Morning celebration began with the “early bird” encouraging us to dance crazily for 20 seconds and we were in. Our group, Gold Rush, were privilaged to win the spirit sledge for the day. So we were raring to go in Missions. After all this, Addison Road came and led us in “We Will Wait Upon the Lord” and “Blessed Be Your Name.” Then, Camp Pastor Ben Stuart came and had us open to James 1:14-15.
The morning word was about temptation. Here are some thoughts he gave. As we are thinking about how we think and live, cultivating intimacy with God, we are really pursuing one movement in 2 parts. We are engaging in behavior that will enhance our relationship with God and moving away from other behaviors that hinder intimacy. This process is called sanctification, which he defined as being more holy or “set apart from things to God.” These two movements have traditionally been called vivification – bringing life and mortification – putting to death things that isolate me from God.
This process isn’t pursued in a vacuum, though. God is calling us to Himself and we have a real enemy who is seeking to hinder our approaching of God. Hebrews 2:14, Colossians 1:13 and Genesis 3:15 all speak of this. In God’s wisdom, He’s allowed the enemy to persist (this enemy doesn’t like our aroma of victory in Christ). Satan wants to frustrate our moving towards God in intimacy. How does the enemy work? He goes after our minds, which contributes toward affections and leads to an act of the will. He will put a thought in our mind in order to stir our affections. This is temptation. If I want to avoid sin, then, I must avoid what leads me to sin (temptation) [1 Tim. 4:16; Romans 13:14]. This is also done in community with other believers. Ben closed with this thought.
At our missions project, we had lunch with the women from our assignment. It was an encouraging and fun day for them. We served them a picnic in the park of hamburgers, hot dogs, potato salad, chips and cookies. Camp Pastor Ben Stuart and his wife came by and greeted us as well. All in all, it was a huge success. Our work is done and now we hope God takes this and uses it to produce eternal fruit.