Several years ago, my wife and I had the privilege of going to Central Baptist Church in Greeneville, Tennessee for revival meetings. There we met Pastor Todd Abbey. Pastor Abbey is now the pastor at Fairfax Baptist Temple in Virginia. It was neat to reconnect with him and his wife. The War of Special Forces team has never been to Fairfax Baptist Temple, though I personally have heard of it for many years. The Lord worked in so many ways a report like this does not cover it all, but it will give you an idea what the Lord did.

Janna was at a store recruiting and saw a teen putting groceries in the car. The teen was not interested, but his mom was. She said she would go home and talk about it and get back to Janna. On Wednesday night, the mom brought the teen and two friends. The young man and one of his friends got saved that night! Janna also saw two girls walking down the street near the school. She invited them out, and they came on Thursday night and got saved. 

After split session, one young man responded. He admitted he had been struggling with holding in bitterness and got into fights with his dad every day. He realized that he was using various sins to help him cope with the hurt in his life, so he decided he was going to give it to God and trust God. He also wanted to ask his dad for forgiveness for his responses. 

A young man whom Zeb counseled was resentful about his family being in ministry. He despised having to assume responsibilities in the church, and had bitterness towards his parents. Zeb explained how bitterness was keeping him from prospering in his relationship with God. He was also struggling because he had been bullied at school. He made a decision to talk with his parents and shared a testimony on Friday.

A young lady responded on Wednesday after the message on bitterness. God continued to work, and convicted her about some hidden sin. She was serious about being right with God and took some key steps to get right with those she needed to. One young person in the school who came back Friday about hidden sin talked to Isaac. After getting right with God, he spoke with his parents and then told Isaac that it felt like such a burden off of his life!

One teen in the school was struggling to understand how a good God would allow circumstances in his life. He had had four friends commit suicide in the past year and two family members that were given months to live. He admitted he was prideful and didn’t want to give it to God; he wanted to be able to carry it by himself. Depression really set into his life, and he had even begun to contemplate suicide. He knew that there were certain things in his life that he needed to get right. Zeb reminded him that he couldn’t have one foot in the world; he had to be willing to sacrifice the pleasures of sin. The young man shared in his testimony:

“…even until this week I was still prideful….I didn’t hate God necessarily but I didn’t want to give it to Him….And it took a long, long time for me to realize…how low I was….[T]hat one breaking point is all it took for me to realize that I’m not good enough, I’m not going to be good enough. If I couldn’t take this for a year, I’m not going to be able to take care of it….God is always going to be there for you even when people aren’t. When people come and go, you can put all that faith and all that trust in Him, because He’s the one that stays.”

A young man in the Christian school said that he lived every minute of every day wanting to get even with his brother. He had bitterness consuming him, locked up inside. He shared in his testimony: 

“…Forgiveness isn’t for the other person, but it’s for me. It’s a key that I just need to choose to pick the lock with.”

There was one young man in the school whom we had been praying for all week. He raised his hand on Wednesday night, and Matthew talked to him for a little bit. He had made a decision at some point in his life, but he wasn’t sure about it. After chapel on Friday, he admitted he had been trusting himself to get to heaven. He prayed right then placing his dependence on Jesus. He was also dealing with bitterness and other sins and admitted he had been leading out in some of the worldly behavior and locker room talk at school.

Below are a few other testimonies: 

“I started having some bitterness with God….[Thinking] ‘why is this happening? Why couldn’t I be born normal?’ And that took me away from God, no matter how much I read the Bible….But eventually I realized that it wasn’t God, it was me and that’s when God fixed that….But recently I got bitter towards my parents, and it was taking me once again away from God….And on Wednesday, he talked about bitterness and I realized once again that that had come back into my life….And it had begun seeding doubts in my mind about going to heaven. I was saved but I was like, “if I die, just this night, would I go to heaven?” So…I realized how much doubt [bitterness] was putting in me and I just want to tell you, if you have bitterness it’s not just going to go away. I used to carry my emotions all of the time because my coping was just canning emotions until everything got better. But bitterness works against you.  And that’s why you have to find ways to forgive.”

“…but there was still something inside of me that was there and I didn’t know what it was. And that next day Hannah gave a testimony about anger and bitterness…and I realized that I had all this anger and bitterness that was just inside of me that was just welling up against my parents and it was just causing me to hate them, hate myself, hate God, just hate everything. And I realized that I needed the grace of God to just come wash over me and it couldn’t be through me but then I had to give it all to God and change from Him.”

“I’ve grown up in a good Christian home, and I felt like my testimony wasn’t worth sharing. But this morning the truth hit me like a ton of bricks and two weeks ago, I was just feeling like I was trying to juggle it all myself. And I was just like, “God, I need your help.” And this morning he talked about how it needs to be 0% you and 100% God….And I was like, wow I’ve been trying to juggle my life myself and I have been trying to live my Christian life on my own. It doesn’t matter if you grew up in church your whole life and feel like you don’t have anything to share with other people- God can still use your life. He can still use things that you’ve learned to influence and so don’t ever let your feelings of inadequacy get in the way because God can use His strength.”

Praise the Lord for all He did!