Gap Year Internships - why you should encourage them!

GAP YEAR Internships

Young people in our churches face an enormous challenge when they finish college and head off to uni. Many churches and parents lament the fact that when their young people leave Home and church for uni, they also leave the Church and God for the world! The story is so common it is tragic.

But it is hardly surprising. Uni is a very hostile environment for a young Christian. Both Brighton and Sussex university boast a great, 24/7 party life in the city with cheap booze, alternative lifestyles and total acceptance - literally, anything goes! The slogan of Sussex uni is ‘Be Still and Know’. They have deliberately left off ‘That I am God’. Sussex uni was one of the first universities to be built on secular humanist values.

Think about it, we take a teenager who has lived at home all their life, been part of a stable Christian family and church, with friends and family within the church where they get lots of support and encouragement in their faith, we then thrust them out, away from just about every bit of support they have ever known, into a totally strange environment, with strangers all around them, with no restraints except their own will - and the environment is friendly in just about every way except one - it is totally, completely and openly hostile to their christian faith. That is not an exaggeration. 

Of course they are desperate to make friends - and you don’t make friends by being a wet blanket. The only way to make friends is to fit in, be one of them, go out with them - just be like everyone else - or be isolated. (Of course their is the CU - but these vary in quality from year to year and are not the local church.)

Then, they secretly seek out a church on Sunday where they find a welcome, but everything is different there. Not many people their age if any. It is another place where they feel awkward and don’t really fit in. The difference between church and uni, is that church is one awkward place they don’t have to go to.

University life is hard enough to adjust to; new people, new classes and learning, a whole new city. To have to go church hunting and try to fit in there too, on top of everything else can just be too much.

It is no wonder our young people go off the rails - we hardly give them a chance, it really is sink or swim, and for far, far too many it is sink!

Brothers and sister, we cannot afford to keep throwing our sheep to the wolves without preparation and protection! Is there anything we can do to help?

Gap-Year Internships on Site

I believe it basic common sense to encourage every 'student to be', to first go to the city of their university and spend a year as an intern with a local church.

This has great advantages.

1. It serves the city they will go to and benefit from.
2. It provides a  strong theological foundation for the student.
3. It give them an opportunity to really focus on God and getting deep roots down into a local church.
4. It give them a head start in getting to know the city and the culture.
5. It enables them to establish strong, gospel relationships with christian friends and church family that will help them through the coming years.

The five points above also mean the student will be more influential than their peers when they start. They will feel more confident and will not have to start searching for a local church when they arrive. As they begin uni, they will have a church family and key friends and mentors who can help them navigate the gauntlet of temptation that university life throws up.

These are some of the reasons we at New Life Brighton offer a Gap Year internship for those planning to study in Brighton. We believe it is basic wisdom to do so. If you know anyone thinking about studying in Brighton, why not encourage them to first do an internship with us? While you’re at it, work on making it part of your church culture that students seek out Gap Year internships in the relevant city.

To find out more, contact me: jrebera.nlc@gmail.com

What kind of God Allows Suffering #2

In my last blog I introduced this subject, you should read the one first if you haven't already. In this blog we begin to see God's perspective on this world. We could not know God's perspective, but He has revealed it in the Bible so that we can know and understand. The Bible reveals the following ... 

1) God created a good world. In Genesis 1, we are told five times that God created this world GOOD. That means, He is responsible for creating a GOOD world and NOT a war-torn, famished, polluted, broken, disease-ridden, messed up, chaotic world of pain and misery. There was none of that in the world He created, nothing in it to spoil it. No sickness, suffering, disease, disaster or death, no human wickedness, no injustice, no pain - just good - that is the world God created. If we are going to complain about the Christian God - then we cannot attribute the creation of a messed up world to Him - that is not the God of the Bible. He created a good world.

2) God created the first ever human couple, Adam and Eve. Their life (like ours) came from God and was sustained by Him. He provided for them a beautiful, harmonious and pristine world to live in and it was only good in every way. He literally provided everything for them!

