Are we helping?
Does the Gospel work?
So many years of revival and where’re the change in society?
Are people just wearing Jesus’ t-shirt for a season
And then going back to ho-hum normal?
Maybe it’s just not worth it.
Had a talk with 20 year old student Rocio today.
She doesn’t see it that way.
When she was a freshman and seventeen
She and her parents started an outreach to inner city kids—kids at risk.
They started with five and were soon touching three hundred.
This year in December God was saying reach out to teens.
She was not enthused until Holy Spirit helped her see
That teens today were kids three years ago.
First day they started in that risky neighborhood
Fourteen year old Claudio threw a rock that hit her leg.
“It made me cry, it hurt so bad.”
“The next week he came at me with a knife pointed at the pit of my stomach.
‘Get out of here,’ he said.
‘I’m not leaving—no way’ I answered and stood my ground.”
Claudio was illiterate and was unkempt—hadn’t taken a bath for a long time.
No school would take him at fourteen and still unable to read.
“Soon he turned that knife in to us.
He and nine other teens were the first to be baptized.
My sisters are teaching him phonics.
He showers at the church and we gave him clothes.
He asks our help to make sure things match.”
Rocio’s family and twenty five teenagers from the church
Are touching the lives of 800 people in three inner city neighborhoods.
The church teens are so busy serving they have no time to get into trouble!
The three neighborhood municipalities have noticed a definite change.
Street kids are playing volleyball instead of doing drugs.
They’re getting tutorial help with their studies.
Parents are coming around and the church is finding them jobs.
Does God’s moving lively Spirit bring change?
You bet!
Think I’ll keep happily talking
About the effects of the Gospel and revival.
