God | Jesse Joyner

Remembering the Sabbath

Last week was a very busy week. There was office work, family obligations, booking events, and the ongoing process of fixing up our old house. And right now we are fixing up the kitchen! It will be great when it is done, but the process can seem long and laborious. So I try to find every free and waking minute in order to work on the kitchen.

The problem is that after a full week of normal work, normal life, AND fixing up a kitchen, I was completely exhausted.

I told Sarah that I wanted to take a Sabbath on Sunday and not do any work-related stuff. In fact, we planned to go on a family walk at a nearby park. Needless to say, Sarah was thrilled. And we spent the day worshiping at church, visiting friends and family, and going on our anticipated family walk.

It was exactly what we ALL needed. When I was in college, I would work like crazy, often not taking a legitimate day off each week. One of my close friends was a top student who worked very hard but he never did any work on Sundays (or whichever day he chose as his day off). I was amazed because he was so good at school but still found time to take off and refresh himself. His example made an impression on me. So I have tried to take at least one day off out of every seven days since college. It is not always the same day of the week since my life schedule changes from week to week. But I have realized that without a Sabbath, I actually become less productive in life, which means that working too much can ironically become counter-productive.

I believe that God made us to bring Him glory. One way we do that is through work. But work is not everything. Even God rested on the seventh day after making the universe. Think about that. God took a break. He’s God after all. Does He NEED to take a break from work?

When Monday morning came around, I was refreshed and ready to tackle another busy week. I’m so glad made us this way – to need and enjoy the Sabbath. I look forward to the work I get to do, but I also look forward to Sabbath breaks!

Hebrews 4:9-11, ESV

⁹So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, ¹⁰for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. ¹¹Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.

The Power of Juggling

In my most recent newsletter (which you can access here), I told the story of how I had done a show for a high school where just days before I came one student stabbed another in the middle of class. A parent sent me a message after my show thanking me for bringing a little joy to the hearts of the students in the middle of a very difficult week.

Someone else read that story and sent me a similar story of how juggling had the power to heal her cousin. So that it is told correctly, I will simply quote how she relayed the story to me. It is a story about how God uses things like juggling and art to heal in people’s lives….

“My cousin, Garry was a juggler and he was very good. He started juggling in high school. He saw a presentation at school and came home, went in his room and started throwing stuff around. When his dad came home from work, he heard a bunch of banging coming from Garry’s room. He asked my aunt what was going on. She didn’t know. So he went [into] his room to investigate. Garry was trying to teach himself to juggle. His dad helped him get some information on juggling from the library and he made his own practice balls out of old socks filled with beans. He later purchased some professional equipment. After he learned the 3 ball cascade, he taught all 3 of his sisters, his dad, a few cousins, and anyone who was even slightly interested. His mom could juggle 3 scarves. That’s as far as she got. I had no interest in learning. I thought it was a rather weird thing to do. But he never stopped practicing. In his last year of college, he was consumed by Schizophrenia. He became disabled and unable to work at all. He wasn’t able to do much of anything constructive and he lived like a hermit, rarely ever coming to any family gatherings. But he could still juggle. He learned to juggle at least 5 clubs, 4-6 balls, 5-6 rings, maybe more. I remember, his parents managed to get him to come to one family reunion. He was very uncomfortable and did not communicate much. But when he started performing, juggling 5 clubs, he was happy and had a huge smile on his face. And he never dropped once. Unfortunately, the only other time I saw him was when he was in the mental hospital. He never wanted to see anyone any other time. One day when he was riding his bicycle in town, a medical supply truck struck him from behind and he died that night. The driver had a diabetic black out. At my cousin’s funeral, I saw all his juggling equipment laid out on the table and I thought to myself, “I could learn to juggle in Garry’s memory.” And I started that day. Although Garry was greatly disabled, he found joy in juggling.

I have NOT been able to reach Garry’s skills. I can juggle 3 balls, 3 rings, some with flower sticks, some with cigar boxes, and I have taught some juggling 101 classes. It’s no longer weird for me. It’s actually a lot of fun! Prior to learning to juggle, I was learning to clown, and it works well with my business. So in a lesser way, I am continuing what my cousin, Garry started. I know that Garry had accepted Christ prior to being consumed with Schizophrenia, so I sometimes wonder if he is looking down from heaven, pleased that he inspired one more person to juggle and I carry that on for him.”

