This past week at church, we finished a series with our junior highers called "Face to Face" (Good help D-Heff). It was a great series where we looked at stories in the gospels where people came face to face with Jesus. We read the stories, talked about observations from the text, and ended up answering 2 main questions--1)What does this tell us about God/Jesus? and 2)What does this say about us as Christians?

Those two questions have everything to do with Bible study. Don't worry, I know there is more to it. Believe me, I am a senior at Ozark Christian College. But how much different would Christians be if they lived by those two questions? If they studies the Bible, knowing that there is something in the text that reveals the Almighty...that there is something in the text that speaks to us living in 2011? Look through the Bible and you will see story after story that speaks to the heart, speaks to our mind, and demands action on our part.

We studied 5 main stories--The prostitute who washed Jesus' feet, The Rich young ruler, The woman at the well, the blind man that Jesus healed, and finally the story of Zacchaeus. In all of these stories we find Jesus meeting people, and they walk away different. The rich young ruler had a tough time handling what Jesus put before him, but if we really come face to face with God there has to be some kind of change. My junior highers are bright--they smell bad, tell bad jokes, and fart in the middle of my lessons for laughs--but they are bright none the less. They came up with the following conclusions over the series:

1)God loves us no matter where we are or what we have done.
2)People almost always change after they met Christ.
3)People recognized that Jesus was who he said he was.
4)God cares more about the changed person than the past person.
5)Jesus came to seek and save the lost

Now for a bunch of farting smelly junior highers--that is pretty amazing!

Coming face to face with God was something that was impossible in the Old Testament. God was to perfect to actually come face to face with man--for man would certainly die! But...that all changed. When Christ lived out Philippians 2. Now we have the privilege of coming face to face with Jesus. I'll end with a question one of my 8th graders asked, "We have come face to face with God--what are we going to do about it?"