RPC Youth Takeover

Good morning, number free.

How are we feeling this morning?

I think we can do a little bit better than that.

How are we feeling this morning?

Well, I just graduated from Lamarcus Millionaire High School.

So yes, I'm four years in, four years out, yep.

First thing I just want to say is I am so thankful and so grateful for this amazing opportunity that I'm being blessed with.

I I don't even know how I'm up here, I'm being completely honest with you.

Um, fun facts about me, I love the color pink.

It is my favorite color ever.

Another thing that I love is Dr.

Pepper.

I am so grateful for whoever came up with that drink.

It's the best drink ever.

You can argue with the wall.

I don't care.

And then fun fact, okay, so I used to be terrified of dogs when I was younger, and I mean so scared.

But recently I got over my fear, and now I love dogs to death.

You know, I'm a dog lover now, so yeah.

Thank you.

So speaking of my childhood, when I grew up, there is a saying that I heard in the church.

Some people would say as a greeting, or they would just walk by each other, and that's what they would say.

And it goes, God is good all the time, and all the time, God is good.

Yeah.

So for some of y'all, you know, you can relate, you can say, Yeah, my life is going good right now.

You know, I have a good job, you know, I got into the school that I wanted to, you know, I have good friends in my life, you know, my life is going great.

For others, we may say, you know, is he?

You know, have you, Rachel, have you seen my life lately?

Like if you were to see what's going on, what I'm dealing with, you would probably question that.

You know, if he's so good, then why am I still suffering?

Why does it feel like nothing in my life is getting better?

And before I answer those questions, I want to tell you guys about three people in the Bible.

You see, the first person I want to introduce you to is a woman named Sarah.

And Sarah wanted a child desperately.

That's all she ever wanted was a son.

And she didn't have a son until 90 years old, was when God decided to bless her with a son.

90 years.

That's a long time.

There's another man in the Bible, his name is Moses.

Some of you may know him.

But you see, Moses, he grew up in the palace, and one day he gets into an argument with a servant, and he kills that servant.

And riddled with that shame and that guilt, he decides to run away.

And he says, You know what?

I'm never going back to Egypt.

I'm too ashamed by what I did.

And he ends up spending 40 years in the wilderness.

Until one day God decides, hey, that same Egypt that you're so ashamed of, that same past that you're trying to run away from, I want you to go back there and free the Israelites from slavery.

And the last person I want to tell you about is this man named Job.

Now, Job goes through a series of devastating tests.

First test is he ends up losing his livestock and his children all in one day.

And if that wasn't enough, his health starts to decline.

He ends up being covered with sores from head to toe.

And what honestly for me feels like the camel, the straw that broke the camel's back, is his wife and his friends tell him, Hey, you keep saying that this God is so good, yet your livestock is gone, your children are gone, your body's in pain.

Why do you keep praising him?

What is there to praise when it just seems like your life is just going to shambles?

And Job says, You know what?

I know my God has something in store for me.

And so I know that right now the season may seem hard.

And you're wondering, you know, what do all these people have in common?

And all they had in common was their faith.

They had, and in Matthew 17, 20, Jesus gives us um a sermon on the mount, and he tells us just how much faith we need to have in him.

He says, if you truly believe with your heart, all you need is a faith as small as a mustard seed, and you can say to that mountain, move from here to there, and it will move.

Nothing will be impossible for you.

So when you're going through those troubles, when you're going through those hard life lessons, when Sarah was waiting for that child, when Moses was in that wilderness, when Job was suffering, they all kept that mustard seed of faith.

And I know you're probably thinking, why now?

Why this test?

Why give me this hardship that I'm going through?

I don't understand.

It doesn't make any sense.

And sometimes God gives us these seasons not to make us suffer.

No, he doesn't do that.

He makes it so he can shepherd us.

So when he does answer that prayer you've been praying for, when he does decide to give you that blessing that you've been wanting, you end up savoring it instead of spending it.

So regardless of what your wilderness or your shepherding season may look like, regardless of the wins and the losses and the troubles and the waiting that you are facing right now, remember that the God that you serve, the God that you believe in, is good all the time.

And all the time, that God is good.

Thank you.

Hey, hello everyone! Sorry, a little different for me there, but uh hello, my name is Jacob Hoover, and I am a recent graduate from Travis High School, and I'm just I'm just so excited, blessed to just share with y'all how God has been great in my life today.

Uh I'll be sharing uh part of my testimony with y'all today, so let's get into it.

I'm gonna start uh uh sophomore year of high school.

Uh I just want to give y'all like a little bit of like where I'm at at this point.

At this point, I am really I'm struggling with depression, anxiety, and even even suicidal thoughts.

Like I went through a lot um in sixth grade.

Like in sixth grade I just had like a really bad friend group.

