Hi Passionate Youth Reaching Out, today is Friday June 3.  My name is Grant and this is Start Up, helping you start your day with an upward focus.

Why doesn’t God protect people by stopping them from breaking his laws?  Why does God give people the freedom to chose their own way, even when it leads to pain? Those are some of the questions that come to my mind when I read this passage.

Romans 1:26–32 (HCSB)

26 This is why God delivered them over to degrading passions. For even their females exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 The males in the same way also left natural relations with females and were inflamed in their lust for one another. Males committed shameless acts with males and received in their own persons the appropriate penalty of their error. 28 And because they did not think it worthwhile to acknowledge God, God delivered them over to a worthless mind to do what is morally wrong. 29 They are filled with all unrighteousness, evil, greed, and wickedness. They are full of envy, murder, quarrels, deceit, and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, arrogant, proud, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31 undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, and unmerciful. 32 Although they know full well God’s just sentence—that those who practice such things deserve to die —they not only do them, but even applaud others who practice them.

I really don’t like reading this passage, it breaks my heart to think about God delivering people over to do what is morally wrong, and what will lead to their destruction.

The way that our culture treats this kind of behaviour is also hard for me.  There are news outlets and social media updates that are constantly promoted personal freedom to do whatever you want to do with your body, with no regard at all for God’s word.

God loves us, but he doesn’t force us to love him.  God has given us his truths, but he doesn’t force us to believe them.  Sometimes I wish that he would just have everyone obey him, that way no one would get hurt.  But if that were the case, we wouldn’t be obeying God out of love, it wouldn’t be a healthy relationship.  So instead God allows people to choose to obey or disobey, to accept or reject his word as truth.  But what many people don’t acknowledge, is that this is a life or death decision that affects each persons eternity.  May God help us to know his truth, and to love his ways.

This weeks challenge was to take a prayer walk around your neighbourhood, asking for God’s Kingdom to come and God’s will to be done in your neighbourhood, as it is in heaven.  I would love to hear some stories of how this went for you.  Bring your stories with you to church on Sunday, or have a conversation with our youth group on Social media. Maybe I can share your story next week on StartUp.

I want to invite everyone to our 11 o Clock service this Sunday.  Its a special service because we are having 2 people at our church get baptized.

If you want to find out more about our youth group, you can find us online at hbcyouth.ca.  We are also on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, just search for Hawkwood Youth.

https://www.facebook.com/HawkwoodYouthPYRO/

https://twitter.com/HawkwoodYouth

https://www.instagram.com/hawkwoodyouth/