First Southern Baptist Church, Gore

So, I am writing this article at church camp this week. Falls Creek to be precise. We have a bunch of youth w e brought down on Monday. We have all ages, 12-19. This is our big event for the youth and it takes a lot of planning.

We started planning about 6 months ago. We had to find a week that would work for us to go. Then we had to find a cabin to stay in that was within our budget, could house the number we were taking and then how are we going to get everyone there. We had to recruit sponsors that would take a week’s vacation to go and cooks that would prepare meals for us to eat. Then there were menus to set and food list of what we needed to buy to cook and eat. Some of our kids need financial assistance to go so donors were sought out to sponsor them. Online registration presented a completely different challenge.

For me personally, I had to figure out what to take to camp as far as clothing. Oh, yeah, I need to take my medicine. Don’t want to forget my Bible either. Deodorant, soap and shampoo already in bag. Then sleeping bag, pillow and sheet. Yeah, that should do it.

Problem is, in all that preparation I still missed some things and worst was leaving my hangup clothes at home and someone to bring them to camp later.

As you can see there is a lot of preparation that goes into one week of camp…work, thought, prayer and sacrifice. But, it is for a good cause. The cause of Christ. Youth beginning a relationship with Christ.

I was sitting in my chair at devotional time this morning (Tuesday) and wondered if we put this amount of work into any other area of our lives. I guess specifically our spiritual lives. I’m sure we do for vacations, family outings, work projects and the like. But, spiritually, what do we do?

We get up on Sunday morning and shower, put on our good clothes, fix our hair and make ourselves look presentable. But do we take time to pray thanking God we are awake, for the day, the opportunity to worship him? Do we read His word in preparation for worship or pray?

What if our spiritual preparation is just making a profession of faith? “I just want to make sure I get to Heaven?” There are those who go to camp and they fly by the seat of their pants having made little if any preparation. Sometimes it works out for them and other times is a major struggle or failure.

This week we are focusing with the youth on Jesus…Jesus First, Jesus Only, Jesus Now and Jesus Always. We are teaching the foundation of life and preparation for eternal life is JESUS. It can’t be just a worship time at camp. It has to be having a quiet time, a Bible study, praising Him through singing and the preaching of the Word on a regular and consistent basis.

Having made that profession of faith is most important for eternal life, do not get me wrong. But, the Christian life is so much more. In John 14, Jesus said He was going to the Father to make PREPARATIONS for us to be with Him someday “behold I go there to prepare a place for you…” (Jn 14:2b) What preparation are you making to spend an eternity with Him?

Preparations for camp are so important as we want to see young people come to the Kingdom. But preparations to live a life for God here on earth is also important. We have the destination set, but what are we doing to prepare for that destination (Heaven)? Let’s start preparing today.

Bro. Tim