Sticking 2 it in ’07

I wanted to remind all of you that were at winter camp (and give those of you who weren’t a glimpse and challenge) of the messages that you heard and the decisions that you made. Decisions are good and can change your life, but just saying them isn’t making them. You need to come home from camp and live them. James says over and over again in James 2 that “Faith without works is dead, being alone.”

If you said you would do something at camp, have you done it? Or are your words “faith” that is dead? If you didn’t make a decision at camp and wish you had, you don’t have to wait until summer to change the way you are living. I love the parable that Jesus gives the Pharisees in Matthew 21:28-31. Two sons were asked of their father to work in the field, one said "yes," but didn’t go; the other said "no," but when he thought about it, he went and worked. Which did the father’s will? Even though camp is over you can do God’s will. Let that be a warning to those of you who did make decisions and haven’t kept them. “The publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you.” It would have been better for you not to make a decision (although that would have in itself been direct disobedience to God) than for you to make it and not keep it.

Take hope as you go: “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; Which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior;” (Titus 5-6).