LEAP Update

Wow, wow, wow.  WOW.  God is INCREDIBLE!!  This week has been amazing!  I would say that this has been the best week I've had in a long time, but I don't think two weeks from Adventure Week (VBS) and Atlanta Fest, and three from Pandamania (VBS) qualifies as "a long time."  Four months from the Jamaica mission trip does count as a long time though, and since VBS was with kids less than half my age, I count that as a separate experience from LEAP and other youth group/campus ministry stuff.  So this has been the best week I've had in a long time.  Haha.

I just have to throw this out there before I say anything else: I was wrong yesterday.  Someone in my small group did sign up to get baptized.  Only four people out of the 100+ at LEAP got baptized today, but still, that's four people making a public declaration of total commitment to Christ!  And MM was one of them!  I can't even begin to say just how excited I am about that!  And we (as in everyone at LEAP, not my small group) even had one kid come to know Christ as his/her Lord and Savior!  Hallelujah!  I can barely contain the joy I feel after today, and I don't want to!  If someone out there prayed for us after reading my post last night (or even before then, or without reading my post), know that YOUR PRAYERS WERE ANSWERED!  (More exclamation marks!  Woo!!)

Okay, so here's an updated summary of the week (a.k.a. an additional chapter in the story of my life, because this is in no way short enough to be just a summary).  Each day this week, we started off the morning with stretches and an exercise to get us all awake and ready for the day.  In other words, we danced.  More specifically, we did the Wop and the Carlton, and we watched the Dougie.  Yeah...  Haha.  It was interesting.  At least the majority enjoyed it.  After the morning dance party, we had TAG: Time Alone with God.  Everyone got a devotional for the morning, written by one of the members of our church, and we spent half an hour "alone with God."  We spent time individually praying, reading the devotional, studying the given Scripture passage, and answering the questions in the devotional, and then we discussed the devotional and shared our thoughts within our small groups.  Coincidentally (more accurately, as orchestrated by God), the TAG devotions were very well coordinated with the guest speaker's sermons, which had to be planned by God because there was no communication between the guest speaker and the person who wrote the devotionals, which is really cool.  Anyway, our group discussions started out kind of slowly at the beginning of the week, which was expected because everyone was still getting to know each other, so they didn't talk all that much.  But we got a few good responses, and the group started talking more and more as the week went on (which was a good and a bad thing at the same time, although it was never as bad as it was good, thankfully).

After TAG, we had our session, where our guest speaker, Chad Cannon, gave the message.  The word and worship were great all week, but I really felt God speaking through Chad and through the praise band today.  Ironically, God spoke to me by one simple act by T, who had given me a little bit of trouble on the first day.  (Funny story: T was late on Monday, and apparently I don't look old enough to be a LEAP leader, so, since he missed the introductions, he thought I was just another student and treated me accordingly all day Monday.  But when he finally realized that I was his small group leader, he started behaving better, and we actually became pretty good friends.  I'm actually looking forward to seeing him at church on Sunday.)  My pride often keeps me from raising my hands in worship, which really annoys me, but when T, who didn't really seem to get into the rhythm and movements of the music this week, lifted his hand, I couldn't help but lift my hand high right next to him.

Then we went to our small groups to talk about the message.  The topics, in order, were God's holiness (Isaiah 40:25), brokenness (Luke 7:36-50), being "living stones" (Joshua 4), and boldness (Acts 5:29-42).  We talked about how our little respect for God's holiness is so much less than what He deserves and how a greater respect for His holiness would change how we think about Him and how we serve Him (I thought it was interesting when Chad pointed out that a triple statement of something in the Bible is considered to be of utmost importance, and nowhere in the Bible do we see it written "love, love, love" or "mercy, mercy, mercy" or "grace, grace, grace"; although, grace, love, and mercy are very important, the only time we see a triple statement of an attribute of God is a proclamation of His holiness: "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty" (Isaiah 6:3)), and how, even though God is not like us and is far above us, He calls us to be like Him through the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit; we talked about how brokenness led the woman in Luke 7 to humble herself by entering the presence of the Lord with accusing Pharisees staring at her, knowing who she was, and how true brokenness over our sins and for all the lost people in the world would compel us to submit to God's power and allow Him to work through us to bring others to know Him; we talked about how, like the stones that testified of God's miraculous work of salvation in Joshua 4, our lives should be a testimony to the work of the Spirit in us, and that words should not be necessary for people to know that we are Christians (as Lee Strobel put it, "Don't tell me what you believe; show me how you live, and I'll tell you what you believe"); and we talked about boldness in sharing our faith, understanding that Christ's love will make us want to share the gospel with people, and that everyone has influence on someone, so a lack of influence is not an excuse for hoarding the gospel for yourself.  The messages and discussions were great, and today was especially cool to me because, when we prayed, we went around the circle and prayed for specific people who we know are not Christians.  After I opened, the entire small group finished the prayer with all the things I wanted to say that I forgot, which shows how the Spirit really does pray for us and is always giving us the words to speak.

