Home Youth Leaders Youth Leaders Blogs Selections from Exodus 3 & 4, Rewritten for Youth Workers

Selections from Exodus 3 & 4, Rewritten for Youth Workers

The LORD said, “I have indeed seen the misery of teenagers in your community. I have heard them crying out because of their loneliness and pain, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the isolation they experience and to bring them up out of that place into a good and spacious grace-filled community, a place flowing with my goodness and grace. And now the cry of the teenagers has reached me, and I have seen the way their culture is oppressing them. So now, go. I am sending you to these teenagers to bring them out of this land of oppression.”

But Youth Worker said to God, “Who am I, that I should go into the youth culture and bring the teenagers out of their oppression?”

And God said, “I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the teenagers out of their loneliness and pain, you will worship God on this mountain.”

Youth Worker said to God, “Suppose I go to the teenagers and say to them, ‘The God of the universe has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?”

God said to Youth Worker, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the teenagers: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ ”

God also said to Youth Worker, “Say to the teenagers, ‘The LORD, the God of the universe—the God of creation, the God who loves you, the God who knows you—has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation.

Youth Worker answered, “What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, ‘The LORD did not appear to you’?”

Then the LORD said to Youth Worker, “What is that in your hand?”
“A Bible,” she replied.

The LORD said, “Open it up.”
Youth Worker opened the Bible, and it came alive, pouring fourth with the love of the LORD. Then the LORD said to him, “Close it.” So Youth Worker closed the Bible, and it was just a book in his hand. “This,” said the LORD, “is so that they may believe that the LORD, the God of the universe—the God of creation, the God who loves you, the God who knows you—has appeared to you.”

Then the LORD said, “Put your hand inside your backpack.” So Youth Worker put her hand into her backpack, and when she took it out, it was holding a cell phone, full of the contact info for dozens of lonely and searching teenagers.

“Now put it back into your backpack,” he said. So Youth Worker put his hand back into his backpack, and when he took it out, it was just a human hand, with nothing in it, ready to reach out to teenagers.

Then the LORD said, “If they do not believe you or pay attention to the first miraculous sign, they may believe the second.”

Youth Worker said to the LORD, “O Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.”

The LORD said to her, “Who gave you your mouth? Who makes a person deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the LORD ? Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.”

But Youth Worker said, “O Lord, please send someone else to do it.”

Then the LORD’s anger burned against Youth Worker and he said, “What about those other adults in your church, the ones who care about teenagers? I know some of them can speak well. They already meet with you, and are glad when they see. You shall equip and encourage some of them, and put words in their mouths; I will help all of you speak and will teach you what to do. They will speak to the teenagers with you, because you can’t do it all by yourself, and it will be as if they were your mouth and as if you were God to all of them. But take this Bible in your hand so you can perform miraculous signs with it.”

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what excuse are you using with god today?

when was great youth ministry ever about the skill of the youth worker anyway?