Expecting the Holy Spirit to show up at Youth Group

05 Mar 2013

Acts, Bible, Christ, God, Holy Spirit, Lord, spirit of power, Student, worship, youth group, youth ministry

by Ben Read

Confession: I’m sometimes very judgmental on Social Media.

When you post a picture of a Bible, a journal, and a cup of coffee and say “LOVE this time of my day” I write it off as fake.

When you post a picture of a Bible verse from youversion, I wonder if you only read the Bible to find a verse to post.

And when you post a picture of students with their hands up in worship and say “WOW WOW WOW the HOLY SPIRIT CAME” I wonder if he really did?

I’ve been wrestling a lot with the expectancy for the Holy Spirit to move at Youth Group. As a Youth Pastor, I’m the spiritual leader of our ministry. As a Father, I’m the spiritual leader of my son. As a Husband, I’m the spiritual leader of my wife and our family. I’ve been wrestling with the idea that the extent of expectancy I have for the Spirit to move in my ministry, my family is proportional to what he does.

Now hear what I’m saying, because as I read that, it seems like it could give the wrong impression. I believe the Spirit of the Lord moves when and how he wants, and no human can tell the Spirit what he can and can’t do.

But I wonder if there are things I do that limit the Power of the Spirit. I wonder if there’s things in my life that cut out room for the Spirit to be at work in my life as much as he could be.

I believe there are a number of ways we can and do limit the work of the Spirit, and I want to get through these things in my ministry. The simple Truth is that the Spirit of the Lord is present in our Youth Groups every week, but too often we get complacent with where we are, and that this complacency crushes our expectancy.

The first way we grow complacent is when we become familiar with what He has already done. If we’ve seen the Spirit work before, we expect him to move in that same way. Many of us have had an amazing night of worship and students just stayed singing and praying and confessing sins to each other and leaders, and lives changed! And now when we have a night of worship, we think we know what God wants to do, and when he doesn’t do it the same way he did before, we get disappointed because the Spirit didn’t “show up” that night. We get familiar with what he’s done, and quit looking for what he wants to do.

We let complacently squash expectations when we get Comfortable. Some of us go to churches that, if someone started praying in tongues during worship, it would be an awkward situation. If a student interrupted your message because they received a message from the Lord, that could lead to a very uncomfortable situation.

Not only that, but some of us have found a great routine for our programs. Doors open, students come in, we sing a song, we do announcements, we sing 2 more songs, we preach the message, and we close. If the Spirit showed up, we don’t actively think, when preparing our services, that God could move in it. We pray for the individual elements, but there’s no real expectancy of the power to be displayed.

I think that last part is directly correlated to the third way we lose expectancy, and that’s the unknown. I don’t know what would happen, what I would do or my students do, if a student stood up with a message from the Lord. When I read about the Acts of the Spirit in the early church, it seems so foreign to me, I wouldn’t know how to react to some of those things.

We lose expectancy because we haven’t seen the spirit truly move in our Youth Ministries before, so we have no idea what it would look like for it to happen.

So I’m praying for more reliance on the Spirit. I want to see crazy things happen in my Youth Ministry. There are students who need healing, be it emotional, spiritual, or physical, and I know only the Spirit can heal them. I want to see my students have hearts that are broken open and set on fire for sharing the gospel with their friends, and no message I preach can cause that to happen, only the spirit.

I don’t know how the Spirit is going to move, but I’m expecting him to.

Bio
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Ben Read

Youth Pastor in Boston | Co-Founder of at Youthmin.org

Ben Read is the Pastor of Students at Trinity Evangelical Church in North Reading, MA, just outside of the great city of Boston. He met his wife, Sarah, while they both were at Liberty University where he was a member of the National Champion Debate Team while studying Biblical Studies and Youth Ministry. They welcomed a son they lovingly refer to as BEAR this past November, who has stolen all of the attention away from their Black Lab, Max.

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http://twitter.com/Pastor_Tank Frank Gil

Took the words right our of my mouth! Wow good post.
http://revjohnson.wordpress.com/ Zachary Johnson

This was quite convicting…thank you for posting this…I just said that this weekend’s D-Now will be like every other event for my students…they’ll listen, but most of the time they will be on their phones and punching each other…but do I even expect the Holy Spirit to come…May you have your way this weekend God!
ainsworthstudio

So good Ben! So, so good.

I read a book several years ago where the author told a story about how she had been invited to speak at a large conference. There was absolutely nothing she felt led to speak at the event. She went to the event thinking the Lord would give her the words, he didn’t. She got up on the stage, still nothing. So she knelt down on stage and with the microphone said: “We are going to wait here until the Lord tells me what to say. Please pray for me.” She stayed kneeling there for 7 hours. 7! Finally the Lord gave her a sentence: “I love you!” When she spoke it, healing broke out in the room.

When I read that book I was so challenged by my own pride. Would I be willing to be the main speaker at a conference of 10,000+ people and do nothing but kneel on the platform for 7 hours? The conviction was what you wrote: “What am I doing that is standing in the way of God moving.”

Pride sucks, lets get rid of it. We are called to live a life of humility and thanksgiving in recognition of God’s high position and our low position. Not saying you’re filled with pride, saying that pride would cause me/us to not be willing to sit for 7 hours and wait.
http://www.facebook.com/beth.thorne1 Beth Thorne

Wow! Thank you for giving me something to ponder over. Too many times we forget that the Holy Spirit doesn’t always move the same way. It reminds me of all the battles in the Old Testament. God always determined the outcome of the battle, but He never delivered them the same way. When they tried to do it the way they wanted, their were always problems.
http://twitter.com/justinknowles3 Justin Knowles

Great, great stuff dude. We are creatures of habit and we like to think we know how God is going to do whatever He is going to do. That’s why we need to shake up services a bit. Do something you never have done before. Mix it up. Allow you to trust on God because we then don’t know what to expect. Reading a book called “Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire” by Jim Cymbola, all about the Holy Spirit in church services. I would recommend it.
Jordan Boley

Hi Ben,

Josh tagged me and asked me to comment. I’d say first know, accept, and enjoy the truth that God loves you, likes to have fun, and wants to see the Holy Spirit move in your youth group in an awesome way. The second thing that comes to mind is get in a habit of hungry, thirsty, and zealous pursuit of God by your self, with no interruptions. The agenda isn’t to pray all about what you’re doing and assigned to but rather your agenda is just to worship God and find out more and more how awesome he is. Out of that place, God will use you like a lightning rod in your meetings.

But when you pray, GO into your ROOM, CLOSE the door behind you and pray to your father in heaven, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, WILL REWARD you. Matthew 6:6
Shawn MacKay

Good stuff, man. Love this. I pray God answers your prayer.
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