Summer Recap
Various speakers
Transcribed by PulpitAI (with edits)
Introduction: Christo Möller
So like I said, this morning will look a little bit different. We have a couple of people who are going to share testimonies, and we’re gonna look at our Summer Recap, what God has been doing in all our kids’ programs, right—Remedy, Anchored, some of the planning for young adults. So I’m gonna share a little bit, and then I’m gonna invite some people to come share with us.
And I was thinking about sharing this morning, and I wanted to tell you guys something that my mom taught me when I was young. She gave me a journal, which is probably 99% still empty today. I don’t like journaling at all. But I’m saying 99% because she taught me this one really good principle, and I applied it to this journal, that 1%. And she said to me, “Chris, whenever there’s something specific that God does in your life, something crazy cool, something—maybe a word from the Lord or encouragement, or even in a tough season, the way God is faithful and good, write that down.”
And I was like, “Why would I write this down? I don’t know, I don’t want to share it just with everyone. Maybe it’s something that I was struggling with. Why should I write it down?”
And my mom said to me, “Well, because when you’re in the next season, where it’s really hard, you can go back and look at what God had done, and you can be encouraged, and you can remember how faithful God has been.”
Like so many times—and we see it in the Bible too—God does crazy cool stuff. He does miracles; he delivers people; he feeds people; he protects for them; he does all these things, and then if you look at, like the Israelites coming out of Egypt, they forget. And then they complain, and then they sin, and then God forgives, and he does something amazing again, and then they forget. Every time.
But as we come to the book of Joshua, right? This is like—the Israelites have been coming out of Egypt, and they’ve been in the desert for forty years. And in Joshua 4, they come to the boundary of the Promised Land, this promise that God had given them. They’re at the boundary at the Jordan River. And again, this is a struggle. “How do we get over the river? How do we get to the other side? What are we gonna do? What is God going to do? Is this going to work?”
And God speaks to Joshua and he says to him, “Well, firstly, let the Ark of the Covenant go ahead of the people,” symbolizing God going ahead of us, right? Symbolizing God. “So go ahead of the people into the river.”
And as they go into the river, the water stops. And they go further and further into the river. The water stops completely. And just like the first time that God had delivered the Israelites out of Egypt, now again the water stops, and they go through the river on dry ground.
But there’s something else really cool that happens. God tells Joshua, in Joshua 4, to take stones from the riverbed. And he tells them to take one stone for each tribe of Israel. So it was 12 stones. I don’t think I have 12 stones here this morning. But he tells them to take stones with him and then to carry the stones, the really big stones—which, thank you Nick, these aren’t as big as those I bet—but to take these stones to the other side of the river so that they can put this pile of stones together.
And then it says in Joshua 4 verse 6—this is really cool, I’m gonna read this for you, and then I’m gonna invite a couple of people up. It says in 4 verse 6, it says:
“In the future, when your children ask you, ‘What do these stones mean?’ tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever.”
So many times God does great things, but we forget. These stones are to represent a memorial to show us, to remind us, of how faithful God has been all this time.
And this morning, we asked a couple of people to share testimonies of how faithful God has been in their lives so that you can be encouraged. Right? This is biblical church. We get together, and someone shares a testimony, and someone shares a song of thanksgiving, and hymns, and encouraging each other, supporting one another, praying for one another, so that we can go out and tell others how faithful God has been.
Like, I’ve been on a couple of trips with the youth group, and bless the Lord, I’m still here. I’m alive. We brought all the kids back, right? Not even half full. Like, the glass is full full. They all made it! And even on some of these trips, sometimes kids come with those questions where they’re just real, and they say, “Well, can I really trust the Bible? Is this really true? Does God really exist? Is this or that?” And the first thing I can do is think about my mom telling me to journal and say, “Write down how faithful God has been.” And I can sit down with the kids, and I say, “Listen, I had that same question, but listen, this one time, there was this pile of rocks in my life, and I remember what God did. Let me tell you what he did in my life, how real he is, how he does what scripture says, how he keeps his promises.” And that can in turn encourage them and stir their faith to stand strong, to hold on in their struggles. And that’s what we want to do here this morning. We want to encourage everyone with the testimonies of how faithful God has been.
Anchored Recap: Marylou MacInnes
Morning! I was asked to speak on my experience helping with the Anchored kids this past year. I specifically helped teach the third, fourth, fifth grade girls group.
