Test Yourself

Litmus Test Yourself:

Material Needed:  Litmus Paper (or little strips of paper) and a pen

Purpose:  A visual aid to show the testing of one’s service, passion, and work ethic in the faith. 

Object Lesson:

Litmus paper is chemically sensitive paper that indicates the acidity of a material or chemical called PH level.  Within 30 seconds of the litmus touching the paper the color will change and tell you what the chemical is.  It will either be an Acid, base, or neutral.   If the paper turns red when touched by the object or liquid, it is acidic. If the paper turns blue, the object or liquid is a base. The same way scripture tells us to test ourselves to make sure we are walking with the Lord and to what degree.  So here’s a little test to help challenge you to meet that challenge of walking and working for Jesus in the Ministry of life.

Read:

2 Corinthians 13:5

Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you—unless, of course, you fail the test?

Galatians 6:4

Each one should test their own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else,

1 Thessalonians 2:4

On the contrary, we speak as those approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel. We are not trying to please people but God, who tests our hearts.

Litmus Test:  With a mall piece paper that signifies litmus paper write down the number that best describes you most of the time if you honestly averaged and rated your life.  Remember your number is between you and Jesus.

1.      If you were to rate your fruitfulness in the faith? (1 being lacking and 10 being abundant)

2.      If you were to rate the effect of distractions on your life,  face-book, various sports, Espn, have on you (1 being extreme distractions and 10 being never?

3.      If you were to rate yourself on the giving of time scale  (1 being selfish, 10 being very giving)

4.      If you were to rate yourself on the giving of stuff scale  (1 being selfish, 10 being very giving)

5.      If you were to rate yourself on the passion scale  (1 being passive, 10 being pro- active)

6.      If you were to rate yourself on how much you talk verbally about Jesus ( 1 being low  and 10 being high)

7.      If you were to test how contagious your life was to other believers (1 being low and 10 being very high)

8.      If you look at the numbers on your paper do you really care to improve them?

All believers are a part of a Royal Priesthood (1 Peter 2:10).  But some are especially elevated to leadership in ministry, missions field, or Church.   We are called to give Maximum effort in the ministry and in life.  There will be times when we fall short and the test answers or our self -ratings will be lower.  But maximum effort is 10’s and we are called to strive for 10’s! 

To Think about moving forward:

·       The Ultimate question is if you don’t have all 8-10’s, is why? 

·       What do you need to do to confidently make your answers all 8-10’s?

Maybe all of us need to realize God takes hopelessly helplessly screwed up people to impact a hopelessly helplessly screwed up world.  But just contemplate how much more impactful your life can be when we remove more of our acidic self and let God transform us into what He wants us to be. 

Darrick 

A Word From Amanda

Hey everybody! I hope you are all doing well and that the Lord is revealing new and personal things about Himself to you daily. Here lately, the Lord has really been challenging me in the area of community. As many of you know, I just moved to Northwest Arkansas to work at camp, but with that transition, I left all of my community at home. My closest friendships, my church, my relationships with the lost- everything was left there. I am now faced with the very scary reality of creating new community within the new context of my life.

Why say all of this? I think it is vital in the life of somebody who is in Christ to build good community in their lives. It is also healthy to understand the balance that needs to happen between our greatest encouragers in Christ and those who are walking in a direction that is completely opposite of that which Christ called us to live. In Hebrews 10:24-25 and Acts 2:42-47, we are given examples of what it looks like to be in community with one another as believers. We are also shown throughout the Scriptures that Jesus spent a lot of time with sinners. A specific example is given in Mark 2:13-17. Jesus called sinners to follow Him, and they did. Not because of anything special that He did, other than living a life that backed up what He claimed.

I think for a lot of people, we hang out with one of these groups only, if we can help it. We spend our time only with believers, or only those not pursuing Christ. This isn’t healthy in the life of somebody who is in Christ. If we spend time with only believers, we shut out all opportunity to love the lost, which is what Christ has called us to do. If we spend time with only the lost, we aren’t getting the encouragement in Christ that we so desperately need. Our lives tend to mirror the lives of those whom we spend most of our time. It’s important to note also that Jesus spent time with sinners, but never while they were sinning.

