Join us for our 10 Days of Prayer where you hear powerful testimonies and answered prayers from the Granite Bay Pastors.

<p>Join us for our 10 Days of Prayer where you hear powerful testimonies and answered prayers from the Granite Bay Pastors.</p>

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Granite Bay SDA Church

10 Days of Prayer

Aron Crews

The Animal Game

This was recorded at the Granite Bay Hilltop SDA Church, located in Granite Bay, California.

Hope you are blessed by the message and that it draws you closer to God.

It's a real blessing to have a baby on the way, due in April, so excited about that.

I'm really looking forward to the many ways in which this child is going to teach me and give me insights into our Heavenly Father.

Being married has been an amazing experience in that arena as well, but I hear from folk that having a child is even a whole nother level added to that.

Well, we have been asked to share about testimonies, a testimony in our life, in my life about answered prayer.

And when I reflect on my life I can think of a number of different stories and experiences where God has answered prayers.

1 of my favorite, 1 key to prayer to make sure that we understand is 1 of my favorite Bible verses is Ephesians chapter 3, verse 20, where it says, and to him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think.

And so I reflect on my life and I know that when I ask God for things and he answers, it's usually in ways and realms that are even bigger and better than I even asked for.

Well, when I was reflecting upon which experience should I share, I have to keep going back to 1 of my favorite stories I love sharing about when I was in summer camp as a camper growing up.

Now, the audience here, there's maybe a few that are summer camp age and middle school age.

So I'm preaching to you, but also it's an experience that I had that I think we can learn, all ages can learn from and be inspired by.

So growing up, I went to summer camp over in on the East Coast in Maryland, and I went to a camp called Mount Etna, Mount Etna summer camp.

And anyone here from Maryland, been to Maryland, familiar with Mount Etna?

And I went to this summer camp growing up.

And I was really a summer camp, just I was addicted.

Every year I went for 11 summers in a row.

1 summer I went for 4 weeks, I mean, in a row.

At the end when my parents would come to pick me up, I'd be like, please, can I stay another week?

And my parents would talk it out a little bit and usually they would cave and say, you know, you're not quite old enough to stay another week, but we can ask.

And usually they would let me stay even if I was, you know, a little bit young for the next week's age bracket.

And 1 of my favorite things during summer camp to do, of course, was the religious experience.

They had worship every morning and evening and there was a spiritual theme throughout the week.

There was classes and activities and they had rec time after supper every day and they'd play big group games.

That's where it's really special where you have all the campers, all the staff involved in these big group games.

Well, 1 of my favorite games that I was always excited to experience every summer was 1 of the rec games was called the animal game.

And what the animal game was was basically if you could imagine a campus-wide game of staff versus campers, hide and go seek.

Where all the campers would gather together in the middle of the campground and in the field, and then the staff members would get, I think, about 5 minutes to go wander off on the campgrounds, into the woods, into the bushes, and they would hide themselves, and getting them a head start.

And then all the campers, you know, 100 plus of us would just go, boom, you know, just scattering all over the campground looking for these staff members.

Now you say, okay, well why don't they just call it hide and go seek?

Well, we call it the animal game is because all of the staff members who went hiding would have an animal name.

Like there was a piece of paper with like whale, lion, fish, whatever.

And they would put that piece of paper with the animal name taped onto their body somewhere, and then underneath the name, it would also have a point value.

So for example, the tiger would be 70 points, the giraffe would be 30 points, whatever.

But the point value, the animal that was worth the most points was the lion.

And the lion was the only animal that was worth 100 points.

And of course, who other than the camp director himself took on the label of the lion worth 100 points.

But this year was a little bit different.

I was, I think about the age of 12 when this happened, and it was announced that they'd be playing the animal game.

On Sunday, it was announced, sort of giving a roadmap for the week and the various games that would be played.

And the camp director added a twist to this year's animal game.

This year he said that not only will those who find him, if they find him hiding, not only will they get the points, 100 points, but they will also get, get this, $100.

And to a 12 year old, $100 is like, Like you can buy a house with that, you know, I mean like 100 dollars the world is your oyster, right?

Your veggie oyster, whatever And so everyone's just like whoa $100 everyone's just like talking.

And people are thinking like, OK, I'm going to be really committed and just do my best to find Jesse.

And he shared with us that no 1 had found him that year so far.

There's been a few weeks of camp already, and no one's found him.

He was pretty competitive actually and so he took things really seriously when it came to, you know, the animal game.

And so I remember thinking, you know, I'm just like everyone else, I want to find Jesse, his name was Jesse, the camp director, and I was thinking to myself, okay, how am I gonna find the camp director?

And I started to think to myself, where do I think he could be hiding?

And I wonder if there's anyone who knows where he's hiding, right?

And of course, the staff aren't gonna be sharing anything.

But I thought to myself, you know, I know someone, actually, who knows where he's going to be hiding.

Like, God of course knows where Jesse is gonna be hiding.

And so, 1 day, I think it was that evening, Sunday evening, I spent some time alone in prayer, and I was praying, and I asked God, I said, hey, God, you may have heard that the animal game is coming up, we always play it Wednesday night, And I said, and I know you know where he's hiding, where he's gonna hide.

And so it'd be great if you kind of told me where he'd be hiding.

This is how we're supposed to talk to God.

Just be very open, very transparent, and just share with him whatever's going on, things that you want.

And, you know, as you are in prayer, those who have experienced, you know, consistent regular prayer, what you know that you kind of, maybe God's voice doesn't come back and speak to you but you sort of get impressions and God speaks to you through these impressions and so he sort of impressed me and asked me the question or basically I remember him saying like yes I can tell you I know where he's going to hide, but what are you going to do with the money?

I started thinking, what am I going to do with the money?

And I thought through things, and I was thinking, well, of course, God, we are to return 10% tithe to give it back to you.

So God, if you show me where he's hiding and I get the $100, I'm gonna, in church this Sabbath, I'm gonna give 10% back to you, number 1.

And God said, okay, all right, sounds good.

And I was thinking more and I said, well, you know, every year I come to camp, and at the end of the week, like I mentioned, I would go to my parents, and I would say, Mom, Dad, I had so much fun.

And they'd usually, like I said, come back and share, OK, we'll let you stay another week.

And it was about that age that I was beginning to understand something about the financial cost of going to summer camp.

We're talking hundreds of dollars here every week.

And so that was usually the biggest, you know, thing to be like, okay, can we afford, you know, 4 weeks of camp over $1, 000.

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Series

10 Days of Prayer

The Animal Game

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

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Recorded

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