Believe and Confess – 2021 Summer Camp Theme
Believe and Confess
“The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we preach); because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. Romans 10:8-10
In a time when we’re told to be distant from other people and not gather, the temptation to close ourselves off from God’s Word, worship, and prayer might be riding high. We might become convinced that the perfect reason to stay away from God might just be for our own good, but nothing could be further from the truth. When we’re away from the Word of God we won’t know what to believe and what to confess about God.
But through God’s Word, we learn who He is and what to say about him. As we stay near the Word of God we learn that He is the giver of all good things that support our lives, that he sustains his creation and still takes care of it each day. But on top of the day-to-day concerns of getting through life, we’re regularly confronted with our own sin and failure. We also learn from His Word that, in sending Jesus, God redeems sinners to be his own children though His life, death, and resurrection. Jesus lives a life we are incapable of living and purchases us from sin and death with his innocent, precious blood. Finally, through the Holy Spirit, we are cleansed and forgiven, given faith, and are called and gathered into the Christian church.
This is what Christians believe with our hearts. In believing, we trust that our sins are paid for with the assurance that we will not be put to shame. This is what Christians confess to be true with our words and actions. In confessing, we proclaim ourselves as God’s own children pointing others to the promises of God in Jesus as we go to Him ourselves. We can’t wait for the summer of 2021 as our campers BELIEVE AND CONFESS the truth of God while having amazing fun at camp with their friends. We look forward to having you BACK at Camp Io-Dis-E-Ca this summer!