Last week at our church youth programme for older teens, we had a look at this whole idea of being fascinated.  The whole purpose and big idea was to set a challenge, to begin to ask ourselves if we are really fascinated with God.

• Fascinated: to be engrossed, captivated, strongly interested, fully engaged, transfixed on something

Fascination is a funny thing and as I prepped for youth, my mind was working overtime trying to understand why we become fascinated with anything,

I’ve been there, fascinated and captivated by the wrong thing, maybe wrong is too strong a word to use, but certainly I could have been fascinated with something better. You’ve been there too no doubt, the TV series that you can’t stop watching and the demon of  box sets that rob you of sleep as you keep saying “one more” before we go to bed, and awful cliff hanger moments that make it virtually impossible.  We become fascinated, obsessed, can’t switch off, because we want to know what happens next.

When it comes to our journey with God, are we fascinated enough?

God is not looking for people who are mildly interested in Him

Fascination is strongly linked to discovery.
We discover something, learn something new and seek to discover more. We want to know more, like what happens next. The incredible thing about God, is that His box set never really ends – there’s always more, and just when we think we have him figured out, we learn and discover even more and that’s were fascination is birthed.  And incredible adventure lies waiting.

This adventure has to start with an encounter.

There is that part of me that wants to shake the “mildly interested” crowd.  This following Jesus is more than an added extra, it’s the main thing.   I can’t stop thinking about how we transition from interested to obsessed through this whole idea of discovery.

I found my mind wandering today thinking about all of this.

Do we play it too safe?  Do we make God fit in a nice little box that we can control and present to the masses as something nice, polished and shiny? In doing so, have we made God predictable?

If anything I’ve learned over the years, it’s that predictable does not fascinate, in fact it often gets boring when we know what will happen right?

Are we as his church presenting our father in such a way that the world wants to know more, or are we boring the masses with our predictable programme?

At youth last week, we played it simple.

We stripped back on all the ‘stuff’ and activity and we worshipped, waited and watched….

It honestly was a beautiful sight. Young people  brave enough to share a word to encourage us, worshipping unashamed, some of them ‘feeling’ something different, but good.  We can attempt to create a lot of cool in youth ministry but the thing that captivates, is when our young people engage with God through the power of the Holy Spirit.  Without His presence we are just another random bunch of people hanging out.

As youth leaders we get to facilitate these beautiful moments – let’s not be afraid to leave space, wait and lean into these moments. It’s those encounter that’s fascinate a generation. They will never forget and will never be the same.

Let’s open the nice shiny box we’ve put God in and let the wild adventure begin.

It’s what’s in the box that counts anyway.