God is working!

God is working, and wow is it cool.

Tonight during our youth service I got to pray with three young men from our group. All of them are part of our core, and all of them have recently shared some of their struggles as God does a work in their lives. It was such a blessing tonight to be able to talk to them, pray with them, tell them I loved them.

The Lord is doing a work in our church right now. What do I mean when I say that? He's always working after all, isn't He? Well, yeah, He is, but I just mean that over the past few months we have seen His work show up in individual people's lives. Some of them had been lost, some had been backsliders, some needed to be baptized, some just needed to go deeper in their walks with God.

There is nothing like being able to see the hand of God working in a church. I praise Him so much for allowing me to be a part of this one. I know that ultimately, there's nothing special about our church. We're just a local body of believers that God continues to bless. It's all about Him, now and always.

Thank You, Lord, for my church family.

Class last night

Sunday night class last night was pretty cool. I am really blessed to be able to teach it; it's helped me tremendously, and I hope it's helped my youth group as well.

Last week we had started talking about witnessing. I wanted to go through the subject because we haven't studied it in a long time, not in class anyway. Dusty and Chris teach a tract time at church camp called "Extreme Evangelism - They Don't Serve Breakfast in Hell", but not all of our youth have taken it; and some probably needed a refresher.

So we've been discussing witnessing, and it's a lot of fun. Last night we continued something we'd started last week. I had been having people give the references to Bible verses that might be useful in witnessing. Last week we'd gotten the basic verses of the Roman Road: Romans 3:23, 6:23, 5:8, and 10:9. Those verses are the most popular to use in witnessing, and don't get me wrong, I think they're great and we should absolutely know them and use them. But I wanted to see what else the youth would come up with for witnessing verses.

Over about 30 minutes, they pretty much blew me away. They listed some more obvious ones: Acts 16:31, Ephesians 2:8, John 3:16. But most of them were leafing through their Bibles looking for more references while others shared theirs, and they found verse after verse that could be used in sharing the Gospel. Stuff like John 10:9-10, Isaiah 55:6-7, Matthew 1:21, and on and on.

Many of them didn't just share a pertinent verse; they would also explain why the verse might be useful in a witnessing opportunity. That really blessed me too, because one of my major goals as I teach Sunday night class is that the youth not merely learn stuff, but learn how to apply it and use it in their lives.

We had a really good time and came up with far more verses than I had ever imagined. Hannah's going to type them up and let everybody have copies next week, so that they can look at the verses further and hopefully memorize them (I encourage that). Also next week, we're going to discuss different questions or issues that might come up while you're witnessing to someone, and we'll do some scenarios. That's right, situations where people like Dusty or Chris or Jordan or Trevor or whoever can both practice and demonstrate ways to witness.

It's pretty cool to see the youth getting into this; evangelism is one of the most important things we can talk about and do, and I hope and pray they're seeing the importance. I'm looking forward to class on Sunday night. Thank You, God, for giving me a youth group that seeks to know You and Your Word better, and for the opportunity to teach them what little I know!

What's Goin' Down

A bit of here and there.

First, my bride-to-be and I will be formatting the September-October issue of Call to Battle tomorrow (Friday). If you have any articles (or certainly blog posts would be cool), you can send them in (or point us in the direction of the blog post if it is that) before noon on Friday. We love receiving and printing contributions from you, so please don't hesitate to send stuff in! If you don't, it's entirely possible you'll simply read more romantic gush from me and Lana! (OK, so with a mostly-female readership, maybe that wasn't the most effective threat to make.)

I want to warn you now about my articles for this issue: Most will seem familiar to you because they are in fact modified blog posts. Hey, it's not my fault you read the blog and get the magazine. Think of it this way: The blog provides you with a partial sneak preview of the next CtB issue.

Oh, and let me just tease you by saying that in this issue, you'll finally get to discover why my screenname is "Warrior of the Dawn." I'm excited about you getting to read this particular work of mine, leftover from the last issue.

I believe the word is getting around my church that Lana and I are engaged. (EDIT: The correct term is courting, not engagement; though we are committed to marrying, we are not officially engaged.) Josh -- a friend, one of my actors in Hunted, a classmate at UAFS, and fellow member of FBC Branch -- asked us today if we'd set our wedding date. Well, no; we will when I get her the ring, and it'll probably be some time before that happens. But I'd much rather people think we're engaged than dating, if there's a choice. I'll try to provide some clarification to my church at some point.

For those of you who have asked about Hunted, well, rest assured we haven't pulled the plug on the project. We have taken a hiatus from filming due to Fan the Flame, and will be idle this weekend in order to give some of our production members a break. We plan on picking it up again next Saturday and hitting it hard, with only about three or four more days of filming to go (Lord willing)! Thank you again to all of you who have voiced encouragement, and we ask that you continue to pray for the movie.

