Teenagers hungry for the Word of God

Yesterday afternoon a group of us joined the teenagers' Bible study at the house of the local YWAM leader. We started off with some enthusiastic worship and then presented a drama about how the things that we or others may view as rubbish - our height, hair colour etc- God fearfully and wonderfully made. We need to ask God for His revelation of how well He made us.

Next we looked up a number of scriptures which told of our value to God. One of the team demonstrated that despite scrunching, chewing and trampling a 20 peso note, it retained the same value. The same with us - no matter what we do and what happens to us in life, we remain valuable to God.


We then split into groups to pray. I got a group of older teenage boys to pray Psalm 23 over each other. It was so encouraging to see as many as forty young people with their Bibles, worshipping with great fervour and responding so keenly to questions.



I must admit that I was not really looking forward to going to the Bible study. I have found it difficult to relate to teenagers in the past but I now see I was meant to go. I was able to contribute to the drama and make contact with a young man who was a very keen Christian and to encourage him in His faith.

This morning I preached for the second time. It was being Sons and Daughters of the Father, focussing on Jesus' constant reference to the Father in the gospel of John. It was a very small church, meeting only for the second time and they just had a small garage to worship in. Afterward there was a powerful time of ministry when the pastor was slain in the spirit.

A quick update !

Well, apologies if you have visited here expecting to see an update - we are staying some way away from an internet cafe and so can only get to it from time to time. This past weekend many of us travelled to city called Iligan, about two hours away by coach. There we were greeted by the Mayor, the councillors, city hall employees and a jazz band. Maged, the leader of the outreach, had negotiated with the leaders of the churches and the municipal authorities for us to come for three days to support the churches in reaching out to their communities.

We went out sharing the Good News in the poor areas, preaching on the Sunday and doing a prayer walk downtown. I got to do my first preach in a church which was up in the hills, just outside the city! It went well - it was on Psalm 139 - how we are fearfully and wonderfully made, how God is pleased with us and we obey because we love Him, not out of duty. Yesterday they took us to a hydrolectric power plant and to waterfall where most of us went for a swim.

Today we were back here in Cagayan de Oro - some of us went to Smokey Mountain which is a rubbish tip where people actually live. I stayed back to do some intercessory prayer - our leader felt God was asking us to pray for unity in the team. This meant some time repenting of attitudes and selfishness, praying against the spiritual strongholds, such as division and miscommunication, on the island of Mindanao, and then praying positively for the team to be blessed. In all, two and a half hours !

This evening there were more reports of healings and people giving their lives to the Lord.