A Newday

Well, this week has been quite exciting.

I've been stewarding at a conference for the youth of my family of churches called Newday, and what was the main message? "I'm coming" says the Lord. Ok then. I'm happy with that. Expectant hearts people, He came in force for 3 or 4 nights in a row. So shut up about waiting, and expect the greatest outpouring ever.

The teaching started well; the gospel message brought out of a story in Numbers. Stef Liston is good at that, because he continued to preach basically from the Old Testament about Jesus for the other three or four preaches he did. Joel Virgo and David Stroud made excellent appearances and were firing up, not just for the thousands of youth there, but also the leaders as well. It's not simple straight-forward "here's the gospel please respond" every night. Even Adrian Holloway's Gospel talk took a completely different turn; when a coffin is brought up on stage to make a valuable point about death you know there's going to be a response.

Quite amazing. A girl was healed of her dyslexia and reading problems. Before she had a reading age of 6 and needed special filters to be able to read pages of words, then she read, on stage, without glasses, straight from the bible, with no struggling at all. It was marvellous what God was doing. He entered over 230 people that night, healed about 50, maybe even more, and His spirit took over the meeting again.

The best thing about the whole event was the final night. I was stewarding on a door with a girl called Kit, and we were trying to greet everyone by name. This was made easier by the fact everyone had name badges. The teaching was about how to continue in faith after such an amazing conference - in brief: You are accepted by God, don't look for acceptance in others, continue to live for Jesus; have confidence in God, He is Lord of all, he gives strength to the weak, etc; and You will bear fuit because God say if you ask Him He will give it to you. Awesome.

On that note I left the campsite with a bad back and the prospect of working in a Football stadium kiosk that night. The upside being I wanted to share the Gospel with somebody that night. After an hour of serving people on and off and 4 hours of hanging around we got back to Leeds and walked home a girl I work with. Right there God gave me fruit, not a response in the sense of giving her life to Jesus, but in the way that I asked her if she knew the message of Jesus. She tried to say what she thought but got it wrong on the second point. I just had to correct her so she knew what the truth really was. After sharing it with her she swore at me. It was so wonderful. Gospel shared, thank you Jesus. The spirit gave me the words and it was so amazing that I said I would and I did.

I slept as well as could be expected but the important thing was I was in a real bed. Praise the Lord for He is Good.