Tick Tock…

Good morning, afternoon and evening everyone. I hope everyone is doing well and getting ready for a great Halloween weekend. I would like to thank everyone who was able to make it this past Wednesday to help pass out flyers to our Fall Festival which will be taking place Halloween evening from 6pm to 9pm. It probably seemed like a really simple thing, but it will be worth it to see these people who live across the street from the church come out and see what we are all about. I also want to thank everyone who will be working it this weekend. I know there are a million other things that you could be doing, and the fact that you will choose to volunteer at a church is pretty amazing! I’m not saying that it won’t be a lot of fun, but I know there are always temptations to do other things besides church stuff.
Because we didn’t have service this past Wednesday, I am going to write about something that is unrelated to what we have been talking about in Ignite. I hadn’t really heard from my Dad in a couple weeks, and he happened to call me last Sunday. It’s not terribly out of the ordinary, but then he said “Hey, I just wanted to let you know…” in one of those tones that you just know something bad is about to follow. It seemed like a couple minutes until he finished, and he basically told me he had gotten into a pretty rough car accident. Now, by rough I mean both he and my sister were pretty sore and their truck was totaled, but they were okay. They were sitting at a light, and my Dad happened to notice a police car behind them. He hurried up buckled his seat belt, then began talking to my sister some more. A couple seconds later he looked up and saw the light had changed, so he pulled forward and was suddenly hit from the side. He said the truck began spinning and they were dazed because of the smoke from the air bags. They made it out and everything was fine, but it really shook him up. You know when something bad happens to you or almost happens to you, you begin to think about how much worse or better it could have been. My Dad sat there and thought about what could’ve happened if he wasn’t wearing his seatbelt, and what could have happened if he had started going as soon as the light had changed. In his mind, the outcome could have been much worse and it really shook him up.
I am telling this story because I think we have all been somewhere near here. There have been times in our lives where stuff has happen that have really shaken us up. As much as these things can hurt and scar, I think they are almost necessary to us. We live our lives very routinely. For me, I wake up at about the same time, I take a shower and I get Hayden up and get him dressed. We leave the house around 8:20 and that gives me enough time to get to the church, drop Hayden off, and be in my office by 9. I have all of my routines, and I just like it that way. We all have routines, and sometimes we become so complacent in these routines that we miss out on stuff that God has for us. We lose sight of the good things and forget how good they can feel. In Mark, Jesus is talking and he says that “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Be on guard! Be alert! You do not know when that time will come.” Most of the time, we used this scripture to illustrate the time at which Jesus will return to this world and take all of the believers with them. I totally agree, but I also think you can also use this to illustrate the time that you will die. It’s a simple thing, yet we get so wrapped up in routines and complacency that we lose sight of it. There will be a day that you will die. I know when I was your age, the thought rarely hit my mind. Now that I am the ripe old age of 26, I have begun to realize that I am in fact mortal. I could seriously die tomorrow. I am not telling you all of this to scare you, I am telling you this to warn you. I want to warn you that you have no idea how much time you have left on this earth, so you need to live everyday as if it were your last. This doesn’t necessarily mean going absolutely crazy, but spending less time worrying about things, and more time with the truly important things. I hope all of you get the chance to get to know Jesus and I hope everyone will understand that He doesn’t keep you from living life, He helps you live life! I look forward to seeing you on Wednesday!!!

What’s an eternity anyways?

What? 2 weeks in a row?!?!?! That’s right. Last night I talked about people who take all of their anger and aggression and they bottle it up until the moment it completely explodes. I have been experiencing this feeling, only it hasn’t been with anger or aggression. If you know me, then you know my mind often wanders, and this is because I seriously have like dozens of thoughts racing through my mind at the same time. Am I the only one that experiences this? Sometimes I feel like I have the absolute hardest time settling down and actually sticking with one thought or one conversation. Who knows, perhaps I should be taking some kind of medication. Anyways, it helps me tremendously to be able to write these thoughts down and hopefully you find it helpful to read it.

