A Youthfull Conversion- How to be "Camp Cool"

Maybe Pete Holmes was right...


Many times, as I went through high school and experienced youth group, I saw many times when we would go on retreats or on missions’ trips that people would have a “Spiritual High” or a “Life Change”. For many people, this is a time where they realize that what they had been doing in their lifes was wrong and set goals that were going to change it or when they would rededicate their life to Christ. For many people, including myself, this is something that happened multiple times in my life. When I was very young, I was baptized simply because my parents took me to the church and I guess it was just something that needed to be done. Obviously because of the age I was at the time, the baptism did not mean much for me. However, when I was in about 8^th grade, I got baptized again as a believer and from then on, have continued on the journey to make my faith my own. I remember on many occasions on retreats and missions trips when people would have a life change, the leaders of the group would go up to them either after words or during a time of worship or reflecting and put their hand on them and tell them how proud they were of them. As Pete Holmes put it, this was “Camp Cool”- A place where a good attitude and participation made you popular. If Paul, in the book of Acts lived in 2014, he would have been “Camp Cool”. As we read Acts, we see a man who hated the church and wanted to kill anyone and everyone who had anything to do with it. He was hard hearted and cared only about himself. He approved the stoning of Stephen. However, as we continue reading, we find a man who experiences a life change of epic proportions. The road to Damascus story is one that I think we all hope to have. We want to have that amazing testimony that is filled with turmoil and problems that are one day “At the crescendo of How He Loves Us” seen as evil as we fall to our knees and surrender our lives to God. With a testimony like that, we are sure to change many lives. Heck. We could even go on the road and preach the gospel. What about the others? What about the people who grew up in the church and the worst thing that ever happened to them was the death of their pet hamster- Larry when they were 7? Where do those people belong in the testimonial hierarchy? Compared to the people who lived their lives completely against god, they have nothing in that category. As I read through Acts, I see the same conundrum. I see people like Paul who saw both sides of the road in his spiritual faith where at the end of Acts 7, approves the stoning of Stephen and then- 6 chapters later, temporally blinds a man for "Being a child of the Devil and an enemy of everything that is right" Acts 13:10. As I read the bible, It seems to me that the people with the hardest stories are the ones who we read about. Sometimes, in life, when we are not crying out to God to help us through this time in our lives, we must learn to honor and praise God in the times when life is Ok and things seem to be fine. As I move forward in my life and my journey to see and know God more, I must learn to honor God in the good times as well as the hard. maybe then, I will be "Camp Cool".