Psalm 3: Enemies, enemies, enemies!

EYC Weekly Devotion Psalm 3: 1-2God,! Look! Enemies past counting! Enemies sprouting like mushrooms, Mobs of them all around me, roaring their mockery: "Hah! No help for him from God!" 3-4 But you, God, shield me on all sides;You ground my feet, you lift my head high; With all my might I shout up to God, His answers thunder from the holy mountain.5-6 I stretch myself out. I sleep. Then I’m up again—rested, tall and steady, Fearless before the enemy mobs Coming at me from all sides. 7 Up, God! My God, help me! Slap their faces, First this cheek, then the other, Your fist hard in their teeth! 8 Real help comes from God. Your blessing clothes your people! Have you ever been stressed? Have you ever felt like negative thing after negative thing after negative thing was happening in your world? Heard the expression "when it rains it pours!"? Had a bad day or two or three? Have you ever wanted to just give up? Well at the time David wrote this Psalm, he was having a pretty bad day ( life, actually ...)! His own son, Absalom, was attempting a coup to de-thrown David as King of Israel! David was forced to flee for his life from his kingdom and home (see the full story in 2 Kings 15 and 16). We know from verses 1 and 2 of this Psalm that things were pretty bad for David. Things were so bad that he was probably feeling like he was about to die at the hands of his enemies! I don't know about you, but I've certainly had days where I thought I was going to "die" at the hands of my "enemies." You know, our "enemies" don't necessarily have to be people running after us trying to snatch our crown! Our "enemies" can be more metaphorical ... but still VERY real. For teens today, some of these "enemies" may include: *the failing of a test or struggling through a class. *judgement from our peers about our clothes, lives, and abilities (or perceived lack of abilities). *gossip, hatred, or jealousy and struggling to find where and how we fit in adults in our lives who just don't understand or have expectations that are too high and we feel are overly harsh, strict, and critical. *being challenged for time for ourselves and God because of schedules that are too full. *money (too much or lack thereof). *peer pressure to do things one may or may not want to do and explore. Regardless of what your "enemy" might be, the bottom line is we all have these fleeing moments of struggle, just like David. No one is exempt! At this point, I think David knew has two choices: he could give up and let his enemies win or he could persevere with God's help. And let's be honest, we all know what David was likely to choose ... SUCCESS!! After all, he clearly had the secret for being successful! How else could one slay a giant and wild animals, become king, and handle extreme adversity? David's secret to success was simply that he trusted God. David knew, without a shadow of a doubt that God is in charge and that God can "knock the teeth out" of our enemies! To close, I think it is pretty easy to insert ourselves into this Psalm of David! It teaches us two brilliant lessons! First, we are reminded that bad things do happen to good, strong people! Life is not always easy and there will be times of pain and suffering. Second, it's okay to have and feel negative emotions. But we also have to remember they are indicators of what is taking place in our inner world! This is much like the dashboard of our car indicating to us a problem in the engine. After seeing the light on, what would we do? Of course, we would tell our parents and take the car to a mechanic and fix the issue! So, in life, why not go to The Mechanic of our Hearts (a.k.a. God) with our negative emotions and struggles?! That is the example David sets for us in this Psalms. Further, being able to go to God is part of trusting God! After all, there is something very therapeutic about just talking about our "enemies," even if it is just crying our in prayer as David does in Psalm 3! So ... try it! Next time you feel overwhelmed, follow the example of David and cry out to God!

Welcome 6th graders!

Welcome to EYC 6th graders!

Sr. High Mission Trip Overview from Jillianne

We had an amazing time serving the people of eastern North Carolina on our Sr. high mission trip! We were able to work with UMCOR (United Methodist Committee on Relief) in the Pamlico County area of the outer banks! That's near New Bern, NC ... basically on the inner banks of the Outer Banks area! We spent most of our time on or near the Neuse River! Monday through Wednesday we were able to put in a new ceiling in the kitchen and bathroom for Mrs. Mary. Mary was a sweet, sweet woman in her 80s. She and her late husband built the home in the 1960s. Sadly when Hurricane Irene came through last summer, the waves were taller than the house in front of her's and afterwards she had about 19 inches on standing water in her house. Because Mrs. Mary lives on a fixed income; so she is unable to afford flood insurance. Obviously, her insurance company would not cover the damage. And, to further add salt to the wound, FEMA was unable to give her any money for repairs either. FEMA gave her money after another Hurricane in the early 2000s. They require that one they give you money you keep flood insurance. Since she was unable to afford it, she was out of luck as far as getting help from FEMA. Fortunately, we were able to give Mrs. Mary a new ceiling in her kitchen and bathroom. The last day of the trip we traveled around Pamlico county in an effort to help Bruce (our site coordinator) consolidate resources. We moved a couple of piles of OSB and other ply-wood. Then we went to Oriental, NC to move a large pile of shingles out of a handicapped man's yard to a dumpster back at UMCOR's warewhouse. It was a tough day and was very hot, but we were able to accomplish the task! This mission trip was not originally planned back in May when we advertised summer youth activities. It was the result of a conversation that occurred on the way home from the Sr. high beach trip to Garden City. In particular, Katie Sands deserves great credit for helping plan the details of the trip! Sadly, she got pink eye on the first day of the trip and had to go home. We missed her but were very thankful for her research and input in planning the trip! Our theme for the trip was to 'Step out of Your Comfort Zone.' Our evening programs focused on that theme. We talked about how when you are willing to step out of your comfort zone, you grow. Ways you can step out of that zone are by being a servant, knowing and using your spiritual gifts to serve God, being the light of Christ in the world and in our daily lives! We hope you will take a look at the pictures from our week! They can be found on our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/sjeyc. Thanks for your prayers and support!

