Speaker 1: Welcome to the Thee Generation Podcast, an audio resource dedicated to a generation of young people who are committed to total surrender to God and total dependence on His power to reach the world with the Gospel of Christ. This podcast is designed to strengthen and encourage through a series of Bible-based practical talks. Several weeks ago, Dr. Jim told of the birth of Minutemen Ministries, but that’s not the end of the story.

Join him again today for the next chapter as he explains the undeniable hand of God leading to the War of Special Forces.

Jim Van Gelderen: Welcome to the Thee Generation Podcast. This is Jim Van Gelderen, and I am broadcasting today from Green Bay, Wisconsin. I know some of you football fans are obviously going to think of the Green Bay Packers, and we’re not too far from Lambeau Field.

but we’re at Bay City Christian School looking forward to a great week with the War of Special Forces. And if you listen to this podcast in the next couple of days, I hope you’ll pray for us. And Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday night will be our rally nights.

We’ve had two wonderful weeks to start the school year, and this is kind of an unusual year. We started earlier. We were down in Anderson, South Carolina last week in Godfrey, Illinois.

And we certainly thank the Lord for young people who are sensitive to the moving of the Spirit of God in their hearts, as well as young people who’ve come to know the Lord. There really is nothing like being in the Lord’s work and seeing God just move graciously in people’s hearts, touching them with truth that can set them free.

Well, last time I had the privilege of doing the podcast for Thee Generation, I told a little bit of the story of how the war began, how Minutemen Ministries began. And our very first full-time tour was in the summer of 1984. And I remember those early tours, just watching God lead us.

And I remember just those early, particularly in the fall of 1984, just beginning to realize, wow, look what God is doing. And although I was young, making a lot of mistakes, and I’m sure still had a lot to learn, God was graciously leading us along and establishing a ministry. Well, that was the 80s and into the 90s.

I had some wonderful teams in those years. But into the 90s, God began to burden my heart for Christian schools. Many times our team would come into a Christian school, but we would many times be so concentrating on the outreach, we wouldn’t have a lot of time to work in the Christian school.

And sometimes we would be able to do a few chapels, have a few things, but we realized we weren’t really impacting the Christian school as much as I felt we could. And I got burdened for it, felt like we needed to adapt the program. I really come up with a whole different program called War of Special Forces.

I don’t remember when the name came to me. And I even toyed around with three or four teams and finally settled on three and just something unique, something different. And of course, we needed the Lord to put his, make his hand on it or to give the clear direction.

So we knew it was hand, his hand, because I believe it was the Lord that was stirring my heart. The verse I’d like to again, emphasize, I mentioned in my last podcast is Proverbs three, five, and six. These were some of my mother’s favorite verses.

Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. I know I certainly haven’t done it perfectly, but I can say this, that God has directed my path.

And I look back to War of Special Forces. I’ve now done this pretty much most of the time from 1996 to the present. That’s about 23 years.

And it has been a great joy to work with Christian school young people and still do the outreach and see community teenagers saved. But you say, how did that happen? Well, I was doing the war, started to get burdened for Christian schools, and then in early 1994, something happened that was clearly the Lord.

I was calling a dear pastor friend who recently went home to be the Lord, but I was calling him these years ago in 1994 and saying, Brother, we’re going to be with you here in just a few weeks. And remember he said to me, he said, Brother Van Gelman, please don’t be offended by this, but I’m not bringing you in this week to reach community teenagers. Now, don’t get me wrong.

I hope some kids get saved, but my burden is for my Christian school. We’re in trouble. And I remember him saying to me, expressing his burden that he really wanted us to emphasize ministry to his Christian school.

And I remember saying to him, I said, Pastor, I cannot believe you’re saying this. God has been burdening my hearts for Christian schools. I said, I’d like to develop a new program.

Could we use you as a guinea pig? And I’m pretty sure I used the word guinea pig. And he said, absolutely.

You tell us what to do and we’ll do it. Well, sure enough, he was good to word. And we sent him some ideas and thoughts.

They put it out. And the only problem was we were coming in on Wednesday nights. We only had Thursday, Friday, and Monday because the war nights are Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, and we leave Tuesday morning.

So three days out of five. And of course, you miss the weekend, Saturday, Sunday. But it was the best we could do.

It would be a pilot and had a couple of good young men with me. And both of them are full-time ministry now, but I remember that as we arrived, presented the ministry to the church, the next morning I knew what he meant, because the Christian school did have needs, and there was a resistance there, and I felt a difficult preaching in chapel.

We went out in the afternoon, did a competition, and I remember young people not even getting involved, high school young people that would normally be very much involved in competition. The ball would be, big ball would coming their way, they’d step out of the way and let it hit the ground in a game like volleyball. And I had two very competitive team captains, and I thought they were going to kill some of those kids.

