Love and Respect

Hello!!!

I just wanted to take a few moments to talk about my Friday night with you!  Yay!

As many of you know, my life has been centered around teen-agers basically since I was one!  First I was one.  And once I became “not” one then I coached them.  And then I coached them and taught them science.  And then I left coaching and moved into Bible studies and youth group stuff while still teaching science.  Now it’s teaching science, integrating the Bible hopefully on a daily basis, administrating the high school, teaching Sunday school, helping prepare the youth group Wednesdays, leading Junior/Senior men small group, and facilitating Friday night small group as well…and lest we forget, I have 2 teens in the house as well that are a part of all this teen stuff.

Teens are cool.

I am cool.

It’s a partnership made in Heaven!  Hahahaha!  {I can HEAR Allison rolling her eyes from the back room as I write this}

Anyway, Ali and I kicked off our first Friday night Bible study of the year last night by cooking our new favorite dinner (“discovered” by Pepper), chicken curry alfredo, for everyone, mixing up 3 gallons of the sweetest sweet tea imaginable (yes, I used a whole 2 cups of sugar per gallon), making the ever-famous “crack-dip” (so named because it’s addicting), purchasing every bag of regular Ruffles that El Rey had to offer, setting out the baby carrots and cutting the celery for the more health conscious (although dipping it into the “crack-dip” negates any benefit), and “dumping” together the blueberry dump cake!  Great night.

Ali and I are still amazed at the study these teens really wanted to do.  After our Philippians study with Matt Chandler’s DVD, we began to talk with the group about what to do and over and over and over the discussion turned towards male/female relationships.  There is a huge need for this.

Ali and I actually purchased the “Love and Respect” DVDs and workbooks quite some time ago with the thought of facilitating this study with married couples possibly through the church.  God had other plans, though.  The couples idea never took flight, but doing this Biblically based marriage study with singles began to make more and more sense.  I’m convinced that studying Biblical marriage is a necessity for singles!  This allows for folks to learn what God would have a marriage look like.

Anyway, so it really was the teens themselves that promoted this idea of doing a Biblical marriage study.

Our previous small group opened up the doors and invited lots of other people to join us.  And it looks like many will be coming!  Unfortunately, the Crossfire worship band (Crossfire is the Wednesday night youth group) had their retreat last night as well and as such we were missing a few people…but they’ll be back!  And I know that others expressed interest in coming as well.

Another cool thing is the parent response!  Parents are awesome!  They have been really supportive of having us go through this study with their teens, and I’m totally thankful for that!

The discussion was lively, hilarious, and heart-felt last night.  It was a bit difficult because I know where the DVD lessons are headed and many times Ali and I would just have to give a short answer and then say, “But just wait!  Because Emerson’s going to talk about that…and as you’ve seen, he’s hilarious!”

So just be praying for us as we continue to talk with this group of teens and ask them questions and have them ask us questions…this topic of Biblical marriage can be dicey at times and OF COURSE touches on some “touchy” issues, but, hey, these issues aren’t going to hide from them just because we don’t talk about them.

Ok, y’all!  That’s it!  Time take La Mulita to the taller for a new placa!

Soli Deo Gloria!