Your Kids...God's Word

Brian Martin

**Personalmente, Yo creo que alguna cosa mágica sucede al oír la sagrada escritura del dios. Por eso les presento a Salmo veintitrés en español. .
Salmo 23
1 Jehova es mi pastor; nada me faltará.
2 En lugares de delicados pastos me hará yacer: Junto á aguas de reposo me pastoreará.
3 Confortará mi alma; Guiárame por sendas de justicia por amor de su nombre.
4 Aunque ande en valle de sombra de muerte, No temeré mal alguno; porque tú estarás conmigo: Tu vara y tu cayado me infundirán aliento.
5 Aderezarás mesa delante de mí, en presencia de mis angustiadores: Ungiste mi cabeza con aceite: mi copa está rebosando.
6 Ciertamente el bien y la misericordia me seguirán todos los días de mi vida: Y en la casa de Jehová moraré por largos días.

**Personally, I believe that something magical happenes when one listens to the word of god in a different language. Therefore i present to you Psalm 23 in spanish.

Claudia Mehranbod

Ephesians 4:21-24 If indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: That you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind,
and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.

This verse to me had a lot of meaning from my transition of having God enter and be a great part of my life. It means that when you have heard about Christ and were taught to agree with the truth that is in Jesus. You were taught to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by deceitful desires. To be made a new attitude of your minds, to make a new you, created to be like God; Righteous and Holy.

Before I started coming to St. Andrews, God wasn’t part of my everyday life. I would go to church maybe 3 times a year and I kind of pushed God away from me. It wasn’t until the 3rd or 4th Pipeline I realized that I started connecting with Christ. When I would pray or even sing, I felt this connection that God was telling me what to do. It started becoming an everyday routine to pray and connect with him. Its now been a year and a half I have started coming to St. Andrews and every second of my junior high experience has been amazing, adventurous, and most definitely Fun! Ephesians 4: 21- 24 is a great discription of what I have gone through since last January of 2009. I have heard God talking to me and he has taught me so much. My old self is left behind and my new self has God as a main part of my life.

Anna Nicles 


Basically, when I volunteered to give the talk for 8th grade pipeline I decided that I wanted to cover what I most toke away from Junior High. So, looking back at all the talks and discussions that I’ve listened to at pipeline, small group and camp the talks that stood out the most all sort of narrowed down to one topic. That topic goes along with my favorite verse which is Matthew 5:14-16 which reads,
14"You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. 15Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 16In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.
This verse pretty much covers what it is God asks us to do and what are responsibilities we have as Christians. The first part of the verse is pretty much defined from a quote that I read in a book I read and the which,
“light transforms darkness. We’re all a bunch of light bulbs. We just hang there, and when God’s power comes on it’s amazing. The darkness is transformed into something spectacular especially when we stay connected together, to each other”
Throughout the junior high program it became very clear to me that God will flip the switch in your life on his own time. For a while I was so anxious to have a strong relationship with God like my leaders and some of the older students had but God has very interesting timing. For some people, God flips the switch earlier that others. He may not have done it yet or maybe he already has. Some of us could still be dark and some of us still flickering on. I’m still flickering but I know I’m almost to my absolute brightness and that makes me so excited.
The second part of Matthew 5 says
15Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.
In this verse God asks us not to hide our faith but to share it with the world. It’s really difficult for me to show my friends and people at school that I’m a Christian. I struggle with it a lot. But what I’ve realized is the more I stay connected to church the better Christian I become. Just continuing to come to small groups and pipelines for a couple hours out of our busy weeks can go so far and it affects the choices you make and your actions so much. I’ve chosen to surround myself with the people at church who influence me in a positive way and bring me up. And the more time spend here the more influence the leaders and other students have on me which eventually plays into my life at school and relationships with other people. So for my words of wisdom, don’t stop coming to church. The relationships we make here are so important and crucial to the way we turn out.