Thoughts from Camp - Day 17 - Peter's Vision

"Seek God until He breaks your heart, and then preach from the bottom of your broken heart." This 

is what I often say to those I mentor. So with seven weeks of speaking, writing devotions and heading up ministry at a summer camp, I anticipate being challenged, stretched and broken as the weeks roll on. Each day I will post some lessons to be learned from the devotions and messages we have studied as a camp.

So we talked about Peter's vision today, and how Jesus fulfilled the law, and that the gospel went out to the nations. Heavy theological stuff for ten year olds. But guess what? They have brains, and they know how to use them, and they comprehended and could articulate the purpose of the Old Testament and the superiority of Jesus' covenant.

But that's not what I'm learning today, so that's not what I'll write. Here's what I'm thinking for today - why do we think discussion time is a useful teaching method? Here's the thing - we are all born without a knowledge of God. We don't gain a knowledge of God naturally, it has to be taught (or better yet, absorbed from Scripture reading). And then we sit down a roomful of teenagers and ask them what they think about God. Or better yet, we throw out Biblical questions - 'why do you think Jesus had to be man?' And these young teens who will some day be young men and women start throwing out their opinions from the limited Bible knowledge they have. Useful? Only to draw out the little knowledge that has already been placed in their heads.

Why not teach? Why not show? A person with both knowledge and passion is an unstoppable force in the church. An opinionated person just fits in with the rest. So why develop these? We need Bible study and proper teaching. Not question time so we can hear opinions. This is a topic I will be fleshing out more extensively over the next few weeks, and I'm sure you can look forward to a more comprehensive blog post about it in the fall.