Innocence Revealed

This past week we had a mission team from FBC Universal City come and spend a week with our church. They were amazing... and I'm not just saying that. They were bold, faithful, ready and obedient to share the gospel. Two men made professions of faith in Jesus Christ and we ended the week with a cook-out with 30-40 people in attendance! Praise Jesus for his faithfulness and pray that we are able to follow-up with numerous connections that were made. Pray as we start a new group this Sunday and as we look to start at least 2 more over the next month!

Although I intended to tell you all about the week, God has again led me back to the girl I've blogged about several times in the past few weeks. She is the one who had attended and disrupted our church multiple times, jumped Tiffany after school one day while drunk, and then came face-to-face with Tiff 2 Fridays ago when she came to church. Her heart appeared to be made of stone and then Tiffany said three words to her, "I forgive you." God used those three words to begin to break that heart of stone. We shared the gospel with her but she was not yet ready to place her faith in Jesus.

Well, I received a surprising call last week from this girl's social worker because she is in foster care. The social worker called to find out details about our youth retreat so that this girl could attend (the mission team was helping us put on a one night retreat). I said I was surprised she wanted to go and the social worker said the girl really wanted to. Well, sure enough she showed up, slightly cold and obnoxious at first, but then my Jesus showed up!

After we had been there for the evening the girl came up to me and asked if we could do this every couple of weeks because it was so awesome. That sounds innocent enough but my heart broke because I know she truly desired to be there as often as possible, removed from the difficult, unloving street life that she had become accustomed to. I wish I could have said "yes, we can stay here forever," but the reality is we couldn't. I would go back to may safe, loving home, and she would go to her new foster home, nervous to see how she would be treated.

Before our final session on Saturday morning I asked if anyone wanted to share what God had been doing in their life that weekend. To my surprise this girls hand was the first to go up. She looked at the entire group and told us with complete transparency that her idea of fun had always involved alcohol, drugs and sex. She said she had more fun this weekend than she ever imagined and none of those things were involved. She said, she never knew she could have fun like that.

Once again my heart broke. This bully of a girl who I genuinely believed was unsavable and unchangable, is being broken before my very eyes. I am having the blessing of watching this 15 year old girl being drawn to Jesus. She is being transformed. What does the Bible say? "What is impossible with man is made possible with God" (Matthew 19:26). I am a man of little faith but I truly believe my God can do the impossible.