Next week we kick off our summer ministry!  Our fifth graders will move up to Junior High youth group, which will meet on Wednesdays from 6:00-8:00.  Our eighth graders will begin their "Golden Summer", meaning they can attend all Junior High and all Senior High events all summer long.  And our summer theme, "On Fire", will begin.  This year I wrote a daily devotional for our students.  Each day they will have a page to read about a Bible verse that fits with our theme and introduces our teaching for that week.  Here is the letter I wrote our students, it's from the first page of the book, I hope it will help you understand the thinking behind the theme:

Dear Student,

There is nothing more important in the world than your relationship with God.  God loves you, and He wants to do incredible things through your life; that means you were born with a purpose, you have a reason to be here!  In fact, God loves you so much that He is willing to give you a choice: you can follow Him if you want to, but He won’t make you.  If you follow Him you get to go to Heaven, and that is sweet, but that is not the only benefit of following Jesus.  If you put Jesus in the driver’s seat of your life, incredible things happen!  Your life will have meaning, you will have a reason to get up in the morning, you get to be a part of something that really matters, you get to make a difference in this world, you have a chance to do things that will matter for all of eternity!  There is no feeling in the world like the feeling of knowing that God is working through you.  When that happens a fire is lit within your heart, and your entire life is all about making that fire grow bigger and hotter and letting it spread to other people.  That is what our summer is all about: being On Fire for Jesus.  This book is part of that theme.  In this book you will read about some of the verses in the Bible that have the word “fire” in them.  My hope is that you will learn to love God better, to know God deeper, to follow God closer, and to shine for God brighter.  My hope is that by the end of this summer we will all learn to be “on fire” for Jesus!

I’m looking forward to a great summer with you!

-Pastor Mike