I was in the youth office talking to Lance, the student minister at Sedon, when I opened the Word and shared with him something that the Lord showed me earlier this summer through a message brought to the church family of Westwood by Matt Pettit.

I understand - in our own mindset, I think we tend to believe that God always wants a packed house before He shows up. Especially at Sedon, where the people had obviously worked very hard to get people to the church on this Saturday night. As usually happens, people commit, then back out. This isn't very noticable when your ministry has a ton of youth, but Sedon is just now in the process of beginning to build their youth ministry numerically. Lance was almost apologetic as he explained how the people had backed out, and I could sense the discouragement in him. 

A BRIEF SIDENOTE - If you're reading this, and you think that there are only truly quality people in big churches, please adjust your view. I don't say this to give these men any glory, and I certainly can't see directly into their hearts, but it is in my estimation that Dale Foote, Lance, Brent, and David are called men of God - quality men who are sincere with integrity.

I digress...I opened the Word to repeat a truth that Matt had taught us that morning out of 1 Corinthians 3:8 - "Now he who plants and he who waters are no one; but each will receive his own reward according to his own labor." After reading this scripture, I said to Lance, "You guys have worked hard and done as much as you possibly can to bring people tonight. And know this from this passage - God does not reward us according to the results. The results are completely up to Him. No, God rewards us 'according to our labor'. You will not be without your reward, because God has seen your labor!"

What a life-changing truth! When I preach, if no one responds to receive Christ - I can rejoice in the labor! If I am faithful to my ministry and work hard, but the results just aren't there - well, that's up to the Lord! He sees my labor!

We prayed together and a little while later, we began the service around 7:30 p.m. with approximately 40 or so people in attendance. After Keith and Ryan led us in worship, I came to the front to preach the Gospel. I love preaching the Gospel as much, if not more, than anything else. In it's uncorrupted form, it is the most powerful thing on this planet - the "power of God unto salvation for all who believe" (Rom. 1:16b), and my labor as a minister of the good news of Jesus Christ is to proclaim it is as accurately as possible.

That night, I preached the Gospel in the form of a sermon that you can hear on this site called "God Sees Dead People." At the conclusion of the Gospel, I encouraged the youth to make their decision and respond to Jesus if He was calling them to salvation.

As a conviction, I believe the Lord has compelled us to do invitations the following way: We ask everyone to keep their eyes open during the time and explain to them that salvation is a public decision. It's not about show-boating, but in the sight of God and in the sight of man, we ask those being dealt with about receiving Jesus as their Lord and Savior to respond to His call publicly. We do this in light of Jesus' very public crucifixion and to urge those responding to do so unashamedly (Mark 8:38).

In short, it takes a lot of courage to respond this way, but on a human level we feel that this helps weed out those who might not be ready to make a genuine response to the Gospel. On this night, John Paul and Kayla would respond to the call to receive Jesus. Both came to the front and I had the amazing opportunity of watching them pass from death to life as they prayed and asked Jesus to save them.

I definitely felt like there were others, and after voicing that, I felt peace to turn things back over to Lance to wrap up the night with a drama. It wasn't to be...

David, Sedon's associate pastor, marched quickly (almost running) to the altar with one of his children shouting, "She needs to be saved! She's going to be saved." It was loud, it was way unorthodox, but here was a man overcome with joy - crying, shouting, crying some more - because his daughter (a church member...undoubtedly, a good girl) had just acknowledged to her father that she was lost.

Upon counseling with her at the altar, and getting to see her accept Jesus, much to the shouting of David (I wish it was as real to everyone as it is to him) I got back up only to see that another girl was counseling with the pastor and a group of people to my right. The Lord had simply wiped out the rest of the schedule as people were responding to the power of the Gospel.

Another girl would soon respond and receive Jesus as her Lord and Savior. After her conversion, Ryan's little boy (Dillon), would find himself counseling with the pastor to receive Jesus. There was so much clapping, so many tears, and such rejoicing - during a youth rally at a small country church. Outside of camp, I can't remember a service in which the Lord showed up so strongly.

Thank you so much for your prayers! May God continue to bless His ministry!

-TD