Peeling Away Layers of Selfishness

Every summer Pastor Koch gives a really good message to the counselors before the campers come. He wants the new counselors to understand what camp is about. I am convicted every time I hear this message. There are a lot of things that you will experience during your week at camp. There are a lot of emotions that you will go through while you are at camp.

The campers live a life of pain and suffering. They are very familiar with rejection and they are used to being pushed aside. The campers experience a lot of physical and emotional pain throughout their lives. At camp you get to experience their life and even some of their pain. For one week you are in their world. We are there to love our campers. But there are also a lot of things that we can learn about ourselves throughout the week.

We have three enemies that tempt us: they are the world, Satan, and our sinful flesh. You are your worst enemy. We are so focused on ourselves and what we want. We are selfish and we gratify those sinful desires. The goal of camp is to take the focus off of ourselves and put it on someone else for the week. There are many different ways that we will be stretched and put in uncomfortable situations throughout the week. We go through these things so that we can understand the campers a little better.

Pastor Koch uses the illustration of a clay jar. We are the clay jar and the hard mold is our selfish being. God uses experiences like camp to make a little crack in that jar. God uses camp to peel away layers of selfishness. We are stretched when we experience pain and suffering during uncomfortable situations. God uses those things to give us an understanding about life. It is a good thing to take the focus off of yourself and care for another person. When God uses experiences like camp to peel away our selfish being we can live life and experience things as He intended.