I have experienced two things this past week that have coincided with each other in a way, and it has really got me thinking. First off, at our yard sale a couple weeks ago, I bought a book entitled 23 Minutes in Hell (Thanks Michelle!) by Bill Wiese. The topic of Hell has always intrigued me a bit, and I had heard of this man a long time ago, so I figured I would pick it up. To give you a little background, he was a man who considered himself a Christian. He went to church, had a lot of knowledge of the Bible and he was an overall “decent” guy. He went to bed one night in November, and without any explanation was thrown out of his bed and into Hell. I would strongly recommend anyone reading this, because it doesn’t mean as much hearing it from me.  He backs his story up with scripture as well as other people who have experienced the same horrific event. The book left me with a better sense as to what Hell is about and left me with an even greater feeling that I do not want to end up there.

Last Sunday night, I went and saw a movie called Paranormal Activity. Chances are, if you haven’t seen it you are beginning to hear things about it. Again, I don’t want to give away much because it is a pretty insane movie. What I will tell you is that it is about a couple who is being haunted by a demonic presence. My good friend Toby saw it the night before and was seriously afraid of the dark for a couple days. I am not sure how many of you guys like scary movies, but I know for me, the one thing that keeps me from going crazy and curling up into a little ball on the ground is the fact that it’s just a movie. Yeah, there are serial killers, crazy people who do crazy stuff, but for the most part, these plots and stuff are nothing but fiction.

I guess the major parallel between these two things is that whole idea of demons and Hell. Everyone who has any knowledge in God and the Bible know that those who choose to reject Him will spend an eternity in Hell. We all have our own little images of Hell, whether it is hot, dark, or scary. I think what we end up losing, is the severity of this choice that we make. We make jokes about going to Hell, but I don’t think we really understand what it all means. Hell is a place of horrifying torment and a place that we can never escape. I want you to spend a moment and think of your biggest fear. Something that absolutely terrifies you. Then I want you to take that and multiply it by 1,000,000 because that is essentially what Hell is. Hell is full of demons (like the movie) and void of all peace, happiness, and worst of all, God. We live our lives with the hope that things will eventually get better. We know that no matter how crappy things are, there is hope that God will make things better. Hell has nothing like that. Hell is a place for hopelessness and hatred. I pray today that everyone who reads this understands that the choices we make today are HUGE! I don’t want you to come to know Jesus because of the fear of going to Hell, but I want you to become aware of how horrible that place is. I want you guys to truly get to know Jesus because despite our mistakes and failures, He is willing to do anything to spare us of an eternity there.  This is why I say the love He has for us is unlike anything we can imagine. Can you imagine being angry at someone and having the opportunity to punish them by sending to Hell? Most of us would jump at that opportunity, yet no matter how much we hurt or anger God, He still offers us grace and a chance to spend eternity with Him. I hope that you all get a moment to sit and really think about all of these words. Grasp the concept of Heaven and Hell and grasp concept of a God who loves us enough to allow us to make the choice. I love all of you guys and I hope you are able to have peace in the fact that you have given your life to Jesus. If you haven’t ever prayed that prayer and if you are really unsure if you are going to Heaven or not, please go to the “Need Jesus?” tab at our website (www.parkwayyouth.com) and get that fresh start today!

Epidemic

Hey what’s going on guys? Sorry again for the lack of posts the last few weeks, but here I am again. I hope all of you guys are doing well… I know I have been dealing with kind of cold/infection the last few days and I know I am not the only one to be dealing with it. Seriously, doesn’t it seem like some kind of epidemic is sweeping the city of Phoenix. Oh well, better get out there and get your flu shots.

Anyways, you know what I hate most about being sick? I hate the fact that you seem almost helpless. I have been sick to the point where I am curled up in a little ball in my bed and I just ache and it hurts to just move. Lately my throat has been hurting like crazy and it hurts to eat or drink, and it just makes you miserable. I know what I want to do, but because of this little bug inside my body, I just can’t seem to do it. I have been lethargic and exhausted, and I don’t even know why! Whenever you hear of people catching a cold, they always say something to the affect of “Oh man, I can’t get sick now. I have too much going on.” We live in a society that we lack a lot of stuff, but probably the biggest thing we seem to lack is time. We don’t even have time to keep ourselves healthy!

