Reflections

I am playing worship at a youth camp in Sun Valley at the end of this month. I'm really excited about it. Last night I was on Facebook and came across some pictures of the facilities up there...and it's beautiful. One shot of of a log-cabin style building instantly took me back to my childhood.

Every August from as early as I can remember meant campmeeting. Our church would hold an old-fashioned tent revival church camp every August in Smith's Ferry, Idaho. The services were done in a big tent and the log-cabin church was used for prayer meetings and bathrooms. God always moved in awesome, wondrous ways. I can remember seeing the crippled get up out of their wheelchairs and walk. One year there was even a man miraculously healed during a heart attack. Brother Gene Haskins. Towards the end of an evening service he started having a heart attack. He stumbled up to the front, and immediately a bunch of guys held him up and began praying. All of a sudden, the threw both hands up in the air and started praising God and running around.

For those who've never been around this type of thing, I'm sure I sound like a loon. I like to think that I'm a skeptical person, not just accepting everything as something from God. But I've known this man practically my whole life. I saw the fear on his face, the paleness of his skin. I watched him stumble forward. I knew about his heart condition prior to this miraculous event. And I watched as God healed him.

So the question to be asked; does God still move like that? Why did such amazing healings, signs and wonders occur at church camp but don't seem to happen all that often today? My answer; they occasionally do, and the frequency could dramatically increase if we understood why campmeeting was so uniquely special. The reason is faith and expectation.

Man, God has taught me a ton about faith over the last few years. My definition of the word has been COMPLETELY overhauled several times, and I think I'm finally figuring out what it is. But that's fodder for another blog post; or perhaps an entire book (although many books on the topic have already been written and the book of a completely different topic I've started working on has only seen 5 pages written in the last 6 months). But campmeeting was amazing and powerful because we had faith and expectation that it was going to be.

People came to church camp with one purpose in mind; renewing their physical and spiritual selves. Mornings and evenings were spent receiving the Word and God's spiritual blessings. Days and nights were filled with fellowship, laughter, and food. Oh man...food. Ol' Brother Boots Shell used to make a buckaroo breakfast every year on Friday morning, the last day of church camp. He was an authentic cowboy. And he made some of the best sourdough pancakes I've ever eaten. Then there was the abundance of hot dogs and ketchup after the evening service, roasted over a fire.

Then all of us kids would play hide and seek in the dark around the playground area. And of course, you can't have teenage kids in the dark without romance. Matter of fact, I had my first kiss at church camp. But I digress...

People got away from the hustle and bustle of life. It's almost impossible to be stressed out when you leave the rat race and get up into the pines and mountains and see all the beauty God created. When people got away and left the busyness and stressfulness of life behind them in the valley and came up to meet with God, God always met with them.

God is no respecter of persons, and I would dare step out and say that He's no respecter of places either. I think we can have the same campmeeting experiences, both individually and corporately, if we would put aside the busyness and stressfulness of life and come to God with an expectation of refreshing, renewing, and the miraculous.

I don't think this has any spiritual significance, but campmeeting ended about the time I graduated high school and we haven't had one since. It's kind of an odd, sad coincidence that something that so perfectly exemplified my youth ended about the time that I "came of age."