The act of saying “yes” to Jesus causes the “fruit of the Spirit” to come through us! The fourth fruit we are focusing on is PATIENCE. It’s easy to not practice patience. We live in a very fast paced world where the latest thing can be had at an instant on our phones. But often the best things in life are “worth the wait.”
Challenge: Is there anyone or anything in your life that you need more patience with? Or are you tired of waiting for an answer to something you’ve been praying for? Let’s pray that we would trust in the Lord’s timing and that He would give us the strength to be patient.
Let’s also pray for the students who will be sharing about PATIENCE and perseverance while sharing their faith in their schools during the week four HOPE cycle.
// Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer – Romans 12:12 //
The act of saying “yes” to Jesus causes the “fruit of the Spirit” to come through us! The third fruit we are focusing on is PEACE. Jesus brought peace into a world full of chaos, and He still desires to bring peace to hearts today. Trying to find our purpose and meaning in anything other than Jesus can lead to a life of worry and anxiety, because none of those things will ever give us a true sense of meaning and purpose.
Challenge: Let’s pray that this week we would find our purpose in Jesus. In Matthew 28, Jesus gives His disciples their purpose. He tells them to go and make disciples. That command to make disciples still applies to us as Christians today!
Let’s also pray for the students who will be sharing about PEACE in their schools during the month three HOPE cycle.
// the Lord gives strength to His people, the Lord blesses His people with Peace – Psalm 29:11 //
The act of saying “yes” to Jesus causes the “fruit of the Spirit” to come through us! And the second fruit we are focusing on is JOY. As we hold onto God we can have gladness that overflows into our friends, family, and the world. 
Challenge: Let’s pray that this week we would pursue the Joy of the Lord even when life gets tough. Let’s pray that that Joy would overflow out of us so that we can impact the people around us for the sake of the Gospel.
Let’s also pray for the students who will be sharing about JOY in their schools during the month two HOPE cycle.
I have told you these things so that you will be filled with my Joy. Yes, your joy will overflow -John 15:11
The act of saying “yes” to Jesus causes the “fruit of the Spirit” to come through us! And the first fruit we are focusing on is LOVE.
Through Jesus we can love those around us even when we don’t want to.
Challenge: let’s pray that we would desire to grow in our own love for the Lord and that His love would shine through us and enable us to love others.
Let’s also pray for the students who will be sharing about LOVE in their schools during the month one HOPE cycle.
//“If I speak in the tongues of men or angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal” – 1 Corinthians 13:1//
For this coming school year, our Hope guides are focusing on the Fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23). Our student leaders will be challenged to focus on and give talks on one Fruit each month and how the Lord can use that Fruit to make a huge impact for the Gospel.
SO, for the next 9 weeks leading up to the start of school, we challenge you to actively follow along in prayer as we pray over one Fruit each week starting this Wednesday.
Ask God how you personally can bear this fruit throughout the week while praying for the students who will be discussing that fruit on their school campus.
// This same Good News that came to you is going out all over the world. It is bearing fruit everywhere by changing lives, just as it changed your lives from the day you first heard and understood the truth about God’s wonderful grace. Colossians 1:6 //
We would like to introduce you to our summer intern, Mary Helen Bayless. She is going into her senior year at Auburn University where she is majoring in Communication and minoring in Business.
Mary Helen was born and raised in Tampa, Florida and attended Plant High School. She was very involved as a student leader with First Priority all four years where she worked alongside Tampa’s Executive Director Amber Johansen to plan the weekly Bible study lunches as well as the big engage week pizza lunches.
Since then she has continued her passion of sharing Christ on her school campus in college. This past year, she was the New Member Educator for her sorority. In this role of guiding 80 freshmen through their first year of college, she got the opportunity to share the gospel and show them what Christ meant to her and how HE is the only one who can satisfy, even more than everything during their four years in college.
“My greatest passion is helping people realize how to reach their own specific mission field that God has given them. In high school, First Priority pushed me to realize that my mission field was the 2,000 students that I walked the high school halls with daily. This same mentality has carried with me to Auburn where I have made Auburn and specifically my sorority my current mission field.”
