Heavy Load

Have you ever had a really stressful day? Or maybe been stuck in the middle of lots of different problems? Maybe you have been in a place where you feel like what you are going through is a little too heavy. All of us have experienced days and moments when you felt like you couldn't go on one more second because of everything you were holding up all on your own. On days like those, it can seem like life is a little overwhelming.

Mother Teresa once said "I know God won't give me anything I can't handle, I just wish he didn't trust me so much!" Some days we start to feel like there is too much resting on us and we just cannot go on. So what do you do then? When the world and the life you are leading are weighing you down past what you can carry?

1 Peter 5:7 says:
Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you.

When you feel like you are holding up too much, lay it down. Stop trying to hold it all up on your own. We are weak and fragile and we cannot, and were not created to, take care of everything on our own. We have to lay it down and let God take control of everything.

Psalm 146:8 says:
The Lord lifts up those who are weighed down.

If you are weighed down today, leave everything with God. He is big enough, strong enough, and steady enough to hold it. He won't drop it, he won't give it back when it gets even heavier, and he won't let us down along the way.

Psalm 145:14
The Lord helps the fallen and lifts those bent beneath their loads.

Our God is our help in time of need, our strong tower, and our shelter. So why do we, his Children, continue trying to take care of everything on our own? Or worse yet, give everything to God to take care of, only to continue going back to all of it and picking it up again. When you tell God you trust him to handle things, then continue worrying about them or trying to fix them on your own, you tell God you don't think he is strong enough to fix it himself.

Matthew 6:34
Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don't get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.

When you have the God of the universe, the creator of all things on your side... Why do you keep trying to take care of things on your own? If your life is too heavy, lay down your load to the one who has always been holding it up anyway.

-Pastor Kayla

Keep On Running

Philippians 3:12-14 "I have not yet reached my goal, and I am not perfect. But Christ has taken hold of me. So I keep on running and struggling to take hold of the prize. My friends, I don't feel I have already arrived. But I forget what is behind, and I struggle for what is ahead. I run toward the goal, so I can win the prize of being called to heaven. This is the prize God offers because of what Christ Jesus has done."

Today, in this morning's message and even our Sunday night Connect Group, the scripture above kept rolling through my head. Sometimes as Christians its easy for us to get discouraged. Sometimes we even consider quitting, sometimes we get so down that we want to walk away from church.

Tonight, God has placed in my heart to write a blog entitled "Keep On Running". As I mentioned above, often we can find ourselves at a place where we find ourselves wanting to quit.

One of the biggest oppositions we face is change. If it's a change financially or a change in our family, change can bring frustration and discouragement to someone who has been "running the race". If you have ever ran a long distance race or even a short distance race, you will find that focus and determination is key. We must focus on our goals and the reason we are running and we must be determined to finish.

In our Christian walk change can trip us up, throw us off the track and even distract us from our focus. And soon thereafter when we allow ourselves to be "side tracked" we start to slow down. The race becomes the walk. The walk becomes the crawl and eventually it becomes your loss and failure to finish the race that you started. You lose and the devil wins.

Today, more than ever God wants to tell you this; it's worth it. The race you are running, the position you are in, the job you have currently have, the family member you are currently helping... It's worth it. Because that race you are running, this life you are living is for him, its his calling on your life and the race you are in it's worth the prize you will receive in the end.

I would like to post the same scripture above along with the verses following and in the Message translation.

Philippians 3:12-16

I'm not saying that I have this all together, that I have it made. But I am well on my way, reaching out for Christ, who has so wondrously reached out for me. Friends, don't get me wrong: By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I've got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward—to Jesus. I'm off and running, and I'm not turning back. So let's keep focused on that goal, those of us who want everything God has for us. If any of you have something else in mind, something less than total commitment, God will clear your blurred vision—you'll see it yet! Now that we're on the right track, let's stay on it.

 

Today, I pray as you read this blog that the scripture in it begins to resonate in your heart, in your mind and in your soul. Keep on the right track. stay focused on the prize and at the end of the race. Keep on running and remember it's worth it. You are worth it! The people you are ministering to and helping, are worth it and the prize of an eternity in heaven with Jesus Christ will be worth it all.

