“Our number is now 809!”That’s the message I received one night last week from a First Priority Student Leader at Unicoi County High School.Several weeks before, I had visited the school and sat down with him and 3 other Student Leaders to discuss how they could reach their campus for Christ. We all agreed that the first thing that must happen, before they began sharing the gospel with their peers, was that they must develop a burden for the students at their school who do not know Christ as their Savior.Together, they came up with a number. That number was 810. 810 is 90% of the estimated 900 students that attend their school. 810 was the estimated number of students at their school that did not know Christ as their Savior. (90% is a conservative percentage. Most studies say that the percentage is closer to 95%).They began writing the number 810 wherever they could, starting with the upper left hand corner of the white board in the room they meet in each week. They began writing 810 in such places as their notebooks, Facebook pages, and bathroom mirrors.When I received the message “Our number is now 809!” I knew what it meant. Excitedly, I asked him to explain.
That week, he had begun a discussion with a classmate in gym class. His classmate claimed to be an agnostic. Each day throughout the week, he told his friend of the Personal, Transcendent God who had revealed Himself through the Bible, and had even come to earth to interact with His Creation. Then he shared the story of how this All-Powerful, Personal God is going about the task of restoring Creation and redeeming us from our sins through His Son, Jesus.
That weekend, the student contacted him and told him that he had come to the conclusion that there is a God and that Jesus died for his sins. He had just asked Jesus to be his Lord and Savior.
The number for their school had just gone from 810 to 809. Guess what number they are now writing everywhere?
One student began asking God to burden his heart for 810 of his schoolmates. He identified one and built a relationship with him. He prayed for him, ministered to him and spoke Truth into his life. God did the rest, and now he not only has a deeper friendship at school, he has an eternal friendship in God’s Kingdom!
Now the number is 809!
