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WEEKLY MESSAGEOctober 15 2019“And?he made from one man every nation of mankind to live?on all the face of the earth,?having determined allotted periods and?the boundaries of their dwelling place,?that they should seek God,?and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him.?Yet he is actually not far from each one of us,?for ‘In him we live and move and have our being.’” Acts 17:26-28 This week, I would like to share with you some of the things we are learning and wrestling with at Fusion, our youth group. We just spent the last month talking about the concept of identity. We asked questions like “what is my identity, where does it come from, and why does it matter?” Many of today’s students do not ask these questions enough and the reality is that they are the ones who need to the most. Let me explain with an example. In recent years, video games have made the jump to the internet, where players can interact, chat, and compete with thousands of other people from around the world. These online multiplayer games are now by far the most popular kind of game among the new generation. They scarcely will look at a video game if it doesn’t at least have an online feature. These new games take on some of the aspects of social media, where teens can create entire customizable identities complete with personalities, accessories, and social circles, all completely dependent on the internet. The problem is, as I’m sure you can guess, young people can get attached to their online personas and even supplement their own social lives in the real world with their digital interactions. Many teens even want to be identified as professional gamers or YouTube stars who post videos of themselves playing video games and make money from sponsorships. The darker side of this attachment becomes painfully clear, though, when it is taken away. In the last few days, perhaps the most popular online game among young people right now, fortnite, was taken down to prepare for a new version of the game to be released. It was taken down in a rather dramatic fashion, however, and, to build anticipation, stayed down for several days. All of a sudden, people couldn’t access their online character or community; the thing that in part, helped to define them. I watched a video a few days ago, right after this happened. A little boy no older than 9 was shown screaming and cursing and punching his TV. It was the desperation of a person who had part of his being taken away from him, floating around somewhere on the internet. All told, the game was down for less than three days, but hundreds of articles, interviews and videos obsessing over the blackout were posted in that time. This is what happens when fickle, external forces control our identities: we are broken when those fickle things are taken away. All of us can struggle with defining ourselves by the wrong things. These can be things like our career, financial success, status, fame, our significant others, even what we think our specific ministries are supposed to be. Paul, when he spoke to the people of Athens in Acts 17, wanted the people to know that God was not like their little deities; limited, carved out of stone, and made in human image with human limitations. In contrast, God created the universe and all of humanity and poured Himself into us to give us a hunger for purpose that can only be satisfied with Him. In Him we live and move and have our being, whether we acknowledge it or not. God is the only one stable enough for us to place our identities in. The things the world has to offer, our own foolish human constructs, manufactured internet identities, none of these has the strength for us to be leaning on them for purpose and meaning. As Edward Mote put it so well, “On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.”Josh Levenhagen ................
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