CIY Move: Day 4

YAWN!!! (What day is it?) I know its 6:30am as I am typing this, but it feels like, like... its way too early to be up and the Holy Spirit wants us to all go back to bed for a while. We are having so much fun that there is absolutely no way we have been able to get enough sleep. It's hard to believe its a Wednesday.

Thanks to everyone who is praying for our group and all of the rest of the students, leaders, speakers, musicians, and workers here at CIY. Yesterday was a great day. Like I mentioned yesterday the theme was Godliness and the thing we heard over and over is that you don't TRY to be Godly, you TRAIN to be Godly. The more you train the better you are prepared to reflect God's character in any situation.

In our evening session the way they showed this to everyone was by having us right down a quality of God we wanted to be more apparent in our lives on a small hand mirror. We kept these mirrors with us all day to keep that in the forefront of our mind. Then in the evening session we took all of our mirrors to the front, and at the very end they had put all of the mirrors together into a giant Disco Mirror Ball that was reflecting light all over the room. It was a pretty cool example!

Another thing that I truly believe was an answer to prayer last night was some of the discipleship that I saw happening within our group. God tells us over and over again in the Bible, that we are supposed to love others because He has loved us. That love motivates us to do a lot of things. Mentoring others and helping them train to become more like Christ is one of those pivotal things that every Christ follower needs to get busy doing if they aren't already. I was so blessed to see our group doing that and talking about it yesterday.

The exceptional thing about that is that true mentoring and discipleship doesn't happen in a afternoon. It is something that honestly is pretty time consuming if you are committed to it. CIY yesterday challenged us to find somebody who could be our spiritual mentor and someone else we could mentor spiritually. Aaron, one of our adult leaders asked the group what they thought of that during our group time. Students said they felt challenged and excited. What happened next though rocked my socks off. One of our girls started talking about discipleship and mentoring with someone else who was already there! Our whole group got to take a front row seat to hear about all the lessons both the girls had learned from their time they had been in a mentor/mentoree friendship. The rest of the group got to see the evidence of growth and strength in these girls' faith (and it was evident). Please be praying that the students walk away from that moment and seek out a spiritual mentor, and also look back to students in our middle school who they can begin to pour into and help grow closer to Christ.

A couple of other awesome things. Last night our group also decided to dress up like superheroes. We had a blast and got some really good pictures too. We had a Smurf, a Tattoo Man (Sorry, but this student did use a sharpie), Batmans, a Jedi, Superwoman, Wonder Woman, Wolverine, GI Joe, and a few more that I'm forgetting. We had a great time and got some crazy looks.

The guys vs. the girls contest is still neck and neck 3.5-3 with the guys in the lead by a half point.

Please be praying for us today as I bet the tiredness really starts to kick in today. The conversations will really start to shift as well. We will all start talking about how we can continue to train ourselves to be Godly once we head home. Its really easy to focus in on God at a conference like this. Its once we get back in the swing of things with School, Work, Family, and Friends that it gets difficult. We start forgetting things we were truly passionate about, and we start making the bad mistake of trying to course correct on our own. Pray that our students would take steps today to put mentors and friends in their lives that are going to help them keep growing after CIY. Parents be praying and thinking too about how you can help support your son or daughter as they try and grow into the kingdom worker God wants them to be.