Praise the Lord for a good week at East Park Baptist Church in Decatur, IL. As we arrived, we found that Pastor Merkle and Pastor Banman were asking the Lord for 50 young people to attend and a handful to really solidly disciple afterwards. God blessed the meeting and began answering prayer.
One young man had been attending East Park for a while, but had never trusted Christ. After the first night’s invitation, he clearly understood his need and trusted Christ alone to save him. Another young man who attended was about as ready as you can get. A dear man in the church led him to Christ after the invitation and immediately got the “Living the Exchange” Bible Study into his hands. The young man is heading off to the military in two weeks and wants to learn as much of the Bible as he can before he leaves.
On the first night, a young man named Devin came back at the invitation, but was not quite ready. Thankfully, he came back on Thursday and was ripe and ready to be saved. After a few speed bumps in the counseling room, Devon trusted Christ. He was rock solid. In fact, he was so hungry that he came back the final night with lots of questions. I was able to talk to him and give him some Bible counsel on things he was dealing with in his life. He later sent me an email thanking me for the Bible verses I shared with him. He asked me if I could share with him other Bible verses about how to get to heaven. He said he had friends that he was burdened to share the gospel with. Praise the Lord!!
Alexandria came to The War on Thursday looking quite different than the average teen. She had bright pinkish purple mohawk, large ear holes, and several other distinguishing clothing and makeup choices that showed that she was begging for attention. During the preaching, she was glued, but didn’t respond at the invitation at all. Cheyenne tapped her on the shoulder and she readily responded. She was totally ready! After some discussion, she understood that Christ was the only way and trusted Him alone. I talked to her afterwards and the glow of Christ was upon her face. Hallelujah for transforming hearts and lives!
Brett came back in the invitation on Thursday night, but during the counseling time he got sidetracked by a side issue. One of my team members stepped in and tried to helped. He tried talking to him, but the digression was still spiraling downward. I saw that things were still going the wrong direction, so I sat in the next room and verbally took the devil to task, quoted Scripture, and told him to get lost. I stepped in, gave him a simple illustration about a transplant and the moral responsibility he had to accept the sacrifice that had already been made, and asked him if he was ready. He said “yes.” He bowed his head and placed his faith in Christ! Praise God!
At the end of the week, we had a total of 50 young people attend The War and 15 had trusted Christ as their Savior! That’s quite a bit more than a handful, like the church was asking for. Praise the Lord for answering the prayers and expectations of God’s people and even doing above and beyond what they asked or thought!
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