Day 4: contentment
It might get loud” – the teens were greeted with this song in the Main Hall today. And it got loud when the best costume from the rag race – the Aliens – was chosen and when the donation total was announced: 48,166 euros.
Today’s theme was about being content even at times of suffering. After his conversion, Paul, the former persecutor of Christians Saul, went to the people who did not yet know Jesus and suffered a lot. Among other things, he survived his own stoning. Based on Romans 8:18, we recognised that in times of suffering we often zoom in on the problem as if with a microscope, but Paul asks us to zoom out and focus on God.
There wasn’t much going on at the TeenStreet site in the afternoon due to the heat, many preferred to stay indoors or to swim in the nearby lake.
In the evening, a slightly different Throne Room was on the programme: the prayer evening. The band played acoustically and Josh Green, Youth Director for 24-7 Prayer, led through the evening. He emphasised that Jesus started the church as a prayer meeting and that it is now time for the church to return to its origins and become a house of prayer. “Prayer has to be persistent, consistent and resistant,” he challenged us.
Then the teens went in their small groups to different prayer stations to pray for the unreached and for each other. At the end, teenagers from over 30 nations went on the stage to pray for their country in their own languages. A “holy chaos” and yet such a beautiful sign of the body of Christ. Finally, everyone prayed the Lord’s Prayer simultaneously in their own languages.
