I started going to the Inn my freshman year, and ended up joining the Student Leadership team my sophomore year. Through this program, i've had the chance to build leadership skills in many different areas of ministry. I've learned how to write and deliver talks, plan service trips, and outreach to my community. As a senior, I moved on to a Student Intern position for the Missions team where I had the opportunity to play a bigger role in organizing and growing the ministry.
Application for the Student Internship:
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Sermonette:
One requirement of the leadership program year was to deliver a short sermon. Below is the general written narrative of what I delivered senior year. I’m going to talk to you guys about just two verses today. I actually switched up my passage a few times, so sorry for all the false advertisement before. I was looking through my notes on my phone though, and I keep a list of verses that I like on there. But I almost never go back and look at them. So when brainstorming for this I did, and out of the whole list I felt really compelled to look into 1 John 4. The book is an epistle (so it’s a letter, shoutout to brynna’s letter last week) from John written for believers—to be spread around to churches, most likely largely Gentile populations. John is speaking trying to teach Christians how to discern true teachers: by their ethics, their proclamation of Jesus in the flesh, and by their love. I got this all from Wikipedia. But I want to chat about that last part—discerning true teachers by their love. A few of us recently went to Washington Student Leadership to hear from prominent leaders across the nation. The theme of the weekend was the same—how to incorporate love into leadership. It’s a phenomenal topic that obviously can inspire an entire weekend of talks and discussions, but let’s focus on a couple verses for the next five minutes. Reading through 1 John 4, I stopped at verses 18-19. They go like this: “There is no fear in love; but love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. We love, because He first loved us.” I was really inspired when I first read this. No fear in love! So powerful. And then I was like, wait. That’s confusing. That’s not consistent with my life. I feel like love and fear go pretty hand in hand. And then I got scared and then I knew this was the passage I needed to speak on. So let’s break down this first chunk: “There is no fear in love. But perfect love casts out fear.” It’s a striking statement because love and fear are such distinct emotions to us. You can so potently feel each of them, and they tend to underlie a lot of our other feelings. But John says they cannot coexist. There is no fear in love. Love casts out all fear. Wherever love enters, fear exits. This is rattling to me, because I feel like I’ve experienced fearful love. One of the most distinct instances was when I began leading younglife. Brynna and I headed out to creekside with 8th grade girls from Bellevue a couple years ago. Just let that age group and city sink in for a second. I was terrified of these girls before I even met them. What if they hate me? What if I’m not cool enough for them? But always reminding myself I’m supposed to be loving them. Then we got to know them. These girls are intense. They’ve attempted suicide, they’re struggling with depression, they all have eating disorders. My fear turned to: I don’t know how to guide these girls. What if I guide them poorly? All the while struggling to love them. So where does this fear come from? The verse states “because fear involves punishment.” Some translations say “torment.” I was reading through a commentary and it broke down to basically, we fear because of sin. We as humans, live in sin, and our Creator, God, is perfect. That chasm is terrifying. Full of punishment. But Jesus bridged that and reconciled us. We no longer need to feel that terror of punishment. Fear turns into awe or respect. When I think about my fear of my younglife girls, I was fearing the consequences of interacting with them. If they hate me, I look bad. If I guide them poorly, I look bad and I’m responsible for screwing up their lives or rather, not fixing them. But Jesus got rid of the consequences for us. This fear is futile. That’s when it turns to torment. It’s fear that serves no purpose. How do we approach love with the knowledge that we don’t have to be afraid or consumed by the consequences of our own sin? Our own self-consumed way of thinking? Chris Lee, who spoke at Veritas, expressed that he came to know Jesus and all of a sudden, he just wanted to hug everybody. I love that. I totally related to that. I was that kid in high school who was pretty insecure and deflected it with the statement “I just hate people.” I didn’t hate people, I was just terrified of them. I came to know jesus, and that fear of those people totally subsided. I was so fond of them. This perfect love without fear implies that it’s a confident love. It’s bold. It hugs people you spent your four years of high school avoiding and it interacts with scary 8th graders who very well could think you’re lame. Because it doesn’t come from us. Where does it come from then? “We love, because he first loved us.” This is essential to our ability to freely love others. We need to first accept His love. This is the scariest part for me. I learned that I can love others, but there have been so many times I’ve distorted that confidence into my own knowledge of what love should look like. And that can ruin relationships. C.S. Lewis said in one of his works “To love at all is to be vulnerable.” Now obviously vulnerability is a hot topic, go look up Brenae Brown’s ted talk or something, but I think this is key in the context of this passage. We are called to love boldly and to love freely. But only because that is how Jesus loves, and only He knows how to do that perfectly. It is essential that we receive this so we can share in spreading that to others. And this is how we not only discern teachers but become teachers. We can love boldly by knowing God, because God is love, and his love is perfect. |