I love watching God connect dots! Most of us as Christians can see the hand of God at work by looking in the rear view mirror so to speak. It seems like the only way we see God at work is when we look back in time. I think life changing faith is seeing God though the front windshield trusting that He is always at work.
With this in mind, I have to tell you a short, cool story of how I got to witness God connecting dots recently. For a few years, we have been asking God to raise someone up in the Orlando area who would work First Priority in the local schools there. We have a few schools that have clubs there that were started previously. Zion, who is a senior, leads one of those clubs and is seeing God change students’ lives. His last Engage meeting (gospel shared) of his senior year was today. He reached out to me a few days ago and asked if I could come and speak. 
As I was reading Zion’s email it reminded me to check in on a guy named Garfield, who I had been talking to for the past six months. He was a Campus Coach for First Priority in South Florida for years before moving to South Carolina to be a Youth Pastor. He had reached out to me because he and his wife were feeling the call to go to Orlando. When I called him yesterday, he told me that he had already moved to Orlando and was interviewing for a Youth Pastor job! Goose bumps.
The next thing I did was connect him and Zion together and today, Garfield was the guest speaker for the First Priority club at Zion’s school. They had almost 100 students in attendance and they saw eight students give their lives to Christ!
God connects dots. Now I don’t care who you are…that’s cool!
~ Mark Roberts, Associate Director of First Priority of America.
My fifteen year old son and I didn’t attend church together this week. We normally go to the 11am service, but I went to the early service so that I could help in the 4th/5th grade classroom where my daughter is during that service. So, he came at 11am with his best friend. After church, we met in the foyer to head home together and eat lunch.
Right when we walked in the door he looked at me and said, “did you happen to donate to the middle school project the pastor was talking about today”? I said, “I did. It wasn’t much but I put all the cash in the offering that I had in my wallet.”
Our pastor is preaching a series called What If? It’s about how being educated and engaged is so important. Not just one or the other.
This week he was talking about being educated about a project we are working on as a church to help a middle school in the Nashville area in their time of need. He wanted us to be educated about who the students, families, teachers, and staff are that attend and work in that school. We watched a video and he brought in a staff member from the school that works on engaging the community with the school to help provide food and other resources for them.
It was a moving service that educated us as well as asked us to engage with them. Listed were several opportunities where we could engage with that community through prayer, giving, and several serving opportunities. It definitely made me think of how I can engage with this middle school and what I can do to help.
Our conversation continued. My son said, “I’m going to get online right now and give. And I think we should really help in other ways too.” I said, yes, that’s great! I didn’t ask how much he gave nor did he offer. He has a little side business he does at home to make some money, so I knew he could at least give a little. I was just thankful for his heart and that he felt like he could contribute and make a difference in this school that’s not too far from us.
This morning I got online to check my bank account as I do most days. My son’s account is linked to mine but I rarely look at it. But at a glance I did notice the balance was down quite a bit. So I clicked on the link and saw that yesterday he had given a significant amount to help that school. I am thankful for his heart and that he couldn’t just sit there and be educated about the problem, he had to engage and do something about it.
How many times do we all sit and listen to the things going on around us, thinking, someone else will volunteer or will meet that need. I know I have had those thoughts before. But the time is now for us to not only be educated about what is going on around us, but to also engage through prayer, giving, or serving.
Here is just one example of how God is moving through the First Priority communities we have across our nation. This is FP Greater Clayton. Praise God for the work He is doing in the lives of students.
68 more students said yes to Jesus!
677 students have responded to the Gospel since our launch.
17 students have signed up for baptism!
30+ more students shared their Faith Stories!
200+ boxes of Mac N Cheese and non-perishable items were collected for With Love From Jesus, missions to other local ministries, and ministry to Teachers.
100+ more Bibles were given to students who wanted them.
2,000 students attended First Priority Clubs last month. That means 2,000 students heard the Gospel!
Around 1,500 students are attending on a weekly basis to learn what it means to be Missional Leaders who live and share the Gospel.
The National Day of Prayer is an annual event that happens on the first Thursday in May each year. The National Day of Prayer helps unite people of all faith to pray for our nation. First Priority students have been praying across our country today and this week to unite together and pray for their schools, clubs, and our nation. Thank you for your continued support in praying for our students so that they can reach more students for Christ!
