Youth Follow up, please pray

I really want to start bloging regularly but there is so much going on right now. There is an end in sight, or rather a reprieve because there is a lot coming up. Still I am not complaining. I really love what I do … most of the time. Tonight was both terrible and wonderful.

I have been ill since last Friday. I took off Saturday night leaving my wife to deal with the students because my fever was over 100 with the meds. Since I run a full degree low under normal circumstances that was pretty bad. I also took Sunday off. I felt better on Monday but took it off since I won’t have another day off till October. I was tired but generally better. Tuesday I was feeling really exhausted by noon and when I finally got home I was running a fever, same today but I knew I had to be at church.

When I got there a few students had already arrived which is normal. Not long after I was talking with one of the students more or less privately and when I came back out with the others my wife was getting lectured by some of the church folk. Apparently one of them took it on herself to address the language of the students and they got mouthy with her. She then lost it with them and her husband started getting into it with them. Later her father threatened physical harm on one of the students involved and the mother of that student overhead. While I was trying to deal with some of that another student (guy) gave a girl a hug that was not appropriate. He was being stupid and not sexual but another church person started yelling at him. I could hear him across the parking lot so I ran over and tried to put that fire out. I took the students involved aside and was talking to them when I heard yelling. There was a near fight between some students. After that I pulled everyone in to get started a bit early so I could just address it all at once. As I was talking about it I saw one of the students come back with his mom and so I went back to talk to them while a few announcements were done and got the story about the threat. One of my leaders who has an existing relationship with the adults involved felt that he should go try and talk to them. I warned him that it was pretty hot already so he would go in with his eyes open. It didn’t go well.

Then we started the sermon and I shared more of my testimony. Next I opened it to one of my students and wanted to get another student to share her testimony. The one that did share his has a long way to go but has also come a long way. He had to leave early for some reason and even though I had just asked everyone to try and behave around the adults that were being grumpy just before the sermon he flipped them off as he drove by. My leader was over there talking to them still so now I gotta deal with that. I’m ready to strangle about a dozen people right now.

That is the terrible, but there is wonderful too. All of this attack was to distract from what God had planned. I knew God had something planned which is why I couldn’t let a little thing like possible swine flu (I’ve been exposed to 5 people confirmed to have it in the past 2 weeks so I’m not joking) keep me away. When I opened it up for altar time we had 12 teens come up and one was a girl that I never expected to respond to any kind of altar call. Seriously you could have knocked me over with a feather and not just because I was tired and dizzy. I look at all of the stuff I wrote about the bad and how little I wrote about the good. It seems like the bad overpowers the good but all of that was about stopping what God was working for and it didn’t stop these 12 from coming down, that was about 25% of the youth tonight so I can’t possibly explain just how much more powerful the good was.

Anyways, I really do need prayer, I am ill and pretty run ragged. We have a lot going on and need a lot of prayer for that. More than anything we have a terrible amount of rebellion in the Youth, the church, and the community. I have never been in a place so inundated with rebellion like this place. You can feel the spiritual oppression and I believe only lots and lots of prayer will help.