Temple Baptist Life

A short time ago I saw an interview with Ron Luce on TBN. Ron is the creator of Teen Mania, the Honor Academy and Acquire The Fire. During the interview he told two accounts of that happened to teens during recent mission trips.

The first was a group of teens in a South American country. The teens were doing community service work in the day and performing evangelism skits in the evening. During the afternoon the teens spread out through the community and began inviting people to the evening event. One burley 16 year old boy came across a young man who was crippled badly. The boy invited him to come that night. The young man agreed and they started back to where the performance was. As they traveled it was learned that this person had been crippled purposely by his parents at a young age. His parents had broken his arms and legs and not let them set correctly so that he would be able to become a beggar. Apparently this is fairly common in some areas of the world. The travel was slow and the teen finally ended up carrying the crippled man so they would not be late. He brought the young man in and set him in a front row seat. By the end of the night the young man accepted Jesus Christ.

The second mission trip involved a different set of teens’ who came across a small village. They saw a procession of people walking and went to them to see what was happening. They found out it was a funeral procession and they were on the way to bury a little girl. The teens joined the group and kept talking to the villagers. Amazingly they found out that the girl to be buried was walking with them and was not yet dead! The teens began crying and pleading with the girls’ parents. They told them that God created that little girl and He loved her very much. They prayed and pleaded and begged the family to stop. Finally the parents agreed and the funeral march stopped. The girls’ life was spared. I don’t know what happened after the mission group left or why they wanted to bury her that day.

I was nearly sick to my stomach from these two accounts. Parents who purposely crippled their son and another set of parents who were ready to kill their four year old child! Can you imagine a world without God? It’s nearly incomprehensible. Thank God that the teens. In one case they saved a life, in the other they saved a soul!
Some people are critical of “Acquire The Fire” because there may be loud bands that play or the skits are designed to be edgy. Acquire The Fire has about 18 hours of planned events. The majority of that time is spent with testimony, Bible teaching and heartfelt worship. If a loud band was a hook to draw kids to the event than I say turn up the music and draw them in. I would guess that many of the teens that went on those two mission trips had attended “Acquire The Fire” and had indeed been touched by God.

Space is limited for this years upcoming event to “Acquire The Fire”. The dates are May 1-3 and ticket price is $35. See us right away if you or your teen is interested in attending. Your teen may become the next one inspired enough to save a life or a soul.