Check out this song/video by Rita Springer "Worth It All"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQVmR0jV52A

Pastor Phil Keller
Youth Pastor at One Way Student Ministries
Located in New Caney, Texas
Please visit our web site at www.onewaysm.org

One Way Service TONIGHT!!!

We are trying to get everyone AMP'D up about tonight's service at One Way!!!!!
Service begins at 7pm and students are welcome to come early starting at 6:15pm for activities, basketball, games, food and hanging out!

www.onewaysm.org

Tonight will be Wk 3 of Beautiful Collision to check out the promo video for this series please visit the link following this statement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFXKA2DL3sE&context=C44c73aaADvjVQa1PpcFM0OkBWioW1WFepHGqOehWKEFk2OE5WPEU=

This weekend we also have Girl Talk '12 at Corsicana and it is $33.00 each to sign up please contact us asap either at the church office or by email at philipjkeller@hotmail.com

This coming Monday, March 26th we have our sectional rally at New Beginnings you can also visit the Impact Tour info by visiting www.impactetx.com There you can also financially support our amazing DYD Rick Martinez and get information on upcoming events in the district.

Next Month we have some exciting things going on at One Way please invite your friends to the first service in April as we continue the revolution and bring people to a beautiful collision with God.

Pastor Phil

Exciting things happening at One Way!!!

We are excited to give you some info today on the upcoming events at One Way Student Ministries.
As always you can find more information on our web site at


    http://www.onewaysm.org/

On the schedule for One Way is;

Girl Talk '12 this weekend the 23rd and 24th of March in Corsicana . Girls Talk is $33.00 to go and covers your stay and transportation there. If you are interested in going we have eight spots available (a few sponsorships are available) For more information please contact Pastor Kayla asap.

Sectional Youth Rally Monday March 26th at New Beginnings. Church is located aprox. 20 minutes from NCFWC Campus and starts at 7:30pm. We will be leaving campus at exactly 7pm. Please join us for this great time of worship and devotion and our section comes together! One Way worship team will be providing praise and worship. DYD Rick Martinez is scheduled to speak.

April 4th we are starting a brand new series encompassed with Easter. This will be the most thrilling, intense and exciting series One Way has EVER DONE! Please mark your calendar and find friends to bring with you on April 4th at 7pm in One Way!

April 6th Good Friday we will be showing the movie The Passion Of The Christ at 7pm this will be an emotional and inspiring moving for our students. Please join us as we celebrate the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ through Easter weekend and Good Friday!

We are excited for things God is about to do! Please be praying for our services tomorrow night and BRING YOUR FRIENDS!!!

Pastor Phil

Are you ready?

Are you ready?
Are you ready to take your Christian walk to the next level?

God is ready. He is ready for you to take it to the next level. In fact for some, we may be causing God to wait. You see God has a plan and a purpose for you and he is ready for you to fufiill that purpose. He is ready for you to change this world, he is ready for you to reach the lost and as big as God is, the plan he has for you is probably just as big. But the question remains, are you ready?

More than ever before I am ready. I am ready to go to the next level. I am tired of worrying about my past, I'm tired of questioning my future and I am ready to live and pursue life today!

With everything I will shout for his glory, with everything I have I will reach out to this world with his love. Today I am going to GO, LOVE and I will LIVE for my purpose.

My purpose is to share the love of God that has changed my life, in hope that someone else can experience what I have.

As far as One Way Student Ministries goes, we will also PUSH forward to pursue and fufill the purpose and will of God. No longer looking at the past or wandering about the future but GOing after God with everything we have.

My challenge for you is this, find out where you are, if you are ready or not. Figure out how to get where you need to be and then make it a habit. To live for God with evertything, every day and stop putting it off.

Let's be ready and lets GO with everything we have!

With Everything by Hillsong United
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq_z_i9XQZc

Would you pass the test?

Psalm 23:2-3 says
Examine me, God, from head to foot,
order your battery of tests.
Make sure I'm fit
inside and out

So I never lose
sight of your love,
But keep in step with you,
never missing a beat.

Our God life is a constant test. Every day God gives us awesome opportunities, and chances to glorify his name. He gives us every tool that we need to grow closer to him and more "fit" in our relationship with him.

Athletes know what it means to train for something, for a competition or event, a game, or a tournament. A good, practiced athelete takes time daily to master their sport, toning their body, pressing themselves past their previously achieved limits. There should be nothing different about the way you approach your relationship with God. We are constantly pressing toward the ultimate event (heaven) and cannot possibly get there without training, mastery of our skills, and a constant push to be better.

