Today was an amazing day. It didn’t seem all that amazing to start out with though.
Frank, Emily, and I went to a meeting this afternoon to plan our BUMP week (a week in July when youth groups from outside the Twin Cities partner with urban churches, serve, and receive intentional training and challenges in their relationship with Christ). The meeting brought some “bad” news—that the youth group that is coming to lead our week of VBS is down to 9 people (down from 16, which seemed like a small group already). We were already dealing with some other “bad” situations—like Living Hope being in a very difficult place financially, not knowing how much longer we can stay in our current building, and our plans for our big rummage sale being ripped apart. In addition, Steve received news of the death of a dear sister in our host church.
These are difficult situations, and we find ourselves not knowing what to expect. However, praise God that all four of us are resting in the fact that God is in control of all these things. Our ministry training this summer involves a lot of dwelling in God’s word and being immersed in Truth. We are working through the Experiencing God study by Henry Blackaby and the Truth Project videos put out by Focus on the Family. With all of this fresh in our minds, and with some valuable experience of walking with God and seeing Him work things out for good, we knew we could trust God. Our role was to pray.
So we did that…and then eventually we had to get on with the other things that had to get done. Steve had to be somewhere else soon, and the rest of us were supposed to go on some home visits with Larry, a guy who often visits homes of ministry participants on Thursday nights.
We realized that we needed some informational flyers to get out to these families…so I scrambled to make something on Publisher. Nothing was working; my computer was too slow, I couldn’t find the document I was looking for; the printer wasn’t working; the flyers didn’t turn out very aesthetically pleasing! (More plans gone awry, more obstacles!) But finally, after a late start, we were ready to go.
We considered taking the ministry van so that we would all fit, but after rearranging the desks in the office, I couldn’t find the van keys as quickly as we needed them. Ok, another change in plans. We split up; I went with Emily and Frank went with Larry.
We visited a couple of houses, then we headed to a nearby park, having heard the some of the kids were there. Then, wow! Cool things started happening. A teenage boy waved at me…it’s Tank! He hadn’t been to youth group for almost a year. And Ethan and Will were there too, playing basketball. These guys had been a big part of youth group a while ago, but after Ethan and some other guys moved away, they stopped coming. It was so good just to see them. Then I saw some of our youth group girls inside and met some of their friends. It was very interesting how these friends kept saying things like—“Watch your language; those are church people.” At one point I brought up the fact that it doesn’t really matter what church people think; God always sees all of us. They joked around—“He needs prayer!” "No, she does!" But I think I found some more people to pray for. J
The best part of my day came next. Thursday nights are “Teen Night” at Audubon park, so decided to stay there for supper (which conveniently solved my problem of what to eat). Emily and I ended up eating with some younger kids, and there was a beautiful opportunity to teach them about prayer as we thanked God for the meal. Then during supper, I asked Jahkaya (a 3rd grader I’ve known for the past 2 years) where she goes to church. She talked about her church and said she’s having her First Communion this Sunday. When I asked if she knew what that was about, she said she couldn’t remember. This began a conversation that went on for at least 45 minutes, as she asked question after question about God and the Bible, giving Emily and me the opportunity to share deep truths with her in terms she could understand. We talked about the Trinity and incarnation, creation and the fall, Satan and the problem of evil, the gospel and the eternal fates of those who trust Jesus and those who do not. I was amazed at how she was the one propelling the conversation forward with her many questions.
Jahkaya was getting excited about what she was hearing, but she got to the point where she said, “I want to read about that in the Bible. Could I have my own Bible where I could read about that?” (Yes!!!) We said she could—that we could even get her one that night. She got really excited and went to call her dad to see if we could drive her to the church. And so we went, found a nice NIrV Bible for her, wrote her name inside, and explained that this book is more valuable than all the money in the world and more important to her than food and water. I think she was inclined to believe us. We showed her how to look up books and verses, and we showed her where to find one of the stories we had told her at the park—Creation. She worked hard to read a good portion of Genesis 1, and we had her underline the things that God made. It was good to see her learning to comprehend scripture on her own! Before the night was over, we had given her a notebook and pen and a bookmark I had “randomly” found that day while cleaning the office (which happened to point directly with the last verse we read—Genesis 1:27). We closed in prayer and walked her home, and we got to meet her older sister and her mom.
Wow. Emily walked back from her house and just began to praise God aloud for the ways He was at work. The Spirit was clearly working in her heart to draw her to the Truth. And though our plans seemed to be going awry all day, His plan always succeeds.
As I look ahead to this summer, the picture is pretty blurry; I don’t know a lot of details of how this will all work out. But I am excited to simply follow Him day by day and moment by moment and see what He does for His Name’s sake. His plan is what really matters.
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