Psalm 16:11

Have you ever wondered how your life will turn out? Where you will spend your older years? Many of you might think that I am already in my older years. I am not (at least not until next week), but even now I did not expect any of where I am now even, 4 years ago. I have been a Christian nearly 9 years. It might be quite odd to read that God makes known to us our paths.

But maybe He doesn’t tell all at once. Each step I took to get here, I had to seek God for the next step, and trust that He has that path set out for me. Wherever we read in the Bible, we know that God is good, that joy comes from Him. (Remember Joy and happiness are different), and that God is all about the big picture.

Lastly, think on the last line today, and what eternal pleasures God has for us. In Ecclesiastes (3:11), we read that God has set eternity in the human heart, even though we cannot imagine what it will be like, God’s ultimate plan was for eternity, so without a doubt, there must a be a heaven where we will enjoy these eternal pleasures. And we can get there all because of Jesus.

Nehemiah 8:10

We have come to the half way point now, and life must be starting to get a little exciting now, a few days before school ends, assignments will handed in and we look forwards to our celebrations.

One thing I notice about today’s text is that Nehemiah is telling them to go and enjoy good food and sweet drinks (can’t get any sweeter than Julmust) but to also send some to those who have nothing prepared. As we look forward to our own celebrations, think about what you also might be able to do for those you know who are less fortunate than you, or are having a hard time this Christmas. Write down a list, and pray for them, but also see if there is something you can do.

There are many homeless in Gothenburg this year, and even though there might be corruption in that, the people on the streets still have needs, even buying them a hot drink can go along way. Maybe in 2015 we can do something as a youth group to help those in need, and I’d love to hear your ideas.

1 John 1:4-7

Today we are still on the subject of light, and we are back to John’s metaphors. We see here that God is only light, and cannot have darkness in Him. Which means that only good things are in God. This is comforting.

Then it goes on to say something very challenging. That if we claim to be Christian but still choose to walk in darkness, then we are just lying to ourselves. What it could be that would make anyone still want to carry on walking in darkness? Shame. When we mess up, we feel bad, and continue to feel bad until we feel undeserving of Gods grace. But that is a lie! God doesn’t want us to feel shame and guilt. Jesus was born, lived a perfect life and died on the cross so that you would NEVER need to be in darkness again. That is what we celebrate, and that is worth celebrating.

Note: Maybe if you feel you are ‘stuck’ in darkness, arrange to chat to one of your leaders. Or maybe take some time to pray, and feel God’s forgiveness and grace. There is ALWAYS a way to turn things around. Nothing is unforgivable, and God always has his arms open. Check out the ‘Parable of the Prodigal Son’ (Luke 15:11-32) in your bibles to see how Jesus shows us this.

Matthew 2:1-12

When you read today’s passages, you might realise there is a bit of a difference between the Christmas story we knew when we were young and what is written here. We are used to thinking that it was 3 kings who also followed the star to find Jesus, but it was actually a number of Magi, or wise-men as we know the, better. They were star-gazers, not like the astrologers we have today, but people who were also waiting for the Messiah to come.

As we looked at on Wednesday at Youth Group, like the shepherds they knew what to look for. They knew the sign posts to the real Messiah, the real king of God’s people, Jesus. But what sign posts do we need to look out for today to find Jesus. The shepherds and the wise men had a star, that shone brighter than all the others which led them to Jesus. They let the light show them the way.

As Annie pointed out yesterday, the light still points us to Jesus today, but it is a different type of light. Have a think about what kind of things might be considered a ‘light’ in 2014. What things point us to Jesus? Use the indexes in the backs of your Bibles to help you see where else the Bible talks about light.

John 12:35-36

The gospel of John isn’t exactly known for being easy to understand (if you want that, read Mark’s gospel), but rather for what seems like a conscious attempt to be cryptic and difficult to understand.   Today’s reading is quite typical of John in that sense!

The central word for this passage is ’light’; Jesus tells the people that the light will only be with them a little longer and to keep walking while the light is with them, because whoever walks in darkness doesn’t know where they’re going. Jesus then tells the people to believe in the light because that’s how you become children of light. But what is this light and why is it so important? The light in this passage is a symbol for Jesus. Jesus is the one who will soon be going away (this was when Jesus was talking about His crucifixion and resurrection), and it’s with him we can find our way around, without him we are lost. And if we believe in Jesus, we can become children of God. Pretty amazing! Lets take some time to thank Jesus for bring our light, and for always being stronger than the darkness, however dark it might be.

