{"id":4743,"date":"2014-05-20T01:24:23","date_gmt":"2014-05-20T01:24:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/?p=4743"},"modified":"2014-05-24T17:13:00","modified_gmt":"2014-05-24T17:13:00","slug":"a-tale-of-two-tales-part-2-you-say-you-dont-need-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/?p=4743","title":{"rendered":"A tale of two tales, Part 2: You say you don\u2019t need God?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Return, O backsliding children, saith the LORD; for I am a husband unto you.<\/em>\u00a0 Jeremiah 3:14, English Revised Version<\/p>\n

A microburst of revival hit the camp where I worked as a counselor during the summer of 1975. For all of the staff and many of the campers, Jesus was front and center\u2014whether\u00a0you liked it or not. When God moves, no one can box Him in or shut Him out.<\/p>\n

I was a leadership counselor that summer, meaning I trained teens in a two-summer program to be counselors. I had also gone through the program as a teen, and now\u2014at the ripe old age of 20\u2014I was training 15 and 16 year olds myself. But I was not the bitter feminist I had been the summer before; I had been born again and was on fire for Jesus. For an up-close glimpse into the revival that happened the summer of ’75, see http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/?p=1447<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One 15 year old leader-in-training\u00a0that summer\u00a0had also recently been saved, and she and I had an instant\u00a0connection in the Lord. Susie\u2019s face beamed whenever I shared my testimony with the other teens, and I always egged her on to tell her story as well, which she was thrilled to do.<\/p>\n

In 1976, I returned to help direct the same leadership program. Susie was back as well for her second year of\u00a0the training, and I was eager to catch up with her to hear about all of her adventures in God. I figured that once you were saved, you stayed on fire. Was I ever\u00a0shocked to learn that this was not always the case!<\/p>\n

Susie had backslidden over\u00a0her past year in high school. She was gracious enough but made it clear that she had no interest in talking about the Lord. I was stumped, but I just loved her and treated her like all my other counselors-in-training. And I prayed for her.<\/p>\n

After their first session as a group under the tutelage of three other twenty-somethings and me, the teens then launched out into the various areas and programs of the camp as junior counselors (JCs). They were not paid for their first JC experience, but many plugged in to other areas after that to make a whopping $30 or so a session. Susie was one of those who stuck around after her first cabin of kids.<\/p>\n

Third session arrived, and the leadership program was devoid of boys for that 10-day period\u2014first time ever. So the two male counselors ditched Laura, my cohort, and me to fill in at other positions for the session. That was fine; we had a great group of seventeen rambunctious girls, full of life and fun, and they\u00a0didn\u2019t seem to care at all about the missing guys.<\/p>\n

Each leadership session went on a three-night camping trip, usually somewhere out on one of Missouri\u2019s\u00a0scenic rivers. We typically chose remote locations\u2014not the big campgrounds\u2014and taught primitive camping skills and rudimentary camp crafts. And mainly, we just kicked back and enjoyed nature and each other. But with this group of seventeen girls, the camp director felt we needed a third leader to accompany us on the camping trip,\u00a0so he\u00a0asked Susie to fill the bill.<\/p>\n

Off we went, along with an ecstatic Susie,\u00a0piled with our gear into a van and the back of Big Red. Big Red was\u00a0a ramshackle old truck that had been there ever since I was a camper,\u00a0outfitted with\u00a0wooden rails\u00a0surrounding the\u00a0wooden truck bed, and\u00a0those\u00a0rails were\u00a0the only things separating sleeping bags, equipment, and teen-aged girls from bouncing out onto the winding two-lane highways and gravel roads. Our drivers flew down those country roads, and we sang and laughed and hung on for dear life.<\/p>\n

We made it to our spot\u2014a very remote location on the Meramec River. What an amazing site! The girls made camp under a thirty-five foot cliff, and the three counselors set up closer to the river, nestling our ground tarps and sleeping bags on the\u00a0luxurious comfort of the\u00a0sandy bar by the stream.<\/p>\n

Of course, at night, there was the campfire and s’mores following my favorite camp supper of foil packs with hamburger, potatoes, onions, and cheese baked in glowing embers before we built the fire\u00a0into a\u00a0towering flaming giant.<\/p>\n

After the last song was sung and the last tale had been told,\u00a0with the fire dying back to quiet crackling, I shared about the Lord of nature who loved all of us\u00a0so much that He\u00a0gave His Son. The girls listened attentively, but I noticed that Susie was looking down, not giving eye contact. After the girls\u00a0retreated to\u00a0their sleeping bags, Laura decided to turn in for the night as well, leaving Susie and me to talk.<\/p>\n

She told me that\u00a0her past year in high school was incredible. She had made a whole new set of friends and had become very involved in everything. I\u00a0asked about her relationship with Jesus,\u00a0wanting to minister the love and\u00a0grace of God to her.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m president of student counsel,\u201d she asserted. \u201cI\u2019m popular, and I\u2019m doing just fine on my own. I don\u2019t need God.\u201d<\/p>\n

She was flirting with danger. As I argued and pleaded and shared with her out of Scripture that she certainly did<\/em> need the Lord, that He longed for her to return to Him, she rebuffed every word I said.<\/p>\n

I crawled into my sleeping bag, praying quietly for her long into the night.<\/p>\n

The next morning, at the crack of dawn, a couple of girls bounded up to the counselors\u2014snoozing away in our\u00a0sleeping bags\u2014ready to hike.<\/p>\n

\u201cMmmmphh,\u201d I mumbled. Susie volunteered to go with them, so I told them to be back by breakfast.<\/p>\n

And what happened next to the girl who “didn’t need God” would be indelibly branded onto my soul\u2014and hers\u2014forever.<\/p>\n

Tomorrow:\u00a0On the edge of\u00a0the cliff without God.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Return, O backsliding children, saith the LORD; for I am a husband unto you.\u00a0 Jeremiah 3:14, English Revised Version A microburst of revival hit the camp where I worked as a counselor during the summer of 1975. For all of the staff and many of the campers, Jesus was front and center\u2014whether\u00a0you liked it or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random-connections","category-testing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4743"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4826,"href":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4743\/revisions\/4826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}