This scenario in a way reminds me of our relationship with God. Before accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we live our lives a certain way. A lot of the time, we live in a way that we think is fine, and this is because we don’t really know God and the standards that He has for us. If you have ever heard of someone who has been sick for an extended period of time, you will hear them talk about how they almost forget what it is like to be healthy again. This is the same thing with us and God. Before we get to know Him, we are completely satisfied with how our lives are. It isn’t until we actually get to know Him that we see the amazing love that He has for us. His love fills that place in our hearts that has always been empty. We spend our lives trying to stuff that space in our hearts with friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, drugs, sex, anything we can find so that we may feel whole. I didn’t grow up in church, and even when I came to know Jesus, I remember not feeling too much different, but looking back and seeing what God has done in my life, I am completely amazed! Still, even when we get to know Jesus, we still have moments when we can lose sight of Him and we fall into the same traps. We get sick, and we get lethargic about our faith, and it becomes harder to read the Bible, harder to pray and harder to go to church. A couple months ago, we talked about Paul and how he went from a murderer of Christians to one of the most influential people behind the entire Christian movement following Christ’s resurrection. Even after Paul came to know Jesus, and while he was preaching to thousands and seeing them come to know Jesus, he still went through these periods where he just didn’t feel right. Paul talks about this in Romans when he says “For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.” I think we all go through these periods when we decide to get serious, and we try to truly follow God only to once again fall short. We treat it almost like a New Year’s Resolution. We decide we are going to lose weight, and do well for 3 days, and then the moment we cheat once, we give up all together. All of us have that little bug inside of us called sin. This means that even when we do everything we can to stay on the right path, we will have moments of weakness and we will slip up. Everyone goes through this! Paul devoted his entire life to preaching the Word of God to people, and He went through this! If there is one thing I could say to you guys, it is that you cannot give up! Even when you think you have completely failed, you have to get back on the horse and keep trying. Not for my sake, or even for your sake necessarily, but for the sake of this world that needs you! This world needs people to stand up and be the model of a true Christian! When you slip up, instead of giving up, you need to try your best to get closer to God. We are all infected with sin, but our only medicine for this disease is Jesus. No amount of good deeds will ever rid your body of sin. The only thing we can do to get away from it is get closer to God and allow him to cleanse us and get rid of this sin. I hope that you guys can understand that you will mess up, man I still mess up A LOT! But that isn’t an excuse to give up on God. We all have good days and bad days, but in the end this world needs Jesus and some people’s only encounter with Him will be through you. This world needs you!

What’s This? A New Blog?!

Hey guys!!!! First off, let me apologize profusely (yup, big word, look it up) for getting behind on my blogs. I enjoy getting to write a little blurb that allows me to get stuff off my chest (or out of my heart) and hopefully you will get something out of it too!!! So without any further ado….

I am not sure if any of you guys had an opportunity to watch the UFC Pay Per View this past Saturday, and I am not sure if you are even into UFC, but I personally find it extremely entertaining. Now, before you begin to think of me as a sick and twisted person who delights in seeing others literally get pummeled to a bloody pulp, give me a second to explain. Growing up, I was never really in fights because I was always the big kid. I never really had to defend myself by using my hands, and for the most part I am very proud of that fact. I would never recommend fighting, and while self-defense can be necessary, I find that 95% of most fights can be prevented using a little common sense.

Anywho,  because I never really gotten into any fights throughout my life, I think to a certain extent I find myself living vicariously through these guys that step into the dreaded Octogon and fight for a seemingly meaningless title belt and bragging rights. There is just something about the dedication that it takes to become an ultimate fighter that gets to me. The blood, sweat and tears that one endures to eventually reach that level of toughness is what really interests me. I have always wanted to be completely pushed to my limits only to fight through the adversity and come away victorious. I think it is incredible to see a man get punched in the face to the point they can no longer see, only to come back months later and go through the same thing! What causes a person to do this?