A great relationship with God isn't easy, it takes work. It takes practice, and it takes training. Is your relationship with God up to the test? Would you pass or fail if the tournament was today?

If your relationship isn't what it should be, or if you (like any good athelete) are ready to push past your current place and go further in God, you can start today.

Begin by reading your bible, read more of it more often. If you are truly in your word, not just reading it because you have to, God WILL speak to you. He will love on you and remind you how important you are to him through his word.

Talk to God more often. The bible says we should pray without ceasing, meaning you should talk to God about EVERYTHING, all the time. It doesn't have to be formal, just remember he knows you better than anyone, so why not share your life with him.

Put your faith in to action. Find somewhere to plug in, serve in OneWay or at NCFWC. Head out on the street ministry, get plugged in at the food pantry, pick up trash that you see outside. It doesn't matter what you do, so long as you DO SOMETHING. Serve and love it! Get fit, so you can keep in step with God, never missing a beat!

-Pastor Kayla

Passion

What are you passionate about? Because where your passion is you can also find the future you're heading towards.

As your youth pastors we are passionate about seeing you live your life to its fullest capacity! And I am passionate about seeing you live a life shining the light of Jesus Christ to your schools, to your family and to your friends!

There is nothing more that I want then to see you walk into a room and light it up! Showing everyone that you have something inside that the world didn't give and the world can't take it away!

 

This month at One Way as we study and talk about Worship.

We want you to grab a hold of a passion and LIVE! Really live your life!

Stop going through the motions and let God rock your world!

In Matthew 22:37 (Msg)

Jesus said “Love the lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence. This is the most important thing, the first on any list!

God wants us to live a life full of passion! Passion for him! When I think about living with a passion for God. I think about passion I think about when I was 13 years old and my parents bought me my first guitar. My brother showed me a few chords. And for months and months I would sit in my room with my little jam amp rocking out three chords! And this was loud with distortion. As I look back at that time I realize my parents only ever asked me to stop a few times. When most people including myself would have been like “Dude STOP! That's annoying!”.

But my parents seen and realized that I had found a passion for something. Something that was bigger than me. Something that could take me places. Something that people could be proud of and enjoy!

And in the same way we have to find our passion! We have to get a hold of it and pursue our passion for God. Until we reach where we need to be. As a musician I have never stopped learning, and as a Christian with a passion for God and his plan for our lives we have to keep learning. We have to be soft to speak, and quick to listen. We have to have open ears and open opinions. Because you never know when or how God is going to speak or move in your life!

But when we find that passion for him. That's when he gets excited about us! That's when God starts blessing us. When we have a desire to live for him and not ourselves, to surrender our lives to him. To read his word!

We have to get passionate about God and make him our priority.

We need to put his will before ours. We need to ask his opinion before ours. We need to put him 1^st in our lives and we need to be second.

We need to make him greater as we become less.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOeruTrdF1Q

That was the former Guitarist of KORN.

Brian Welch who made a decision to stop focusing his passion towards Drugs, Sex & Rock N Roll. And he made Jesus his passion, He made God number 1. There are some of you who needs to realize that you need to do that.

You need to make God NUMBER 1 in your life. You need become second. See he realized that everything he had going was really nothing.

Because in the eyes of eternity! Your intentions and your ways are not important.

God wants you to get passionate. He wants you to become real and realize there is a way to live that is far better than where you are at now!

Brian Welch quit the band KORN because he realized there was more to lifethan where he was currently at. And he became passionate about Jesus.

Psalms 37.34 says

Wait passionately for God, don't leave. He'll give you your place in the sun. While you watch the wicked lose.

God wants to give you what you need. But we have to show him we are sincere. We have to wait PASSIONATELY for him, don't leave, don't give up.

And he'll take us where we need to be. Today I challenge you to step back and review your life.

Figure out what you need to do to prioritze Jesus Christ and get passionate about him. When we do that... When we get excited about him... The sky becomes the limit to your future.

Unity

With the absence of unity there is war, struggles, jealousy, hatred and discomfort. So the fact is this; we need unity in our lives. We need peace, comfort, love and compassion. We need to be united. As a Christian it is important to have unity, in your relationships and between you and God.

