On Eagles Wings - Ron Hutchcraft Ministries

A Surge to the Cross

You have helped put on this event. Your prayers have brought us here, and it may very well be that your gifts have literally enabled some of these young people to come here from some corner of North America. We now know that this is definitely the largest Warrior Leadership Summit we’ve ever had. There are 622 people here, and they represent 70 different nations. We have grown from about fifty people not very many years ago, and God continues to enlarge the impact of this conference!

Yesterday morning, a first-time Native speaker here, Pastor Bobby, came and spoke to us and talked about Mary Magdalene. At each session we’re talking about a great warrior of the Bible, because our theme this year is The Warrior Way. We talked about how Mary Magdalene was willing to stick by Jesus when there seemed to be no reason to stick by Him. He had died. He was buried. He’d been in the tomb, and Mary Magdalene refused to defect.

That’s the way of a warrior, and it was a marvelous challenge to young people who will go back to some of the hardest environments in America. There might not be another group of young people for whom that kind of a message would be more important. That’s why we have to pray for these kids, because they go back to toxic places where they stand alone. Here they are not alone and they know that.

Last night, it was my privilege to present the warrior of all warriors as I took them to the greatest battlefield of all time. It was on a hill outside of Jerusalem where the greatest battle of all time was fought. It was also where the greatest victory was won by the greatest warrior of all time. The battle was between the forces of heaven and the forces of hell. The only One who can win this battle is the warrior that God sent from heaven. He is the Chief of all chiefs and the Warrior of all warriors, who won an enormous victory against the chains that have kept generations in bondage from sins that are repeated generation after generation. We heard here through drama, video, and the preached word, “You can break the chain in your generation—the addiction, the anger, the hurt, the violence. You can start a whole new line that will affect generations to come, because of what happened on the Battlefield of Golgotha—of Skull Hill.”

We talked about how Satan was crushed there and how death was defeated. Then we told them the price that was paid, and that no one could take the life of Jesus. He had to give it. What a privilege to tell them that He chose the nails, He chose the spear, and He chose the thorns. He chose to be separated from His Father for us. We closed by telling them that the greatest battlefield now was in their heart, where the battle for them would be decided by them.

I asked them if they wanted to begin a relationship with Jesus Christ, to step out from where they were and make that public. About one out of eight people in the room gave their heart to Christ last night. They were from all over—Canada, the U.S., and all corners of North America. What an emotional moment it was in that counseling room. The exciting thing that validates the work of the Holy Spirit here is that it was basically over in a single minute. In one minute, essentially, everybody had come forward. It was literally a Spirit surge to the cross up in front, to give themselves to the Christ who had died for them on the cross.

One of the powerful things God used last night as He does on the reservations, and He will on the reservations we go to this summer, was a hope story. Almost every one of our sessions includes a hope story by one of our team members.

A young man, I will call Marty, comes from perhaps one of the most remote, one of the most depressed, and one of the most depressing places in North America. It can only be reached by boat or by plane. You cannot get in or out very easily; it’s a closed universe. In that universe on any given summer night, you can go in the woods and find five and six-year-olds passed out from using inhalants and nobody even cares to stop them. There is so much suicide, darkness, and depression, and Marty knows that. We talked about how Satan had come to steal lives, and Marty shared that when he was nine years old, two of his nine brothers killed themselves within two weeks. Imagine, nine years old. He became a teenager and another brother killed himself.

Marty, with all the pain and all the temptation to respond to that same despair, began to use alcohol and drugs to relieve his pain, only making his life worse. Then he heard about Jesus. He is a quiet young man, was an On Eagles’ Wings team member last year, and he learned to give his hope story. He did it four or five times facing the hard faces and hard hearts of reservation young people. Last night, he talked to the WLS audience, and told how Christ had replaced his despair with joy, peace, and purpose, and now was using him to bring hope to his people. Some of the people from his village were here last night. I know of at least a couple who responded at invitation time to begin a relationship with Christ.

God is using these young men and women. The exciting news is that the rescues of The Summer of Hope ’09 have begun. You have prayed for the ROI—the return on investment. The return on investment of your gifts has begun. Do you know who did the leading to Christ last night? It was the people who will be doing it on reservation after reservation this summer—the warriors of On Eagles’ Wings—and they’ve had their first rescues as of last night. I walked around and put my arm around different ones and said, “Let the games begin.” More accurately, “Let the harvest begin.”

What happens when these people come forward? We met a young man here this year who we were told last year came from perhaps one of the hardest reservations I’ve ever been to in America—a reservation on the Plains. We were told he was the first one to come to the cross this same night last year. They said he ran to the cross, and he was the last one to leave. He poured it all out. The missionaries who know him, told us that he has since lived for Christ, grown in Christ, and is passionate about telling others about Christ. This young man came up and said, “Can I give my testimony here?” I said, “Better yet, what do you think about the On Eagles’ Wings team where you can give that hope story on reservation after reservation, night after night this summer?” Last year, you prayed him to Christ, and you made it possible for there to be a conference where we could meet him that would speak the language of a Native young person.

I was in the counseling room for a long time last night, as many battles were won on this battlefield where the Warrior of all warriors came to win the hearts of those He came to fight for and to die for. I walked in to what was a worship concert that had been going on for an hour. What a scene! Native young people representing seventy nations clustered around the platform in exuberant praise to Jesus, singing praise and worship songs as passionately as I have ever seen young people sing them anywhere. They were singing, “Oh, the wonderful cross!” Indeed that was the story of Day Two.

The cross is what Charles Spurgeon called "That Magnificent Magnet." Today it was the magnet that drew many Native young people to Christ. You know what’s exciting? This is only the beginning. Once again I’ve been an eyewitness to the answer to your prayers. Thank you. You are more a part of these victories than you could ever know.