The more I have thought of this, the easier it was for me to come to this answer: There is something inside of these fighters that makes everything they go through worth it. The broken limbs, the missing teeth, the concussions, they are all worth it if in the end, they stand victorious and at the top of their sport. If you joined us this past Wednesday, I touched on this a bit. How is it that I can walk down the street and stub my toe and find myself writhing on the floor in pain and cussing to myself (or aloud), yet a football player can dislocate his shoulder, only to return to the game moments later and help his team win “the big game?” Me stubbing my toe was for absolutely nothing, while the football player fights for a reason. It doesn’t matter if you or I find those reasons to be silly or insignificant. All that matters is that the passion that is inside of all of us is being fed.

These examples directly relate to what it means to truly follow Christ. I don’t mean going through the motions and playing the church game, I mean becoming a disciple of Christ. When you accept Jesus into your heart and he begins to clean up the stuff inside, you have actually begun a pretty rocky journey. It is weird, because you will have some good times, but for the most part it will seem that this whole “Jesus” thing actually makes your life harder! You have higher moral standards to live up to, people begin to place you under a microscope, and overall you experience some hard times. In the Bible, it actually says that you will be hated. The difference between playing the church game being a disciple of Christ is the same as stubbing your toe and playing in the Super Bowl. While the pain seems the same, one is almost meaningless, and one can be something you have worked your entire life for. When you begin to put Jesus #1 on your list of priorities, you will find that your passion for Him increases dramatically. It won’t be as difficult to follow His moral standards, pray to Him and read His Word. You do it almost subconsciously because your success in following Christ means the world to you. You will find that when people judge you or ridicule you, it doesn’t hurt as bad as it once did because you know the goal you are trying to reach: Dropping everything you have and following Jesus Christ with everything inside.

I pray that you guys can begin to truly look at your priorities, and begin to take steps to put Jesus #1 on that list. I honestly think that the closer you get to doing that, the more focused your life will become. And in the end, it will make the pains you go through (or are going through now) much worth it because you are working towards a greater goal: Eternal Life with our Creator.

Stupid Fake Sharks…

“…nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get it and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward.”

If you have known me for an extended period of time, then you probably know what some of my favorite movies are. I love older movies that I used to always watch with my Dad when I was growing up. I remember sitting with him and watching Jaws, which looking back now seems pretty cheesy, but I promise you at the time I would have bet anything that the shark was real. The entire Rocky series (well most of them) is another collection of movies that I could watch almost every day and still jump up and down like a little child when Rocky gets up after being knocked down and wins the title. There’s just something about Rocky that gets me pumped to run and get in shape and do things that most people wouldn’t believe I can do. Now as you probably have noticed, I haven’t ran nor gotten in shape yet, but I am still working on it. The quote above is from Rocky Balboa, and I have quoted it numerous times. I think it’s an amazing quote because it is so true. Nobody gets through this life unscathed. Regardless of what you see when you look at people, everyone goes through rough patches, everyone has been hurt, and everyone has scars. It’s a fact of life. What distinguishes the “successful” people from the “failures” is how they react to these adversities.

A lot of people have this “me against the world” mentality, which is good because there are many situations that you face where it will be you against the world. We have learned through the many life lessons of Rocky Balboa how to deal with these circumstances. But what about the situations you are in and the rough patches you face because of something you did? I think these situations are so much harder to deal with and get through because we just don’t really know how to react to them. It always seems that a situation is a lot easier to deal with when there is someone besides you to blame. As we talked about last night, when we make mistakes, it becomes this enormous piece of baggage that we just carry around with us. This baggage weighs us down and makes it hard for us to live our lives the way we would want to. Sometimes we carry this around as a form of punishment. We always know that there are consequences to our actions, so we just think that this baggage is part of those consequences. Maybe we don’t want to carry this baggage, yet we don’t know how to get rid of it.

