The stories that I want to share is is something amazing that the Lord did at my high school.

Just a little background about myself, I was born in Mexico. My whole family’s from Mexico–moved here when I was five and met the Lord when I was 16 years old in 2009 and it was over the summer. So I had just finished my freshman year in high school and went to summer camp and got saved there. And then when I came back to school in the fall, for my sophomore year, I got saved, but it seemed like everyone else at school got saved. And it’s just a public school, wasn’t a Christian school, but everybody else was saved. There was just a bunch of my friends that had gotten saved also at youth camps.

We were all going to an FCA group, which is Fellowship of Christian Athletes. And that group used to be just five or six kids in a classroom and talking about the Bible. And one Friday morning, which is when we had it, it just turned out to be 30, 40, 50 kids. Got to a point where we had to change the classroom because it just, it just grew. And we were just seeing the Lord, out of nowhere, just calling his children.

And it really was so surprising. There’s one guy who was saved with an incredible testimony. He just had a very, very bad reputation in school, with the girls and just all of that. I’m not going to go into detail with that. But he got saved this summer as well. And now he’s he’s a senior pastor, he’s my age. So he’s about 25, say, but now he’s the senior pastor, has his own church. And he actually was the the leader of the FCA group, which was a miracle in itself, just to see someone like him just be set on fire for the Lord.

There was a church five minutes down the road from the high school, and they put on this huge event. They had a rapper come out, his name was Big C, and nobody knew anything about the church. Nobody really went to that church. But they had an awesome youth event going on, prizes, all this stuff. And the concert was really cool. Big C. he just gets up on stage and did his music. But then he started preaching. And he was giving people opportunity for healing. And our high school running back had just gotten hurt I think the night before.

And so he was going to be out for the season and stuff like that. And, and he calls him up to the stage and everybody that is experiencing all what’s going on at the high school, knows what’s happening, knows what happened to our running back and he gets on stage. And he prays for, I think it was his hip, and he gets healed just on stage. And then he he played the next game.

My best friend at the time, we would go to youth group on Wednesdays. And I would always bring a group just whoever wanted to come, whoever wanted and could fit in the car. First come, first serve. And my best friend would always come and they ended up showing the movie Finger of God, and my best friend ended up bawling in tears and crying his eyes out and, you know, getting saved that night.

But just things like that were very normal to see in that time. Things… just people coming to the Lord or healings or people really hearing the Lord and crying because, just He’s so good. And nobody just nobody knew him in the way that he was presenting himself at that time. Yeah, there’s just so many things. I feel like a little, I’m a little scattered. But just to see the flip from my freshman year to my sophomore year, Christians walking around everywhere got to the point where it was, it started to become a culture where in my classes people were asking what’s up with the Christians at school why, like, where did they all come from?

But the Holy Spirit was using me and my brother, who is just a grade above me, and the Lord just says, you know, like, “Don’t, don’t abandon your friends. Don’t abandon the friends that you already had.”

And I don’t know what to call it. Just an anointing or an opportunity to speak into the lives of the friends we had before we were saved. And get togethers, whether it was around the Cowboys game on a Sunday night, or just somebody’s birthday, or, or just a high school party would open doors into speaking about the Lord, speaking about what he did for us, and what he wants to do for you. And, people that age, a lot of times, are just broken and need the Lord. Like, that’s where I was. And he found me and he was using us a lot in that way. I didn’t, have a fear of Oh, what do I look like, what are people gonna think I look like, I’m a Christian. But I’m at these parties. Like, I didn’t care. Because at the parties, everybody knew me, my brother or my friends, they knew, oh, these guys don’t drink. Like, don’t offer them anything. Or sometimes they’d even ask us why [we didn’t drink].

But my thing in my life is that, you know, the typical thing we probably heard it a lot is you’re the thermostat or a thermometer. So you change your surroundings instead of being changed by your surroundings. So that’s, I don’t know, a grace that the Lord gave us in high school where it wasn’t like we were at the party so now we were subject to the temptation of falling into this or that.

I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone, just because everybody’s different. But that’s, what I was going through in high school. So I just told him, Hey, like, you know, this party should not affect who you are. Like, if you have a conviction in your heart, and the Lord’s calling you to do something and be someone, then you got to do that and be that no matter where you are.

We had a friend and she had a really cool house where we would always hang out. And on a few occasions, we were hanging out, and it just turned into a Holy Spirit party. And different friends were talking with either me or my brother, or one of my really good friends. And the three of us were really the ones doing the ministering. But I remember just the amount of questions that the friends had. Why does God do this? Why is the Holy Spirit this, why, but what about this, and this, and this, and I had just gotten saved. I’m 16 years old, and I’m not a theologian, but the Holy Spirit would give me these words to explain to them, how much the Lord loves them and, and just share with them the gospel. And I remember not knowing the answer to their questions, but answering them kind of hoping that they were right. But also at the same time, the Holy Spirit was giving me the confidence to say these things, almost like a permission, and then later reading it in the Bible. You know, telling them man, like we can love him, because he really, really loves us. Like, he really loves us. And that’s why we can love him. And then later, you know, learning we love Him, because He first loved us. And it and it just sounds, to me was like, Whoa, like, that’s like, he actually wrote these things, or just different things that the Holy Spirit would have me say that as such a young believer, I didn’t know that they were actually in the Bible. But he had put them on my heart.

And so it was, as I was reading it, it was more, it was more of a personal amazement of how he was using me than it was what I was saying, you know, before.

But yeah, it was, I don’t know, it was kind of really cool. And I remember my brother would do this all the time where he he’d be talking to a friend and then they’d end up crying and they gave their life to the Lord or something like that. And I’d always be super curious, like, what do you do? What did you tell them? He’s like, honestly, I don’t know. And that always bugged me because I’m like, “How do you not know if you’re the one that told them?” But he would always say, “Yeah, it was just, it was just the Holy Spirit. Like, I don’t know why really that they’re crying or why they acting like that.” But, even though yeah, he probably knew. But I think what he meant is, he doesn’t really know what the Holy Spirit’s doing in them, because it’s so specific to them personally in their heart.

But it really happened that way, where we just, the Lord would give us opportunity, and we just wouldn’t pass it up. And he’d be faithful, even though we were babies in the spirit where we just gotten saved. But the Holy Spirit is good to, you know, give you the anointing give you the words that you know someone else needs to hear at that time. Because he really, really loves that. And it was just a really big yes in our life to the Holy Spirit, to him and just submitting to him.

There are more people who said no to the Lord having seen our running back getting healed on stage or, you know, their best friend getting saved, or this or that, there are more people who said no to the Lord than people who are out there being youth pastors or pastors or this or that. But it’s, I mean, many are called few are chosen, I guess, but they, you know, the objective, I guess, that the Holy Spirit gave us is just to “Show my love, share the gospel, like go out make disciples.”

And you know thinking back to that time, it hurts my heart, you know, to think about people saying no to the Lord just because he’s so good, but yeah, I mean, that’s just the reality of it. But I think that, you know, their stories are not over, you know, just because I haven’t seen it doesn’t mean it won’t happen. So, but yeah, because the seed has been planted, you know, the if they’ve seen the Lord work, they’ve seen a sign or wonder, they’ve just, they’ve heard the Lord, they see what He he can do, if not personally, at least in my life, hopefully my life is something that they see whether on social media or whatever. Because, we’ve given our lives so we’re just bound for whatever He wants to do and just that season was so much of the Holy Spirit just doing, just showing up, and I’m kind of just thinking, you know, right now that’s all still possible, He still wants to do all those things.