Tommy learns Jesus love him

     The scriptures declare that “unless we become as little children, we cannot enter the kingdom of God” (Mt. 18:3).  This testifies to the importance of having an open heart and mind to the wonders of God’s Word and ability to speak to our hearts.  Whether it be elementary age children or even the teens of our present worldly culture, the openness of the yet unadulterated mind of young people often more readily believes the testimonies of scripture regarding the miraculous works the Lord desires to do in and through His church. In my years as a youth pastor, this openness was constantly evident as the powerful working of the Holy Spirit was often a regular part of the teen salvation experience.

The Lord had opened a door for Betsy and I too work with the teenagers in a church we were attending in East County San Diego.  We were soon serving as youth pastors of a small group of teens, several of which had parents that were deacons in that church. It did not take long for us to recognize that this small group was comprised of spoiled and privileged teens who had little interest in any real spiritual life. They had become accustomed to dominating their little circle of peers at the church and would even discourage other teens from returning when they came to the youth meetings. Knowing of the great need for outreach to the young people in this community, I began to bypass the church teens by visiting the local Jr High (middle school today) and High school.

The door into the teens on these campuses came in a most unexpected way.  The senior pastor of our church pointed me towards a young man who lived in our community named “Tommy”.  Tommy spent much of his time searching the local dumpsters for food.  His mother was a call girl, and his older brother a drug dealer. Tommy spoke with a severe stutter and had the complexion you might expect from someone eating out of the dumpsters and practicing little personal hygiene. I first encountered Tommy when he was climbing out of a dumpster in an alley only several blocks from our church.  I brought him to the youth group that night, and afterwards took him out for pizza. Pizza that night was his first real meal he had in days.

Over the next few weeks, I spent more time with Tommy, sharing with him the Lord’s great love, but also making sure he knew I cared for him. During this time, Tommy began introducing me to several of his friends.  It was not long before we had a new group of teens attending our youth meetings. Since they had little influence with this new group of young people, the group of “church teens” became less and less a part of this newly formed ministry. Tommy and his friends were amazingly open to hearing the gospel and accepting the promises it contained.  It was not long before there was obvious excitement as the group began to grow. This new collection of teens included two eighth grade sisters who were, to put it mildly, sexually active. It also involved a boy who lived in a home where Meth was manufactured, along with another boy who was being prostituted to men by his evil stepmother.

Attracted to our group by one of the two promiscuous sisters, another very tall young man named Ray began to attend. I soon discovered that Ray, who was six-foot-three, was afraid to go home because his six-foot six father was beating him daily. Two young women named Sandy and Jessica were also drawn into out little group.  Sandy was living on the ground in an open field, under a small truck canopy with her father.  I remember thinking at the time how much her father looked like Charles Manson. Jessica had been drawn into prostitution in San Diego, and I would still have to deal with her pimp who would park outside our meetings to draw her back into that lifestyle. Their desperate need to be loved made these teens the perfect group to experience the life changing power and love of Jesus Christ.

During those early months, as this youth group began to take form, I was able to take Tommy and six or seven other teens to a youth convention in Costa Mesa. Spending several days worshipping and hearing the gospel with over 2000 other young people had a tremendous impact on all of these teens.  However, it was on the drive home after the convention that I would learn just how much Tommy was truly impacted.

I was driving down interstate five at about 9 pm that night in my teenager packed two door 1974 Buick, (I think there were at least eight teens packed in it). They were all animated and excited, laughing and teasing one another as teens do. I broke into their revelry by asking what they had gotten out of the convention. There were several very calculated and even mature responses, quoting some biblical doctrine they had learned or even some new revelation of what they were called to be as Christians. All these were good testimonies, but Tommy was destined that night to upstage them all.

As the group returned to their laughter and raucous conversation, I looked in my rearview mirror and saw Tommy sitting behind me, sunken down low into the rear seat against the window. Speaking over my left shoulder, I quietly asked Tommy “what did you get out of the past two days”. Consistent with his reserved character, it was a minute or two before Tommy responded. In his typical shy and reserved manner, Tommy then leaned up in his seat, and with his mouth just inches from my left ear, he stuttered out his response saying “pppppastor LLLarry, I llllearned that JJJesus loves me”. 

Tommy’s testimony that night proved to be a real and sincere one. Not only was Tommy a completely new person from the day forward, but his influence upon other teens and the youth program was equally prolific.  Each week he would bring several new teens to our meetings. He was a completely transformed young man. He no longer stuttered, and it was not long before even his severe acne cleared up. He was confident and even gregarious in his interactions with other teens. He had come to know the love of Christ and it brought a level of confidence to his life that was unmistakable. Over the next few weeks, numerous people at our church commented on the change in Tommy.

Although I had already been doing some visitation on the school campuses before the Youth Convention that weekend, the entire intensity and consistency of those visits changed. Tommy now all but demanded I come on to meet his friends on campus. Once there, I was regularly surrounded by a crowd of Tommy’s friends. These visits lead to another incredible work of the Holy Spirit that I can only convey by going back to my first contacts with the Jr. High (yes Middle School) principle. 

I had scheduled an appointment with the principle to get permission to come on campus to visit. Although this principle was courteous and friendly enough, he also laid out some very specific restrictions if I wanted the privilege of visiting on “his campus”. Those restrictions were, that anytime I came to campus I must first check in with him or the vice principle. Once on campus, he demanded I never use the words “God, Jesus, or church”.  When I did come to visit his campus, usually during the lunch hour, he made sure I was never out of his purview. (I must confess today that I did not faithfully follow his restrictions).