The title of Wednesday night’s message was “God loves you in spite of yourself.” We read a story in Acts 9 about a guy names Saul who is radically changed by God,but wasn’t even looking for it. If we had to earn God’s love, we would never receive it, yet we don’t have to earn His love, it is given to us. All we have to do is stand up and take it! I want to challenge you this week to begin to look past your mistakes and look to God. God is here right now and wants to clean the slate on your life. He wants you to know that today is a new day and the past really doesn’t matter anymore. Despite your biggest efforts to do good but ultimately fail, God is standing there waiting to put the pieces back together. In order for us to start looking forward, we need to stop looking behind us.  I love you guys, come see us next Wednesday as we begin to learn more about how we can let go of the past and get rid of the baggage!

College Life

85. The percentage of college students that change their major at least once throughout their college careers. 4. The typical amount of years it takes one to graduate with a bachelor’s degree. 7. The amount of years it took me to graduate with a bachelor’s degree. The reason for this simple statistics lesson? Chances are, the career that you have picked out for yourself right now will probably change 3 or 4 times before you complete your college education.

When I was a junior in High School I already knew what my career was. I knew without any shadow of a doubt that I would be an architect. I loved the idea of designing various building for people, plus the money is pretty sweet too. I also thought it would be my way of stamping my legacy on society. I liked the idea of having stuff named after me so after I was dead, people would comment on my work and appreciate it. I enrolled at ASU and went through my first semester with flying colors. I was a week into my second semester when the realization hit me that architecture wasn’t for me. The program was extremely competitive, and while I was interested in architecture, I looked at the other “nerds” that made this their lives and realized I would probably never make it. I spent the following 2 years completing general classes and finally this spring I received my bachelor’s degree in Psychology, not architecture. If you had asked me 7 years ago if I would become a youth pastor and preach every week to a group of teenagers, I seriously would have called you crazy.

So what’s the point of my little statistics lesson and my story? You might have an idea of what you want to do with your life now, but that may change. I think as we grow and mature, our motives for things also grow and mature. A lot of times we choose career paths based on a pay scale rather than our level of happiness. As we grow up, we realize it should be the other way around. I may never make “architecture” kind of money by being a Youth Pastor, but I wake up everyday excited about what I do. I genuinely love all of the students I get to hang with while I didn’t plan my life this way, I wouldn’t change a thing.

Now, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t plan ahead and start thinking about what you want to do. There is no excuse for being lazy and uncaring about your future. That is the truth path to living an unsuccessful and unfulfilling life. As we talked about on Wednesday, it is vital to be prepared and focused on the future as well as the present. But as important as it is to be prepared, you must also be open to what God wants to show you and teach you. As much as you may not want to admit this, God knows you far better than you know yourself. In the book of Revelations, Jesus says “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door I will come in and eat with him and him with me.” It is incredible to me that we are constantly trying to get through this life alone when the very being that created it is there waiting to help us out. I really hope and pray for all of you (and myself) that we can begin to open that door and allow Jesus to enter our lives. If we can begin to trust in Him and allow Him to guide us through our lives, I have no doubt that we will know what to do with our lives, and we will be the happiest we could ever be. I love you guys and I can’t wait to see you guys this Wednesday!

Bumper Stickers

I really hope I don’t burst anybody’s bubbles this week, but I have an incredible piece of news for you all. Recently I have discovered that while some might view me as somewhat prestigious because of the position I hold in our church (I am being a bit sarcastic here), I am in fact not perfect. I will give you a few minutes to catch your breath because I know that just about knocked you off of your comfy computer chair. But seriously, I am not perfect. I realized this the other day while I was driving on the freeway. I am rarely in a hurry (as evident by the fact I am generally ten minutes late for virtually everything) but at the same time I enjoy going my 8 mph over the speed limit (I’ll show those tricky radar cameras). I was just driving and minding my own business when a car speeds up and proceeds to cut me off and then immediately slow down, leaving me startled and forced to take off the cruise control. All of my “Youth Pastorianism” jumped out the window as millions of angry thoughts ran through my head. I thought I would first tail gate him, then I decided I would speed up, get in front of him, then then throw a little smirk into my rear view mirror as I slow down to 45 mph. As the moment arrived where I was to carry out my plan, I noticed the lovely 105.5 K-Love window decal along with the Christian “Jesus Fish” sticker next to the chevrolet decal. Within an instant my anger was gone! I was laughing at this point of the obersity of treating another Christian in such a manor. He’s in the club!!!

