Please Bring the Breaking...

This is the second week of 'Never the Same Camp" in Houghton, NY...and it's a dark one.
I have been hearing the stories of many teens that are here and they have been beaten, broken, lied to, cheated and thrown out like last week's garbage. Since the beginning of the week I had this eerie feeling that someone was cutting themselves. The feeling was specific and straight to the point: someone here was struggling with cutting. I didn't tell any one until yesterday afternoon when I told the middle school chapel speaker how I felt. He said it sounded like God was speaking to me, and so we prayed that this person would be revealed. By that evening a young girl had confessed to another girl, with tears in her eyes, that she had been cutting herself.

I heard of one young man's story where his dad was in prison when he was born and had his father tell him that he hated him. His mother abandoning him and telling him that he was no good and that she too hated him. He broke down last night. Imagine how heavy he must have felt...no one loved him; no one wanted him. And then there's this girl who confessed to a leader that her daddy raped her when she was four and continued until she was six. How does this happen? How does a human being get so full of hatred and anger that he could take that from an innocent little girl, that he could do that? She was torn from the inside out. From that moment he hurt her, she was changed, shaken and damaged, questioning am I still good? Am I still pure? And then just yesterday as I was doing security and guarding the chapel doors, a girl came storming past me and as I tried to tell her not to go through, she looked at me with anger and ignored me and walked through anyway. My instinct was to get mad for her lack of respect, but later that night God revealed to me the deeper issue. As I was working night security, the same girl came storming out of the dorms, trying to take off. Her leaders were chasing her, pleading her to come back, but she yelled at them with frustration and anger. I said, "miss you need to go back inside for small groups" and then she looked at me and said, "you need to shut your mouth!" In shock I said "excuse me?" wondering if I had heard her correctly, but she just kept going. After the camp director was contacted and other leaders chased her around the campus, I watched as she continued to scream and cry and hate the world....I saw myself. In that moment I saw in her a familiar face, the girl I used to be when I was her age, and my heart began to break. What is in her life? What has she seen or experienced that she was so hurt? As I watched her, I prayed and asked my Dad to help her, to bring the breaking. Then, I saw it. She fell into her leader's arms and wept.

Satan is attacking these teens with things we can not imagine, and I am angry about it! It's time to pray people; time to pray hard. We want to see deliverance in these young men and women; freedom, truth, breaking of chains. God is calling out to them this week and He wants them to go home changed...please pray that they will absorb His presence. My Dad can do that! He wants them to see that He, their Heavenly Father, their Abba is offering freedom. They need not be in bondage any longer! In the words of Christ: "IT IS FINISHED!" Dear God, please bring the breaking.