All You Need is Love

We're back!!! We are finally back in action after two weeks off due to the snowy/icy weather! Love was definitely was in the air, especially since it was the first Vibe after Valentine's Day! So in honor of this day of LOVE, we wanted to talk about what love and God have to do with each other!

First, check out this video we made on the topic of love!

If you randomly asked people, you are probably going to get a lot of different answers! God is the universe! God is you, He's in all of us! These are answers you won't find in the Bible, but even Christians have a hard time figuring out who God is! One answer you might hear a lot is God is Love!

We see that this is true in 1 John 4:7-8, "Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love."

Chris has Bieber fever!

So He really is love! But how do we know what love is when we hear people use love in so many different ways! I love this video game! I love this car! I love Justin Bieber! (something Chris confessed to us!) Love is a word that we hear all the time! The word is one of the most abused word in our language. And sometimes, we can abuse others in the way we love.

Too often, we stop loving things or people when they stop benefiting us! We practice a selfish love. We no longer love our phone because it is not as nice as the phone someone else has. We no longer want to be friends with someone because there isn't much in common. The world says that things will make you happy. If you have that new phone, you will be happy. Somehow, we are never happy enough though. So the choice is yours, what do you believe, the world or Scripture?

What does Scripture say? We read in 1 John 4:7-8, Love doesn't come from things! Love comes from God. If we look further down in chapter 4, we see one of the best examples of God's love. In verse 10, "This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins." Even after sin separated us from God, God loved us! So much that He sent His Son as a sacrifice, a way to be with us again! That is how great His love is!

Let that sink in with you, God loves you. truly loves you.

Friends

Hey Vibers!

I just wanted to update y'all on what we talked about last night. We have been talking about some tough stuff. Sometimes, life is hard. The people we surround ourselves can help us or make things even harder.

Hebrews 10:23-25, "Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another - and all the more as you see the Day approaching."

Who are your best friends? Who influences you? Are they encouraging you? If your friends put you in a place you don't want to be or try to get you to do something you don't want to do, you need to find new friends. It is better to not have a friend at all than to have friends that put you down or pressure you to do things you shouldn't do. This doesn't mean that we can't be friends with non-believers, but we shouldn't have friends that influence us (your best friends) that are not going to encourage us toward Christ!

I challenge y'all to think about those who influence us. Are they Christ-followers? Are they going to encourage us and love us like Christ does?

I don't want you to stop there. I want to challenge you a step further! Are you the kind of friend that encourages and loves like Christ?

I can't wait to see what y'all do with this!

Next week, we will be having a fun night so bring all your friends and yourself cuz we will be playing games and eating cotton candy!

Life Hurts God Heals

Hey Vibers!

This year we started with a series of talks that talked about some tough stuff, like bullying and gossip. Things can make any teenager's life hard! And last night, Kyle talked about our identity.

Anger, Lonely, Depressed, Afraid, Guilt, Shame, Failure, I could go on and on with examples of things we might identify with or have identified with at one point. Kyle talked about how these names we think of for ourselves are NOT who we are, nor are the names that others think of us. It is not about what you've done, but about what's been done for you! We can see what exactly has been done in Ephesians 1:4-5, "Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure."

Did you get that? He loves us, He loves you, He loves me, and it has nothing to do with what we have done. And the Bible says there's nothing that can separate us from God's love. Look it up, it's in Romans 8:38-39. So what does that mean? He not only loved us before we were even born or before the earth was created, but He loves us still! Nothing we have done or anything else will ever even get a chance to separate us from the love of God!

Check out this music video from the band Tenth Avenue North for a song called You Are More.

What a cool ending! All those pains and hurts were washed away. We can also have them washed away. Jesus' death on the cross was served as a sacrifice for all of our sins. So when we believe in Him and accept Him into our hearts, we become children of God. John 1:11-12 says, "He came to his own people, and even they rejected him. But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God."

So if we are indeed Christ-followers, we are His children! Instead of seeing your sins, God see His daughter or son.

Maybe you are interested in Life Hurts God Heals. The purpose of Life Hurts God Heals is to take students through a journey which helps them to process and discuss some of life's toughest issues. It is a safe place that meets at 201 on Tuesday nights.

Starts Feb. 1, email bfemrite@chaseoaks.org if interested.

Have a great weekend!

Nezif Jar/Haircut

These past months, we have had a money jar sitting out during Vibe so that we could support Nezif, our Compassion kid, with our change and bills. As if that was not enough reasons to give, we said if you could fill it up, we'll cut Ashley's hair off. Well, the jar got pretty heavy. So we called in a professional bottle smasher to help us out, check out the video we played at Vibe last week!



If you want to see the actual haircutting, we have a video posted on the Vibe facebook page, check it out! Enjoy!

P.S. We did donate the hair (about 12 inches) to Locks of Love!

Service Day/Baptisms Video 2010

We made a video recapping things that have been happening at Vibe recently, including Baptisms and Service Day. Check it out! Thanks Kyle for making it.

Baptisms 2010

Last Wednesday, we had the privilege of celebrating 8 baptisms. Check out the pics as we celebrated at night! Thank you God for letting us be a part of these kids' lives.

Service Day at the Fair, 2010

Well a lot has happened since we last posted, including welcoming our new Vibe youth pastor, Chris Turner, Camp Eagle, Joseph City Mission Trip, A start of a new school year, etc. While we will try to catch you up on all these events, today's post is dedicated to our service day we had this past weekend. Vibe and The Yard students gathered together to run a lot of fun activities at a "Street Fair" in Plano, Tx. It was a blast to see the students serving the city and children! Check out some pictures from the event!