One particular spring day I visited the campus during the lunch hour. After checking in, I walked out into the common lunch area and was quickly surrounded by eight or ten teens from our group. Tommy was there at the center of this gathering, anxious to introduce me to even more of his friends. After only a few minutes, the gathering grew to several dozen teens. We were attracting quite a crowd, including the scrupulous looks of the principle who stood upon a retaining wall overlooking the lunch area.

It was at this time that one of the young men who had just joined the cluster of teens looked at me and brazenly asked a “who are you?” Before any of my now very excited and animated (as teens can be) teens could respond, I responded by saying “I am a teacher”.   Several of the teens from my youth program began looking at me accusingly, wondering why their youth pastor was lying. The truth was that I was as equally surprised at my answer as they were. It seemed to just blurt out of my mouth without any real consideration on my part. As my little group of faithful teens stood looking confused, another teen shouted out “what do you teach?” Again, my response seemed to precede my though process. I quickly responded “I teach vision”. Now my teens were truly perplexed. What happened next however revealed what was really going on. 

After declaring that I taught “vision”, I then pointed out to the large crowd of students filling the lunch area. Some were standing while others sat at tables eating their lunches. Pointing to that crowd, I asked my little teen-age congregation “what do you see?” The first responses were just what you would expect from a Jr. High crowd. One boy laughingly called out “ I see Bobby flirting with Becky”. Another said “I see Jesse picking his nose”. These typical teenage responses and the accompanying laughter continued for a few moments. When they did cease, one of the boys then sarcastically asked “what do you see teacher?”. My response can once again only be attributed to the Holy Spirit’s working and the Lord’s great desire to reach these young people. I responded “ I see skeletons and corpses walking about because they do not know Jesus and they are going to Hell.”

The silence in our group that came about after I made that ominous statement was itself deafening.  No one in the group spoke a word. It was as if they were all frozen in shock. My hand was still up pointing out into the crowd when the teens along that path began to step back, creating an opening for me to walk out of our little group and into the larger population of students in the lunch court. As I walked forward through that opening, it seemed that even the larger population of students became quiet. It was sort of like the parting of the Red Sea. 

As I approached the students in the lunch court, I stepped up on a lunch bench and began to share the gospel of Jesus Christ. I preached. I spoke of Christ’s love and the great need that everyone of them had in their lives for salvation. As I spoke, I looked to my right and noticed the principle was still standing upon the retaining wall. He was looking my way, but not with a look of consternation or anger, but more of bewilderment. It was as if he too was frozen in time. The entire time I spoke he did not move or say a word.

After sharing the gospel with that captive audience, I stepped down off of the bench and returned to my little group of teens. I remembering seeing smiles on so many faces as many of them recognize the work of the Holy Spirit that they had already been experiencing in our meetings.

Only a few weeks later, working with several other youth pastors, we put on an activity at night in the school gym where around 200 of these teens attended. We began that night by allowing them to play games and socialize, providing snacks and drinks, then eventually turning to a time of worship and sharing the gospel.  Our local youth program grew to over thirty active teens, often reaching many more.  In the weeks the followed, our youth meetings were continually filled with miracles of healing, revelation, salvation, and more.  One newly saved young man named Chuck kept inviting his friends to join hands with us in prayer so that they too could experience “that electricity thing” that happened when we prayed. Another boy who arrived at the youth meeting with a cast on his lower leg ended up tearing off the cast and running out into the church yard while the rest of the group followed shouting for joy. That came about because the teens chose to lay hands on this young man and pray. They all saw and were a part of the healing he received that evening.

With this growing number of teens now frequenting our meetings, we began to deal with some of the issues that directly affected their lives. We had a service where two of my youth workers who had been part of a devil worshipping rock band shared and testified to the teens about the demonic activity associated with some of their music. After the meeting, we went out into an isolated area of the church yard near some pine trees where these two workers burned their albums and demonic paraphernalia in a camp fire. The teens around that fire heard and saw that night the demonic manifestations that rose up in the smoke out of that fire. 

While the fire was burning and many teens were passionately praying, I noticed a young man who was new that night to our meetings wander off into the trees. He was a very handsome and charismatic young man named Chris, a sort of “Fonzie” to the rest of his peers. When I approached Chris in the trees, he was weeping. He then confessed that he was very much involved in that music and lifestyle and had no idea how evil it was. I prayed with Chris that night to accept Jesus. After that night Chris went home and trashed his albums and tore the posters off of his wall. Like Tommy, Chris became an entirely new young man.

Evidence of Chris’s transformation was further established when a week or so later I received a call while I was at the church. It was Chris’s mother. In teers, she emotinally thanked me for giving her back her son. She said he had returned to the boy she had known, and was even more loving than ever. She was weeping for joy. 

The Lord reached into the lives of many more of the very troubled teens of our community during that time. Even several of the original “church teens” were drawn back into the group by the excitement the Holy Spirit was creating. Often, I would stand back in our meetings as the Holy Spirit took over and the teens would pray for one another and share Christ with those who were new. Through the powerful working of His Holy Spirit, Jesus showed them that He was a living and active God who loved and cared for each of them.  All of this began because one little “street urchin” named Tommy learned the life changing truth that Jesus loved him.