Back

October 31, 2024

What's Forming You?

Hot pink posters with neon yellow stripes popped across the back of the auditorium. Meaningless words reached out, grabbing the attention of the audience. It was snappy, busy, and attractive. But no one was focused on that. Almost 400 youth leaders from across Central and Eastern Europe had their eyes closed with a hand laid on their neighbor’s shoulder. The theme of this year’s Fall Conference was Word Formed. Tyler Patty urged the audience, “Pray for a fresh vision of hope that is shaped by God’s story. Pray that young people in this region of the world would become Word Formed.”

NOISE. Inner noises of anxiety and outer noises of technology snatch up our attention. “How do we hear the voice of God in the midst of all these voices?” asked Dave Patty. As Christians, we must be on guard in the midst of this. We must have discernment regarding the words that we hear. For Christ is the Word. Through him, we are Word-formed. If we ignore Christ’s words, we will fall prey to the noises of the world. In order to distinguish true words, Dave pointed out four points of formation to look for:

1) Delight. God will bring about an affection for his words.

2) Comfort. God’s words will be a strength to our emotions.

3) Correction. The Word of God will form our actions.

4) Teaching. God forms our convictions through his law. God’s Word will overpower the noises of the world.

STORY. Jeremiah was a young man who was given a story from God to tell the nation of Israel. It was full of words that were both bitter and sweet. So how did Jeremiah know if these words were actually meant to form the nation of Israel? Tyler Patty explained that, as Christians, we are to wrestle with similar thoughts in order to bring about both honesty and humility. We must approach the strangeness to be transformed by the sacred. God is the great storyteller.

THE EQUATION. Open awareness + selective attention + self-intervention = Word Formed. Sean Smith pointed out that as people navigate the path of life, hearing all sorts of noises, they can live purely from emotion or purely from reason—whatever they want to hear. However, as Christians, our emotions and reason must be in tune with the Word of God. We must equip ourselves alongside our brothers and sisters and stay on his path to be Word-Formed. God is the strongest pathmaker.

RELATIONSHIP. Are you Word-formed or world-formed? “God’s words function as an extension of himself,” said Landen Llamas. “He is entering into a relationship with his people through his Word.” It is easy to get distracted by the meaningless words of the world. Our actions are always a response to the words around us. We must remember to recognize God as the Word and choose to live in light of that relationship: Word Formed.

WORSHIP: Our God is sovereign! He is the Word made flesh that dwelt among us. “We sang Praise until we had no voice left and jumped so much on that last song,” said Nia from Bulgaria. “I could see all around me young people from Latvia, Poland, Czech, Albania…so encouraging. It really felt like Heaven.” When we distinguish the noises of the world, share God’s story, live out his equation, and cherish a relationship with him, we can worship him as those who are Word-formed.

Nia was right. In Heaven, we will be perfectly Word-formed. We will dwell forever with the Word, face to face. Meaningless noise will have no more power. So while we are here on earth, seek out the Word. Pray for a fresh vision of hope that is shaped by God’s story! He will give you one that is formed by the Word so that we may go and be Word-formers.

Related Posts

Read Story

Discipleship, Events, Stories

The Unseen War

Three years of conflict and still no peace. The war in Ukraine has returned to the forefront of the news as world leaders clash in a spin cycle of opinions. Those in the country feel the weight of years of exhausting conflict, with no clear end in sight. But behind the scenes, another battle is raging for the spiritual soul of the nation.  Amidst pain, hardship, and struggle, God is still at work and our JV team of 27 staff are pressing forward to take ground in the fight. During the last weekend of February, they gathered 450 young people from local churches across Ukraine for an innovative “Spring Fest.” Good Bible teaching, powerful worship, and personal testimonies were woven together to point people to the resources they have in Christ. He is the only firm anchor for our souls in the midst of a raging storm. The storm is particularly fierce for these young people. Some of the youth groups meet close enough to the front lines to hear the sound of bombing all day and live with the constant threat of evacuation and displacement.   One youth group from Kharkiv, en route to the fest, had their main youth leader forcefully conscripted into the military. Can you imagine if that happened to a youth group from your church?  Yet, our sovereign God is always working to accomplish his purposes despite the evil and failures of man. In fact, he often uses these unwelcome trials to accelerate his work. Our team is experiencing an unprecedented response to the gospel and a passionate hunger in young people to grow deep in their walks with God. With the exodus of leaders out of the country or into the military, there is a huge need to equip a new generation of leaders, and our training events are packed. Other JV countries are using the crisis to mobilize their young people into mission. Recently, our JV team in Slovakia held a series of events for 250 youth leaders called “Glow and Go.” Their goal was to inspire, mobilize, and energize young leaders into personal transformation and bold outreach.  As a result, 12 Slovaks traveled into war-torn Ukraine to serve at the Spring Fest.  They led worship, organized eight workshops, and served in numerous practical ways. But most of all, they told these young people that they were not forgotten and not alone. More teams from Slovakia and the Czech Republic will be assisting with evangelistic camps. When under pressure from the enemy, the best strategy is forward motion. Thank you for joining us in the spiritual battle for Ukraine.       
Read Story

