Following a powerful evening discussion about suffering and God’s presence, power, and grace with us in the midst of our suffering, the students were set to sleep till noon…. if we had let them. Their wake-up call yesterday morning was David Crowder’s “My Beloved,” complete with the room lights popping on every time Lee, our worship leader for the week, sang the words “I see the light.”
While the students were dragging a bit to get to breakfast, I was pleased to see them return to their Crew assignments with the same energy and excitement as the two prior days.
The team at Nehemiah enjoyed another day of ministering to their kids, while my crew continued to pour into their summer school students.
After breaking for lunch, my team went back to the Wagner community garden to resume weeding where we left off on Monday. We were blessed by some clouds overhead that kept us cooler than Monday’s scorching heat. We dug in with a zeal and were able to accomplish far more this second time around while listening to some upbeat music (including a series of Disney songs).
The theme for the worship programming last night was letting go of the things that hold us back from wholeheartedly following Jesus and giving His Spirit full access to our lives. Both the video and message were powerful, and allowed for us to talk together as a team about the three stages of discipleship. No matter which stage we found ourselves in, we committed together to let go of the things that make us feel unworthy and to simply answer Jesus’ call to “come, follow me.”