Time Out: Weekly quiet times for the youth worker’s soul.
(by Adam Wormann)

My kids are at a great point in life. Right now, they are 5, 3, and 1. I love that the older ones not only give me great story after story, and make me laugh constantly, but they have no idea how little their dad knows. Any time that I know something, whether it’s because it’s obvious, they’ve already told me, or I got a tip from my wife, they tell me that they know how I knew. “Because you know everything Dad!” I wish that really were true, but in the mean time, I’ll enjoy what I can before reality sets in, because eventually everyone grows to the point where they realize that nobody has all the answers, and teenagers often hit a time where “certain people” have none of the answers.

We get like that with God too. We get unhappy and are convinced we know better. It always makes me think of Jonah. We always tell kids the story of Jonah as the guy who got swallowed by the fish. I always think of the angry and bitter man. Even the end of the story is pretty depressing. It’s just Jonah and God talking, Jonah is bitter, God rebukes, and the story just stops, without knowing what happened to him.

(Read Jonah 4)

The big problem comes with why he’s so bitter. He’s convinced that he knows better than God. He’s mad because God showed grace and mercy to a people who were truly terrible and terrifying. He didn’t do thing Jonah’s way, He did it His own way (which always winds up being the better way!). Jonah still didn’t like that, even seeing the end result.

I think we get like this a lot of times. God does things different ways than we’d like. Other church leaders do things ways that we don’t like. Even if they become effective, we still think it’s wrong. Rather than putting all our energy into taking up our cross, following Christ, and being obedient, we put it into complaining and sulking.

Let’s commit to staying positive, staying faithful, and being ready to do what it is that God wants us to do.

Questions for reflection:

-How do I make sure that I’m on board with God’s plan?
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Adam Wormann is a Youth Pastor in Old Bridge, NJ where he’s been serving for the past 8 years. He is also one of the mentors at Life in Student Ministry and the editor of the “Time Out” series. You can stalk him on Twitter and Facebook.

Posted on November 8, 2010