i still don't get it, i don't deserve you

Well I could say a lot of things about this weekend. It has been an insane week, very busy and yes, even stressful (declares the man who insists he is never stressed out). So much happened in so many different areas. And to end the week I led a group of 27 people up to Sacramento for a big youth rally. The rally was a lot of fun, in the end.

I've been to atf for three years now and I go through the same emotional trip each time. I am initially skeptical, then critical, then almost disgusted, then disappointed, then bored, then worried, then touched by God. Those don't seem to follow very much but they all combine to make the divine intervention that much more meaningful.

God has actually been all over this weekend and this past week of my life and it has been utterly amazing to see. He answered countless prayers and worked out so many things to make it possible for us to go this weekend. And then when we were in Sacramento He did so much I couldn't even begin to list it out.

I was the most touched when I went down to the floor with a large group of my students at the last 'altar call.' They were overcome with tears, sobbing, holding each other, and crying out to God. I am sometimes worried about emotionalism - about this experience substituing for a real connection with God. But I could see in some of these kids' faces such a desire for God and a brokenness before Him that I had no doubt He had touched them and had worked. It is literally awe-inspiring for me to be in a big group hug with ten of my girls, or to see someone I was talking to a few hours before about how they felt empty just look at me with red watery eyes and give me a big hug because God just gave them a bigger one.

I didn't cry yesterday, I'm not given to that sort of thing. But God totally touched my heart with what He did for these students. Because really, He did it for me too. They bless me more than I think they know, or can know. God is freaking awesome, I suppose that's what it boils down to. I have almost never been more certain of His existence than I am now, after seeing what I saw happen these past seven days, the good and the bad.

More than anything though, I don't want what God did with these kids to become a memory for them. I don't want it to be an event they went to and got worked up at and cried at and felt like they deepened friendships at. I want them to view it as an experience they had with the Almighty God that changed their lives, that showed them in a new way how He cares for them through all the garbage of life. Cause man, I don't care where they were this weekend. I care where they will be in two years, five years, ten years, twenty years. Will they still be walking with God, or will this all have been a phase, reduced to a memory? I want so bad for them to meet God and never turn back.