God produces fruit through NW CHICAGO YL!!!!!!!!!!

"I am the vine and you are the branches. If a person remains in me and I in him, they will bear much fruit"

YES!!!!

I feel so privileged to have been able to talk to one of our guys and see him come to the LORD last Thursday the 1st of April on our way to lunch.

I had invited Tae to lunch because he was leaving for 3 months to go back to Louisiana to be with his mom and a conversation sprouted about how he wanted to come back because, "he had things to do." So I obviously asked what he had to do and he went on to say, "CAMP! I want to go to Young Life camp!" I laughed and we continue to talk about YL Camp.

Tae has been also going to the Grace and Peace Community Church youth group called Crossfire and has been hearing the Word of God for a while now, so he's been around church, but had never professed his faith. So, when we talked about camp, I kind of tippy-toed around the "religious" reasons of camp for a while until I could not hold back any longer and asked him, "What do you think about all this Jesus stuff?"

Like most teenagers, he answered, "Ummm, I don't know" hahaha. So I asked him, "Well, let me ask you this: Do you think you're going to heaven?" And he told me that he didn't think so because he sinned to much." So I started to explain that I sin too much too, but I'm still going to heaven. I told him to forget everything that he ever learned about God for a second so that I could start a fresh set of questions.

"Tae, do you want to know your destiny?"

"What?" He answered.

"Well, you told me that you believe that there is a God, and that you know that He created you... Right?

"yea"

"Well, would you want to find out why he created you?"

"I guess"

"OK Tae, let me ask you something. You like football right?"

"I LOVE FOOTBALL!"

"OKAY then. Cool. Let's go sign up for a ballet class."

"What? No way!"

"Why not?"

"Because I hate ballet and would NEVER wear tights!!"

"hahahaha"

"That's what I mean then. You were created to like football and for some reason right now you don't like ballet."

"so?"

"Well God created you in such a way that you would not only like football but also be good at it. And He created you in such a way that you don't like ballet. In the same way, God created you in a unique way so that you could do something amazing in your life. Do you want to find out what this amazing thing is?"

"Yeah. That sounds cool!"

"Well remember how you said you sinned a lot?"

"yeah"

"Well even 1 little sin in your life or my life is keeping us apart from the perfect destiny of heaven and the great destiny on earth that God has for us. And this is so because God cannot be where sin is."

"So I'm screwed huh?"

"hahahaha. No! That's what Jesus came to do. He's the one that can allow you to see your destiny!"

"How? What do you mean?

"Well. When we decide to follow Jesus for the rest of your life, He shows us the way to our destiny! When we are not following Jesus, we are walking aimlessly toward things that have nothing to do with what we were made to do and be like. And a really cool thing about following Jesus and discovering your destiny is that your destiny gets inter-twined with my destiny and other people's destiny. This is because part of our destiny is to love one another and be in community be each other to serve each other."

"I think I get it."

"It's like this. You play football so you know about zone defense right?"

"yea."

"Well with a zone defense what happens when 1 person doesn't cover their zone?"

"The whole thing breaks down"

"Exactly. The same thing goes with both of our destinies. Jesus points us towards each other in community, but when one person doesn't want to server others, the team is weaker."

"oh yeah, I get it."

"So just like in your football team, you got a coach that tells you how to read the playbook and all those x's and o's"

"Oh! The Bible is my playbook for life huh!?!?"

THAT LAST STATEMENT MADE MY JAW DROP!

"Yeah! But sometime you need that coach to explain things. I'm your coach :)"

"COOL!"

"So here's something that the Bible says: Romans 10:9-10 roughly says that if you confess with your mouth, understand in your head, and believe in your heart that Jesus Christ was real, was the Son of God, and that God the Father revived Christ from death, then you are saved. Do you understand that?"

"yeah I do"

"Do you believe that?"

"*nods while smiling* yes"

I WON'T EVER FORGET THAT LOOK

"Then that's it!"

"That's it?"

"yeah that's it! You are now following Jesus and He will reveal your destiny!!!!"

"That was easy...."

"Yeah, that was easy but SUPER HUGE... and that doesn't mean that it will get easier... in fact... in might get harder. Jesus doesn't promise that you football game of life will be easy, but He does promise that if you seek Him out and follow the destiny that He created your for, and that if you finish the whole football game of life with your blood, sweat, and tears on your uniform that you will be in Heaven with Him and with me."

"COOL! I can already think of other people that should be on the team with me and need Jesus to find their destinies because they are not in a good place. My aunt and others have tried to explain it but I never got it. This is the first time that I actually get why people follow Jesus."

HE MENTIONED A FEW NAMES FOR HIS TEAM :)

I was trying not to start crying. This was so cool!

- - - -

Later during lunch I told Tae that Heaven threw a huge party that day for him since he is now on the team and seeking out his destiny through Jesus. He LOVED it! He said that now, when he talks to people that party, he's going to tell them that if they really want to party, they gotta get to know Jesus. Hahaha. He was so excited!

Since he was very excited about actually understanding about Jesus, I took him to my house, pulled out my Message Bible, write in it, and gave it to him. I told him that the first place to read in this playbook was John because it talked a lot about what Jesus did and who he is. We looked at John 1 and read John 1:14:

The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.

I told him that the WORD in John 1 was actually Jesus, so he read it again:

Jesus became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.

He loved reading it because he felt like he could understand it more and realized that he still needed a coach to tell him things like, "The Word is Jesus"

I cannot believe that I had the privilege to be the one that explained this whole thing to Tae. I really look forward to seeing Tae grow in Christ for the next few years as Christ has both of our stories line up for a while. I am truly honored to have been part of this. And as one of our committee members put it, "This is the first kid that came to Christ while you were here, but there's many more to come!! Humboldt Park... WATCH OUT!!!"

Praise God.