What they were looking for had been right there all along. It was a lesson that sometimes the answers we need from God are right beside us, but we don’t see them because we are not paying attention.
You can read their specific faith assignment in the picture at the top of this post. The gist of it was that they needed to keep their eyes open and keep hunting for God’s Word all month long. When a verse held specific meaning for them, they would write about it in their new journals (that is what was in their packages).
Prayer Requests and Clean Up
The second meeting of the Point Guards was wonderful, better than I expected. Who would have known that just selecting a symbol for our faith would be so meaningful to us?
So, now I ask you: If you had to choose an object to symbolize your faith, what would it be? Why?
To Be Continued …