Uth Celebration

Yesterday, we (Dale & Angie Hamilton, Tammie Diggs, Cathrine Smead, Ryan Hamilton, and Amy Wright) attended Uth Celebration in Conway, Arkansas on the campus of UCA. Uth Celebration is a purity conference for kids 12 years and older. This year the theme was OneEighty. They were trying to encourage us to make a 180° turn from the direction the media and our culture is going. When you think about the shows we watch on television, they have life situations, ways of dressing, and language that we don’t want out children to imitate, but yet we allow the shows into our homes and allow our children to watch them. We have failed to realize that our teenagers are falling away and doing the things of the world because they have learned it from television. Sesame Street teaches our children their ABC’s and then as teenagers they learn how to sin by watching television; they have been desensitized to sin.

One of the speakers, Robert Harris, who is pastor of Victory Baptist in Sherwood, Arkansas, spoke about how the Israelites kept rubbing shoulders with the Canaanites until they intermarried with them and their cultures started to intertwine. There are so many similarities with us today. We keep rubbing shoulders with Canaan so much that they have rubbed off on us. We are starting to smell like Canaan, look like Canaan, and God is calling us out to be separate and to be devoted only to him.

The second speaker, Jonathon Johnson who is youth pastor at Sharon MBC said that, "purity flows from an intimate relationship with Christ." When we are close to Christ, reading His word, and staying close to Him in prayer, we will have purity flowing from our hearts and lives.
One thing I learned was that purity is not just for young people. Older people need to seek purity in their lives as well. I pray that we will all make a 180° turn and head to Jesus, seek his face, and turn from our wicked ways.