This really got me thinking… How many of us share in these same experiences? We all walk around with our angry, bitter faces, then put on our happy “church” faces when we around Christian people. There is something comfortable in being around another Christian. For one, they already know Jesus (presumably) so I won’t have to argue with my small knowledge of the Bible. Two, I don’t have to worry about any sort of rejection.

Towards the end of Matthew, Jesus sends out these group of guys to share His love with the world. He tells them to “Make disciples of ALL nations…”. In order for them to complete this, they are going to have to venture out unto unknown territories and be around weird people. In looking at Jesus, He was painfully honest at times, but also beyond sympathetic and he never gave up on anyone. These are great characteristics of a friend, but these are insane characteristics of a human being. Jesus didn’t exude these characteristics to just His disciples, He acted this way to every person He encountered. He would show love to His disciples, but also to the town prostitute that everyone wanted to kill. In the world that we live in, people are skeptical of religion and tired of the facades. This world is not much different than the world Jesus walked through. Jesus was crazy and revolutionary! He would walk past the stuffy religious people to hang out with the mentally ill and the lepers. Now I believe that church is an amazing place for encouragement and everyone should be plugged into one, but that shouldn’t be the only place we carry our Bibles and say Jesus’ name.

The term Christian can be translated to “Christ-like”. I want to challenge everyone who calls themselves Christians (me included) to step out and begin to act like it. We all have friends and neighbors who are literally dying daily. People without any hope for the future. The suicide rates in this country are beyond evident of this. Jesus encountered these people and didn’t just tell them about hope, He gave them hope. Let’s show this world true love and let’s be the same revolution that Jesus was and still is. This world doesn’t need religion. While it can be important, this world doesn’t NEED you to have a Masters in Theology as well as the Bible memorized in 15 languages. This world needs love. Love that doesn’t come with a price tag or stipulations, but love that is unconditional. You can be the one to save a life today. Let’s all step out and love people today regardless of their window decals or taste in radio stations.

So with all that said, I have a challenge for you. I will give a Starbucks giftcard to the first person to e-mail or text me a picture of a K-Love or Air1 bumper sticker. You have until Wednesday so hurry! My e-mail is bavina@parkwaychurch.com or text me at 480.228.6135. See you guys Wednesday!!!

-Bobby

Welcome to Parkway Community Church

Parkway Student Ministries exists to share God’s love with others and encourage them to enter into a relationship with Jesus Christ. We do this by reaching the hurt and broken, restoring them by allowing God to heal their hearts, refreshing them by encouraging them to grow closer to Jesus, releasing them to love others in the same way, and rejoicing in the presence of our Savior Jesus Christ.
We have a service that is specifically designed for students. We have times of Praise and Worship Music, small groups that will give them the chance to discuss topics and interact with others, videos that also relate to various topics, a message that is relevant to what is going on in their lives today, followed by a time where they can receive prayer for things that they need God to help them with. We also activities that we do on 2 Saturdays throughout the month. These are times where we get to get off of the Parkway Campus and just go out and have fun. We do barbecues, picnics, volleyball, pool parties…pretty much anything that there is to do. We recommend that you bring a friend and come and hang out with us! Check the Upcoming events page to see what is going on this month! We also have classes on Sunday Morning at 9:30 for students of all ages. We watch videos, participate in times of discussion so that students get the chance to voice their opinions. We encourage that after those classes, they stay and participate in our Sunday Morning Worship Service. This service is for all ages and contains amazing Worship followed by a great message from our Lead Pastor, Ronnie McPhatter.