19/11/2013 10:03
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by Gitty, Sheril, Nimmy
We’re having a great day and we want to share our joy. We’ve heard this new track and its tune is playing on our mind. Whom do we share it with? We feel sad and lonely. Whom do we call at the first place to share our feelings? Let’s face it. We teens and youth like to spend most of our time with our friends more than our families. How important is it to have good friends who will help us in our walk towards holiness? Today we have a vibrant, cheerful group of friends from Worcester who will share their experience on how their friends have enabled them to grow closer to Jesus.
“A friend loves at all times.” (Proverbs 17:17)
We are a bunch of friends who come from Worcester. After experiencing the love of Christ in our hearts, we realised how important it was to be around good friends in order to walk in the path of holiness. While good friendships help us to be better people, bad friendships can give us many temptations. We can easily fall in to sin, which leads us away from God. No matter how many sacrifices we take, bad friendships are an easy way to get stuck in a trap.
Hence we decided to start a prayer group…
"After the disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit they announced with one voice 'we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard." Acts 4:20
First it was just a small gathering of us friends. We used to go into our school chapel and literally dance to Gospel songs that we knew. If anyone had come into the chapel, they would have thought that we were crazy. You know, now when we remember back, it almost feels like balls of anointing were bouncing off each of us. This is what is so positive about being with good friends. We have so much fun together, and it never feels like we are carrying burdens. There is always that opportunity to openly share and discuss our problems. It is easy to communicate inspirations and ideas. So that is, how our prayer group really developed. We started inviting our English classmates and friends to come with us to the chapel. People just used to say that they will come later and then not come at all. But we encouraged each other to carry on and ask more people. Good friends push us to do good things, instead of pulling us back with negatives. Eventually the Holy Spirit began to bring more English children to our prayer sessions each week. At one time, we had a total gathering of 20 people in our school chapel. Ecstatic, and thrilled - we all had beaming smiles on our faces! All glory to God, because we were just instruments that He used.
Soon we began to evangelise people together. One day we friends went on a small school trip to a church for Mass together. After the Mass, there were four of us and we were told to go in our college principal's car! Just imagine - our knees were knocking against each other and our hearts were racing and thumping. Before we got into the car, we decided to use this opportunity and tell our principal about our experiences with Jesus, as well as about the prayer group. So we started talking and the Holy Spirit inspired him to want to know more. He became so interested and enthused that he finally decided to hold a retreat in our school in September! By the grace of God, Kids for Kingdom (part of Sehion UK) came and conducted a retreat at our school.
Jesus used this retreat to anoint many of the English children - we saw many students standing up for holiness and purity. There were long queues outside the confessional room, to make confessions. Even a summer camp was announced for the English students in the 2014 summer holidays.
The basis and foundation of all of these things, was the good friendship between us. True friends are really a blessing from God.
Dear Lord, give us holy and good friends so that together, we may be true witnesses of Jesus wherever we are.
Stay in peace. Stay with Jesus.