Don’t Believe Me Just Watch
Posted on Thursday, June 8, 2017 by
By Claire Froehlich, Juvenile Justice Ministry Chaplain / Site Director
We listened to the popular song “Uptown Funk it Up” that has the line “don’t believe me, just watch” as the intro music for our Easter service. We’d been wrestling with some of the big questions in Bible study about Jesus and life in general…
“How do I know for sure that God loves me?”
“If God is good, why does He allow so much suffering?”
Easter morning, I asked, “How many of you doubt that Jesus loves you?”
Every hand went up, including mine. “Yeah, I doubt sometimes too. What we’re about to see is Jesus’ answer. He says, “I love you! You couldn’t make it to heaven on your own so I came to pay the price for you because I love you so much, I can’t stand eternity without you. No matter where you’ve been or what you’ve done, the price has been paid to win you back for all time. Don’t believe me? Just watch!”
It didn’t take long watching “The Passion of the Christ” before we were all in tears.
Afterwards, I asked, “Now that you’ve watched how much Jesus loves you, what do you think?”
“It makes me love Jesus to see that He suffers for me.”
“I wanted to be the guy helping Jesus carry the Cross.”
“It’s hard to believe He suffered all that for everything I’ve done wrong.”
“It made me sad that everyone was making fun of Him when He was hurting so bad.”
I confessed, “I don’t know why God allows us to suffer, but I do know that whatever the reason, it isn’t because He doesn’t love us. He allowed his Son Jesus to suffer for us on the Cross. When I see Jesus suffering out of love for me, it quiets my suffering. It doesn’t eliminate my suffering but it gives me a sense of peace to know Jesus is right there with me and He knows what it’s like.”
Many of the girls have taken this to heart and are seriously considering what Jesus means to them. Some have opened their hearts to Jesus and are starting to learn what it means to follow Him.
Juvenile Justice and Parent life saw 551 young people accept Jesus into their hearts in 2016. Your partnership helps us to share the good news of Jesus with so many young people that need to know He is with us, for us, saves us and longs to gives us eternal life!
Thank you for being a part of the ongoing conversation with youth in our city and helping us share God’s story. It's our honor to be the storytellers on your behalf who meet kids right where they are and give life to their story.
Providing young people in our community with the opportunity to make an informed decision to be a follower of Jesus Christ and become part of a local church.