3) Now this next bit people often don’t like, but it has to be said because it is just true. That is, because He created everything Himself, including Adam and Eve, He rightfully owns everything. He owned Adam and Eve. In fact, since we were all "In Adam", God rightfully owns you and me too. We are not our own, we did not make ourselves. Back to Adam and Eve ... And because He owned them, He had every right to give them His law - and He did. The law was, 

“You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” 

(Genesis 2:16,17)

4) This law was not hard to keep. The fruit from just one tree in the whole world was forbidden. They had everything else. God made everything, He is perfectly right to reserve anything He makes for Himself, since it is His in the first place, He is not obliged to give us absolutely everything and it is unreasonable and ungrateful to expect everything. But anyway, God never gave that rule for nothing. 

5) In giving this rule or law, God did a number of important things.

a) God exercised His authority. God is God! We should obey Him simply because He is the Authority. Our godless, modern thinking hates authority. The idea that we should obey someone just because of who they are strikes at the our prideful hearts. “Give me one good reason why I should obey you!” we say. God’s answer is simple, “Because I Am GOD!”. The Bible tells us that by His word He created the heavens and the earth. Imagine the power of His word. That we would dare defy, reject and rebel against Him would be laughable if it was not so dangerous. We should obey, simply because God has spoken.

b) This rule was necessary for Adam and Eve’s humanity. The fact that God gave them a command, meant that they had a choice about obeying God or not. We have that choice today. There are two reasons parents want their own children to obey them. 

(1) Because parents love their children. The rules parents give are to keep their beloved children safe and for their ultimate flourishing. 

(2) Parents want children to obey them, because the obedience of a child to a parent is an expression of trust in the parent. That is to say, the child obeys because the child loves the parent. Imagine your child only obeyed you because they had no other option. The very fact that they can go against you but choose not to, speaks of their love and appreciation of you. They freely choose you.

That is what God’s law enabled Adam and Eve to do.

5) He gave them the choice of living in that pristine world under His rule and authority, or they could reject His authority. But to reject God’s authority is to reject God Himself, because He is ultimate authority. 

To reject His authority is to take control of our own lives with ourselves as the highest authority. We become God’s of our own lives - the Bible calls this idolatry. We cannot do that without taking control of God’s world too - because, we carry out our defiance and rebellion by doing what we want in His world and with His world - as if it is ours to do as we please. 

The problem here is, though we (human kind) want to act like we are gods, we are not. The truth is, we cannot govern and control this world with justice and in harmony. We cannot sustain it or hold it together. Our limited power, wisdom and understanding means we are ignorant of how to govern this world and our universe. That is why we have so completely trashed it. That is why there is so much human misery. The world is falling apart and so are we. 

It is a strange thing but, this world is in desperate need of God to intervene, yet still mankind denies and rejects Him. No wonder the Martyrs in the book of Revelation cry out … “How long O Lord, How long?” 

Part 3 to follow soon.

What kind of God allows Suffering?

All Suffer
Suffering comes to us all. Possibly the worst kind is the truly heart wrenching experience of helplessly seeing our loved ones suffer. How quickly we would swap places with them. Have you ever experienced that kind of suffering? Do you know what it is to feel pain? Physical? Emotional? Mental? Heart wrenching pain?

What Kind of God?
The sad truth is, the only qualification for experiencing suffering is that we live long enough. Isn't that true? When faced with such cruelty, it is understandable that people blame God. What kind of a God does this kind of thing? What kind of God allows this kind of thing?

Unsurprisingly, the answer most people come to is that God is cruel and unjust, or there is no God. You'll doubtless agree with me that, it is easy to see why millions of people would say that. The thing is, I would entirely agree with them, they would be right ... but only if this life is all there is. 

If there is a God and this life is all there is, then God is unjust, uncaring and pointless. If there is no God at all, then this life is all there is and life is pretty wicked in the evil sense. Hitler, Fred West and the 911 bombers get the same reward as you and I.

More to it
But, there is so much more to it than that. There is a God, and he does care for you very much, so much more than you know, and he makes the world of difference. The problem is, we cannot see it for ourselves, so God has revealed it to us in the scriptures as we will see in a future blog. But for now, let me explain two things God does now.

