The summer of Zap

Every summer, from my mid-teens through my 21st year, I worked as a camp counselor. The second to last summer I worked at that camp—when I was twenty—I was a brand new Christian. I had gotten saved over Christmas break, and I’d been loading up on the Word and was freshly baptized in the Holy Spirit.

I entered my beloved camp that summer as a new creature—both spiritually and in the eyes of my peers. Many young believers before me had worked at the camp, sowing seeds of prayer and witness into the fertile ground of the souls of the kids, teens, and twenties they touched. One dear friend, a singer, had used her guitar and her voice to plow deep furrows for imperishable seed into the soil of hearts for several summers before I was saved. The chorus to her signature song was:

          And Jesus said Come to the waters, stand by My side;

          I know you are thirsty; you won’t be denied.

          I felt every teardrop when in darkness you cried,

          And I strove to remind you that for those tears I died.

But those more seasoned Christians were gone for the most part; it was now my turn. God sent two others that summer, a young man who led the dorm Bible study I attended at my college, and a young woman who, like me, had just received Jesus within the past year.

A microburst of revival was about to sweep that little camp.

The three of us quickly found one another and the after-hours prayer meetings commenced. At first it was just us, but one by one, over the summer, other counselors joined in, and we became a pile of prayer, heaped up in the middle of the non-trafficked road near the lake, an every-evening occurrence under the Ozark stars accompanied by the music of crickets, bullfrogs, and whippoorwills.

Things started happening. Little miracles were taking place in hearts all over camp as young people began opening up to the reality of Jesus. Things even got a little crazy. Those who viewed our passion with skepticism began calling us “Zaps” due to the lightning-quick manner in which prayers were getting answered and hearts were being changed. They also dubbed themselves “Pazzes”—the polar-opposite of “Zaps”. In fact, before the end of the summer, our prayer piles were encircled by “Pazzes” standing quietly, hands behind their backs, as they observed us fellowship with the Father.

One late July Sunday morning, in a counselor-led chapel service on the hillside by the lake, one counselor, neither a professed Zap nor a Paz, a scientific-type who was a bit older than most of us and greatly respected by everyone, stood up to share his thoughts. “I’ve watched all of you this summer as lines have been drawn. I’ve seen the changed lives and the stand that so many of you have taken. And I wanted to take this opportunity to tell every one of you—I, too, believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and He is the Lord of my life.” A stunned silence fell upon that hillside, and with that, no one remained in the faith-closet any longer.

Probably the most remarkable incident of the summer, however, happened far away from the view of the prayer pile.

One morning, early in August, two counselors-in-training, boys I had trained in the leadership program, stood up and took the mike after breakfast to deliver the daily “Thought for the Day”. Instead of reading a saying from Kahlil Gibran or a snippet from a Peter, Paul, and Mary song (as was the habit of many “Thought-for-the-Day-ers”), they re-enacted something they had experienced just the night before, after hours. It played out something like this:

Pee Wee: Jack, man, I’m bummed out!

Jack: Why, man?

Pee Wee: I messed up my back in a wrestling match last spring, and I really hurt! Man, I’m so bummed out! I may never get to wrestle again!

Jack: Oh, man, that’s a bummer! I’ve heard, man, that, like, if you pray and ask God, man, like maybe He might heal you.

Pee Wee: Man, do you think He would?

Jack: Well, man, like let’s just ask. Hey, God, Man, like, I’ve heard that You might heal people. Would You, like, heal Pee Wee right now, Man?

Pee Wee (to the campers and counselors present in the dining hall): And then, man, I’m not kidding—a ball of light of flashed down on us! That ball hit me, my pain left, and it’s still gone, man! I’m going to get to wrestle again next year!

Jack: And, like, I’m going to serve God, man! He’s real!

Pee Wee: Me, too, man; Jesus is so real! God bless you, man! Campers, dismissed!

With eyes full of accusation, the Pazzes flashed looks across the dining hall at the various Zaps. The Zaps shrugged their shoulders and shook their heads no at the Pazzes—we had nothing to do with this! Zaps looked in wonder at other Zaps around the room. All over, everyone shook their heads, nope—we had no involvement in this one!

As the summer drew to a close, everyone—both Zap and Paz—knew that they had been in the middle of something they’d never experienced before—a real move of God. The microburst of revival left an indelible mark on the hearts and thinking of every one of us. And now, sprinkled all over America are men and women in their 50’s and 60’s who witnessed what God could do through a little band of praying people. And it is my prayer that every one of them gets to witness it again, and that their hearts and lives will be forever changed through a fresh move of God.

May God move again upon this generation—everyone now living—from the youngest to the oldest, from the most tender to the most calloused—and everyone in between, in Jesus’ name!

On your walls, O Jerusalem, I have appointed watchmen; all day and all night they will never keep silent. You who remind the Lord, take no rest for yourselves; and give Him no rest until He establishes and makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth. Isaiah 62:6-7

Jesus, have Your way in this hour!

Dorothy