They introduced me to Lusk, they introduced me to they pressured me to even try a vape.

Luckily, I didn't get addicted to that any of that, but um yeah, you could just really see like how like much of like a low point I was in.

In my sophomore year, uh I was invited to RPC youth for the first time.

And the person that invited me was actually a girl, and we started dating at that point.

Now, I wasn't really going to church for for God, really.

I was really just there for her.

But I met some people and made some friends.

But um eventually, after a month, that relationship ended, and I stopped going.

Now uh that was like April 2024.

Now we're in I'm gonna go to I'm gonna jump to October 2024.

Uh I have a lot of dogs at home, and me and my brother, we decided we want to take them to go run and have some fun.

So we took them to this school, and um there was uh a road nearby, and while we weren't looking, one of them ran out to the road and he got hit and didn't make it.

Now we were just very devastated by this moment.

We were all just so sad and it was just a really heartbreaking moment.

But in this in this moment, I just like heard this voice like telling me, Hey, you should go to church.

So yeah, I listened, that's what I did.

I even told my best friend that I uh was going with back a couple months ago, hey, we should go back to church.

So we did.

And when I went back to church, I actually started to learn a lot more.

I started to learn more about the Bible, I started to make even more friends, uh, and I started to watch a lot of podcasts, and I was actually learning a lot more this time.

I even started changing my music taste, which is really good because my own music, I would just use music as an escape, and it was a lot of sad and not good stuff.

So when I was changing my music, this was a really big point for me.

And I remember April 7th, 2025, I was just in my room alone, and I felt like this piece, like Philippians 4, verses 6 and 7 explains it perfectly.

Philippians 4:6

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your request to God.

And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

And now, that verse, those two verses there really just describes perfectly what I felt in that moment.

Like I felt like everything that I was like looking for in lust when I try to vape, just everything I was looking like to try and fill that hole in my heart, God filled the hole in my heart in that moment.

And now, the reason I tell you all of you this is because what we what we need to do is we need God to fill that hole in our hearts, not these things of the world.

And um I know sometimes we might get stressed and we might turn back to that sin struggle, whether it's anger, lust, whatever it is, a lot of the times we get stressed out, and we like to turn back to our sin because it's just easy, and it you get like instant gratification.

But God says no, he wants to fill that hole in your heart.

Matthew 6, 33 says, but seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

So if we just seek God and not this these things of this world, he will fill that hole in our heart, and whatever it is, maybe maybe you're anxious like me.

Like I struggled with anxiety a lot, and you're just anxious, like, what am I gonna do in the future, or how am I gonna pay the next bill, whatever it is, he can he can fill you for your heart in that moment and get rid of your anxiety.

And he um yeah he can fill that hole in your heart.

Thank you.

That was so amazing.

Give it up one more time for Jacob.

That was great.

Hello everybody, my name is Nettie Zoe.

I'm a freshman at Dallas High School, Go Vikings.

Um, and today I'm gonna be talking about a way I've seen God's goodness in my life.

So, a fun fact about me is that I'm a really big theater kid and I've been doing theater.

Yeah.

I've been doing theater since I was really little, but when I would go to auditions, I would get really stressed out and really anxious, and I would start crying, and I wouldn't really have any fun.

So because of this, I decided to join a theater academy so that I could work on my skills and my confidence.

The day of auditions for my age group, I had a prior commitment that day.

So the academy said, hey, you can audition with the teens.

And I was only 10 or 11 at this time, so auditioning with high schoolers was pretty scary.

But I called myself, me and my mom, we drove to downtown Houston, and I was super duper early.

I was the first one there.

Turns out I was the only one there.

Um because they had less people than they expected.

They moved all of the teens to the day before.

And in this moment, I was super stressed out again.

I was anxious, I honestly wanted to cry.

Um, and in this moment, I could have had more patience.

My mom reminded me that everything happens for a reason, and what happens happens, and everything will go the way that it's supposed to.

Psalms 37, 7 says, be still in the presence of the Lord and wait patiently for him to act.

A lot of times when we're in the middle of our problems, all we think is our problems, all we see is our problems, all we feel is our problems, when we could turn our eyes to God and give that problem to him, give it to the hands of the Lord.

So after a while of waiting in the lobby, the director of the academy comes up and gives me her business card so that I can still send in a video audition directly to her.

And I don't think that this would have happened if I was crying, if I was panicking a whole lot, and if I wouldn't have calmed down.

Ecclesiastes 3.11 says, Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time.

He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God's work from beginning to end.

We can't always see what God has planned for us.

And that can be hard because we don't know what will happen and we're scared and we're nervous.

But if we give all of that nervousness and that anxiety to God, it physically feels so much better.

It's like a weight lifted off of you.

