On Wednesday morning the OU Sooners discussed "Gretter & McDavid"

Wednesday afternoon the OKC Blazers had a great discussion around the origins of the universe and the arguments for an Intelligent Designer of this awesome creation that we get to experience. 

Wednesday evening, the UCO Bronchos discussed "How Good is Good Enough", led by team chaplain, James Jalbert, while the 16U team talked through "A Boy Named Sue" and the 14U House Plus team pondered "The Eternal Jesus"

Thursday night, both the 10U minor team and the 14U Major team also discussed "Gretter & McDavid" 

In summary:

In "The Eternal Jesus", players were challenged to take a look at John 1:1-5. Here, Jesus is described as the Word of God who was with God in the beginning and is Himself God. Through Him, everything was created and He gives life to everything. Jesus is not merely a good man that lived some 2000 years ago who said and did some "good" things, He is the eternal Son of God who is not a created being but instead has existed forever and came to earth to live with us and eventually die for our sins. 

"Gretter & McDavid" encouraged players to investigate the claims of 5 men, most of which were made within 3-4 days of encountering Jesus in John 1. Just as Wayne Gretzky's claims, in 2016 that Connor McDavid is the greatest 19 year old hockey player he has ever seen, make McDavid worthy of investigation, the claims of John the disciple (one of Jesus' closest disciples), John the Baptist (called by Jesus: the greatest man to ever live), Andrew, Philip, and Nathanael (all eventually disciples of Jesus) should inspire us to dig into the person of Jesus and take a look at what He said and how He lived. Among the claims discussed were that Jesus is: "the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world", "the Messiah", "the one Moses and the prophets wrote about", "the Son of God", and "the Unique one who reveals the unseen God to us." Jesus is worthy of investigation and His life, sacrifice and teachings should bring change in our lives. 

"A Boy Named Sue" took a look at John 1:42 and Jesus' first encounter with Simon. Jesus immediately changed Simon's name to Peter, and as the story is also told in Matthew 16:18, Jesus proclaims that Peter means "rock" and that Peter would be the rock on which Jesus would build His church - quite bold claims of a man who repeatedly misunderstood Jesus' teachings (Matthew 16:22-23, John 18:10-11, John 13), denied Jesus 3 times in His moment of greatest need, and even forgot the Gospel that he was spreading after Jesus rose again (Galatians 2:11-13). Players were encouraged to see that Jesus loves and even uses ding dongs like Peter, and that our God (on several occasions in scripture) is the great "name changer". He wants to change all of our names from "Sinner" to "Son" (and daughter) (John 1:12). 

The Blazers' chapel looking at the origins of the earth and the arguments for an Intelligent Designer of the Universe inspired some great discussion and took a look 

at some great reasons to believe that God exists. This discussion obviously garnered more good questions followed by further discussion into topics like Dinosaurs and old vs. young earth positions and ultimately players were encouraged to consider that believing in God doesn't deny science, while not believing in God actually requires quite large faith, all in the hopes that they would discover that Jesus is worth investigation. 

"How Good is Good Enough" started with the false assumption many believe that if they are just good enough (up to some arbitrary level of goodness) they can earn their way into Heaven. Looking at the story of the rich young ruler and a good portion of Romans 3, players were encouraged to see that God says that actually no one lives up to His standard of goodness (Romans 3:10 & 23). Though a hopeless position if left at that, God stepped into our hopelessness and achieved for us "goodness" that we could never measure up to on our own, by sending His Son Jesus to pay our sin penalty. We can't be good enough, but thankfully Jesus was and is! 

We're looking forward to another great week of chapels with y'all next week!