One of the reasons I love coming to Juniata Baptist Church is that we get to connect with some past War of Special Forces “veterans.” The pastor, Del Terpenning, got some things right with the Lord his senior year when the team came to the school. There are others in the area who were a part of one of the meetings in the past. We always have been encouraged with a week at Juniata Christian School, and this year was no exception.

Austin, the MIghty Marine captain, was out recruiting on Tuesday with some of the Christian school teens. They had gone to a park, but hadn’t found anyone there. One of the teens suggested they head to a small town a few minutes up the road. They found a general store, and Austin went in to see if there were any teens. Providentially, there was one young man at the counter. Austin thought he was too old, but felt led of the Lord to invite him anyway. The man ended up being a teen and he was able to come out Wednesday night where he heard the gospel, and accepted Jesus as his Savior.

Ashton, the Super Seal captain, was able to hand out fliers at a stop sign near a public high school. On Monday, he was able to talk to a teen and recruit him. He saw him again the next day, and this teen came to the War with a friend on Thursday. Ashton said, “I was praying for him and at the invitation they raised their hands.” He was able to go through the gospel with them and they both accepted Christ as their Savior. The team was praying we would see more fruit from those fliers Ashton had handed out even though we had no phone numbers to follow up. On Wednesday, two middle school girls came from one of those fliers. They both got saved!

Carissa, the Seal co-captain, was burdened for a girl on her team in the Christian school. She began praying for the Lord to work in her heart, and the girl responded to the invitation on Wednesday. She was from a very rough home situation and was angry at her dad. Carissa was able to talk to her about her bitterness and the sins that bitterness led to. She was able to take some steps towards victory that week!

Here are some testimonies from Friday night:

…Something that the Lord talked to me about this week was…I had to get something right with somebody, and I was really nervous too because 3 years ago when I did, I didn’t feel any better, honestly….But at lunchtime, I went and I talked to that person, and I got something right with them, and I felt so much better. It was literally like this weight lifted off my chest. And it was, it was the best thing ever. If you guys have to do that, I encourage you to do that. Another thing was…I’ve been struggling to do my doing my devotions so much…I have been for years…And then Dr. Jim Van Gelderen preached a message this morning in chapel about being 0% you and 100% God. And even though I was praying, Lord, help me to do my devotions for you, I was still putting me into that. So, today I changed my prayer, and I said, “Lord, teach me.” So, instead of me being the person that is leading, “Lord, teach me every day…” It’s great to have a relationship with God, and I love it so much. And I’m going to encourage you all to do it too.

 I…got assurance of my salvation…and just having the doubts…out of my head was awesome cause it was really annoying cause every time I hear something about salvation or just even not hearing something, it’s just being in my head. It was like, “I want to go to heaven when I die, but I don’t know if I’m saved, but I think I got saved.” And it was just driving me nuts. So, I got that settled with my pastor, and youth pastor.  So, thank God for that. And…just any of you who got saved…this week, just keep going for God. Get a Bible, do your devotions. I’ve got devotional books in my locker if any of you want some.

…We need to be witnessing to other people. My grandpa, he passed away…about a year ago and it was very sudden…we weren’t ready. But I want to encourage you guys that there are a lot more people out there who are unsaved and might die in 5 minutes. We don’t know, but we really need to be spreading the Gospel to others.

Hey, I just wanted to…give a testimony of something the Lord put on my heart this week…I’ve been right in with you guys sitting there, and obviously, I’m an adult, so it’s a little bit different. This year…we’ve gone on mission trips, we’ve gone to camp, and there’s been a ton of stuff that feels like spiritually we’ve been marching forward. And…this week came, and I almost felt like spiritually amplified out. Like, okay, we’ve already had our times and times and times of testimonies and moving forward and moving forward. I mean, we just had the leadership canoe trip and stuff like that, which was a wonderful time. And honestly, I came into this being like, okay, my decision-making time, my personal growth, and I’m thinking your guys’ growth was was done, right? Like, we’ve done enough. We’ve gone enough forward…but then throughout this week, I quickly realized that’s completely wrong. That’s a terrible mindset to have. There’s never a time in your life that you’re not going to be continuing to grow in your knowledge and understanding of Christ. There’s never going to be a time where God’s going to stop convicting you of sins and stop convicting you of of things you could be doing better. And the same thing happened in my life. I mean, I’m a youth pastor, right? I do this for a living. I preach to teens about stuff, but even I was super convicted even today…by the message about it being 100% of God and not me. You see, one of the biggest things I struggle with is…going out and talking to people and evangelizing and trying to bring them to church…I like to be liked, right? I like to for people to think I’m cool. I like to be socially accepted, and…so when it comes to going out and… talking to people I’ve never talked to…and really just asking them about their relationship with Christ, asking them if they’re saved, that’s something that I am terrible at, even as a youth pastor. And I’ve loved being able to see these guys and their willingness to just go forward…This is an urgency thing. And then tying that with the message today about how it’s God, not me anyway. So, I have nothing to fear. It is a very serious thing to be able to go out and tell others about Christ, and I need to be doing that because it is very urgent, and I don’t need to fear while doing that because it’s 100% God and 0% me.