What a blessed time we had under the tent!
This September, our home church, Miamisburg Assembly of God, decided to have a tent revival in an open field across the street from our property. There was a strong desire in our hearts to bring the Gospel and the presence of God out of the four walls of our church and into our neighborhood. It was a vision that the Lord had birthed in the hearts of the staff, and through a series of unforeseen connections, He provided us with a tent, sound equipment and chairs through two local ministries, Simple Street and Whole Truth Ministries. We had meetings Sunday through Wednesday night, and each night, the tent was filled with people hungry to receive from God. And He did some amazing things!
After a conversation I had with our Lead Pastor, Chuck Sharp about the possibility of putting on the revival, the Lord put a message in my heart long before the event was scheduled. God gave me the topic of surrender and I had a mental picture of waving a white flag in my hand, sharing the message under the tent.
We invited a good friend of ours, who is an evangelist named Mark Turner from New Jersey. He came in and preached under the tent on Sunday night. Pastor Chuck preached the Monday night meeting. Both of those meetings were powerful, with rich worship and so many people touched by the Holy Spirit through the messages and altar ministry. One young lady came and testified that she had never experienced anything like it and loved the way she felt in God’s presence.
I preached the Tuesday night message. In the sermon, I talked about the rich young ruler and his conversation with Jesus that led to Jesus’ invitation to follow Him. He gave the young ruler three stipulations in Mark 10:21 (NKJV). He told him that he needed to sell all of his possessions and give them to the poor, take up the cross and then follow Jesus. The rich young ruler rejected the invitation. In fact, the Scriptures record that he walked away sad (vs. 22).
I spoke about these stipulations and how each is an invitation to surrender something: the pursuit of wrong things, our selfish ambitions and control of our lives. I used a white flag as an illustration and talked about the history of the flag of surrender from war history. I then challenged the people to surrender their lives to Jesus. When I gave the altar call, fourteen people came forward to pray to receive Christ! Many of them were from the local community. I had the amazing privilege of helping water baptize many of them the next two nights. Our church has been contacting them to plug them in with people who can disciple them. God is still in the business of calling men and women to Himself!
The Bible says that all of heaven rejoices when one sinner comes to Christ (Luke 15:7). There must have been a great party in heaven that night.
I’m so grateful for such an amazing opportunity to preach the Gospel and see souls touched by Jesus. There’s nothing better than seeing sinners come to Christ!
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