That's a pretty tall order for a 12 year old (and anyone really)! If it were not for God's remarkable ability and desire to take open and willing hearts and make them into faithful witnesses and disciples of the Risen Jesus, confirmation would be a silly thing for us to do w/ sixth graders.
But as I was reminded this week... God loves to do this very thing!!!
I had the chance to sit down and talk w/ some of the eldest members of Aldersgate. They were a part of Aldersgate before it was Aldersgate... when it was Forest Ave. Methodist Church. As I asked them to recount the way God had worked in their lives and how they came to surrender their lives to Christ, one by one they said things like, "Well, you know I've just never known anything else. I've always known God's love for me and always been a part of the church. I guess if I had to say when that really began for me I would have to say when I was 12 years old I joined the church."
As we talked together they kept saying things like, "Oh, I just love Him!" and "Oh, I just talk to Him everyday... ALL day." They'd look me intently in the eye and say, "If you could only know all the things God has led me through!"
Though not one of them could point to some kind of dramatic experience in which God saved them, each of their long lives lived in humble faithfulness, to me, bears a much more substantial and radical testimony.
And I could not help but hope and pray this same kind of life w/ God for our five confirmands -- who for the most part have spent their whole lives up to this point in the church. I hope that they will be able to look back on a life so entrenched in God's love and work that they will say in their old age, "I've always know God's love and I guess if I had to say where that really started for me... I joined the church on April 11, 2010, when I was 12."
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