After small group time, we had our rec time.  Monday we played capture the flag (we got second place), Tuesday we did a (ridiculously long) relay race (the last shall be first, so we really came in first place... haha), Wednesday we played dodgeball (second place again), and today we had the dodgeball championship (team aqua versus team red (the red team got first place yesterday, but the aqua team only lost because they tied with another team and lost in a tie breaker game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, so they were really undefeated)), and afterward we played tug-o-war.

Then we had lunch.  (I don't really need to explain that, do I?)  And then we did our service projects, which, since I already explained our projects for the last three days, brings us to today.  Today was kind of strange.  I looked up the directions to our service location at the Dallas campus of Northstar Church (and by that I mean, my mom looked up the directions and showed me); unfortunately, I guess I didn't take a good enough look, because we ended up passing it.  We finally got there about fifteen minutes late.  In typical God-like fashion, though, we finished what usually takes about five hours in just under two.  And Brad, the pastor there (and my former high school pastor), gave us some Northstar Dallas shirts in thanks.  Then, since we were done so early, he gave us the address of another place that needed some help.  Sadly, our GPS, Brad's directions, and the directions of the owner of the place seemed to conflict with each other, so we never made it there.  We just went back to the church instead, and we picked up trash along the trail by the back parking lot.  Needless to say, we did a lot of driving today.  I think God was messing with me because I said yesterday that I was excited about driving again.  Haha.

We finally got back to Northstar (Kennesaw, not Dallas) around 4:30.  (Well, technically, more like 4, since we were picking up trash by the parking lot, but we actually went inside at 4:30.)  Then we did baptisms at 5.  I don't think I've ever been as excited for baptism as I was today.  Each of the four people who got baptized had special significance to me in some way (not necessarily by personal acquaintance though).  The first kid was the brother of one of the LEAP leaders who my brother and I have known since we started going to Northstar five years ago.  The second was MM from my small group.  The third was one of the LEAP leaders who felt the calling to be obedient and set an example and recommit her life to the God who has set us apart from the world.  Those three were the only ones who signed up to get baptized, but when Nick (former middle school pastor, current high school pastor) opened the baptism pool for anyone else who felt the urge to get baptized, one more kid stepped forward.  The air was thick with the Spirit!  It was awesome!  Seeing God move in those four to bring them to be baptized... wow.  That was exactly what I was waiting for all week.  I just didn't know it.

And actually, there was more that I didn't realize I was waiting for.  Nehemiah 8:10 says, "the joy of the Lord is your strength," so Satan must have been whimpering in fear when he saw me at the end of the day.  We finished off the day (and the week) with what's called the LEAP Bash, where we have a bunch of inflatables and water games to just have fun with.  I was standing by the bubble fountain thing (very descriptive, I know), "supervising."  In other words, I was "helping keep everyone safe," and I used that as an excuse to not get dragged into the water games.  Well, I left briefly to get a drink from the water fountain inside, and when I came out, there was a girl standing where I had been standing.  After a moment, she asked why I wasn't doing any of the games.  I gave that same explanation.  Then we got into a long conversation, and somewhere along the way she convinced me to go on the slip'n'slide.  I didn't notice at first because of all the noise, but out of nowhere she pointed out her accent, which was almost unnoticeable.  (Again, I won't give her name, but her initials are IW.)  She was adopted from Latvia about five or six years ago and has only been coming to Northstar since this past February.  (She went to another church before then.)  The more we talked, the happier I got for her because she became good friends with my friend Matt, who was her small group leader, and a couple others in her group, and she is beginning to like Northstar a lot more now that she has made some friends there.  (It's sad that nobody stepped up to become her friend in the four months before LEAP, but what matters is that she has friends here now.  And she has some of the best too.  Matt was one of the major welcoming forces when I was new at Northstar, and he, along with my friends Tanner, Michael, Craig, and Dusty, were the ones that really took me in when I hadn't made any friends here yet.)  And having those friends (and I'd like to count myself among them, not to be prideful) will definitely help her a lot as she finishes up middle school and goes through her high school years.

Something about the fact that she's adopted just filled me with joy.  I can't really explain it.  Maybe it was because she was the one who brought it up by pointing out her slight accent.  Maybe it was her joy in knowing that someone in America, who had probably only met her once, loved her enough to take her into their family.  Maybe it was the peace she carried with her that just seemed so contagious.  But whatever the reason, God gave me the joy I had been praying for all week, and boy, did He pile it on top of me!  Through meeting and talking to IW, through talking to MM yesterday and through her baptism today, through hanging out with T and BK, through the joy and thankfulness of the heads of our work sites, through God's word spoken through Chad, through worship with the praise band,  through the joyful service of Katie, Matt, and all my fellow LEAP leaders, and through the thankfulness and love my small group showed me and Katie in return for our service and love, God gave me new joy, hope, and strength to continue growing in Him and to share the gospel of His grace, love, mercy, and of course, His holiness with everyone around me.

So, just as this has been an encouragement to me, let this be an encouragement to you (or a prompt if you don't know Christ), showing you that God is moving and working in amazing ways in the generation that's rising up right now.  Our God is not dead... He is surely ALIVE!