The image above is our GAP student presentation to the DBC body. Below are the general notes from the GAP Commissioning Ceremony delivered on August 19, 2023.
Welcome to GAP year 5!
This ministry was born out of a desire to see this upcoming generation equipped and inspired to build a life of true success.
To accomplish this desire, God has assembled a team of folks…introductions…
What is GAP? GAP is an idea…a vision…
- A vision tied not to the material or the measurable, but the supernatural…the eternal.
But, we have a problem…
- Our world is full of people, and when you get people together without a vision bigger than what we can measure and make, you get towers of Babel erected all around us.
- Towers proclaiming our achievements and successes…
- Towers of business success…scientific success…
- Towers of educational success…parental success…
- Towers of achievements…affirmation…and adoration.
What is a possible solution?
- Scientists…philosophers…self-help gurus…all advance their ideas.
- But, an 18th-century French Philosopher in the prime of the Enlightenment captured the heart of all the world’s responses in his work, The Social Contract.
- Rousseau begins, “Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”
- Therefore, he argues to let man be left alone so that his nobility from within will determine and produce his best outcome.
- A twist and aberration of God’s truth.
J.R.R. Tolkien and the Inklings understood that this type of solution was insufficient to meet the greater needs of man, and they took to writing. Their pens were their swords.
One of Tolkien’s more insightful but largely unread works, The Silmarillion, captures the dilemma faced by mankind since the Garden of Eden…and serves as a defiant rebuttal to the Rousseau-ean solution and all who misunderstand the crux of our predicament.
After introducing the key figures in his story, created by Iluvatar’s thought and enabled to sing and produce music, one of the most powerful of his creations, Melkor, begins to change things. Listen to how Tolkien describes Melkor’s diabolical scheme:
“But as the theme [music] progressed, it came into the heart of Melkor to interweave matters of his own imagining that were not in accord with the theme of Iluvatar; for he sought therein to increase the power and glory of the part assigned to himself…he [Melkor] had gone often alone into the void places…But being alone he had begun to conceive thoughts of his own unlike those of his brethren…
Some of these thoughts he now wove into his music, and straightway discord arose about him, and many that sang nigh him grew despondent, and their thought was disturbed and their music faltered; but some began to attune their music to his rather than to the thought which they had at first. Then the discord of Melkor spread ever wider…” (Silmarillion, p. 16).
Well…how does that manifest today?
Let’s look at a Melkorian take on the blessed man…
- Blessed are the strong in spirit…for they shall own the earth.
- Blessed are those who always laugh…for that is how you cover your pain.
- Blessed are the brutal…for they shall rule the earth.
- Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for riches…for they shall enjoy cocktails and caviar on an exotic private beach.
- Blessed are the cutthroats…for they shall see their revenge.
- Blessed are the pragmatic…for they don’t need God.
- Blessed are the victorious…for they shall never be humbled by defeat.
- Blessed are you when you achieve your goals through deceit, hypocrisy, and slander despite the naysayers and opposition.
- Rejoice and be glad…your reward on earth might be great…for this is how you get ahead…all your parents and grandparents did it this way, and so should you.
The problem is great…a twisting of truth by the evil one.
If this is our problem, what is GAP’s role in finding a solution?
GAP is like an ophthalmologist. Let me explain
- The genius of an ophthalmologist is not that he gives new eyes or even eyes that have superpowers but that he provides to people in his care:
- Clarity from the fog of clouded vision…
- Diagnoses and treatment of the disease…
- Restoration of sight to what it ought to be…
- This is one aspect of GAP’s role in bringing a solution to the problem of twisted truth, i.e. clarity for a foggy vision.
The follow-up question is… To what vision are we restoring? What is the vision we are aiming to provide to students?
There are three basic things:
- A knowledge that you were created for God’s glory.
- An understanding…
- The world is not what it ought to be.
- To see the world for what it is.
- The world is not what it one day will be.
- A path to walk in biblical wisdom.
KNOW: you were created for God’s glory.
- Isaiah 43:7: “…everyone who is called by My name, and whom I have created for My glory, whom I have formed, even whom I have made.”
- 2 Timothy 2:20-22: “Now in a large house there are not only gold and silver vessels, but also vessels of wood and of earthenware, and some to honor and some to dishonor. Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from these things, he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified, useful to the Master, prepared for every good work. Now flee from youthful lusts and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.”
UNDERSTAND:
- The world is not what it ought to be…
- C.S. Lewis captures an Edenic-like scenario that perhaps touches on thoughts of an Edenic-like experience in his book, Perelandra. Listen to how he Lewis describes the environment:
- “The smells in the forest were beyond all that he had ever conceived. To say that they made him feel hungry and thirsty would be misleading; almost, they created a new kind of hunger and thirst, a longing that seemed to flow over from the body into the soul and which was a heaven to feel” (Perelandra, p. 37)
- Genesis 1 & 2
- C.S. Lewis captures an Edenic-like scenario that perhaps touches on thoughts of an Edenic-like experience in his book, Perelandra. Listen to how he Lewis describes the environment:
- The world for what it is…
- Cursed, but not abandoned…and is a foretaste of heavenly delight. Therefore, be stewards and enjoy God’s world wisely!
- Ecclesiastes 5:18: “Here is what I have seen to be good and fitting: to eat, to drink and enjoy oneself in all one’s labor in which he toils under the sun during the few years of his life which God has given him; for this is his reward.”
- The world is not what it one day will be…
- Paul caught up in the 3rd heaven. “I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago—whether in the body I do not know, or out of the body I do not know, God knows—such a man was caught up to the third heaven. And I know how such a man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, God knows—was caught up into Paradise and heard inexpressible words, which a man is not permitted to speak” (2 Cor. 12:2-4).
- C.S. Lewis and joy…finds its source in Christ.
- Revelation 21 & 22.
WISDOM
- Proverbs 14:12: “There is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.
- Joshua 1:8: “This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success.”
And so, what is GAP’s mission: to equip young adults to build a life of true success…to see!
What is true success?
- Biblical wisdom.
What is biblical wisdom?
- Fear of the Lord.
How does one fear the Lord?
- New life…new heart.
How does one have a new heart?
- By grace through faith in Christ.
God must intervene and condescend below man’s condescension to bring him up to new life in Christ.
“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me” Galatians 2:20.
GAP aligns with this in all we do…
Bible…Worldview…Leadership…Life Skills.
To the GAP Parents… “Be anxious for nothing” – Philippians 4:6-7
To the GAP Host Homes… “Be examples.” – 1 Peter 5:3
To the GAP Volunteers… “Believe the best.” – Judges 6:12
To the GAP students… “Redeem the time.” – Ephesians 5:15-16
— August 24, 2023