And at the end of all of this, I ended up going to that academy, and I ended up gaining a lot of confidence in my speaking and getting enough confidence to speak today.

And I wouldn't have done that if it wasn't for God's plan.

And even though when I was 10 or 11, I was just going so that I could do my super fun hobby.

It led me to getting a lot of confidence and learning to trust in the Lord even in the middle of my problems.

Thank you so much.

Hello, River Point Church.

My name is Berlin Snyder, and no, it's not after the capital of Germany.

So a little bit about me.

I'm in ninth grade at Logos Prep in believe it or not, those are my friends from my other school.

But um, yeah, so I'm it's my first year at Logos, so it's a new high school.

A fun fact about me my family and I we love Benson Boone.

So we may or may not have named our dog after Benson Boone.

Not only that, but our other dog is named Maggie, which is Benson Boone's girlfriend.

So, yeah.

So today we're talking about the goodness of God, and but I want to talk about the goodness of God in like difficult situations.

Because we always like, we know that God is always faithful, but in those difficult situations, we often ignore that.

So we all have difficult situations, whether it's friends, drama, school, or work, taxes.

Um but yeah.

So if I pray to God, okay, God, let's get a A on this test, here we go, then I get a D.

Why, why?

I think that's always God's fault.

Did you ignore my prayer?

So I came across this image, and it was um bear with me while I explain it, because it's kind of difficult.

But it was this kid, and he was praying to God, God, please protect me from all this like hurt and anger.

And so he's you know, he's praying, like, God help me.

And then the next image, he gets hit with a rock.

Ouch.

So he's praying for the protection, and the next thing he knows, he gets exactly what he like he gets the opposite of what he prayed for.

This often happens, like I explained with the grade.

You wanted an A, you got a D.

So the next image it was of Jesus kind of spread out like this, like as a shield for the kid.

And he's getting hit by like pounded by all these rocks.

All these rocks that would have killed us if it hit us.

So he's taking all of this hurt, so we get hit by one rock.

So to put this in a real world example, like I said, I'm at logos, so it's a new school, harder classes, I don't have as many friends, and so I'm trying out for volleyball.

It's a very small school, so there's no cuts for the team.

So it's either varsity or J V, which sounds like really cool, but it's A team or B team, which you can't get cut.

So I'm trying out and playing volleyball, and I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm doing so good.

Varsity, here I come, right?

I'm ready, and then lo and behold, I'm on J V.

What I did not want.

So I prayed for this, I prayed for varsity, and then I'm on JV, the rock.

So, but and all I focus on is God didn't answer my prayer.

He wasn't there, he didn't listen.

He was never watching me, he wasn't hearing me.

But little did I know, he was getting hit by all these rocks.

I didn't have to make a team at all.

I could have broken a leg and not been able to try out.

All these things that could have happened, I make JV.

Is it really that big of a deal?

So in Psalms verse 139, 7 through 8, it says, Where can I go from your spirit?

Where can I flee from your presence?

If I go up to the heavens, you are there.

If I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

God is always there.

Even in those difficult times, even when I thought he didn't hear my prayer, he was there.

He put me on JV because he knew this is what I needed.

Even though I wanted to play varsity, maybe I wouldn't have played as much.

There's always things behind the scenes, and we because we think we're the center stage, but we never pay attention to the backstage of what's happening.

So, thank you.

Good morning, everyone! For those of y'all who don't know me, my name is Beckham Perez.

This year I'm gonna be a freshman at George Ranch.

I'm playing football, and then after that I'll be doing wrestling.

Fun fact about me tomorrow marks the year's anniversary since I've been baptized.

You know, every year comes the same thing in August.

First day of school, new teachers, new classes, new clothes.

Uh but for me, it's personality sheets.

Every single year, a teacher gives me this little sheet about myself, 20 questions, penning at the end of the class.

Personally, I don't like those.

Not for the reason you might think.

But I've never liked these because I've never knew what to write.

20 questions about yourself, you think that's easy.

I've always had to make stuff up just to get through it, just to get through the class.

So when this year rolled around, walking in the first period, uh, pick up the paper, read the questions, and I realize I can actually answer these.

I actually have a perfect verse for my scenario, Matthew 16, 25.

For whoever wants to save their life will lose it.

But whoever loses their life because of me will find it.

The way I lost sight of who I was, the way I lost track of what I was supposed to be was by living for others.

I was living for the validation of others.

I was trying to find myself through people who wouldn't even call me their friends.

But when I stopped doing that and I gave them up and I started living for Christ, that's when I found out who I was.

That's when I found out who God wanted me to be.

That's when I found who I'm supposed to be.

In this past year, God has brought me farther than I can have ever imagined.

He's taught me in so many ways that you just gotta experience it, honestly.

He's brought me so far.

