God really moved at Beulah Youth Institute (BYI) last month. Thank you for your prayers.
If you don’t know this place, BYI is cinder block cabins, open fields, a concession stand and an open air tabernacle in a small town in southern Illinois run entirely by volunteers. For 100 years the message here has been a relentless invitation to salvation and a life of holiness empowered by the Holy Spirit.
Schedule includes morning prayer, morning Bible time, seminars, and an evening worship service! There are no recreation facilities except a concrete basketball court. It often rains, creating small ponds around the property. It may seem counterintuitive, but hundreds of students come each year. This generation is hungry for meaning, purpose and genuine encounters with the Living God!
The prayer covering here is phenomenal! All over southern Illinois and beyond, from retirement homes to dinner tables, saints pray every year during the third week of June "for the boys and girls at Beulah." They pray for young people to surrender their lives to Christ. And they pray for young people to be called into ministry and mission. And God answers their prayers.
The early Celtic Christians spoke of "thin places" - places where the space between heaven and earth grows "thin" and we can easily and naturally encounter God and sense His presence. BYI is such a place and God has called many here to lives of full surrender. I once met someone working for the State Department in Montevideo, Uruguay who told me he had given his life to Christ years ago at a little camp in southern Illinois called Beulah!
My teaching during the week was on living a life worth living - one marked by surrender, obedience, receiving and reflecting His love, dying daily to ourselves, and looking to Him for our core identity, our calling, and our community. God is calling students to missions, to ministry, to faithful witness in the public square. Through your prayers and support you share in the fruit of what God is accomplishing in the lives of the students.
Thank you for “standing” with us on your knees! We are eternally grateful.
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