So to sum everything up I’ve got a few quick questions for you to think about…

1    1) Are you sick or are you healthy?

2    2) Where is your heart for reaching people?

3    3) Have you responded to Jesus’s calling?

      4) Who in my do I have pouring truth into my life? Who am I currently a positive influence on         who needs Christ?

5    5) In what relationships am I not making Christ the focus? What steps need to be taken for this to happen?

Seek community. Seek the lost. Pursue Christ. And remember this awesome truth and encouragement…

“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” –Hebrews 4:15-16

Amanda

Pre-Game Speech

I love football.  Everything about it.  It has been a part of my life since I was able to toddle around the living room and play tackle football in the living room with my dad.  I began playing flag-football in 3^rd grade and then played tackle football 4^th-12^th grades.  In college I played on some great intramural men’s and co-rec teams at the You of A (Go Hogs!), and I have been playing every fall on a men’s league team here in Rogers.  I really love football.

One of my favorite parts of playing football and being on a team was the Pre-Game speech.  After a week of practice, watching game film and getting ready to take on your opponent, our coach would sit us down and give us a final charge. 

A good pre-game speech isn’t long and it doesn’t take a lot of words.  It is your coaches’ final chance to get across the big picture… the things that matter.  Sometimes it isn’t strategy; most times it is about life and how to live.

Here is an example of one of my favorites:

In John chapter 12, Jesus begins his final week on earth.  He is aware of what is about to happen.  It is almost “Game Time.”  So in the chapters that follow he is going to line out the big picture.  What really matters and what he wants to leave his disciples with. 

As a staff, Monday morning we looked John chapters 12-18 as if it were Jesus’ Pre-Game Speech to us and tried to point out some of the main points.  As “Game Time” approaches, what does Jesus want us to take to the field.

Here are a few of our notes:

Chapter 13: Jesus washes his Disciples’ Feet- servant

Chapter 14: 6 “I am the way the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Chapter 14: 15-23 He repeats that if anyone loves Him, they will obey his commands 3 times!

Chapter 15 He is the vine and we are the branches and he will send the Holy Spirit to be with us.

These are just a few of the thoughts that we had.  What do you take away from Jesus’ “Pre-Game Speech?”

Jesse

A Word of Encouragement

As the summer is now over we begin to look at next year but before we move on we need think about last summer just for another moment. As program staff we get to read all your wonderful surveys around this time to see what we can improve on for next year. One of the best questions to read on the survey is to “take time to comment on your summer at Camp War Eagle”.  Below I wanted to highlight some of the comments from our surveys to encourage you now a few weeks removed from camp.

“It was a great experience! I loved getting to know a bunch of people and hanging out with kids.”

“My summer at cwe was fantastic.  I am really sad that it was so short.  I learned a ton from the individuals in higher positions, other counselors and most importantly campers.  Camp War Eagle rocks.”

“It was one of the most spiritually led times of my life. I felt so much love and support in everything that I did.”

“I absolutely love the staff here, and their ability to encourage other staff members!”

“It has been amazing! Loved every second and the opportunities The Lord gave me! Push me beyond my limits and I will be forever grateful for them!”

“I'm going to miss y'all dearly! I think that working with Ozone would be awesome and you guys are my favorite.”

I believe all of us can say that this summer changed our lives forever and years down the road you will still be seeing how much working here one summer has changed your life. I hope that these quotes are encouraging to you and help encourage you as the year goes on. We all need to hear encouragement through out our life and one great way to do this is writing a little note to somebody. As a staff we did that today during our devotional and this can be a powerful thing to do. I want to encourage you to take a moment and write a quick note, text message, or pick up the phone to call someone to encourage them. You might have not got a chance to encourage someone you were a co-counselor with, coached with, or helped taught a class with. Now’s your chance to encourage them it only takes like 5 minutes to send a quick note to someone to encourage them so you have no excuses.  

Shameless plug: If you miss camp and need to hear some encouragement we are still looking for a few more workers for our Mish Mash Live event at Camp. We are inviting families to come out and enjoy Mish Mash at camp September 15^th. Trust me seeing these families out here will bring encouragement to you  to see how much this summer impacted the home. If you’re interested email brad@campwareagle.org

Andy