Lancaster Baptist Church is a place where there is a soulwinning/discipleship emphasis. It is always a blessing to be there and be a small part of what the Lord is doing. This was our third visit with the War of Special Forces. There is no doubt that folks were praying. I could sense the liberty during the week of ministry. We enjoyed working with the leadership at Lancaster Baptist School. They all definitely had a big heart for the students.
God answered many prayers over the course of the week. First, God gave the team supernatural enablement to learn the names of the students. The junior high and high school had about 180 students in it. Second, on Friday, we prayed for a spirit of humility across the student body. On Friday we saw God answer that prayer during the invitation and testimony service. Third, the school had many foreign exchange students; many were from China. We prayed for them to understand the Gospel and the Bible preaching. One of the teachers interpreted many of the messages, so that the students could better understand. On Thursday night, after the rally, one of the foreign exchange students got saved on her way home. Annaleese, the Ranger co-captain, tried to follow up with her the next day. Although the language barrier was hard to communicate through, when Annaleese mentioned the name of Jesus, the girl got a big smile on her face, and she knew what Annaleese was talking about.
Every morning, our team met for prayer. We had faculty members join us, and it was a blessing to battle in prayer with them. On two of the days, we had some of the students join us; these students had some level of leadership in the school. The first day that students joined us, God met with us in a very clear way. It was neat to see students, staff, and team members all praying and claiming Bible verses. Many of the students were brought to tears as they were broken over their own need for God and their desire to see God work in their student body. One of these students gave this testimony on Friday:
“If you know even just a little bit about me, I’ve become kinda known as the ‘spiritual person’ in my class, and I’ve let that become a mask in my life…[I’m] so afraid of what everyone thinks of me…I tried to hold all these broken pieces together in my life and just put a mask over it…And I realized on Thursday, when Stephen asked us to pray and I didn’t do anything…that I was so scared…and I couldn’t do it. I had no strength, I was so weak, I wasn’t able to do it. And, you guys, He’s got so much more strength…but it needs to be fully Him, there’s nothing we can do.”
Janna, the Seal co-captain, counseled one girl on her team who confessed some hidden sin. She told Janna how she had done things in secret over three years ago, but hadn’t done them recently. She saw her need to get the sin out in the light. She told her parents on Saturday, and she contacted Janna to tell her she followed through with her commitment and that she was so glad she talked to her parents.
On Friday, over eighty young people responded during the invitation. We had only a short time to counsel them, so we split the guys up into groups based on what they responded for. Josiah, the Marine team captain, talked to a group of guys about purity matters. He was very encouraged by their response and desire to get victory in this area. Here are some of their testimonies:
“I made a decision to let God help me, cause there’s a sin that I do over and over again. And…I try to [keep] justifying it in my head…just trying to forget about it, but I can’t. And three years ago, I made a really big mistake. And never did it again till a few months ago. And…I started again…The Lord’s been talking to me this week about confessing it…not just to Him but also to my parents. And…I had to tell my parents something that I was so ashamed of…I thought they’d kill me…but I told them and they didn’t seem angry and I realized…God’s given me mercy.”
“I was convicted this week to confess some hidden sins that I had in my life and honestly I was really scared to, because I was scared of what people would think of me or how they would treat me different, but I did it and they’ve been so gracious to me.”
Here are some more testimonies from the week:
“The message that really spoke to me was on Wednesday during the Jr/Sr lunch. And it was about trusting God, standing for what’s right, and taking the ring out of your nose, and not being scared of what other people think of you. And…I’m standing up for what’s right. I don’t care what anyone else thinks of me anymore. And I’m taking the ring out of my nose and I’m doing what’s right.”
“The sermon about bitterness just really helped me because my parents…got divorced when I was little, and I just felt like I couldn’t forgive them, and it broke me for a while. I felt so angry to everyone and I felt so angry to God because I thought it was God’s fault…I’ve been hearing a lot of sermons like this but I always fall back into bitterness, but I realized that it’s because I am not meeting with God and trusting God for all things. I decided to forgive Him and I’m really glad I did.”
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