Thirst for More – Youth Retreat 2010zarahlim_1

Youth Retreat 2010Theme: Passion for JesusObjective: To remind them why we need to have passion for Jesus. (-zg)

*Holy week emphasis

THIRST FOR MORE

I. Filling the cracks of the parched heart (15 mins)

Scripture Reading: Psalm 42:1-2“As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God.

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?”

You are acquainted of physical thirst. Your body, according to some estimates, is 80 percent fluid. Apart from brains, bones, and a few organs, we’re walking water balloons.

Stop drinking and see what happens. Coherent thoughts vanish, skin grows clammy, and vital organs wrinkle. Your eyes need fluid to cry; your mouth needs moisture to swallow; your glands need sweat to keep your body cool; your cells need blood to carry them; your joints need fluid to lubricate them. Your body needs water the same way a tire needs air.

In fact, your Maker wired you with thirst—a “low-fluid indicator.” Let your fluid level grow low, and watch the signals flare. Dry mouth. Thick tongue. Achy head. Weak knees. Deprive your body of necessary fluid, and your body will tell you. Deprive your soul of spiritual water, and your soul will tell you. Dehydrated hearts send desperate messages. Snarling tempers. Waves of worry. Growling mastodons of guilt and fear. You think God wants you to live with these? Hopelessness. Sleeplessness. Loneliness. Resentment. Irritability. Insecurity. These are warnings. Symptoms of a dryness deep within.

Treat your soul as you treat your thirst. Take a gulp. Imbibe moisture. Flood your heart with a good swallow of water.

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‘If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water’” (John 7:37–38 nkjv).

So Jesus invited: Are your insides starting to shrivel? Drink me. What H2O can do for your body, Jesus can do for your heart. Lubricate it. Aquify it. Soften what is crusty, flush what is rusty. How?

Like water, Jesus goes where we can’t. Throw a person against a wall, his body thuds and drops. Splash water against a wall, and the liquid conforms and spreads. Its molecular makeup grants water great flexibility: one moment separating and seeping into a crack, another collecting and thundering over the Victoria Falls. Water goes where we cannot.

So does Jesus. He is a spirit and, although he forever has a body, he is not bound by a body. In fact, John parenthetically explains, “(When he said ‘living water,’ he was speaking of the Spirit, who would be given to everyone believing in him . . . )” (John 7:39). The Spirit of Jesus threads down the throat of your soul, flushing fears, dislodging regrets. He does for your soul what water does for your body. And, thankfully, we don’t have to give him directions.

We give none to water, do we? Before swallowing, do you look at the liquid and say, “Ten drops of you go to my spleen. I need fifty on cardiovascular detail. The rest of you head north to my scalp. It’s really itchy today.” Water somehow knows where to go.

Jesus knows the same. Your directions are not needed, but your permission is. Like water, Jesus won’t come in unless swallowed. That is, we must willingly surrender to his lordship. You can stand waist deep in the Colorado River and still die of thirst. Until you scoop and swallow, the water does your system no good. Until you gulp Christ, the same is true.

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Internalize him. Ingest him. Welcome him into the inner workings of your life. Let Christ be the water of your soul. How is this done? (1)Heed your thirst. (2)Drink good water. (3) Drink often.

Come Thirstyby Max Lucado

Chapter OneThe Dehydrated Heart

II. Group Dynamics: (10 mins)Answer the ff. questions:1. What is your top 5 spiritual “low-fluid indicator?”

Snarling tempers. Waves of worry. Growling mastodons of guilt and fear, Hopelessness. Sleeplessness. Loneliness. Resentment. Irritability. Insecurity.

2. From the poll above, summarize the results and indicate your group’s top five spiritual “low-fluid indicator.”

3. Group prayer: Ask Jesus for a refilling for all the parched hearts in the group.

III. A Satisfied Thirst (15 mins)

“Mommy, I’m so thirsty. I want a drink.”