And to go back to how that started was, I was feeling the Lord stirring in my heart that it was time to volunteer here at Salem a little more than I was doing. And as I began to pray about that, simultaneously I was praying for my own children, and one of the things I specifically was praying for was that the Lord would put people, leaders especially, in their lives that would truly impact them for the Kingdom and truly care about them as a human and not just show up, do fun things (which are always great), but really see them and care about their heart and their development here in the church.
And as I was praying about that, the Holy Spirit nudged me and I heard him say, “Well, why don’t you be one of those people?” It starts with being willing to be those people for other kids, right?
And so I said, “Okay.” So when I was asked to help in Anchored, I was glad to do so.
And it really surprised me—I shouldn’t have been surprised—but over the course of the year, working with those girls, my heart turned in such a way where I genuinely felt towards them the same love I feel for my own kids and wanted so badly to see their maturity and their growth in the Lord and their success in the Lord. And it really is a testimony of God’s faithfulness. And when we’re willing to say yes to something, God’s gonna show up and make our heart the very way he wants it to be, and it is to love the youth and the children, because these people, these young people, are our future, the church’s future. And when we invest in them, when we’re willing to be the hands and feet of Jesus in them, the church has just more hope and more success for Jesus.
And what I thought would be worth sharing as well was—a while ago, I had someone just ask if I would maybe consider helping out with an older group at some point. And I thought about it and prayed about it, and I said, “Yeah. When my girls get to be that age, I’ll be there because I’m committed to these third, fourth, fifth grade girls, and I really feel called to stay with them as they go up into the youth group.”
So anyway, that’s the testimony, that’s the rock that God wants me to remember, that when we say yes and our heart is truly after his will, he does the work in us, and my prayer is that one day, the youth I’m involved with will have rocks of their own of how the leaders in their lives have impacted them in positive ways for the Kingdom.
Camp Testimony: Hannah Dusek
Go to camp. It really helps. It helped me. I prayed with some of my counselors about a bunch of the mental health issues I was dealing with, and my counselor walked me through what to do, and she gave me a bunch of Bible verses, so I would say, “Go to camp, because it brings you really close to Jesus.”
Camp Testimony: Hannah Allen
Like for worship especially, like, they played a lot of songs about the crucifixion and like what he did for us and how worthy he is of just us living, you know, our life for him and everything we do. Like, so that was really special, like—and also the fact that we can’t have our phones, that took away every distraction from like—I just got to fully focus on God and like meditate on what he did. So that was really special. That was something that really moved me a lot.
Camp Testimony: Hailey Osborne
So at camp, U-Turn Night is on Tuesday nights, and it’s basically the big worship and, like, experience God moment. And usually for the past—like as long as I’ve been going to Camp, it’s always been emotional for me because other people are emotional. But for this year, it was different because for the first time I was emotional because God spoke to me through the worship, and I could just feel him loving on me as a person and, like, personally. And it was just a big game changer to know that he loves me and that he’s got an eye on me and that he knows who I am.
Remedy Recap: Christo Möller
I promise I didn’t hurt anyone!
Some of our students do not attend here on Sundays, and that’s why we had videos too. We’ll have a couple of videos later too. Some of the students aren’t here today, and that’s why we have videos too, but we do have a couple of students here, and this morning, Vaida Pearson and Savannah Peterson is also gonna share. So I want to ask Vaida if she will come forward and share her testimony of how faithful God has been to her.
Testimony: Vaida Pearson
Good morning, everyone. I wrote it down like Christo said because if I don’t, I’m gonna yap. So, I’m gonna talk about something that God did at Unite.
So at Unite, God worked in my life in so many amazing ways, but the one I’m gonna focus on this morning is about how God put an amazing friend of mine on my heart. Her name is Jenny, and at the time that God put her on my heart, she was an atheist and didn’t know anything about Christianity. And I really didn’t know anything about her other than she was my friend’s girlfriend. So I DM’ed her on Instagram and introduced myself, and then we became pretty close friends, and I really started to pray for her and that she would encounter the Holy Spirit.
So a couple of weeks pass and City on the Hill is coming up. So I invite her to go, and she said, “Yeah, I’d love to go.”
I said, “Great, I’ll buy the tickets on Friday when I get paid.”
So Friday comes and I didn’t get paid, and I was like, that’s kinda weird. So I talked to my general manager and he’s like, “I don’t know what happened there, but you’ll get paid next pay period.”
So I was really bummed. I got off work and I got in the car, and before I even said anything, my mom said, “Hey, you can win free tickets to go to City on the Hill.” So I called the station, and surprise, surprise, I won the free tickets for both days. And I knew that was a God thing.
