God, the Shaker and Mover

God is TRULY doing a work in our Jr. High Youth Ministry! As you've read by my blog, the CRAZINESS that we've been experiencing has been a wild ride. However, I've learned to see that if you allow God to strengthen you during the wild ride, there is a HUGE payoff at the end!
Before I give some great news about Wednesday Night, I want to give some background into our Jr. High Ministry as of late. This is probably the MOST attended youth night we have as well as the MOST non-Christian attended. One week, I counted off 25 Jr. High teens and all but 5 were from non-Christian homes (most had parents who've NEVER been to church...EVER). We were still missing approx. 5 of our regular teens this night too! Well, as you can imagine, this many teens who've come from un-churched, non-Christian homes has been a bit of a challenge. There has been tons of talking during the lesson and tons of "he said, she said" fighting that goes on. One week, I had hit my limit and wandered what God was doing and if I was good enough for this calling. The very next week is when I hit something I didn't expect...I gave a teeny bit of my life's story and the teens were silent, listening to every word dripping off of my tongue. They loved the connection of my life to the Scriptures. Now, I'm a student of Youth Culture, and I know teens connect WAY more with personal stories, yet for some reason I never utilized it the way I did this one week.
Well, I prayed about this effect and since our Month's theme was: The Quest (Our Journey Towards God), I felt like this Wednesday, God wanted me to give my full testimony (which is pretty intense, I will Blog about it sometime soon). I did indeed give my full testimony and the teens again were intensely listening to what I was saying (something that doesn't often happen for the full 20 minute talk). God was moving in their hearts and when we moved to Small Groups (which I do every week after the talk, so the teens can then interact with the lesson together), God showed up in a BIG way. As a side note, the greatest fun during this time, was that one of our Sr. Highers (Ty Walker) was leading the small group discussion and he did great! When Ty got to the question of "Do you want to Go on this Quest towards God" 3 kids raised their hands, asked how they could and then PRAYED TO RECEIVE CHRIST! It was flippin' sweet and so much more sweet that a Sr. Higher was able to get these Jr. Highers to this point. I praise God for what he's doing!