Yesterday, we had another youth worship. Probably hundreds of teens were invited by me or by other teens and youth pastors, but I never know how many will come until seven o clock that Saturday..The crowds had been low, but I was praying for a good turn out because we had put together a skit to perform. Thankfully, this was one of our best turnouts in spite of the road construction that makes it nearly impossible to get to the church. We did the famous wordless skit done to Lifehouse’s song “Everything”. It depicts a girl out of fellowship with Jesus. She is chasing the things of this world such as: boyfriends, money, alcohol, and the desire to be thin. Once she is at the end of her rope, she is tempted to take her own life. A dark caped character comes creeping in (played by me). I hand her a knife and convince her to cut herself. Then I wrestle her some and put a gun in her hand and lift it to her head. The whole time Jesus is on stage right waving his arms at her, trying to get her attention. She now has the gun to her head as the music builds. When the music blasts “Cause you’re all I want, You’re all I need, You’re everything, everything”, she throws down the gun and tries to run to Jesus. It gets pretty violent as each character that represented the boyfriend, money, alcohol, anorexia, and demon, try to pull her away from Jesus. This fight goes on for a while until she drops to her knees, that is when Jesus steps in and becomes her mighty fortress not allowing those influences to reach her any more. When done right, this is a very powerful skit.

A half hour before people began showing up, we practiced it one more time for the video camera. As we watched the video, we seen how we needed to use the minimal lights that we had to our advantage to get our point across. So we used what lights we had to emphasis what was going on. A strobe light was used at the peak when the violent fight began as she tried to get to Jesus. A lot of light came on when Jesus stepped in to protect her and then a flash from my eight hundred watt construction lights blasted when Jesus threw off all the characters that represented the ways of this world. I felt that the skit went really well, but you not sure until you see it on video. After we got home late last night, we plugged in the camera to see if our contrast of light and dark made the difference that we were looking for. I believe it worked really well and it was very moving to watch.

I spoke on Psalm 27. It is a beautiful psalm that shows that a relationship with God can bring a confidence that chase’s away any fear. This psalm shows God as a light that drives the anxieties and dangers of the darkness. The one thing that David seeks after is “to see the beauty of the Lord and to meditate in His temple (v. 4)” David figured out that God is “all I want, He is all I need, He is everything, everything”.

I wanted to show the group there that they could have that same confidence that David had, but they must have a relationship with Jesus. So I used John eight, when Jesus said “I am the light of the world”. “In the court of the women in the Temple were four golden candelabra that were lit in the evening during the Feast of the Tabernacles. It was said that there were not a courtyard in Jerusalem that did not reflect the light (Sukkah 5.2)”. These candelabras represented the Shekinah Glory, so while the memories of the Feast of the Tabernacles was still fresh in the Jews minds. Jesus walks into the temple and makes the statement in John 8:12, “I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.” (nasb) It is an awesome picture showing the deity of Christ. Jesus comes into this dark world as the “light” that reveals our sin and brings salvation to those who are walking in darkness. My prayer was that everyone that left that place seen Jesus and that they were able to say that “You’re all I want, You’re all I need, You’re everything, everything”.