Family Camp -Youth Report
By Christel Beckley

I thank the children and parents for making this years family camp such a success. There was an average of 21 children throughout the week. !! Boy !! Did we have fun. With the help of Mary Jane Patterson and Bruce Miller we kept the children very busy.

Throughout the week the children/youth learned:

about deliverance, and how demonic spirits come in through our lineage or our own choices,
about being a team player - we are all parts of the body of Christ
about sowing and reaping, you will reap what you sow - whether it's kindness and love or anger and hate
about the parables that Jesus gave on the sower and the seed
about what Independence Day should mean to us as Americans

The children were in all the deliverance services this year, and one 7 year old child shared with me their testimony about getting delivered from fear. It was wonderful that they know that deliverance is real because of a personal experience.

Reaping What We Sow - Do We Understand The Fullness Of This?

One of the topics discussed with the youth during Family Campmeeting was, "You reap what you sow". I wonder why we as Christians don't appear to understand the principles of sowing and reaping? That whatever I sow, I shall reap. As I look back to my younger days, I can see that I made mistakes and was rebellious (disobedient to my parents). I think if I had had a clearer or better understanding that I was going to reap rebellion (because that is what I sowed), and I mean really understood it in it's most fanatical sense, I would have made better choices.

"Judge not lest ye be judged" is a perfect example from the Bible of sowing and reaping. In a natural sense if I want to reap a clean house I have to sow diligence in cleaning and not procrastination (meaning to put it off until later.) There are natural and spiritual things that my parents sowed into me that are just now being reaped. As a child I was raised to make my bed every day and even in college I did this to "keep an appearance", but when I lived by myself there was a time when it didn't matter to me if I made my bed every day, because there was nobody to see it. But now, through deliverance from irresponsibility, I am getting back to those good housekeeping responsibilities that make a big difference. It is nice to come home every day and walk into my bedroom and see the bed all neatly made. It is rewarding to come in and have all my clothes hung up because I took the time to do it when I took them off instead of laying them on my bed to be moved to some place else when it was time to go to bed. And then "the pile" (of clothes) begins and somewhere down the road in time I have to go through that pile and put the clothes away either in the dirty clothes or back in the closet and drawers. This can mirror a spiritual cleanness also, children should be taught that when they make a mess they are the ones to clean it up and make it spotless. They need to leave the area cleaner than they found it. They need to do this immediately to prevent the mess from getting bigger. The clothes could represent sin, and we just let them pile up instead of repenting quickly - daily. In the spiritual sense, when we make a mess, for example we say something that hurts another person or we commit a sin against God, we need to be thorough to clean it up better than we found it, as well as learn from it, so that we don't make that mess again. Some of this cleaning may require deliverance from evil spirits that came down through the family as a curse, or something we let in through unrepented sin, it still has to be cleaned up.

Example: Let's say for a minute that I am a wood floor. As a wood floor I have some of the characteristics that my parents had and some defects (nobody is perfect). Now I come in contact with people every day. I can't control what they bring in on the bottom of their shoes, or who they come in contact with. But, I can go to my master every night and say Jesus please cleanse me and wash me clean. I got dirt on me today and I need to be washed in the water of the Word. Then as time goes by and I begin to wear, some of those defects in the wood grain start showing. It is then time to go to the Master and say Lord please cut out this defect (an evil spirit) and replace it with a perfect piece (the Holy Spirit). The defect is something that came down in the seed (from my parents/ a generational curse) and was sown when I was first planted or it could be something in my surroundings while I was growing that marred my wood and through the process of growth, it sprouted or grew because it was a characteristic in the seed or a mark in the tree. But Jesus can remove those defects or ungodly characteristics and make our spiritual lives perfect in Him as we yield to Him as the Master craftsman.

When we are conscience that there are things that are sown in our lives by whomever that are not pleasing to God then we can spoil the plans of the enemy by overcoming in the areas that would seem to be a weakness. We can raise our children to avoid these problem areas by teaching them a better way to do it and by having these areas already overcome in our lives. Not that they will always choose the way we taught them, but at least if their way doesn't work they will know where to come back to. If they get caught up in the tares of this world and need to be set free they will know where to go. (Raise up a child in the way he shall go and when he is old he will not depart from it.) And they will know how to sow a better crop for the next generation to come.

Back to July/August 2003 Voices