The sun was out, but it was cold. I wondered as I approached the Quarry if we would make it through an hour.   What were we thinking?  Did we really think the young people would rise to the challenge of spending an hour alone with God? Why hadn’t we thought through how cold it was outside?

This past month we developed a teaching series in our youth group called “How to Connect with God”. We talked about the basics like how to pray- and then we practiced doing it. We talked about connecting with God through the Bible- and many in our group, both Christian and non-Christian had never interacted with God through his Word. So we practiced.   We talked about connecting with God through worship. Everything we talked about we practiced.

So the week we talked about connecting with God through nature it was no less important to practice. It just happened to be February.

So we set up an Hour-With-God-Challenge. The rules were simple. We would all go to an outdoor space, and spend an hour connecting with God. They brought their Bibles and journals and we gave them a list of things they could do to connect with God through nature (download our list here). After that we would eat pizza and share together how we found the experience and what we felt God drawing out of us.

There is something that happens when you take young people out of their normal setting and set them the task of spending time in the presence of Jesus. They surprise you. They surprise themselves. They start out thinking “there is absolutely no way I could spend an hour with God”. But each of our young people- both Christians and non-Christians enjoyed the hour.   Some of them relished the alone time and others found it difficult to spend an hour alone with themselves, let alone God. All of these things were talking points during our debrief time.

In the end they were all surprised about how fast the hour went. They were surprised to meet with God outside in the cold. Before we even left the Quarry they were talking about doing it again soon. Yes, I thought, just maybe not in February.