A Devoted Friend
I love the 'Lord of the Rings". Frodo sets out on an epic journey. The journey has a purpose (destroy the ring) and destination, to take the ring to Mount Doom in Mordor where the ring can be destroyed. The journey is perilous. Frodo endures many hardships, but also experiences laughter, he sees much bloodshed, but also great courage and nobility, he sees much evil, but much good too, watches loved ones slain in the battle and experiences many sorrows, but the sorrows are because of the of loved ones lost, the pain is at the loss of loyal friends. Isn't this like life?

JRR Tolkien was a devout Christian and it is easy to see the influence of his faith in the Lord of the Rings. Frodo is not spared the hurt and pain of the journey, neither are we, but the journey is made more bearable by Samwise Gamgee. Frodo is not alone on the Journey. Samwise is his devoted friend who shares in all Frodo's trials. Frodo knows that Samwise, his devoted friend knows. What tremendous comfort, to have someone we can talk with at any time, who knows exactly what we are experiencing. However, there is a point where Samwise must leave Frodo and Frodo is alone.

This is why Samwise is just a shadow of what God does. God does not spare us the pain of the journey. We cannot avoid it. But the pain is so much harder to bear when we feel our aloneness in it. The promise of Jesus is that, unlike Samwise, Jesus walks with us through it all, he shares in our pain and suffering, experiencing it with us. He is an ever-present comfort in times of trouble so that we need not be alone.

Jesus promises His friends in John 14 ...

15 “If you love me, keep my commands. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another comforter to help you and be with you forever— 17 the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. 18 I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.

In this way, by His Spirit, Jesus Himself promises to comfort and strengthens us, He gives us real hope - but the promise is for those who love and obey Him. That is not to say that He doesn't care about those who do not love and obey Him, but of course he will not force Himself on those that don't love Him, that don't want Him. If you don't want Him in your life, He respects that. 

Of course what we want though, is for God to be our servant. A kind of divine waiter. We want Him to stay out of our way while we enjoy our lives, but when we want something we click our fingers and God the waiter to dutifully come at our beck and call. When He doesn't we get angry with Him. But God is not merely our 'Waiter' who runs to our beck and call, He is not there just to be used by us, He is God, and if we shut Him out of our lives, it seems ironic that we then blame Him for not being there.

And the condition of obedience is simply because, if we don't trust and obey Him, He cannot help us - remember, He doesn't force us to trust and obey Him, but He wants us to. Like a small child standing on the kerb of a busy road with cars rushing by, the child is wise to take the hand of a loving parent who can get hm to the other side, but the child must trust and obey that parent to get safely to the other side. But if we are like the child that refuses to trust and obey, that thinks he knows best and insists on going his own way, the Lord allows us to do so, sadly with tragic consequences. Jesus does not want that, He wants us to trust and obey Him.

A Worthy Reward
The second thing God does is to show us what His overall purpose is. It is easier to endure hardship and pain when we know it is worth while. In a superficial way we see this in everyday life. Think about how dull and dreary work is for many people. BUT ... it does become easier if there is purpose in our work. Perhaps we are saving for a holiday in the sun. At lunch time we might look at brochures or go online to explore the hotel, the beeches or nightlife we are looking forward to. The work we're doing, as dull as it is, is what makes the holiday possible. The harder we work, the longer and more enjoyable the holiday - it is worth it!

Of course there are many people who squander all their money on cigarettes and other lesser things so have nothing to show for their work - and never get that holiday because they spent their money on sweeties! We cannot avoid suffering, but it need not be in vain. There is purpose in it all. Even in the helplessness of watching a loved one suffer - we will see How God specifically knows that pain, and how there can be purpose even in that if we will trust, obey and love Jesus.

The Apostle Paul knew about God's purposes and so invested His life in them. As a direct result he suffered intensely, but was able to write ...

1 Corinthians 4

17 For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.

It's not that Paul didn't truly suffer, he did, read the scriptures and you will be left in no doubt about that, but compared with the 'eternal glory' to come, his intense sufferings were light and momentary. Paul understood that when we trust In Jesus, all suffering passes along with this brief life, and God will give an eternal reward that "far outweighs them all".

As the old Hymn goes ...

"Strength for today, bright hope for tomorrow

Blessings all mine with ten thousand beside.

Great is Thy faithfulness!"

In my next blog I will explain what God has actually revealed, that we need to know if we are to make sense of suffering.