This is the second time the team has been privileged to be at Lancaster Baptist Church working with their junior high and high school young people. As a result of the COVID situation and the fact that the ministry is in L.A. County, we had to make several adjustments to the week. However, even though things looked different, the Lord worked in a special way. We are grateful for the faith perspective of Pastor Chappell in regard to the week.

After the Seal team meeting, a young lady responded to the invitation and got desperate about the lack of her own walk with the Lord. She was in tears as she gave a testimony in front of the student body:

“I’ve always tried to have a good walk with God. But this week I realized that even the simplest of things, even my devos that I’m doing for God, I have to give to Him. It’s not something I can do on my own. Even if my intention is doing them for Him; they are His. I have felt God’s presence before, but this past year I’ve been depleted.… I realized that I was trying to feed myself spiritually and that every day when I go into…my devotions…it’s not about me trying to find something that I can learn from Him, but about letting God feed me what He wants me to know for that day. This morning…His presence was so thick I could physically feel it. It is something I’ve never felt before. And I just knelt down and I prayed that each of you would feel the same because it’s the most incredible thing I have ever felt in my entire life.”

Another girl was struggling with bitterness and held on to it all week. Finally on Friday, she responded to the invitation and broke. She was tired of holding on to it. She gave a testimony in front of her peers: 

“…I’m letting some things go. I’m letting some bitterness go ‘cause I know it’s not helping me and it’s not helping the situation and…I’ve tried before but it hasn’t worked because I realized that I was depending on myself to get rid of the bitterness and not God, and it’s 100% God and 0% me. So…I’m letting go.” 

Below are some other testimonies: 

“My dad wasn’t really in my life. He was there, of course, he visited me, he loved me, but there wasn’t really a connection….He just gave things I needed. And … I really wanted that because I saw that everyone else had that, the love that they got and I was jealous because of that….So that night…I prayed…I made a commitment that I wanted to change; I wanted to love my father because he loved me….And I love him so much… but there was something blocking me. And I’m glad that I got that [bitterness] out today because without this I would probably have still been like that after this week.

…last week in the English class…we had a vocab quiz and I wrote a cheat sheet for it and I cheated on the quiz. And I go home, I tell my parents about it. My parents said, “…you have to check your heart. It’s not an issue of you didn’t study, it’s an issue that you’re not right with God.” …And then the whole revival I was like “God, I want a relationship with you. I want to get closer with You.” And just now when Brother Van Gelderen preached that, I realized I didn’t have a relationship with God. And the reason I cheated on the quiz wasn’t because I didn’t study, it was because I didn’t have a relationship with God. And I mean because of that I hurt a lot of people, and I hurt [my teachers]…I hurt my reputation and my testimony….I’m gonna start trying to read my Bible and start to try praying. But it’s not going to be me! It’s going to be 100 % God and 0% me. And just like Brother Van Gelderen said…it’s about the pursuit of God.

“…I want God to use me so so badly. But in order for Him to use me, I have to be willing to be used. And I have to be willing to be His 100%. And the fact that God can work in our weakness is great because that’s basically all I got.”

“…I was struggling with looking at things I wasn’t supposed to. I would often be caught in the chains of temptation and sin and constantly be doing it almost every day. Soon I got it right with God, but then as the years went by and days, temptation kept on coming back and sometimes I gave in. I didn’t know what could stop it. Then Tuesday’s message came. It was the message of freedom for me. It was a message that could help me entirely change that I could not do myself. And Jesus was the One that could change me.”

The team left for Orange County encouraged that God had done a deep work in some of the lives. The testimonies blessed our hearts. God is still moving in teenage lives!