what do i do after i share the gospel?

Of all the hard things God has been teaching me, this topic was less of a hard lesson to learn and more of reminder to be thankful for such a blessing:

Currently, my main ministry is high school kids.

I started youth ministry with a handful of 7th graders. Most of them stared at me while I talked their ears off and pretended to communicate. We had an unspoken exchange of favors: I got them out of their house, or helped them avoid taking the bus home by picking them up from school, and they pretended to listen to me. Sometimes, I think they actually did listen to me, and that sweetened the deal for me a little bit.

Youth Ministry has been a really great ministry for me to be in for several reasons, but one in particular being that I am more well-suited to people coming to me to hear about God. (I'm just being honest, here-and I'm always going to have something wrong with me, so judge me and move on, ok? :)

Anyway, after almost four years, I'm now leading mostly sophomores (I've known some of my girls since 7th grade) and I feel like I'm a decent small group leader. I really like it at least. I really love hanging out with all of my girls. I love getting to know their worlds, their friends, their point of views. It's amazing.

Due to my involvement with high schoolers, I've been thinking a lot lately about the answer to the title of the this post: discipleship. If I don't have any talent at all in evangelism as I implied above, I do think God has given me a heart to disciple.

Mostly, I love discipling students because I myself am learning so much about how to live with Jesus as my Lord and these kinds of lessons naturally want to overflow from my talkative mouth. Another aspect I love is that there are very few ways to mess it up. All you have to do is live life with them, challenge them (and be challenged by them), and love them.

The rewards are wonderful, amazing even, to watch a kid blossom each day, week, month, year.

Watching the light bulb above someone's head flick on is so fun. But in discipleship, I get to see that so often, all while my own light bulbs are flicking on.

Thanks, God, for blessing me with such an amazing group of girls to love: Anna, Katey, Sirena, Hana, Ellen, Kayla & Shelby. *oh crap, here come the tears* I'm REALLY going to miss all of them when we move to Iowa City. But I'm very thankful we have eachother now.


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