Sr. High Mission Trip Day # 4 (Thursday) - Ben de la Canal

Today Jillianne let us sleep in a bit ... we all woke at around 7:15a.m. Breakfast consisted of French toast casserole. We headed to the warehouse then to the farm. At the farm we collected plywood and brought it to the warehouse where we unloaded it into a pile. When that was done we headed to a giant 10,000 ft pile (it felt like) of shingles that we had to clean up and bring to the warehouse and place in the dumpster. It was brutal. The sun burned us, the wind did not exist, and the clouds seemed nonexistent. The bright sun shined down from high above and sent its sun soldiers to come and fire their heat rays at us resulting in our burns. We fought them off; after all we are soldiers of God's light. We called on God and he sent both clouds and breeze. Then we headed off to Topsail Beach watching the movie treasure planet (a famous future style treasure island with space ships that look like the ones from the book Larklight) on our way. Then when we reached Topsail, we settled into our rooms, and had some free time on the beach, then we had devotion and went to bed. Thank you for listening!

Sr. High Mission Trip Day # 3 (Wednesday) - Sabina de la Canal

After eating breakfast we went to our worksite at Mrs. Mary's house. We put up all the ceiling tiles and, even with having almost no tiles in the bathroom yesterday, we finished. We had even worked our way around the lights and put one of the lights back up. When we were done with that we swept and cleaned up. Before we finished Ms. Mary came over with drinks and ice cream for everyone. Then we had lunch and left. We know that Julia and Ian were working at a summer camp near by so before going back to the church we went to see them. We had to take two ferry rides to get there and after Ben de la Canal asked we were shown to the control room where the captain was. They even let Ben blow the horn. We finally got to the camp and had to wait awhile to see Julia because she was on a sailboat at sea. To pass the time we played ninja. When Julia got back she took us to archery where we did two rounds of shooting arrows. Then we got to see Ian. After giving them their cookies we went back to the church where we were staying. Our rule for the out of your comfort zone dinner was that we couldn’t serve ourselves. The solution; feed each other! Everyone had a different way of doing that. Some people were nice about it and some were not. For program we got candles and went outside. We talked about being the light of Christ to people and about how as a servant we shouldn’t hide our lights or spiritual gifts.

Senior High Mission Trip (Tuesday) - Sasha Hege

We woke up and had fabulous breakfast made by Cathy Harrison. After that we went to our work site to complete the ceiling tiles in the kitchen and started on the ones in the bathroom. We had to work around the lights and that was very hard. We had to cut a lot of tiles before we got it perfect. In the bathroom we had to start over many times and when we had at last gotten almost two rows done at the end we had to take it all down again because of one board. We found out Ms. Cathy had to go hospital because she had a kidney stone. On the way back to the church we stopped and Jillianne got us all ice cream. Before dinner we said a prayer while passing each other a ball of yarn and tying it to everyone. We passed it to everyone twice and then had to spend the rest of the day tangled up to each other. This was out 'out of your comfort zone' dinner for the night! We had to eat dinner and clean up like that. When we finally could untie everything we made ninja cookies that did not turn out looking like ninjas. We had program where we sang and had m&m’s again while talking about our day.

Sr. High Missin Trip Day # 1 (Monday) - by Sasha Hege

We went to Ms. Mary’s house for our mission trip. There we started to put up ceiling tiles. We learned how to put them in by Mr. Bruce (our site coordinator with UMCOR - United Methodist Committee on Relief). While we were putting up tile we learned that Katie Sands had pink eye and had to go home. When we got back we had dinner of spaghetti and we couldn’t use forks knifes or spoons. Jillianne had planned a different 'out of your comfort zone' task at each meal! People got creative and used cups and tongs but most people just used their hands. After dinner we had program where we sang a song and then Jillianne came around with a bag of m&m’s. It was our group's way of de-briefing the work day! For every m&m we had to say different topics about the day. For example, if you had a brown you had to praise another youth, yellow was something you learned, and red was to talk about a moment that frustrated you, and so on. We learned that when Jillianne says to only take a few, she means it. Several of us took large handfuls! :) Our topic for the night was Spiritual Gifts! We took a survey about what our spiritual gifts are. We also did a gift exchange with gifts we had bought earlier in the day at the dollar store.