The Ultimate Question

    I can’t tell you that I’ve seen many signs of progress in the youth I’ve been working with over the past few months. However, this past week’s holiday club proved to be the most wonderful kind of change any member of the Christian community could see.
    Holiday club is the name for the modified vacation Bible school we ran for the elementary school-aged kids this past week. The UK school system is set up a bit differently than the American; they have a shorter summer (six weeks), but have a few one-week breaks throughout the year. This past week was one of them, so we organized and ran something similar to a vacation Bible school for three days. Certainly the ultimate goal was to present the Gospel to the kids who came, which occurred on the third day. We used the color-method—black for the sin in our lives, red for the cross, white for a clean heart, etc. At the end of the presentation, we read a prayer for salvation. The other leader in my group said “now if you want to make this prayer your own, say it when you get home.” One of the girls in the group asked the question which is greater than all questions which can be asked in a lifetime: “Can we pray it now?” I was about ready to jump out of that church when she asked it. I’ve been here for a few months and haven’t heard anyone express anything near that sort of interest towards what (or who) I’m working for. Of course we prayed that prayer of salvation out loud, then-and-there. I’m deeply elated to tell you that glorious story. If you email me, I’ll tell you the name of the girl so you can pray for her. In the “brows my photos” section are a few pictures of the event. We had permission forms to take pictures, which is why I’m able to post them.
In a book we are reading on the spiritual disciplines, an interesting point was made which has kept me thinking. The point was about forgiveness. Specifically, the extent of Christ’s victory over sin does not end at merely canceling the sin of one of his children, if I may put it like that. The point is that forgiveness isn’t just about the sin, but the sinner as well. When we ask for forgiveness for our sins, we can’t simply move on because the sin has been erased. Rather, the sin has been forgiven, and the sinner as well. So a change needs to take place in the life of the forgiven sinner. Another way of saying that, and the way in which I need to hear it said, is that the sinner needs to acknowledge that a change takes place in the life of a believer when the sin is forgiven. I’m thinking about the ” therefore anyone who is in Christ is a new creation, the old has gone and the new has come” theme, and how that has implications in the sinning aspect of our lives.