Prayer Counseling in Children’s Ministry

In a previous post, I explained the idea of worship response stations and their use in ministry to children. I am going to unpack each station in a series of posts, starting with the prayer station.

The Bible teaches us to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17), so I believe prayer is essential to Children’s Ministry – before, during, and after worship services. I’d like to look at ways to use prayer during worship services with kids – specifically when used as a response to the hearing and teaching of God’s Word.

Most of us are familiar with the traditional “altar call” prayer station. This is where the teacher/preacher speaks and then calls people forward for prayer, either en masse to pray with the preacher or to receive individual prayer from pre-selected prayer counselors. The focus of the prayer is usually related to the points of the message, whether a call to follow Jesus or for healing or for God’s strength to overcome a challenge in life, etc.

There is also the method of having people pray in their seats after the message with no call to get up and receive prayer. And some pastors simply tell people to seek out a leader after the service if they have questions or a request for prayer (sometimes with prayer counselors waiting in a particular location, like the front of the sanctuary or in a prayer room somewhere else in the church).

There are many other ways to incorporate prayer as a way of response to the message. But here is the way we did it at camp a few weeks ago:

I preached the message and then closed by inviting the kids to come forward for prayer if they wanted to respond to the message. I had about half a dozen prayer counselors ready and they came forward before the kids so the kids could find one of them. I encouraged all the kids that if they saw a friend come forward for prayer that they were welcome to join that friend and stand beside them in prayer. I also mentioned to the many adults in the room that if they saw their own child (whether in their own family or in their cabin group) and wanted to stand beside them in prayer that they were also welcome to do so.

The worship band came on stage and began leading everyone else in some slower paced worship songs. After about one song, I opened up the entire room to all of the many worship response stations, sometimes having a large group prayer to ask God to prepare us and speak to us during the worship response stations.

The prayer counseling station then stayed open as one of many response station options. Kids took advantage of it at various points throughout the entire response time. Even adults (including myself) took advantage of it.

And that leads me to the next thing we tried with the prayer station – the “kids pray for adults” station. I think it was one of the kids that suggested it to me and I thought it was brilliant. I had led something similar before when I was a Children’s Pastor at a Tuesday night prayer meeting that was led by kids. The idea is so simple and incredibly life-changing.

So on the second night of these worship response stations, I opened up the “kids pray for adults” station. It was separate from the “adults pray for kids” station, which was still there. I told the kids about it and said that any kid who wanted to pray for adults could come work the station and be available to pray for any adult that came forward for such prayer.

We had a few dozen kids come to the station and they stood there ready to pray throughout the worship response time. I even encouraged some of the girls who were there for a long time to go try some of the other stations. They said they wanted to keep working the prayer station. Of course I let them, since all the stations were optional and had no time limits.

I then encouraged adults to come receive prayer from a child. One man told me it was the highlight of his week – as he came back to the station for prayer five times in one night. Here is why I think this station is so powerful:

1. It humbles us adults to hear the prayers of a child.
2. Children pray very sincere, concise, heartfelt prayers. They are not like us adults who pray like the Pharisees with prayers to sound super-spiritual that go on and on.
3. Children pray with childlike faith, which is the model of faith Jesus teaches us to have (Luke 18:17; Mark 10:13-16). Don’t you want prayer from someone with strong faith? Then have a child pray for you.
4. It empowers children and it is our way of telling them that they are as much a part of God’s family as adults and have just as much (if not, more) to contribute to the Kingdom of God and ministry to others.

It is this last point – about empowering children by letting them use their spiritual gifts – that I think we most often get wrong in Children’s Ministry. We usually view Children’s Ministry as the time for us adults to download information into the brains and hearts of kids. But Jesus told us to be like children in our faith. So why don’t we more often let kids teach us and give them opportunities to use their gifts and bless both adults and other children? It goes against our intuition, but so also does the Gospel of grace.

Let the children come to Jesus – and let them pray!