A Joyful Heart..

With a joyful heart this morning, I come to write some more, to clue you in a little more on my life =) Reading other peoples' posts make my heart glad, and reminds me that we have such a great God. This morning I've read about adoption, ministry conferences in other countries, a friends filled life due to letting God take her where HE wanted, and a few others. Those kinds of stories remind me of the mercy, grace, and love we are constantly shown day by day, even though we are so undesrving of it.

I have been struggling lately with a lot of emotions; hurt, anger, frustration, annoyance, etc. Some ministry related, some not. One of the emotions associated with the ministry would be frustration. I've been involved with the youth group for over two years now, but I've been more involved in the past year than I realized. Within that year, we've lost a youth pastor and a senior pastor, and our church is going through a major transitioning time. We've also lost a number of students for numerous reasons. Out of ideas and desperate for a different point of view, I emailed my youth pastor from when I was a youth group student. Here are a few things he mentioned;
-If whats happening isn't what the student wants, they will leave. (Positive or negative)
-Those who stay, are staying for a reason
-Focus on the things God is doing in lives, not the behavioral, disruptive, and other issues
-Trust what the Spirit is doing even when we don't see anything happening
-Teach the Word and don't lose heart.

He gave some other great insight also. Some of the things he suggested are things that I've considered, but have been told no, or that they wouldn't work. I know personal experience is quite void sometimes, but some of the things he mentioned are some of the things that I was glad were enforced as a student, and things that made me grow. I would love to try to mesh them into the ministry I help with. They may help some of our students who are caught in a lull. I guess we'll see what happens. Needless to say, though, reading that email was very refreshing!

As I was writing, this verse came cycling to my mind from the back of my brain, and I couldn't think of a better way to end this post, so give it a read and have a good day!

"A joyfull (cheerful) heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones" -Proverbs 17:22