// God-Moment//

I have an encouraging God-story for you. As most know, I am home for the summer so I have returned to my youth group, but as a leader. This past Wednesday night was only my second night back and something awesome happened in the life of one of the students.

Before the service even began, I was slightly hesitant because during the previous Wednesday night’s service I had felt completely out of place; I still felt as if I should be back in Spain doing evangelism on the streets. Even in a place that was ‘home’ to me, I was struggling with feeling inadequate in this place full of teenagers that I did not know.

Fortunately, I have a hard time quitting something I begin without finishing first and since it was only my first time I back, I decided to come to this next service in a new place with a new perspective and effort. I grabbed my leader lanyard, welcomed students into the building, and sat front row with them listening to Terry as he preached on ‘Getting Off Your Donkey.’ It was a humbling message telling us on how we are called to all people in all situations; how we cannot be legalistic and make excuses saying, “that’s not my calling right now, God.” For all people, for all time, is any Christian’s daily calling; this is God’s heart.

The message came to a close, and Terry opened the altar call. I was personally touched by the message as well as the numerous students surrounding me upfront. In a unique way, I felt a new passion and release to go pray with any student I felt led to. I decided that tonight was about doing, that there was no place for analyzing. So, I prayed. And prayed. And then this one particular girl caught my eye. For a single moment the thought entered my mind that she didn’t need prayer, but then I consciously chose to push through and just go; why not?

I sat beside her, rested my arm on her shoulder, and as I prayed I could really sense that she was experiencing a salvation or a recommitment to the Lord. Then I felt her begin to cry as if God had just touched her. Terry, then, returned to the stage and gave the dismisal for the students to leave if they needed to. I could feel the girl begin to stop crying so I finished my prayer and was about to leave when she lifted her head, wiped her tears away, and said she had to tell me something. She explained to me how she had been struggling with her religion and told God that if she was to give another effort, somebody needed to pray with her, and that in the moment, I came over and laid my hand on her.

Wow! How awesome! It was such an encouraging thing to me, that she had chosen to share that with me, because of what I had experienced the previous week. God used both of us to witness to the other and it was such  God-thing. After that we prayed, giving God the praise and celebrating what had just happened.

I hope our story can encourage you as a student and a leader. God moves.

“So last week at the element I was on the side of the alter and I haven’t been into my faith since new years so I sat there and I prayed that if God wanted me to follow him to have someone pray for me an literally a second after I finished my prayer a leader had he hand on my shoulder and I knew my prayer was answered. Pretty amazing thing that happened.”

-Kailey K.

// Props//

I know I said I would post a photo each day, but today I bought props for future photos so I think that counts for something? (: I am mostly proud of my sofa chair purchase; it’s a green retro color and it is super comfortable. I also got a few blankets, records, and an old Canon film camera! I am very excited to use these in my shoots this summer…. eventually you’ll see photos of these props, I promise.

// So Comic Sans walks into a bar…//

considertheaesthetic:

and the bartenders says,”Hey, we don’t serve your type here.”