Truth Is Effective

The Massive Worship Youth Rally.

A 2-hour concert, filled with teachings, skits, and of course Music. Sounds pretty epic ey?

Now picture yourself in Grade 7 or 8 or 9 and not being too fond of Jesus or His teaching.

Alright, this is now the Youth Rally that our team put on in Cold Lake. It was hard, although a few really enjoyed it and got into it, the majority of students were talking to each other, giggling, possibly finding us very cheesy and silly, which is fine, we’ve felt like that before, but I suppose it is a rather hard thing to experience when all of us on the team want so much for them to know, experience and encounter Jesus, our God.

During our time of prayer, Riane shared her testimony, and then led us in a prayer where we repeated after her. One of the lines we repeated was “Jesus I open my heart to you” and after everyone said this I heard a voice from the crowd say very boldly “I don’t”, Riane continued with her prayer…

When I heard this, my heart broke, to hear somebody completely reject Jesus flat out without even being “open” to him. I suppose it affected me a lot more because it was being “open” to Jesus is what led me from an atheist back to my Catholic faith. And I started to become very discouraged. My thoughts sounded like this:

“Jesus, what the heck? How can this be? They are not even open to you, how are you supposed to do anything through us if they don’t even care about you? Why are we here? Jesus, are you just humbling us? I can’t do this”

In this moment I really felt Jesus saying:

“Emma, if you don’t, who will?

I have called each of you to be a part of this team to minister specifically to these people in this way”

And then I felt that the Lord wanted me to look specifically into the crowd and find the people we were singing for. And amongst the people hitting each other and talking and laughing and making fun of us, I saw this girl in the back row, who had her head propped on her hand who looked like she was really thinking about Riane’s words and our teachings. I began to see little pockets of people singing with their eyes closed. And then to top it off, in the front row I saw this girl in grade 7, singing her heart out with her eyes closed and her hands in the air; grade 7! So beautiful. And this is what fueled me to continue on with the Rally in good spirits. God really showed me who I was playing for and he reminded me that in the moments leading up to me experiencing God 3 years ago, I was very shut off from him and not open whatsoever; first he had to soften me up. God showed me that there is ALWAYS someone we do our retreats for, even if it’s just one person, our retreats aren’t pointless, even if we do them over and over again, even if the retreatants look uninterested. God is working though our ministry, even if I were to see no one in that crowd praying or singing, God speaks his words through us, and God’s word is truth and truth is effective.

Emma Fradd,

Massive Worship