The latest update from Lovers' Lane: Note-giving is all the rage. Note-giving, you ask? Yep. During class, as opposed to taking notes, we often find ourselves giving notes -- to one another. We had a delightful time doing it in Reasoning yesterday, and in both of our writing classes today. But I told Lana that, alas, we'll have to cut down on it or we'll lose our scholarships due to poor grades.

College football begins tonight as LSU takes on Mississippi State on ESPN. I can't wait (and am trying to get CtB articles together so I can watch some of it). Most of my readers may not care about this staple of Southern life, football, but I am eagerly anticipating the coming season and have high hopes for the beloved Arkansas Razorbacks. The Hogs open against Troy on Saturday. Woo Pig Sooiee!

I ask for your prayers for our youth group. I know God has some awesome things for us coming out of FtF, but the devil is attacking us right now. We had kind of a tough service last night. It ended up being good, but there was definitely a feeling of tension in the air. I expect it from Satan; he's trying to steal what God has given us and continues to give us. But as the ending of one of our FtF skits quoted, "One little word shall fell him." Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!

More Thoughts on Fan the Flame

Eleven days till Fan the Flame. I just sent information to one more church today, First Freewill Baptist in Charleston. It looks like they'll bring a group. Pretty cool to be able to get another commitment this late in the game.

Attendance-wise for FtF, we're looking for at least two hundred to show up, and I think that's definitely realistic. If we get that many, it's going to be a great crowd. If we get more than that, well, yeah baby, it will rock awesomely.

Even though it's a dream of ours to see the church packed out on August 25, I'm not too concerned about our attendance numbers. God will bring the ones who need to be there, and I believe His fire will fall on us. Of course, we still need to be doing everything we can in the meantime to get people there.

I know several people from outside our youth group have expressed interest in coming on this blog and others of my friends; and that's awesome. I would love to see a host of homeschoolers descend on FBC Branch for FtF; we actually have plenty in our youth group now, which rocks my face off.

Anyways, if any of you "outsiders" need any info about the event, just let me know; I think I'm in charge of information for FtF.

I do want to give a warning about the music, though. It's only fair that I let you know that it will be pretty loud. As the lead singer, however, I can assure you that there will NOT be a concert-type atmosphere, and all the songs will direct praise to God. We do several songs in kind of a rock-slash-worship style, but most of them are acoustic. We're even looking at featuring some piano this year, which I think will be fantastic.

Anyways, I wanted to shout that out because I know that homeschoolers sometimes have different convictions about music, and homeschoolers are currently most of my audience on this blog.

In the meantime, I would like to ask that my praying readers add another request to the list: rain. Each year we close Fan the Flame with a bonfire service; it's a special and unique time that has really made an impact on people in the past, and this year's bonfire service is planned to be the best one yet.

But it won't happen if we don't get some rain between now and then. After a rainy early summer, the floodgates have closed and it has become very dry. Our county, Franklin, is not yet under a burn ban, but it will be by FtF without rain. And we'll be unable to light our bonfire.

So please pray about that. I know God already has His perfect plan laid out regarding whether or not we're to have a bonfire this year. Pray that His will be done, for that and for everything regarding the event.

In my last post, I mentioned the class time on Sunday night with my youth group. They were such a blessing to me, sharing some of their concerns and heart's desires for the event. I believe that God is going to bless our group and use us to do a great work at Fan the Flame.

One thing I wanted to touch on in class, however, was that this event is really not anything special in a worldly sense. The band will lead worship. Chris and Dusty will preach the Gospel. We'll do some other fun stuff, eat a meal, have a bit of time to hang out. That's old hat for our youth group, if not necessarily for the visiting youth attending.

But I don't think it's what we do at Fan the Flame that matters so much. If we had Chris Tomlin there to lead worship, Billy Graham preaching, and a water park for afternoon fun, I certainly don't think our event would automatically become so much better. The key to FtF is not that the band rocks everyone's faces off in worship, or that Chris and Dusty mesmerize the crowd with dynamic messages, or that everybody has the maximum amount of possible fun in the afternoon. The key is that we surrender ourselves to God and allow Him to move in a mighty way in our hearts on Saturday, August 25. And if that happens, the event will be a smashing success.

So don't expect an all-star event a week from this Saturday. At the same time, expect God to do something amazing. It's what we're praying for.

Let the fire fall.

Uh-oh, here we go again

No, the title doesn't signify bad news, merely that it's back-to-back with the previous post. So if you haven't read that one yet, go do it and then come back up to this one. I feel like I owe multiple posts after a long silence.