Zephaniah 3:17

This verse is probably one of my favourite verses in the whole bible. It tells us so many amazing things; God wants to be so close to you that next to you simply isn’t close enough. So God decided to moved inside of you. And he is delighting in you, even if you are struggling to see any positives with yourself, like we were talking about a couple of days ago, God does not struggle with that, when he sees you he likes what he’s seeing, it makes him happy, he delights in you!

The bible even adds that God will rejoice over you with singing, that’s how pleased he is with you, that’s how much he loves you and wants to be close to you! The verse just before tells us not to let our hands sink in hopelessness, and how could we, when we have a God that loves so much?

Psalm 119:105-106

How are you getting on with your bible readings? You are now just over 1/3 in to the month of December, so if you’ve done all of the readings you’ve done really well, and of you’ve only done some – well done to you too! Some questions to reflect on today; how have you found reading the bible on a more regular basis? Have you found out something new about yourself or God?

Today’s verse talks about God’s word being a light that shows us the way forward, if you flick through all the devotionals you’ve got this far, what’s the main thing you are bringing with you this far? Also, think about the situations you are struggling with at the moment, pray that God’s light will help guide you through that situation.

Mark 12:28-30

Today’s reading is another New Testament classic. Here Jesus is asked the greatest commandment in the Jewish law. Jesus replies by quoting Deut. 6:4, a passage that is sometimes described as the Jewish creed (summary of beliefs). Then he adds something of his own; ’love your neighbour as yourself’. As a conclusion we have two very basic and important commands here!

Today we are going to focus on the second statement, but maybe not the way we might naturally think (loving other people) but on the fact that in order to love others we also have to love ourselves. Being human, and maybe especially a human teenager, loving yourself can be very difficult! In my early teens I used to really hate everything about myself, I couldn’t see any positives with my personality or my looks. But what Jesus says here is that loving ourself is just as important as loving other people, intact it’s even more important because until we start loving ourselves we are unable to love other people.

So today, if you are struggling with loving yourself, take some time to ask God to show you all the amazing things he has put in you; in your personality and in your physical appearance. And if you are really struggling, drop me a text, because I’m sure I can come up with at least 10 for each and every one of you – you are amazing young people with so much to give the world!

1 John 4:7-8

This term I’ve been studying New Testament Greek, which means I’ve learnt words such as ’false prophet’, ’kingdom’ and ’arch-liar’ in Greek but still don’t know what ’hello’ is or how to tell someone my name (things like that isn’t on my list with the 200 most common words in the New Testament…). The past few weeks my homework has been to translate the whole first letter of John from Greek to Swedish. It’s been (surprisingly) fun, but also quite difficult.

One of the themes that keep popping up throughout the letter is love, just like in today’s verses. Love is also one of the themes for Christmas, with songs like ’All I want for Christmas is you’ as one of the recurring hits on the radio.

In today’s verses John wants to encourage us to love each other, something that isn’t always easy, especially if you are as stubborn as I am! But maybe this Christmas we could make an effort to forgive someone who has hurt us – or to ask someone who we have hurt to forgive us?

Matthew 1:18-25/Isaiah 7:14

Reading today’s two texts together you realise the greatness of Gods plan. The part of Isaiah that todays text comes from was written sometime after 740 BC, when the prophets ministry started. That means, that God had at least 740 years (or since the fall) of planning before putting his big plan into action!

That’s a pretty long time…

I believe there are two reasons planning something takes long;

1. The thing you’re planning isn’t very important to you, so you procrastinate for as long as you can (like planning a school project in your least favourite subject)
2. The thing you’re planning is so extremely important you want to get every detail exactly right and make sure that nothing can go wrong (like planing your wedding)

I believe the reason it took so long for God to get his plan going was the second reason, the people on this earth, you, were so important to him. If you compare it to planing a wedding, we might need a year to plan our big day. But for God it wasn’t just one day in two people’s life that was at stake – it was the future of all his beloved children on earth throughout history! No wonder he needed a bit more time!