Brief summary of our teen's week 4 meeting

In Daniel 1:5-16, the Babylonians were preparing Daniel and his friends to serve in the king’s court. Even though Daniel and his friends were captives in a foreign land, they were treated royally. The king himself ordered that they be fed from his own table – everything that he ate, they were to eat. Daniel had been in Babylon and under the training program long enough to have made a friend. Ashpenaz thought highly of Daniel. Ashpenaz honored Daniel request not to defile himself with the king’s food and wine.

One great benefit from Daniel’s obedience to God’ training program is that it didn’t help only him. Ashpenaz changed all of the young men’s diets over to God’s training program. There were probably some guys among Daniel’s friends who thought he was crazy to turn down the “choicest food and wine”. Perhaps they didn’t share Daniel’s view of defilement. But Daniel belonged to God. He knew God was with him and what God expected of him, because he was familiar with Scripture. One thing we can expect when we obey God – we’re going to stand out from the crowd. We’ll be set apart from other people who choose not to obey God. We won’t “fit in”, and that’s not always comfortable. But obeying God is always the right thing to do. Just like Daniel, we have the same privilege of taking a stand and sharing God’s Word with the people around us.

We showed a short video concerning a very trouble young man who didn't have a good life within his own family and outside of family wasn't any better. One of his Christian peers at school was very concerned about him and never gave up telling him that God loved him unconditionally and cared very much about him. The troubled teen almost got to the point of beating up his peer that cared for him, because he assumed what was being told to him was just another story of untruth. The story ends as the troubled boy is standing on top of a bridge comtemplating jumping off and in the distance walks up his peer who cared about him. The troubled boy reacted very negative at first but when he noticed how much courage his peer had to walk up to him and still tell him how much God cared about him, loved him, and he himself cared about him he sensed there was a part of this story that must have some truth to it. The video ended up there. The Christian peer shows tremendous determination and faith in God. Even as he was literarily threatended he was still determined to share his faith and not give up on his troubled friend. What if he just gave up? Would his troubled friend have jumped to his death from the bridge? Earlier in talking about Daniel, What would have happened if he didn't stand firm in his faith when he was taken from his native land to be transformed to a Babylonian? As our study goes he not only stood firm God's way and changed things for him but a whole nation was changed because of his faith.

The last sectment of every meeting is Council Time conducted by our Director, Steve Fowler.