Evangelism, Events

The Fog is Lifting

The fog was relentless. It engulfed the city, delaying flights, forcing reroutes, and leaving hundreds stranded. One plane circled Kraków Airport 27 times before finally diverting–an unofficial record. This was not how I imagined the start of the Revive Europe Conference when I agreed to help organize it. Our team spent two years planning this gathering of thousands of young believers from across the continent, yet we still felt unprepared to handle the haze that greeted us the first day.  I must confess, at times, I feel as though all of Europe is in a fog. Once a place where church bells rang with certainty, Europe now seems lost in a haze of spiritual confusion. It’s one that muffles sound, obscures vision, and leaves many wandering without clear direction—making it easy to believe this gray uncertainty is all there is. Yet, after Revive, I am now more convinced than ever that God is not done with Europe. These students didn’t just come with longing; they came with expectation. Throughout the week, hundreds knelt in surrender, responding to the call for repentance, forgiveness, and consecration. Some might dismiss this as youthful idealism or a fleeting emotional response. But this generation is not naive. They have known suffering, loss, and longing, and still, they believe. Their faith is not blind; it is bold. I saw this depth displayed in my Ukrainian friend Nastya. As we counted down to the New Year, worship resounding around us, she stood with tears in her eyes. A release of soldiers in captivity had just been announced, and her friend’s name was not on the list. She turned to me and whispered, “I had hoped… I really thought he would be free by now.” Like many others, she hadn’t expected the war to last this long.  So we spent the first moments of 2025 in tears and fervent prayer. And then, as the final “Amen” was spoken, Nastya lifted her hands in worship, singing with the crowd: “Bless God, for he holds the victory. Bless God, for he’s always with me. Bless God, for he’s always worthy. Every chance I get, I’ll bless your name.” Like Nastya, the crowd was aware of how deeply broken Europe is. We all felt the weight of the task before us. But we were also aware of the power of the cross. We know the Great Physician, the King of Kings, the Prince of Peace. And we believe that he has a desire to see Europe restored. Therefore, this is not a time to settle for small victories. It’s a time to seek God’s presence, to cry out for revival, and to pray his promises into reality. We are already seeing glimpses of renewal breaking through. The hunger for God’s Word is growing in Bulgaria, with a surge in Bible distribution over the last few years. In Romania, churches are uniting across denominational lines in unprecedented ways. Ukraine now has the fastest-growing church in all of Europe. We know that revival is not something we manufacture—it’s something we receive. However, scripture shows that revival begins with us, broken and surrendered, crying out for God to do what only he can do. This is what I saw displayed over New Year’s.  Perhaps you, too, are in a season of waiting—longing for a breakthrough, clarity, and the fog to lift. Take heart. The same God moving in Europe is moving in your life.  Will you join us in praying for revival? Let’s cry out together, trusting that the Spirit is at work, lifting the fog and bringing light where there was once only gray.  
Read Story

Spotlight, Stories

The Light of Imagination

On Saturday, December 22, 2012, in my final year of Czech high school as a Josiah Venture Kid, a light came to our doorstep in Czech. I was preparing to graduate in the spring and move to the States for college. While I expected this Christmas to be the same as all the previous ones, it felt different because of one encounter on a chilly Saturday morning. Our neighbor Pavlina, who lived down the street, rang our doorbell to bring us a special and meaningful Christmas greeting: a flame from Bethlehem. This flame was lit in Bethlehem by a Palestinian boy, flown to Vienna, and taken by the scouts through Brno to Ostrava. Pavlina had woken up early that morning to take the one-hour train trip to Ostrava to light her flame so that she could spread the Light to our little town. The candlelight danced inside the lantern as she opened its glass door and passed the flame to a candlestick, which she used to light my candle. It was so cold that we could see our breath, and we lingered only for a moment at the door before she said goodbye and went on her way. Pavlina walked away with her lantern, but the light she still held was now also in my hands. We kept that flame alive throughout the following days until Christmas. Even after we turned off the lights for the day, it still glowed safely in our lantern on the windowsill. I was mesmerized. Growing up as a JV missionary kid, I often heard about Christ being the Light of the World. That Christmas, however, that flame that came from Bethlehem ignited my imagination. It brought the story of Jesus’s birth to life in a new way. We don’t only get to hear about the Light of the World; we get to experience him, just as I experienced the light and felt the warmth of the Bethlehem Light. This past September, I had the joy of hosting a workshop at JV’s Fall Conference and learning together with youth leaders and brothers and sisters in Christ from all over Central and Eastern Europe. The workshop, “Getting People Excited About the Bible,” centered around applying our imaginations to studying God’s Word. Back in high-school, the visual of the Bethlehem Light sparked my imagination as I considered the Christmas story. In the same way, when we apply our imaginations to engaging with God’s Word, we see it with fresh joy and wonder. In our workshop, we imagined ourselves as different characters and looked at Scripture through that lens. For example, we talked about being like a guest. As guests, our goal is to come in and try to understand the culture and the people in the home we are visiting, not assuming we already know what life looks like there. With that in mind, we explored the cultural traditions of Psalm 23 together. We also imagined ourselves as astronauts who can see the whole world from their space station. They can see how the continents fit together and how big the ocean really is. We again looked at Psalm 23, but this time to discover how it fits into the bigger picture of Scripture. Perhaps someone nearby has delivered the Bethlehem Light to your town, and you could find it, bring it home, and share it with your neighbors. Or perhaps you could discover and carry the light differently—by using your imagination to explore the story of Jesus and inviting others into this joy. Advent is a season of anticipation, a time to pause and let the beauty of the gospel stir our hearts and imaginations. Just as the flame from Bethlehem sparked awe and inspiration in me that unexpected December morning, we, too, can let the light of Christ illuminate our lives and draw others toward his truth. What could it look like for the story of Christ’s birth to come alive to you this Advent season? How might your imagination draw you into its beauty? Could this wonder then spread to those around us as we also bring the light to them? May this season be one of discovery, joy, and sharing the gift of Immanuel, God with us.