Broken Heart

The regular season has begun.... Malibu will officially have 400 kids here for the next 11 weeks! I can already tell that this summer is going to be a great one. Our first session of work crew and summer staff on the ODC are already great. We have some really strong guys which makes our boat days of moving over 30,000 lbs of freight a breeze.

As the first week has ended and all the other interns have finally arrived, it is finally feeling like the summer camping season. Before the season began I was chosen to take a role in a traditional Young Life drama called Broken Heart. The role I was asked to do was Satan. I was excited to be a part of such a impacting part of camp but was unsure of how I would enjoy being the villain. The first week of the drama nerves were racing as the whole cast prepared. As we all bathed it in prayer and told God that it was His thing not ours, He gave me a peace in my heart. As the drama went on, the Lord blessed it. It went so well and the impact on the campers was evident as many stayed afterwords as their leaders comforted them with tears.

The aftermath of playing the role of Satan is interesting. For the last two days of every week at camp I will be recognized by all the kids as Satan. Kids would say "Hi Satan!" as I would walk by them in camp. It is kind of a crappy name to be called.

I just recently started reading a book called Forgotten God by Francis Chan. In this book Chan focusses on the Holy Spirit and how it is a God that we have forgotten within the Trinity. This book has been very influential in my times here at Malibu already. I have really tried to focus more on being more in touch with the Holy Spirit inside me. I think the Holy Spirit is one of the main reasons why I have made a couple of drastic decisions lately.

One of the most profound things that I have learned so far from this book is how forgotten the Holy Spirit is. Jesus gave His disciples the ultimate reassurance; Another Comforter would come. Jesus said that the Father would give the disciples "another Counselor to be with (them) forever" (14:16 NIV). In this case, the Greek word another means another that is just like the first(as opposed to another that is of a different sort or kind). So Jesus was saying that the One who would come would be just like Him!

What an amazingly comforting verse. Even now we seem to prefer to have a physical God when we have the same God dwelling within us. The power of the Holy Spirit is hard to understand but amazing to start to see glimpses of.