God is with me every single step of the way this past year.

I was never a burden.

I was never a pain in his butt.

I was never something to bother him.

He was more faithful than I could have ever been in my walk with Christ.

God was willing to be with me through my whole journey.

So why wouldn't he be willing to walk with you?

Thank you, Colson.

It's only been one year, and I'm up here on the That's about it.

That's all I have for today.

I just want to thank you all for listening.

And I thank you for listening to them too.

And I hope I see you next week.

That's right.

Dear Heavenly Father.

I thank you for bringing us all here today.

I thank you for inspiring some people who don't usually come to church and come to church today.

Lord, I thank you for the bravery.

And I thank you for the chance to give me my friends to speak up here.

Lord, you for you brought all of us so far, and I thank you.

And I'm so excited to see what you have to do what you have for us in the next couple years.

Lord, we love you.

And it's in your son's name we pray.

Amen.

I don't know about you guys, but when I was that age, I could have done that.

Wow.

It is such a blessing to be honored and see the next generation.

Be so bold for Jesus.

One of my favorite things to do after receiving, after having heard such an amazing word, is to give what we've received and give back to Jesus in worship.

Can we do that this morning?

Can we sing one more song?

Can we sing one more song?

Can we sing about the goodness of God?

All my life you have been faithful.

Yes, you have.

And all my life you have been so so good with every read that I am.

And I love your voice.

I've known you as a friend.

If y'all will pray with me, God, thank you so much just for how good you truly are.

God, thank you so much for these students who've gotten me feeling some type of way because of how good you are in this ministry.

God, we thank you so much for this church.

We thank you for this opportunity that we got to showcase your goodness.

We thank you that you have been good in our past, you are good in our present, and you will continue to be good in our future because you are good all the time.

God, thank you.

We love you, and it's in your son's name that we pray.

And everybody said, Amen.

All right, y'all can sit down.

I have a few announcements.

They're gonna come out a little weird because I'm, I don't know, why I'm just a little weird.

My name is Jay Wynn.

If I have not gotten to meet you, uh, I would love to meet you.

I truly want to say welcome to my world where I get the privilege and the honor of seeing God's goodness in this crazy, exciting way every single week.

And I'm so glad that you guys got the opportunity to see what I get to see.

And you get to see how God is moving in our ministry.

And I have, it's a little bit special for me uh this this time because I feel like I've realized that in my past, you see, I started as this little knucklehead kid who was born in the inner city of Houston to a single mom, six siblings, and having to learn to navigate life and be who God created me to be was very difficult.

My friends taught me a lot of the wrong things.

And it was my church in Angleton, Texas, shout out, that really poured into me and helped me to be who I am and show me how good God is.

And it was my youth pastor looking at me and saying, Hey, I think you could do this, and me saying, There's no possible way that I know anything about the Bible enough because I get like I gave my life to Christ uh actually a year after, or a year after I started high school.

But I was like, I don't know the Bible enough, I don't know who God is enough, I can't, I don't I'm not good with words, I can't be a youth pastor.

There's no way, like I'm not destined to be that.

And he was like, What?

Like you think that you have to be a certain way for God to use you, then you're crazy.

God's willing to use anyone.

How about you read your Bible?

And I was like, okay, I guess I need to do that.

And so to see how God has transformed me from that moment to this moment where I get to stand in front of these students, ooh, who God sorry.

This is awkward.

To see how God has used me and his faithfulness, who I feel like a nobody.

Oh my gosh, sorry.

Just to see God's faithfulness in my own life has been really amazing.

Oh my gosh, I'm sorry.

All right, I'm about to just get to the announcements.

And I'm just truly blessed by them every single week.

Alright, I gotta go to the announcement.

I'm so sorry, I don't do this.

Uh I do have a few announcements for you guys.

If you want to stay up to date with everything that we got going on, we would love for you to follow us on Instagram.

We have our uh handles on the screen, and like Ashley made a joke, uh, you can follow us on Facebook also.

If you just search RPC Youth, we would love for you to join us there.

And then we have uh we're always in need of people who want to partner with us and join me and helping to steward what God has given us in this youth ministry.

So if you have questions or you want to join what God is doing, then please scan this QR code and make sure uh you send me an email if you need to do that.

All right, and then last but not least, we have a parenting event for parents of all ages, not just teenagers from of all ages, even if your kids are out of the house and grown adults, we would love to invite you to join us at this apparent this parenting event where we're gonna have so much information, great resources, and uh really look to come alongside of you as your church to partner with you and help you be the best parent that you can be.

Now, if you are here and you were looking for prayer, we normally have a prayer team down front, but we have the prayer team out in the lobby, so you can stop out there on your way to get prayer if you're in need.

That is all we have.

Thank y'all so much.

We love you.

Have a great day.