Friday, December 01, 2006

"Freedom Speakers"

I would like to say thanks for taking the time to come to read my thoughts. I hope you get something out of them as you read them.
Well this Friday, at Rainstorm Youth Ministry I talked about sharing your story. We then gave the chance for someone to come up and share his story. This guy has been coming out for four months now. He had been in a relationship Christ for about four months. This Friday was his last week with us. The family that he lives with moving to B.C. first they are going to do some traveling down in the U.S.A. (that is not the reason for the picture, I will explain later) It has been a great honour to get to know this family, and they youth. They will be missed.
Before we had him come up and share his story. I just talked a bit about sharing your story. There was this verse in the Bible I came across as I reading someone else's blog this week. She had Psalms 107 down at the bottom of her blog. So I looked the verse up and I used verse 2. It says:

"All of you set free by God, tell the world!
Tell how he freed you from oppression" (Ps. 107:2 MSG)

When I read that this week I was like that is awesome we need to share that God has set us free, and we need to tell the world this. So the U.S.A has freedom fries and they have freedom fighters, we can be known as freedom speakers. People that go around telling the world that God has freedom them from different things and the relationship we have with Him. I want to be known as a freedom speaker what about you?

We have to say goodbye to this family this week. And this Sunday we are going to be baptising three from the family 2 girls and one guy. Not only we will be baptising these ones but also two more (one guy and one girl). It has been great getting to know this youth and young adults and seeing some of them start a relationship with God in the past few months, and seeing some of the continue with the relationship they have with Him. It is great to see these youth and young adults doing this, it is a honour to know these young people and to have been a part of this it have been awesome. So this Sunday I will be getting in a hot tub (much like this one)
and hear about their relationship with God and then I will get to dunk of the guys. I found out today it will be awesome, because the guys I am dunking, started coming out to Rainstorm when he was invited to Undertow, which is a faith-club I lead at a local high school in Dundas. He was then invited out to a event at Rainstorm a coffee house we did at the end of June. It started coming out on a week to week after that. He also attend Ignite our young adults small group. He then left and went to Ottawa to attend a school their. So we have not seen him since he left. We have talked to him on msn. It will be sweet to see him again. It is awesome to see when people start a relationship with God and you talk to them about it. After this guy left he sent a card to the church, the card was read by the pastor on Sunday morning during his talk. The guy said my name and the impact on had on his journey towards starting this relationship with God, and how me and another lead helped him with stuff about God. When I heard this I started crying. He talked about the impact Rainstorm had on his journey too. So this Friday at Rainstorm we celebrated that he is coming home to do this, and the other people that entered into a relationship with God the past few months. It is great to see when young people do this, and we at Rainstorm can fulfill our mission statement: To produce young people of passion - pursuing Christ!

Maybe you have read this and you say to yourself I have not started a relationship with God yet, that's cool each person is on a journey. I want you to know that if you have question feel free to email me and ask away.
If you are in a relationship with God but you it has broken down somewhere I would like to get together with you and talk about it, you can also email me.

Sorry for the blog being so long, I know the last time have been short. I want to try to keep them short so I am sorry. But I think you know why it is so long.

Thanks
Howden Matt Howden

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey matty!
So true so true!! as lawyas very good blog...and i am soo happy for everyone who got baptized its amazing what God is doing in the lives of teens!!
much love matty...good job!
-abbey<3

Jade Kenyamanyara said...

Hey Matt! awesome blog. i feel like i haven't talked to you in a while, sorry, i've been very busy. but i am doing super! i hope you are too, it sounds like it. i'm so happy that the baptism service was happening and i trust that it went well. i wish i could have been there. pass my love on to everyone!
talk soon!
jade