Last week was my week to go to camp with the students here at Park Springs Christian Camp in Providence, NC. I had a great week; it was one of the best weeks of camp I have been to.

Though I have been to many weeks of camp, this one had some different experiences and lessons for me to learn. The first of which was teaching a lesson everyday. The theme for the week was Signs of Summer and the sign for my lesson was Toll Road Ahead. This is referring to Luke 14:28-30 where Jesus is talking about counting the cost of being a disciple of His. Though I have taught lessons before, the was the first lesson where the topic is actually difficult to talk about. Using the surrounding passage in Luke 14, the story of the rich young ruler in Mark 10 and John 15:18-21, I covered the ideas of walking away from family if they do not follow Christ, giving up everything you have, being treated like Jesus was to the point of persecution and death and being generous with the things that God has blessed us with. These are hard topics to talk about while still highlighting how the benefits of Christianity outweigh these costs. The costs can seem so high that no benefit could be worth it. Through the week, I was doing my best to balance my teaching by covering both the costs and the benefits and talking about how experience will tell you the benefits are worth it. But I kept feeling like that idea wasn’t getting through because I knew that I was saying and what it sounded like. But at the end of the week, my family group was the last group to take my class. During family time we would talk about one thing that God had been telling us that day. One of the kids in my groups said that what God was telling him from my class that the costs of being a disciple of his do not even come close to comparing to the riches and benefits that will be rewarded to us. This was a great encouragement to me because it let me know that God is speaking to the students through me, and I am not speaking my own words. If it was just my words, each student would have left my class very depressed. But God came through and used my mouth to speak to the middle schoolers to have them hear what they needed to hear: real truth. One of the kids in my group said he liked my class because it was real. Both comments were huge encouragements to me.

I was also able to speak for campfire one of the nights, which is something I haven’t done before. The theme for the day was Yield: yielding to God and being committed to him. The speaker for chapel spoke on the importance of yielding to God, so I figured I would hit on commitment. Before campfire, we had a movie night and watched How To Train Your Dragon. There is a great illustration of commitment between the two main characters that I was able to use in my little devotion. I talked about how we are more committed to other things than we are to God, to things like movies, video games, music, etc. I explained that being more committed to these things is a for of idolatry because something else is more important than God. While I was speaking, I realized that I was in this group of people as well. I was more committed to some of the very things I was talking about than I was to God. I asked how many people spent more than five hours a week with movies, TV, video games or music. Quite a big response, including from me. Then I asked how may people had spent five hours a week praying, reading their Bible or talking to God. Not a huge response but the point was made pretty clear. When I said that, I realized that I don’t spend as much time with God as I do with other things and have been working to remedy that. I am glad that God was able to speak to me through what I was saying to help get me to where I need to be.

At the end of the week, we had about 10 first time decisions to follow Christ, 7 of which were baptized at camp, and even more rededications. Many of the kids experienced change from the beginning of the week to the end of the week, and I was great to see.

Now that I am back from camp, I have a full week of Across the Street Ministry in the morning and lessons to work on. I will have another update for you when the week is over.