Lord Have Mercy

I recently had the opportunity to spend time with teenagers from my church and other churches in the area. We "retreated" - you know, went out to "woods" and slept in cabins with no heat. We listened to really loud worship music and really bad speakers - and some good ones too.

No - I'm sorry, I should clarify - 'speakers' like people. The sound system worked fine. I can tell because my ears are still ringing.

At the end of the weekend, students were encouraged to share their "testimonies" about how this weekend changed their lives, and so the brave little obedient kids lined up and for forty-five minutes, they told us how they experience this weekend.

Their hands tingled.
They were "slain in the Spirit."
They knew that God was going to heal their "father wounds."

And so it went.

Either the kids described how they had a physical response during the sessions of really loud worship music, or they spoke arm-psychology like the best of them.

No one repented.

No one said, "This weekend I saw how far I've fallen from God." No one said, "This weekend I realized that I am a sinner." No one said, "This weekend, I saw the problem of sin and now I begin to understand what Jesus was trying to fix."

Don't tell me that those concepts are too high and too difficult for teenagers. Some of them could have carried on a conversation with Carl Jung (but not with Freud, because we think sexual repression is what God desires of us).

We've robbed our kids of the gift of repentance.

I think what happened is that most of us (folks from my particular denomination) are transplants. We came from other churches. We were dying in the "frozen chosen." We were cowering in fear of hell-fire. We were following all the rules.

And then we found freedom in Christ - we thawed.

And O! How thankful we are!

And we're not going back and we're not going to do that to our kids.

We've reacted. And we've stolen the gift of repentance.

"Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me, a sinner."

Kyre Elieson.

posted by Headless-in-GR @ 10/18/2004 05:28:00 PM