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--- Begin Message ---Dear Friends, Here is a great encouragement from a powerful woman who has impacted thousands of lives, young and old, for over three decades now. Jeanne May is the Director of MC Atlanta and a dear friend of Master's Commission International. Blessed reading! ~Ptr. JesseThe Call is Higher Than the Fall by Jeanne Mayo I've been in full-time youth ministry for a little over three decades. Laughingly, I sometimes share that I've been in youth ministry so long that I remember when the Dead Sea was only sick! So occasionally someone will ask me a question that sounds like this "After all your years of ministry, if you could give Christian teenagers only one message, what would it be?" Years into the youth ministry journey and several thousands teenagers later, my answer comes pretty quickly now. "The CALL is higher than the FALL." Put another way, God's dreams and destiny for your life will always be more powerful than your day-to-day mistakes and mess-ups. Thankfully, the Lord is not nearly as interested in our perfection as He is our direction. So if I were "playing the Devil" and attempting to discourage today's Christian youth and young adult culture, I would just make them focus mentally on all their human shortcomings and day-to-day struggles. I would play "failure videotapes" over and over in their minds, long after they had asked the Lord for His forgiveness. I would make lots of sincere, great young Christian young adults begin to think of themselves as spiritual failures and wipeouts. The result? Slowly, following Christ would begin to feel more like another sequel of "Survivor" than the promised "more abundant life." The excitement of partnering with the God of the Universe would be painfully eclipsed by the nagging sense that true holiness is a trophy to be earned instead of a relationship to be enjoyed. The encouraging truth is that apart from Christ's grace, all of us are miserably short of being the person in Jesus we really want to be. No, we probably didn't murder a policeman or hijack an airplane recently, but our words, attitudes and priorities have often been a long way from being another page out of the New Testament. Maybe that is why one of the wisest men that ever lived, Solomon, once said, "A righteous man falls seven times, but he gets back up again and again." David, who earned the title "a man after God's own heart", also knew that "failure isn't fatal." He was the man who said," Don't rejoice over me, my enemies. For though I may fall, I will arise." So if you are reading this article, consider this moment a "divine appointment." Before you put finish this article, the Lord wanted me to remind you that He never consults your past to create your future. Whether you are fifteen or fifty-five, He knows the very rawest parts of you and remains still relentless in His love for you. He heard you the first time you murmured to Him. "I'm really sorry." And now, maybe thousands of "I'm sorry's" later, you still have His undivided love, attention, and commitment. You say that you don't deserve that kind of forgiveness? I understand. Neither do I. Thirty-three years into an amazing journey of youth ministry, I couldn't tell you the countless times the Enemy has screamed phrases into my own head like, 'You're a failure You're a phony." And sadly enough, I often gave the enemy some pretty decent material to work with. What keeps me going? The same realization that the Lord wants to encourage you with today. You didn't have to be at Columbine to experience life-altering grace. Why? His call is always higher than your fall. Article originally published in The Pentecostal Evangel, Gospel Publishing House, General Council of the Assemblies of God. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Finding fabulous fares is fun. Let Yahoo! FareChase search your favorite travel sites to find flight and hotel bargains. http://farechase.yahoo.com/promo-generic-14795097
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