Day Four
So this is the second time I will have typed all of this…. For various and sundry reasons that I do not know, Safari tried refresh this page while I was writing a new blog and I lost it all…. I’m thankful that its all still in my head and I have the ability to be able to recall the events of this day from my mind! (A little bit of the thankful game for all you AIM people :))
Anyways, I have to say something that should have been on the last blog, but I forgot it for some reason. I went prayer walking that last night of camp as well, but this time, I stayed around the auditorium where we were having worship. I really had been burdened during worship that night because the walls were still there. I was so discouraged that they weren’t coming down. As I was praying over the building, God spoke to me and said, “Those walls are cracking. You are doing what you’re supposed to be doing and the walls will come down in MY time.” After He spoke, I had such a peace about what we were doing. After I was done, I was going back to my room and Mrs Wendy Manuel caught me because she wanted me to meet her husband. We started talking and even after her husband left, we kept talking for almost an hour if not more. We simply opened up and shared what God had been showing us through the week and I was so thankful for that because we not only talked about the week, but about so much else. I am so glad that she caught me, it was such a God thing.
We only had one Bible study today because we had worship in the afternoon and the campers left after that. The identity question for today was, “Am I Holy?” The Bible study today was taken from Acts 9 and the conversion of Saul. We started the Bible study by having the campers draw whatever they wanted to on these little die-cut wooden circles. We then divided the class in half and took one group’s circles and put them in one bag and the other group’s in another bag. We had a relay race in which the kids had to find their circles in amongst the rest of their group’s circles. We then asked why it was easy for them to find it. We used that question to show that God knows us because we belong to Him just like their circles belonged to them. God knew Saul and knew what He could be and came down to meet with Saul on the road to Damascus in order to change his life.
After that we separated them up into groups and had them read through the account of Saul’s conversion and they had to put fact strips in order. The fact strips were simply the details of Saul’s conversion. The groups had different sections of Scripture with different fact strips that they had to put in order. We (the other leader and myself and the counselors) helped the kids do this and when they were done they put them up on a big piece of bulletin board paper that had a road on it with a cross in the middle of it. On one side of the cross is the word, “Before,” and on the other side, “After.”
After they had done this, we asked, “What was Saul like before he met Jesus?” and “WHat changes do you see in his life AFTER?” We used these questions to show that God know all our lives and knows what we can be with Christ. We then asked questions that summed up the entire week:
- Do you know what Saul’s new name was?
- Why do you think God changed Saul’s name?
- Was Saul new?
- What about us? (They answered this on a page that had a road with a cross on it that was similar to the big one we had.)
- What have we learned this week fro God’s Word about who God has made us to be in Christ?
These questions helped the kids to see that Saul was completely new and was now Paul, one of the most powerful followers of Christ the world has ever seen. After saying that to the kids, we read Ephesians 1:4. “Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him.” (NASB)
After reading that, I asked, “What does it mean to be holy?” We let them answer and then started to talk about how holiness is not some list of rules we have to follow, but rather that holiness comes from having a close relationship with Christ and that there is no other way for us to be holy. Our lives can be powerful proof that Christ is alive and well. We then closed with shouting our Identity Revolution Chant. This was a chant that we often said in Praise Rally or in worship and it went like this:
This is my identity revolution.
I am not the person I was.
I am a new creation in Christ.
I am becoming the person He created me to be, and no one else.
I am not afraid.
I am not ashamed.
Jesus is my life, and nothing else matters!
As I already said, we had worship that afternoon and it was soooooo good! Bro. Andrew (who is also a very much anointed person) preached out of Romans 5. The basic points of the sermon were that God wants to be recognizable to us and to make Himself recognizable through us. When Jesus Christ is in my life, I am a new person. These next few sentences are new because I forgot to add them when I wrote this. [The answer to the identity question is “Revolution.” Revolution can be defined as a “dramatic and wide-reaching change in the way something works or is organized or in people’s ideas about it.” We have to have a revolution in our hearts before we can be holy. It is only through having a relationship with Christ and constantly keeping our focus on Him that we can ever hope to become holy. The closer our relationship with God becomes, the holier we become. This only happens with a “dramatic change in the way [we] work.” That change is us giving our life to Christ and following Him.]
I am so thankful that God gave me the opportunity to work with these kids and I’m SOOOOO glad that He has given me a heart for children. I pray that the seeds that were sewn at this camp will be watered by other obedient servants as these kids continue on through the summer and into the school year.
This was the theme song of camp.
