Kairos - Now is the time!

I have experienced several moments in my life where all I can say to explain what happened is simply, God showed up. This past week at Wayfarer Camp was one of those moments where God's initiative collided with our prerogative and our students ministry experienced His power like never before.  

We gathered at 4:30am Tuesday, June 14th to make the trip to South Carolina. On the way there, I really did not have any extraordinary expectations other than we would hopefully grow closer together as a family and bring this excitement back home with us. We have a wide range of ages (6th-12th grade) which makes deep spiritual conversations difficult especially for the younger students. However, I've learned and am continuing to learn that God can do anything He wants including captivate the attention of younger teenagers to make much of His name. 

This week of camp seemed especially to be filled with more younger, spiritually immature students and you could sense distractions during every worship service. The final night, as we gathered in the auditorium, I leaned over to my wife and whispered, "this is going to be difficult." I personally felt as though everyone in that room was not really there because you could literally hear and see distractions as the band tried their best to move us into a spirit of worship. 

And then, God began to move. 

It's pretty cool when man says, "there is no way", God says, "I'll show you the way." Our worship leader, David Walker, does the best job at leading worship than just about anyone I've ever followed. He is so sensitive to the leading of the Spirit and would rather allow God to move than to make sure everything is musically perfect. In the middle of his set that evening he paused from what he had planned to allow everyone to refocus on the reason we were gathered in the first place. He asked for anyone who felt led to, to begin naming attributes of God to remind us of the closeness of God in our midst. This set the stage for what would come next.

As we opened up God's word, Dave Rhodes continued leading us in worship by taking us on a journey to discover brokenness through the story of Jairus' daughter in Matthew 5. In the story, Jesus is on His way to heal Jairus' daughter, but on the way he is interrupted by a woman who is healed by simply reaching out to Him. Jairus though Jesus was too late, but sometimes the greatest breakthroughs come after our biggest letdowns. Nothing is beyond the healing touch of God and there is nothing you can do to hinder the healing work of Jesus. The truth is, God is seldom early, but He is always on time.

Moments come where we are tempted to give up on God or life or even both. But it is in this moment that God does His best work. Sometimes God chooses to heal our wounds, but then there are times were God uses us as a wounded healer. As we processed this story, we were instructed to head towards our church groups thinking of some kind of brokenness we've experienced so we could share with one another in order to pray for and encourage each other as a family. 

I honestly did not think our students would be able to grasp the depth of the conversation needed to make this happen. I was careful to not manipulate the conversation by telling them what to say, instead I just allowed them to begin sharing what they felt God leading them to share. It started out with students sharing sins in their lives they now desired to give up. This was of course not the point, but it was definitely good for them to release these things and ask for accountability. I really thought this would be the extent of our time together, but then one of our adult leaders spoke up and brought clarity to the evening by describing to everyone what brokenness really is. 

There was a moment of silence as everyone was trying to figure out what to say next and then, God showed up. The depth I didn't think could happen all of a sudden came pouring out of a few students as they shared personal stories of brokenness and the wounds that have been shared. The night ended with many tears shed and a lot of prayers iifted up as the body of Christ suddenly became the family of God allowing Him to break through in a way we have never seen before. 

This has been an incredible journey and a clear reminder that God is seldom early, but He is always on time and He makes everything beautiful in His time!