Roots Student Ministry Podcast

Everyone goes through struggles and hardships. But what are we supposed to do about them? This week, we look at the story where Jesus heals the blind man in John 9. In this story, we see that our hardships that we go through are ways that God can show Himself to be faithful in our lives.

No matter how much you have messed up, God's grace still forgives you. When you rest in His forgiveness, you can learn from your mistakes and become stronger in your faith. This week's message was written and delivered by students from Camarillo High School, Newbury Park High School and Homeschool students who are a part of Roots.

There's a lot of unfair things that happen around us. And when something feels unfair, it can bring up a lot of emotions in us. But when we look at what happened because of the death and resurrection of Christ, we learn that God is full of grace. We see this in how Jesus restores Peter back to right-standing with Him. Did Peter deserve it? No. But through the life of Jesus, we can see that God's grace is unfairly good.

Jesus went to the cross for us. He abolished the need to work hard so we can be saved. He said "It is finished". That means that we can have a relationship with God all because of the work that Jesus did on the cross and His resurrection from the grave.

Sometimes we can get the wrong view of God. We may even think that God is the bad guy who makes us live by rules or even the guy who's in control of the chaos that is happening in your life. Sometimes how we feel about God doesn't represent what is true about God. When we look at the way that Jesus lived, we realized that He was real and honest with His Father. We need to learn from Jesus and know that we can be real with God and trust that He will be good no matter what the outcome.

We always hear about how opposites attract, but that really isn't the case. We are drawn to people who are more like us. It just feels more natural. But we are surrounded by people who are nothing like us, even at church. Maybe that's why Jesus prayed for unity for the Church near the end of His life. He knew that people would start to see Him through the unity of the people who love Him.

It's easy for us to forget things. We forget what others have done for us and take them for granted. We forget things that have happened to others, and it communicates a lack of care. And we forget promises we make, and it hurts the feelings of other people. Just before Jesus went to the cross, He sat down with His disciples for a final supper to help them always remember what He has done on this earth. Jesus knows that we tend to forget, so before He left, He taught the disciples to remember. When we remember, we come to realize that Jesus never changes.

When thoughts about suicide start to creep in, you may start to believe the lie that the world would just move on without you, or even be a better place. In turn, you just feel like everything is hopeless. And if you give that through enough time and repetition in an isolated brain, eventually it will become comfortable there. But Jesus came to give life. So no matter what our temporary problem is, we can't make a permanent decision because of a temporary problem. Through the hope of Jesus, we can choose hope today and life tomorrow.

We like having our space and freedom and we don't like when others tell us what to do. We don't like when boundaries are put in place. But we also don't like when others cross the boundaries that we have put up. In this message, we talk about how boundaries can not only be good for us when it comes to our sexual integrity, but also boundaries can be very powerful. Boundaries help us be wiser when it comes to our sexual integrity.

We all go through difficult times and we all make mistakes. It's tempting to keep all those mistakes in the darkness. One of the healthiest things for us is to have a trusted person who we can go to so we can share about our struggles and temptations. That way we an turn the light on and see things as they truly are.