Christy and I spent this past week in Chicago serving our Missionaries there along with some of our high school and college folks. Here are a few pics I took one night with the iPhone:

The Best God in the World

Last week some folks in our church gave up a whole week just to love on the kids in our church and give them five days in a row of fun, laughter and partying in Jesus’ name. Whoa, it looked like a BLAST! Everyday my kids came home so pumped, so worn out and so totally in love with Jesus! Man, you can’t beat that. There were sandboxes, homemade t-shirts, cheers, delicious food, a bounce house, a giant slip n’ slide and about a million water balloons and the whole thing went down under the umbrella of loving Jesus... not only that, but it meant that the moms of those kids got five days off from being total, full-time moms! Man, everybody wins!

During the week, all the kids put together a little something that they wanted to present at church during the worship service. It was their version of something called ‘Cardboard Testimonies’ where traditionally, a person will basically tell their whole story in about 15 seconds, using two sides of a big piece of cardboard. One side says, “I used to be this.” or, “I used to do that.” and then they flip the cardboard over and it tells how Jesus changed their lives... well, five-year-olds don’t really have too much of that sort of thing to share about, so they just made their testimonies about “Why I Love Jesus.” Each little kid held a big board that said, “I love Jesus because...” on one side, then they flipped it over and the cards said things like, “He made the world” or, “He let my Mommy have a baby” or “He loves me.”

They were all really cute, and I even got choked up a bit when Anna and Norah flipped their little signs, displaying their sweet love for Jesus for all to see, but my favorite cardboard testimony that morning was written by a little girl named Bethany. She walked to the front of the stage, held up her sign that read, “I love Jesus because...” and then flipped it over and it read “He’s the BEST God in the whole world.”

Wow. I’ve been thinking about that unbelievable bit of theological insight ever since Sunday morning! There are so many things in this world that are trying to be like gods... so many things making promises to fill you up, give you life, tell you you’re important, and on and on, but they can’t deliver! How often do we expect things other than God to do things for us that only God can do?! We think money will make us feel important. We think the right job or the best houses and cars will make us feel like our life has real meaning. We think that government or a specific party or ideology can meet our needs. We think certain relationships will tell us we are loved and wanted and yet, none of these things can really, truly fill us up! None of these things can do for us what Jesus can! There are many things in this world making promises, many things acting like ‘gods’ but only One can really be God. Of all the ‘gods’ in this world, only One can really fill you up! As Bethany said, Jesus is “the BEST God in the whole world.”

Psalm 48 put it this way, “This God will be our God forever and ever, He will be our Guide even to the end.”