For years, Bible Baptist Church in Hampton, GA has tried to schedule one of our teams to come and do the teen program for their Vacation Bible School. This year is the first time we have been able to accommodate their dates. We entered the week knowing that it was going to be physically and spiritually intense. In some ways, we had no idea.
We hit the ground running on Monday morning with our first “War.” We had 87 teens right off the bat. God worked and souls were saved at every rally. I preached the gospel at the end of the first morning and 15 teenagers responded in the invitation and trusted Christ. What a start to the week! Both Monday and Tuesday, we went recruiting in the afternoon and found many young people interested. Wednesday and Thursday, we had rallies both in the mornings and in the evenings. On Wednesday evening, there was a family that attended who had two teenage girls and a young man who was a family friend. They sat through the preaching, but did not respond in the invitation. God put the family on our hearts and we prayed for them on Thursday morning in our team prayer time. That night, the family came again. Before we came inside, the parents approached one of the team captains and said that the girls wanted to talk to someone, but they were too embarrassed to respond in the invitation. They wanted to talk to him afterwards. After the event, the team member sat down with the family and the two young ladies trusted Christ! The family friend was led to the Lord outside as well. 11 teens were saved that night. God was doing things like that all week long!
Throughout the week, the Army and Navy team battled back and forth for first place. Navy had a surge at the beginning of the week. However, about half way through the week, Army made a comeback and took first. On Friday morning though, Navy won both competitions outside and nearly took first place. In fact, the whole week came down to one vote in the final cheering contest. Army won the final cheering contest 4 votes to 3 and sealed their final victory. The final score was 88,500 for Army and 85,500 for Navy.
We also saw some other miraculous interventions in the weather. On Wednesday, the weather forecast a 95% chance of thunderstorms for our competition time. We claimed the promises of God again for God to prevent the storm from interrupting our evening competition. Later on in the afternoon, the weather forecast got worse–100% chance for the first half hour of our competition time, 95% thereafter. The clouds loomed on the horizon. The youth pastor asked me if I had indoor competitions ready. I told him that we could do competitions inside, but told him that we would see if God’s forecast was more accurate than the weather man’s. Minutes before our first competition began, things looked like it would rain any second. I cried out to the Lord in my heart. We began the first competition. Spirits were high, but the whole time I was very conscious of the threatening clouds at my back, yet no rain or lightning interrupted our play. After the first competition, I almost sent everyone inside–I felt a few small drops of precipitation–but suddenly I knew that it would have been a step of unbelief. I continued the competitions outside as if no rain was predicted. Praise the Lord, no storm ever did interrupt our competition that day. In fact, afterwards, I looked at the radar history. The storm had been heading straight at us as one big mass. About 15 minutes before the competition, it began to wrap around us, two arms reaching around the exact spot where we were. At one point, the entire storm had been raging all around us, but God kept our location completely clear of the storm. What an incredible answer to prayer!! My friend, God is still interested in saving souls!!
Over the five days and seven rallies, we had exactly 200 teenagers attend with a high day of 108. Over the course of the week, 49 teens transferred their dependence to Jesus alone! Praise the Lord!
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