While our plans for Friday and Saturday were restored by the grace of God, our Thursday plans fell through. We had been planning on using a couple of homes of people in our church. Well, they weren't sure whether they'd be available on Thursday because they were supposed to help somebody move, and then Jordan, my contact who also happens to be in our band, never told me for sure. Then he temporarily dropped off the face of the earth (which he does sometimes). By Wednesday night, I had to make the decision to call the filming off. It was okay in a sense, because I had kinda felt from the Lord that Thursday wasn't going to be a good day to film anyway.

We were able to use Thursday night for band practice. Daniel, Trevor, and I, that is. That's the guitar, drums, and vocals in our band, respectively. We also have Billy the old one (he's like, 30, I mean old) on bass and Jordan the young one (he's like, 15, I mean young) on congas. But they weren't able to make it, Jordan's reason of course being the whole helping-move thing, so the three of us practiced together and made some progress. There's a little Chris Tomlin ditty called "Let God Arise" that is going to ROCK at Fan the Flame. If the Lord wills. We're all pretty excited about playing that song.

In the last couple of days, sitting at home because I was off work, I was able to get various stuff accomplished for FtF. I have finally finished our skits, the ones we were originally scheduled to begin practicing three weeks ago, and I'm fairly happy with them. The last one, a take-off on "This Little Light of Mine", is the best; it has a type of humor I haven't used in a long time.

And then, Wednesday. (Notice how I kinda keep going back in time here? That's not intentional.) God has really blessed our youth group and allowed us to grow quite a bit in the last few months. We now run a solid 30-35 on Wednesday nights. I think we can easily have 40 every time if we can get a few more people that are "on the fringe" to start being faithful.

At any rate, on Wednesdays we usually start getting together at about 4 or 4:30 at the church. We hang out, maybe play some basketball or Ping-Pong, talk. Then we eat (our food being cooked by Dusty's wonderful wife Amanda and Chris' wonderful wife Dadrian, with help from some of the youth girls). And for about a year now, instead of having "class" on Wednesday nights, we basically have a full-fledged service in the fellowship hall. I lead the worship time, assisted by Daniel on the guitar (and lately we've added Caleb Melton and Jordan on the guitar as well), and then either Chris or Dusty preaches.

It's something we decided to start doing while we were at church camp last year, and I think it has been awesome, no question. I would estimate that we've seen close to thirty youth pray to receive Christ on Wednesday nights since we started doing the service. Not all of those decisions were genuine, sadly, but many were, by God's grace.

Anyways, it's straight-up awesome to be able to lead worship every Wednesday night for a group of young people. I highly encourage that all my readers do it sometime (wink). We have had some great times of worship, and the Spirit had really been moving lately. But in the last couple of weeks, we leaders have been noticing something a bit alarming.

It wasn't something earthshattering, just a small difference that we probably wouldn't have picked up on if the Spirit hadn't told us. While everything perhaps looked okay during our worship times, we began to sense that the group wasn't totally united, that a lot of the kids were holding back during worship.

That's never a good thing for a youth group. When you've got Fan the Flame, a huge event that you want God to bless mightily, coming up in a few weeks, it has the potential to be deadly. So we and some of the older guys in the youth group prayed about it before the service on Wednesday, and we came to the service ready to address the issue.

Dusty started, butting in to the announcement time (just kidding; it's always cool with me when he or Chris does that) and stating concisely that we had noticed the group as a whole hadn't been as focused lately as it should be. Then, after giving the announcements and taking prayer requests, I let loose on the group.

It wasn't pleasant, for me or for them. I nearly always try to be upbeat and positive at the beginning of the worship service, but not this night. I shared the story from Joshua about the Israelites' defeat at Ai and how the sin of one man, Achan, was responsible. It was uncomfortable. Several of the youth, especially ones who hadn't been coming for very long, were glancing around as if to say, "Is this guy off his rocker?" I began to worry that none of it was getting through, that the whole service was going to go down the drain, that I was saying too much.

It's hard not to say too much in a situation like that; there was so much I wanted to say, but it has to be God speaking to them, not me. Finally, I quit talking and started singing. We usually start with an energetic song to get going, but this time we kicked off with the prayerful "One Thing".

And we had worship. It felt wonderful. For me, it was passionate worship. I sang a lot louder than I usually do; hopefully that didn't throw anyone off. The Spirit fell upon us.

Chris then gave a hardcore message about witnessing; good stuff and convicting, for me (I think) as much as the kids. As the service wrapped up, I felt a lot better about the unity of the group. I'm not naive enough to think it was all resolved, that everything's now perfect. But I know some kids got right with God on Wednesday, and our group is better off for it.

I just pray that we'll be ready for what God has for us at Fan the Flame. Fifteen days to go.