So Friday night comes, and I’ve been praying pretty much all day. So we go to pick her up, and we go to the music festival, had a great time. I told her about Jesus and what he did for us and why he did it.
So Friday night comes to an end, and I was like, “Come on, God, you called me to do this. She didn’t give her life to Christ.” And I was really bummed, and I was like—but I still had that little faith of a mustard seed.
So the next day comes, and she starts asking me a bunch of really good questions, really hard questions. Thankfully, Scarlett was there, so she knew how to answer all of them. And when Toby Mac came out and started playing his music, she started to worship, and she prayed. And after he was done, she said, “I think I might’ve met Jesus tonight.”
And I said, “Are you serious?”
She said, “Yeah, I think so.”
So I prayed for her, and she said that she’s not quite ready to give her life to Jesus and start living for him, but she wants to learn more.
And just quick, I want to share a Bible verse that God kept putting on my heart throughout the last few weeks of this.
“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
- Matthew 28:19–20
So I just wanted to encourage you that if God is calling you to something, please answer his calling, because he’s most likely going to do something great. And if God can use a weird, awkward, 14-year-old homeschool girl, I’m sure he can use you.
Unite Testimony: Savannah Peterson
Good morning. So God did a lot for me this summer, but especially during Unite.
So before Unite, I was really struggling with my faith because I was going through a lot. Physically, I was really sick. Mentally, I was very distracted, and I was just really struggling. So I was really looking forward to Unite because I wanted to take that time to recenter myself on God.
So going to Unite, I was really excited. Nervous, but excited. And so when I got there, I was immediately pulled in. Just the entire atmosphere, the schedule—everything about Unite was “Focus on God, focus on God, focus on God.”
And through the worship, through the different people speaking, and at times directly, God spoke to me. He promised to give me strength. He promised that he was with me. He promised that I was his. And so many other things.
And I learned that even though I was struggling with my faith, even though I was having a hard time trusting him, he was with me. He wasn’t gonna leave me in the mess that I was in. He was never going to leave me even when I was struggling to put my faith in him. He would always be there for me whether I was at my highest point or at my lowest. His plans for me would never change, because even if I messed up, no matter how badly I messed up, he knew when he made me when I would fall, and he still made me, he still made his plans for me.
And just through all of Unite, I was able to take time to recenter myself on him, just figure out the steps I needed to go deep for my faith, and just learn to rest in him fully and completely. And I’m just so grateful that I’ve had the chance to have this experience, and I’m so grateful to Christo and all the volunteers for taking me to Unite and back.
Unite Testimony: Jeremiah Hoover
I guess at Unite, I came in with some burdens that I’ve been carrying for the past few years. And I, you know, I always—like in the Pilgrim’s Progress, like you can, I felt the weight, and I’ve always gone to church my whole life, and I haven’t put down my burdens. But after the past, well, two weeks since Unite, I’ve felt the burdens being slowly taken away. Just something clicked at Unite, and I’m really thankful to the Lord for giving me a chance to go there.
Conclusion: Nicholas Anderson
Can we just give a quick round of applause and a shout for joy for everything? Yeah, I was getting emotional, and I don’t know if I can continue.
Man, it’s just so cool what God has done. But with the time that we have left remaining, this is what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna bring the mood down. So, sorry, I’m the bad guy. I’m gonna bring the mood down. We’re gonna get kind of serious. And then hopefully, if I do my job correctly, we’re gonna get excited and encouraged and launch into what’s next. You guys with me? Okay, I know. It’s a roller coaster.
All right, here we go. Some troubling statistics:
The Surgeon General has a warning on loneliness. Loneliness is associated with greater risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety, premature death, and the mortality impact of being lonely is equal to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. So just think about that. Being lonely has the same health effects on you like smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
Social media, there’s another Surgeon General warning. There is growing evidence that social media is associated with harm to young people’s mental health. Children are exposed to harmful content on social media, ranging from violent and sexual content to bullying and harassment. And for too many children, social media is compromising their sleep and valuable in-person time with family and friends.
And then just in general, mental health. One in three high school students and half of female students are reporting persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness.
So we are living in very, very difficult times, very sad and troubling times. Our youth and young adults are leaving the church at a rate of two million a year. Can we just sit in that for a few seconds? That is heavy, heavy, heavy.
And you might have some questions that come to your mind like, “Okay, what’s next? What are we gonna do about it? Is there any hope in this situation?” And luckily the answer is, “Yes, there is hope, and hope has a name, and his name is Jesus.”
