Blessings from Camp Berea

Can you spot Sean in this mess of crazy, wonderful, good looking young men of God

Last weekend Pastor Dan took our Youth group up to Camp Berea for the weekend. All the spots were graciously donated to our Church by the camp director! It was a blessing, but hey!, I guess it pays to know people(Pastor Dan used to work up there). Anyways we had a great weekend listening to Circleslide lead worship and Brian Pruitt bring the Word of God. There were many fun things to do including a massive tubing hill, walking on the crazy windy lake, paintball, basketball tourny, etc etc-you know all the fun camp stuff.

Circleslide really brought an excellent worship experience to us. We had a couple kids who had never experienced "rock worship" and they were hesitant on Friday night. By Sunday afternoon however they were loving it and getting really involved! I love that type of worship myself and was blessed to have such a humble and excellent band around. They did mostly worship songs that the kids would know, but they also did one song they wrote. It was written in response to them seeing a friend go through the loss of his 10 year old daughter and still praising God in the midst of that tragedy. It reminded me of My own church Pastor and his family. They lost their daughter at birth, but their anchor holds in Christ. I hope you are blessed by this song as I was. It is currently my favorite song.  This is an accoustic version, but you can find others on YouTube where the really rock out.

• "Worship the LORD with gladness; come before him with joyful songs." Psalm 100:2

What always makes the weekend retreats for me is the Cabin times. I would skip free-time, nap time or meal time to make sure that Cabin devotionals happened. You know, the times when everyone lets their guard down and truly shares how the Spirit of God is working in them. Whether it is a brokenness, an unsatisfactory life, desire to draw closer, or be ever so grateful of how God is blessing them. There are people on all walks of life there and some are experiencing God for the first time, others are growing deeper in love with Him.

Here is where the story gets awesome. Saturday night we 'laid hands on each other' in prayer (which basically just means we prayed for each other.). I will keep names out, but man, some people really know how to pour out blessings in prayer. Different people were in tears being so moved by the Spirit, so that God could build them up. Others were renewing their walks with Christ and asked for a genuine sense of change/repentance. God was present and anointing His disciples. I felt very connected to these verses about response of the Spirit.

• "Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come." 2 Corinthians 2:21,22
• "Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and affective." James 5:16

Seeing those kids pray for each other with passion, and most importantly with the Spirit was such a blessing. One student in particular was FILLED with the Spirit. He didn't even know what he was praying, and doesn't really remember it. He was praying with Theological concepts that he probably doesn't fully understand and if asked to explain them he would not be able to correctly. But in his prayers, the Lord spoke! I am so confident that the Holy Spirit was praying through him, that I wanted to grab him and have him pray over me. Although I didn't say this, I thought, "You got the spirit pouring out of you and I want to be blessed by His prayers!" My prayer request was as follows:

• "It is not good to have zeal without knowledge, nor to be hasty and miss the way." Proverbs 19:2

I really feel like my desire is to be closer everyday to God, I just can't get enough. But in my zeal for Christ I don't want to be pushing others away because I don't have knowledge or discernment and am spiting out things that are hurting and not healing, hindering and not helping. So if you do want to pray for me, please pray for discernment and knowledge to go with the zeal that Christ gave me to draw me closer to Him!