Sunday summary

It's 1:00 am and everyone is tucked in snuggly after a long day. We had two really great services today. It is exciting to see our teens bonding together and it is awesome to see God at work in the lives of young people.

As most of you probably know by now, Bronner Burgess drowned last night. Even in the midst of tragedy, God is still at work. I believe He has used this in this conference to teach us and bond us closer together.

This mornings service taught about the enemy of comparison. We looked at how the Hebrew spies were defeated by that enemy after scouting the promise land in Numbers 13 and 14, and we examined many different areas where we are vulnerable to comparison today. Life, however, is not for competing, but completing the will of God. No matter who we are, God has created us uniquely, to serve a unique purpose in a unique time. When we grasp that truth, we can delite in our uniqueness and serve Him with our life rather than trying to always desiring to live someone elses life.

Tonight, Scott Dawson challenged students to know Christ. He delivered a powerful message on trusting Christ for salvation. For tonights service, all six conference groups were brought together in one venue. Over 7200 teens and their leaders assembled in one auditorium. I must confess that I was very concerned as the service started. With their being that many students, many, including our group, were sitting far away from the stage. Even the projection screen in the center of the room looked far away. Add to that the constant movement of people in and out of the isles and to the concession and merchandise areas in the back of the room, and you end up with a very distracting environment. As much as I tried to focus, even I couldn't maintain attention and I was extremely concerned that the students would have the same difficulty. You must understand that even though all of the sessions are large in a conference like this, in every venue you can see the speaker clearly and feel conected to them and conference staff does an excellent job of eliminating distractions. I did not have that feeling tonight. In fact, I can probably tell you almost nothing of what the first speaker said. After he spoke, Kutless performed in concert (loud and raucous!), then Scott got up to speak. When he started, I was still struggling; people were still moving around and I saw kids who looked 10,000 miles away, fidling with their fingernails, messing with their stuff, etc -- how could God speak to anyone through this? The amazing thing is this though -- a few minutes into the message, and all of the distractions disappeared; those same kids who were fidgitting and out of it earlier were all of a sudden intently engaged. A room of 7200+ was all of a sudden so quiet you could hear a pin drop. When they were invited to accept Christ's offer of salvation, I watched some of those same kids who I could have sworn earlier didn't even know there was a speaker go forward, broken and crying, to receive salvation. God demonstrated in an amazing way that He is almighty; He is in control; the environment doesn't have to be perfect, the speaker doesn't have to be eloquent -- what matters is that He is God and He can speak to hearts through His Spirit and draw people to Himself in spite of what else is happening. Over 300 kids trusted Christ tonight. What an awesome God we serve!

We finished up the night with an incredible Toby Mac concert. It is even rumored of some dancing Jesus freak youth leaders, but you know you can't trust all rumors (and sometimes video footage mysteriously disappears)!!

Tomorrow we wrap up and head home, so this is the last "from the road" blog update. Thank you, parents, for trusting your kids to us; you have no idea how much of a blessing it is to be able to work with them and to watch them grow in the Lord. We love each one of them and, most of all, we love our Lord Jesus Christ. To God be the glory!!! See you at home!