The reason it is so important to have unity is simply this; it creates better Communication.

When your in a relationship it is very important for you to have unity with that person. I know in Pastor Kayla and I’s relationship when we allow things to take up our time and distract us from each other. We will start failing to communicate.

And in our lives when there is a wall in between us and God, our communication becomes harder. The reason we have a hard time hearing from God and it seems like he doesn’t answer our prayers is because we haven’t truly tore down those things between us.
And unity is simply this; When more than one thing combines into one.

I don’t know about you but I don’t want to do this thing called life by myself. I want to be one with God. I want to come into unity with Jesus. I want to have full communication with him.

Without communication any relationship will fail. Because you have to communicate to succeed.

 The bible says that iron sharpens iron and that we can help each other! In Ecclesiastes it says; Ecclesiastes 4:12 ¹² By yourself you're unprotected. With a friend you can face the worst. Can you find a third friend? A three-stranded rope isn’t easily snapped.

If you have a problem with someone in your life or you don’t like someone that comes to youth group, you need to get over it! Your friends, your family and even the people that are in your lives that you don’t like. You need to find a way to get into unity with them. You wanna know why we need to? Because the bible says so, because God says this;

1^st Corinthians 1:10

¹⁰I have a serious concern to bring up with you, my friends, using the authority of Jesus, our Master. I'll put it as urgently as I can: You must get along with each other. You must learn to be considerate of one another, cultivating a life in common.

As I talk about this I’m  dreaming a dream with you. Of what we want to see in this youth group. And that is young people who are passionate for God and want nothing else and will settle for nothing but a move of God, in their lives, in their families and in their friend's lives.

Today I hope that we can start something amazing. Today I dream that we can start having the unity that we need. Today I wanna challenge you to step out of the NORM.

We need to grab a hold of that unity and ask God to come down in our lives.

Read Matthew 18: 20 For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them."

Pastor Phil

Represent

Did you know that there are more than 3.5 BILLION pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts etc.) shared on facebook every single day? And that there are now more than 800 million active facebook users? That means that every day, LOTS of people see LOTS of posts. We live in a generation where people post statuses about everything. People tweet or update when they're eating, when they're sleeping, when they're having trouble sleeping, when they're angry, when they're sad, when they're bored. You get the idea, and more than likely, you have seen all of these types of posts. Every time we snap a photo it is judged to see if it is our next "profile picture". When we want to talk to someone, we private message them, or just send them a text.

Because facebook and twitter are so widely used, if someone wants to know who we really are, they just visit our profile page. So, what does your profile page say about you? Does it tell the world that when you are angry with someone you post it all over facebook? Does it tell others that you hate your parents, or that you hate you life, or that you are always bored? Or does it tell people that you are respectful of your friends, that you love others, that you enjoy church, or does it share a bible verse you found particularly encouraging? Facebook can be used as a tool, or it can completely destroy your testimony. It is hard to invite your friends to church and make a lasting impact when people see another side of your personality in your tweets.

Romans 12:1-2 says:
So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

We are meant to be different, we are meant to stand out and glorify Jesus Christ in everything we do, everything we say, and yes... everything we facebook post.

A Beautiful Collision

Have you ever been involved in a car accident?

I have.

When I was 16 years old I was involved in a 2 car accident that actually injured 3 other people and myself.
Looking back 9 years later many things come to mind. How'd this happen, why did it happen?

But the thing I'm most thoughtful of is the fact that it could have been much worse.
When you are involved in a collision it is a life altering action that you are involved with.
Things change.
You're perspective on life changes.

When two moving objects come together in a collision something happens.

Sometimes you leave the collision with pieces from the other object, sometimes you don't leave the same. Sometimes you can't leave without changing, sometimes the IMPACT of those two objects is so powerful that a total life change, a total reconstruction has to happen. Sometimes a complete change has to be made.

For example in my accident I had to buy a new car, I had alot to think about concerning where my life was and if I was really ready to meet my maker.

This week at One Way we are talking about a Beautiful Collision and what happens when you and God collide.

This month we pray that you would have a head on collision with your maker, with your savior Jesus Christ and that you would walk away eternally changed.

Don't miss this Wednesday night at One Way Student Ministries as we wreck into the arms of our Savior!

    http://www.onewaysm.org/#!current-series