Let the Redeemed of the Lord tell their Story

God is an author. Of course that is a word I have heard used to describe the Lord a few times. Yet, the longer I follow Him, I start to see moments of faith come full circle. Those are the moments where I see the most the unique story writing abilities of our God.

This summer I spent ten weeks at a middle school church camp. This is the camp where I have experienced both some of my best and worst moments. Camp is easy, except for when it’s not. As routine as the days were, my roles for each week switched up just enough that I can honestly say that I was challenged by something (in a good way that helped me grow as an individual) each day. The thing that makes camp totally worth it, though, are the countless number of Jesus moments that I experienced or witnessed day in and day out. Some are subtle, like when the staff worked together so well that we got the dishes done soon enough to have time to take a nap before heading out to afternoon rotations. Others are more obvious, like getting the opportunity to pray with a camper. Some Jesus moments are seen right in the moment, like when the Lord paints beautiful sunsets across entire sky, but others take time to fully develop, like when a camper comes back for a second year of camp, and we get the opportunity to build on a relationship that was started the year prior.

One Jesus moment in particular was one that was an obvious sweet moment, yet when I began to think about it, I saw the intricate writing of the Hand of God and realized that it was one that the Lord had been planning out for a while.

Let me back this up to last summer. It was my first year on staff, towards the end of the summer. I was tired. I love people, I love the staff, I love the campers, but this girl is still very introverted. By the end of the summer, I was in need of time away from anything that might ask me to talk. That particular evening, I grabbed my hammock and headed down a path to a more secluded part of camp. I didn’t take my phone; I don’t know if I even took my bible or anything to do besides my hammock. I was on a mission to be alone. I went down this path past the point where normal camp activities occur during the day and continued out to the woods and set up my hammock in quite a beautiful spot overlooking the lake. I tied up my hammock between two trees and laid down but immediately felt in danger.

“Calm down Hannah, you are literally fine. It’s just a woods. It’s not even dark outside.” 

That was the internal dialog going on in my head. The longer I laid there the more unsettled I felt. I was so far out, I was so alone and felt so scared that even God seemed to have taken a step back. I didn’t know quite what to do or what was going on. I was scared to move but I was also scared not to move. Finally, I gave myself a countdown, whispered, “Jesus protect me” and jumped out of my hammock, pulled it down off the tree as fast I could and sprinted back to the lodge. Nothing happened out there, but there was something about it that I just couldn’t shake off.

The summer ended and I found myself still drawn back to camp. I was pretty confident that the Lord was leading me back for a second summer. The only hesitation in my mind was that area of camp that seemed so creepy to me. I loved camp so I didn’t like that there was any part of camp where I felt unsafe. So I decided that that was simply not okay. Once or twice a month during the school year, I would drive back down that dirt road and walk the grounds of camp and pray. I had some special moments with the Lord and it was beautiful to see a lot of those prayers answered this summer at camp. Yet every time I went back to camp, I would look down that path that I had walked down to hammock and I felt the Lord whisper, “Not yet”. The whole year I prayed over the camp, but I felt frustrated that the Lord didn’t want me to walk back down to that spot because I felt like that’s the spot that I needed to pray to have peace about the situation.

Finally, it was the week before staff moved in to camp to start training. That week I felt like it was time to go back and pray and a small group of people also felt like praying out in that area of camp. We went out on two nights, back to back. The first night, it was calm. We made a cross out of twelve stones. I wore a bracelet that said, “Fear not” so I took it off and put it around the middle stone of the cross as a reminder that I did not need to fear because of the work Jesus did on the cross. The next night, four of us stood around that cross, held hands and prayed for that upcoming summer of camp. We prayed over incoming staff, over past staff, over the campers, we prayed over site, and we gave a lot of thanks and praise to God. We prayed for several hours but it didn’t seem but a few minutes. All of us out there felt the peace of God as we prayed. After that moment, I no longer felt scared about that place at camp.

Fast forward now to the last day of camp. My role at this summer alternated between being the Medic some weeks, and being a lifeguard and adventure team member the other weeks. The last week, however, I got the opportunity to be a counselor for a group of 1^st and 2^nd grade girls. The girls were too tiny to do some of our rotations, such as the blob, so the replacement rotation was going on a nature hike. The girls liked it so much (to my surprise) that they wanted to go on another one. So the very last morning of camp, I took my group out on another hike. Without thinking too much about it, I took them out to the same spot I had hammocked, the place where still laid a cross made out of twelve stones.

We got out there, and I look at the cross. It was still all there, but the “Fear Not” bracelet had fallen off and was lying to the side. I crouched down to put it back on, and by then, the whole group of curious girls had circled around to see what I was doing. The girls asked questions like most 6 and 7 year-old's do. In that moment I got to explain how I made the cross as an act of worship and how it is a reminder to me not to fear, but to trust God.

We continued on our nature hike. I ended up getting to share the gospel with the girls and leading them in prayer. It was definitely an obvious Jesus moment.

When the day ended, camp was over for the summer. I sat by myself on the back balcony of the lodge where I often sat to talk to Jesus throughout the summer and began to think about all he had done. It wasn’t until then that I remembered just how special that moment with the girls at the cross was. The day before camp started, I prayed with three other people that the Lord move and work at camp. The last day of camp, the Lord moved out at the same secluded spot out by the lake where we prayed.

That is just like the Lord though. He uses our worst moments to lead to some of the best moments. What the enemy means for evil, the Lord uses for good. I am sure that the enemy tried to keep me from having a restful time out there last summer, but this summer, the spot with the worst memory became the spot with the best memory.

The Lord writes stores of redemption. Our testimonies, the stories we tell, all have the underlying story plot of how the Lord had redeemed us. He redeems people, places, and relationships.

Psalms 107:2 says, “Let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story”

Praise the Lord for His redemption!