It’s funny the way it works sometimes that we’re often blinded to our own strengths and abilities. Oh, we can certainly recognize our faults and weaknesses, but so many of us are often hard-pressed to name things we’re good at.

That’s where community comes in. The people around you who know you best can see you better than you can see yourself. They will be the ones to notice a pattern of behavior in you that showcases a hidden talent or gift you didn’t know you had.

I saw a very good example in a video I watched today in my community group. A man was asking an older lady what her strengths were. Somebody behind her yelled, “She can cook like nobody’s business.”

She probably did that without thinking too much about it and without realizing it was one of her strengths, and it took someone else to call it out of her. Left by herself, she never would have thought that cooking was her gift.

Who are you empowering by helping them see their gifts and talents? Who are you encouraging to develop those said gifts and talents? Maybe there’s a DaVinci or a Rembrandt or a Mozart out there, waiting for someone to call out their special talents. Maybe it’s the next Billy Graham or Mother Teresa. And maybe you’re the one to call out that gift in them.

This was my fourth year to volunteer for the Youth Evangelism Conference, sponsored by the Tenessee Baptist Comvention. That means those freshmen from when I first volunteered are now seniors. Yikes. That puts it into a little more perspective.

Friday night, the main speaker gave an altar call and over 1,000 students went forward to profess Jesus as Lord and Savior. As always, it gave me serious goose chills to see the sides of the stage filling up with teenagers giving their lives to Christ.

As usual, I went away refreshed (though at the same time in need of a serious nap after less than five hours of sleep. 

One day, some of those students will come back as volunteers, like I did. That blows my mind. They will have come full circle and seen the event from both sides and also gained new perspective. Maybe some of those students will one day be youth leaders, pastors, evangelists, missionaries, and– quite possibly– martyrs for the cause of Christ.

One lingering question remains: what will happen when these students climb down from their proverbial mountain-top experience to face the daily grind of every day life? It’s easy to make promises and commitments in the midst of all the hype, but what happens when that hype gets replaced by the humdrum of school and tests and chores and normality? I’m praying this fire won’t die any time soon.

I hope to be back next year and see again what God does through the obedience of His people and their faithfulness in the smallest details. I know I had a blast.

I’m pooped. Period.

I just got home from volunteering at the Tennessee Baptist Convention’s Youth Evangelism Conference (and will be driving back there at 6:30 am tomorrow morning). It was fantastic as usual, but I am spent. My mental level is currently at the “fire bad, tree pretty” stage.

I do remember to things the main speaker said.

1) You can’t out-sin the love of God. No matter how low you’ve fallen, that “reckless raging fury that they call the love of God” can reach lower still.

2) Whenever anyone invites God in through the door of Jesus, He will always enter in. He will always say yes. He won’t say “Get your house in order” or “Get your life together first.” He simply enters in.

As many years as it’s been since I qualified as a teenager, I still needed that reminder. I’m fairly certain all of us do from time to time.

The end.