God Moves

I love Compass summers. I’m always reminded of the greatness of God in so many ways.

The staff went into this week after having two weeks of no campers. This group had never done a Compass trip before so neither we nor they knew what to expect exactly. I was feeling anxious and unprepared in a lot of ways. The way that we do things was definitely stretching to most of the campers, which led to a little bit of an awkward first day. There were also interpersonal challenges within the youth group and staff. On the first night, I start by leading worship and then telling my life story. I hadn’t told my story in a couple weeks, as I mentioned, and I was suddenly nervous and blanking on what I would say right before worship. Overwhelmed, I had to step away from everything and pray.

“Lord, I can’t do this without You. I have nothing good to give on my own. Please use me this week. Let it be You working through me, because I can’t do it without You. Move through the entire staff this week. In Jesus’ name and for His glory, amen.”

Well, we are now coming off the end of this past week and it was incredible. The entire staff is encouraged after a great week with awesome campers. We had two campers accept Christ as their savior and many other heard from Him and/or learned more about Him through worship and discussion. The staff was able to build great relationships with the campers, and (more importantly) we saw campers build great relationships with each other that weren’t there at the beginning of the week. Will and I started off with a small group that wanted nothing to do with us because they expected us to want nothing to do with them. At the end of the week, we became great friends, spending lots of extra group time just hanging out.

These things could not have happened without God’s movement through us, and these things happened for His glory. We were simply blessed to be a part of it. We were blessed to see God do great things. And even as I say “he did these things through us,” I hardly feel like anything is happening through me at all. I feel more like an observer of God growing and moving in our campers. I come to the last night or the last morning before campers leave and am amazed at all that God has done.

This happens weekly for us here at Compass. Additionally, God’s movement and using of this ministry also produces incredible growth and blessing in the lives of all the staff. We grow together by working towards a common purpose and seeing God do great things here. This is my fourth summer to work, and each summer has brought its own revolutionary movement to my faith as well as a new closeness to/understanding of God. His love is real! His Grace is sufficient for all our junk and our pain and our struggles! His strength is perfect in my weakness! I know these things because of God’s using of my Compass experiences.

Needless to say, I’m blessed beyond words to be here.

- Justin “Lunny” Luningham