My Commitment

Back when I started as YoungLife leader, my area director handed out a sheet to us when he was talking to us about how the mission of YoungLife works. The sheet is a kind of letter from a guy named Bill Goans entitled "My Commitment". I have a couple copies of this laying around, because it has always really spoken to me as a reminder of the harsh world so many of my high school friends live in....and how this is always kind of the case. Today, I recreated my "Wall of Fame" in my office. It's nothing too exciting- but its a place where I put pictures of students- to show them how important they are to me...and how much I value them. In the center of my Wall of Fame is a simple printed Message version of John 10:10 and then this letter. I finally got around to laminating it so it doesn't get messed up. As I was putting pictures up this year, I placed 2 pictures intentionally right above this letter- so that whenever I look at these pictures I will read it...or whenever I read the letter I will look at these pictures. The first picture is of 2 students thave I adore that I've gotten to know recently. These are kids that I know God has put into my life to walk through things with them. The other picture is of 2 younger kids that I've gotten to know in the past couple of years. They're 5th graders now...and seem so young and innocent...and yet they serve as a reminder of how important it is to be in true relationships with these kids...and to continue that. Its amazing to me the Providence that exists in my relationships with these kids....and how I can feel led to a student and God will give me an awesome opportunity to serve them or hang out with them. I've had the name of one of those highschoolers form the pic above the letter written on my mirror in my bedroom for a year now- as a reminder to pray for her. I have no clue why I put her name on that list to begin with- obviously God put her on my heart...and I've been praying for her for a year...and now we hang out and talk and I feel so humbled that God is allowing me to be a part of her life in this way. So anyways, I wanted to share the words of this letter:

My Commitment by Bill Goans
As long as high school kids mill around at ball games looking for love in all the wrong places,
As long as they desperately seek an identity based on the opinions of friends and reputation,
As long as kids limp through the stands broken by family strife, enslaved by drugs, alcohol, and sex
I want to be found- not in the adult section where it is respectable and controlled, but right in the middle where passions, vulgar and profane, blurt out obscenity,
Where raucous and reckless facades hide wounded hearts filled with torment and fear,
Where the price tags have been changed and darkness confuses-
Right in the middle where God has positioned me to shine forth His grace, His Hope, His love and His truth.
As long as there is an enemy who can convince his victims that tomorrow doesn't matter, that harm will not find them, that chains are like jewerly and cool is free,
As long as his lies leave character, soul, and life in ruins- when thrill goes ill and fun turns fatal,
As long as terminal is only a passage word to an eternity of one's own choosing.
As long as God has rendered him a defeated foe using the weakest of us to shine a light that pierces the darkest places, that brings rescue to the lost,
As long as the darkness is blasted away by the light of the world- that Light that lives within all who know, follow, and love Him.
As long as there is such darkness, I'll man my post right in the middle of all that chaos, holding my position until he calls another play, and I steal home.

As long as we stand in such an important place, we must not forget what it means to be salt and ligh in this tasteless and dark generation.