So let’s start to get this mood back up a little bit, okay? Let’s go, let’s do this.
Let’s dive back into Joshua 4:21–24. So I’m gonna read it.
Then Joshua said to the Israelites, “In the future your children will ask, ‘What do these stones mean?’ Then you can tell them, ‘This is where the Israelites crossed the Jordan on dry ground.’ For the Lord your God dried up the river right before your eyes, and he kept it dry until you were all across, just as he did at the Red Sea when he dried it up until we had all crossed over. He did this so all the nations of the earth might know that the Lord’s hand is powerful, and so you might fear the Lord your God.”
So two things I wanto focus on here is:
The nations might know
You might fear.
They’re kind of sort of related, so they might kind of squeeze into one, but we’ll see what happens.
So how will the nations know that God is working powerfully among us today? How will Duluth, Superior, Cloquet, Esko, Hermantown, Proctor, Two Harbors, Wrenshall—we come from all of those places—how will they know that Jesus is strong among us? And to answer that question, we actually need to look at the word “fear.”
Unfortunately, in our English language, “fear”—well, I mean, English is just a tough language, right? Weather/whether. There/their/they’re. That’s just, it’s not very good, right? And so “fear” oftentimes is associated with, “I am afraid. I don’t want to be near you. I am scared.” But when we “fear the Lord,” it’s not that type of fear; it’s more of a reverent awe type of fear. And reverent awe—what does that make us do? And I think there’s two things that reverent awe of the Lord makes us do. One is internal, and one is external.
So the internal ones, I think we as a Christian society as a whole—so not necessarily talking Salem Covenant, but as a whole—I think we’re pretty good at, and that’s kind of the internal study, praise, contemplation. “Internal” meaning “personal and within our community.” We’re pretty good at getting together, hanging out, fellowshipping, all that things. And these are very, very good things. I’m not trying to say that they’re bad things. But I think in getting so good at that, we kind of lose the—we get good at it at the expense of the other. We might be too good at being isolated monks and yelling at everyone else from behind our personal monasteries. So that’s the internal. That’s the internal thing, and that’s good. Sometimes it might be too good that we do that.
And we don’t want it to be at the expense of the second one, and that’s the external—walking in his ways, obeying his commandments, loving God and neighbor. Jesus taught us how to treat ourselves, our family, our neighbors, and our enemies. When we walk in his ways, we are showing this nation that Jesus’ hand is powerful. What is harder to do, do you think? Parting the Red Sea or changing the heart of a calloused man or woman? Jesus is powerful.
So what I want to do is I want to reread Joshua 4:21–24 again, but I’ve changed some of the words to fit our context. I am not endorsing a new version of the Bible, okay? Not doing that, but I’m going to change the word for our context today. So hopefully in me reading this, we’re gonna get that mood back up, okay? And then we’re gonna finish with some worship. So here’s my version.
Then Nicholas (that’s me) said to all the members of Salem Covenant Church, “In the future, your children will ask, ‘What does this church building mean?’ Then you can tell them, ‘In the same way that he did a miracle by parting the Red Sea, by bringing down a giant, by turning water into wine, by raising himself back to life, that God, that Jesus, wants the whole world to know that he is powerful today as he was in the past, and he wants to do miracles in the lives of people at Salem today.’ You will tell them, ‘This is where my life was changed from a wreck to one full of abundant life.’ For you see, Salem, the Lord your God has done mighty works in the lives of the people here before your very eyes, just as he has done in the past (and we saw that today). He did this so all the communities of Duluth, Minnesota, and the nations of the earth, might know that Jesus’ love is powerful, and so you might obey and worship the Lord your God with a profound awe and reverence forever.”
Remembering produces direction. When you remember the way that someone treated you, whether good or bad in the past, that shapes how you interact with them in the future. And I feel so lucky today that we get to sit here and watch videos and listen to testimonies of people talking about God’s faithfulness in their lives here at Salem Covenant Church.
And so, my exhortation to you in remembering the faithfulness of God is: what can you be doing in your life here at church, in your neighborhood, in your school, in college, whatever it might be—what can you be adding to Salem’s metaphorical pile of remembrance stones?
So I want you to be in prayer over the next couple weeks as we launch towards the school year, and that’s when all of our ministries are starting back up. I want you to be in prayer. Talk to God. Talk to Jesus. Listen to the Holy Spirit. Where can you be involved in putting more stones onto Salem’s pile?
In the future, our children will ask, “What are we doing to invest in the lives of the next generation?”
