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Twice a year Windermere High has a week devoted to growing the children spiritually. We take off from classes and invite in a speaker from Nassau to come a challenge the children to get serious about the things of God while they are young.
We invited in Pastor Kwame Selver from New Testament Baptist church in Nassau. He works as a camp director and youth pastor on the island and has extensive experience working with young people.
His messages were so very appropriate for what the children are experiencing, and he has a keen talent to speak to them so that his points are relevant and applicable to their lives. He covered a myriad of topics from purity and the lusts of the flesh, to holiness and the lies of the devil.
He spoke to the dorm students in the evenings and on his last night we held a bonfire and took pictures of the kids with brother Kwame. I was so impressed that after the 1st day he had the entire campus of children’s names memorized. You can easily sense his heart for youth and challenging them to chase after God and not the things of this world.
The dangers for our young people today are wickedly vile. It seems at every turn there are more than just temptations – today’s world has emboldened evil and such godless attractions that are potent and concentrated that any young person would be up against insurmountable odds to walk with the Lord.
It has been my observation that Windermere offers these children a chance to see what brother Kwame was preaching lived out in our lives and in the lives of the rest of the staff. But it is a frustrating reality that you can only lead them to the door; they themselves must choose to walk though.
Although Spiritual Emphasis week is a wonderful time of digging into the Word of God and hearing great messages, its sobering to watch how the children simply “tolerate” the chapels without making much change in their lives. I’m shocked at the grip the world and the love of the world has in their lives. This is a systemic problem throughout my observation on Eleuthera, that people have lost the fear of the Lord.
And yet there are still others, children who you might have written off as hopeless who are making small decisions for positive eternal consequences. Just in the last 2 days I’ve seen 2 of our students stand up and tell the truth about wrongdoing, not because they thought that they would be rewarded, but because they are submitting to God.
Pray for us and especially for our students. In our morning staff devotions we pray for all the students by name, and they need your prayers as well. Windermere and Spiritual Emphasis are necessary moments where the virtues of Christlikeness are taught, but I believe real changes will only be made through the supernatural working of God in their lives. How desperately I long to see them surrender to His love.