Susanna Petroysan heard her daughter’s pleas, but there was nothing she could do.She and four-year-old Gayaney were trapped beneath tons of collapsed concrete andsteel. Beside them in the darkness lay the body of Susanna’s sister-in-law, Karine, one ofthe fifty-five thousand victims of the worst earthquake in the history of Soviet Armenia.Calamity never knocks before it enters, and this time, it had torn down the door.Susanna had gone to Karine’s house to try on a dress. It was December 7, 1988,at 11:30 a.m. The quake hit at 11:41. She had just removed the dress and was clad instockings and a slip when the fifth-floor apartment began to shake. Susanna grabbed herdaughter but had taken only a few steps before the floor opened up and they tumbled in.Susanna, Gayaney, and Karine fell into the basement with the nine-story apartment housecrumbling around them.

“Mommy, I need a drink. Please give me something.”

There was nothing for Susanna to give.

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She was trapped flat on her back. A concrete panel eighteen inches above herhead and a crumpled water pipe above her shoulders kept her from standing. Feelingaround in the darkness, she found a twenty-four ounce jar of blackberry jam that hadfallen into the basement. She gave the entire jar to her daughter to eat. It was gone bythe second day.

“Mommy, I’m so thirsty.”

Susanna knew she would die, but she wanted her daughter to live. She found adress, perhaps the one she had come to try on, and made a bed for Gayaney. Though itwas bitter cold, she took off her stockings and wrapped them around the child to keep herwarm.

The two were trapped for eight days.

Because of the darkness, Susanna lost track of time. Because of the cold, she lostthe feeling in her fingers and toes. Because of her inability to move, she lost hope. “Iwas just waiting for death.”

She began to hallucinate. Her thoughts wandered. A merciful sleep occasionallyfreed her from the horror of her entombment, but the sleep would be brief. Somethingalways awakened her: the cold, the hunger, or most often, the voice of her daughter.

“Mommy, I’m thirsty.”

At some point in that eternal night, Susanna had an idea. She remembered atelevision program about an explorer in the Arctic who was dying of thirst. His comradeslashed open his hand and gave his friend his blood.

“I had no water, no fruit juice, no liquids. It was then I remembered I had myown blood.”

Her groping finger, numb from the cold, found a piece of shattered glass. Shesliced open her left index finger and give it to her daughter to suck.The drops of blood weren’t enough. “Please, Mommy, some more. Cut anotherfinger.” Susanna has no idea how many times she cut herself. She only knows that if shehadn’t, Gayaney would have died. Her blood was her daughter’s only hope.

***

“This cup is the new covenant in my blood,” Jesus explained, holding up thewine.1

The claim must have puzzled the apostles. They had been taught the story of thePassover wine. It symbolized the lamb’s blood that the Israelites, enslaved long ago inEgypt, had painted on the door-posts of their homes. That blood had kept death from

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their homes and saved their firstborn. It had helped deliver them from the clutches of theEgyptians.

The law called for spilling the blood of a lamb. That would be enough. It would be enough to fulfill the law. It would be enough to satisfy the command. It would be enough to justify God’s justice. But it would not be enough to take away the sin.

One of this retreat’s objective is to remind us why we need to be passionate about Jesus. Here’s the reason why:

Sacrifices could offer temporary solutions, but only God could offer the eternalone.So he did.

Beneath the rubble of a fallen world, he pierced his hands. In the wreckage of acollapsed humanity, he ripped open his side. His children were trapped, so he gave hisblood.

It was all he had. His friends were gone. His strength was waning. Hispossessions had been gambled away at his feet. Even his Father had turned his head. His blood was all he had. But his blood was all it took.

“If anyone is thirsty,” Jesus once said, “Let him come to me and drink.” John 7:37

IV. Altar Call (15 mins)

FILL MY CUP LORD

Fill my cup Lord,

I lift it up, Lord!

Come and quench this thirsting of my soul;

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Bread of heaven, Feed me till I want no more

Fill my cup, fill it up and make me whole!