But I remember getting them aside and said, hey, they’re just trying to get you to react. Don’t do it. And we were in a battle.

I don’t know how to explain it, but Thursday, Friday, it was a battle. Saturday, I knew we had not won the battle, at least from any kind of outward perspective. And sure enough, Saturday night, pretty much they did not come.

And I was burdened about that. Those are evangelistic at rally night, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. They didn’t largely come.

Some of the youth group kids did, but not really the school kids. I remember we had a good crowd still because community kids came and about 60 teens and had a good night from our evangelistic perspective. On Sunday night, a few more of them came.

To be honest with you, I think they just wanted to come and compete instead of going to church because their heart was really not right with the Lord. So we had some more come that night. And I remember I preached the gospel again on a Sunday night after our competitions.

and I remember giving the invitation, and a junior in high school, and that Christian school was really weeping. I think sobbing might even be a better word, and I was farthest one from him, but I remember him leaving the room crying. He’s a very popular kid, and I wonder what’s going on.

Well, we, of course, dealt with kids, and kids left, and we finished the meeting, all that, and kids were leaving, and I remember that this young man, his name was John, he came out of the room, and he was still crying. Somebody counseled him. He made a very important salvation decision.

He was still crying. And time went on. In fact, he and his siblings had been dropped off by their father, who was a pastor, and they were waiting for the dad to come back and pick him up.

I think they were the last ones. And I remember walking up to John. I said, John, I said, what in the world’s going on?

He said, Brother Van Gelderen, he said, tonight while you were preaching, he said, God made very clear to me, if you don’t get saved tonight, you will go to hell. And I remember he just sobbed. He believed with all of his heart he got saved at his last opportunity.

Well, I thought, wow, God’s doing something. Well, the next morning was a Monday morning. It was our final chapel.

And I do not know how to explain it, but you could have cut the tension in that chapel with a knife. Everybody had heard about John. And of course, at a Christian school, they’re worried that, okay, John knows too much.

He’s going to tell on us and we’ll be in trouble. Of course, John hadn’t said anything. He’d just gotten saved.

But I remember that morning getting up, you could sense the tension. And I’m about to preach, and John stands to his feet in the back of the auditorium there, about 60 students. He said, Brother Van Gilden, could I say something?

I’m thinking to myself, sure. I’d been preaching, not a whole lot happened. I thought, maybe what you say the Lord will use.

And I didn’t say that, but I certainly was thinking that. John comes up, he has a cardboard box in it. He has cassette tapes, and he pulled the magnetic tape out of those cassettes tapes, and it was just a mesh of magnetic tape in this cardboard box.

He set the box on the platform and told the students what God had done in his heart the night before. And then he said, you know, now that I’m a Christian, something like this, he said, I don’t need this garbage music in my life anymore. He said, I’m burning it tonight.

He said, if you’ve got garbage in your life, he said, you bring it, put it in the box, we’ll burn it together. You literally could have heard a pin drop. I got up to preach.

I was preaching, I don’t know, about halfway through that message, when all of a sudden, all I can tell you is this, God arrested my heart. It was a very clear moving of the spirit of my heart. It was like God was saying to me, you need to stop preaching right now.

And make a long story short, I quit as quick as I could. It was like a crash landing in the message. And I gave an invitation.

I will never forget that message, that invitation, I should say, because it was like a neutron bomb went off, spiritually, that is. There was collateral damage everywhere. I think our team was involved in spiritual triage for an hour or two after that, just dealing with teenager after teenager.

In fact, I remember about an hour after the invitation, walking down one of the hallways, and a sophomore in high school was sitting out in the hallway weeping. Sat down next to him and said, friend, can I help you? He said, yeah, I’m going straight to hell.

Opened my Bible, led him to Christ. The assistant pastor, who is now a pastor friend of mine I’ve been with several times, told me, you see, that revival changed our school. It changed our school.

It was not a flash in the pan. God moved. Well, God did something that week that stirred me.

And as a result of that, we decided to actually go do a full pilot, a Saturday, or I should say a Sunday through a Saturday or a Friday night meeting. And I remember I was trying to determine who could I call that would help us. I was back and I was making calls and there was no interest in anybody.

And it was like the Holy Spirit said, why don’t you ask me? So I said, Lord, where would be the pilot? Who should I call?

And the Lord immediately put in my heart a friend of mine, a youth pastor that I knew, and I picked up the phone, called him. He said, I cannot believe you called. He said, we just had an evangelist canceled for the very week you’re interested in coming.

He said, I believe the Lord’s in this, and I’m telling you, God was. We went down there to that Christian school, a large one. We did our very first War of Special Forces with the three teams.

Instead of adapting the war like I had done there the week I just talked about. We did the full program. We put some brochures together, different things together, t-shirts.

I can’t remember all the details, but we had enough to do a pilot. We did three teams. I’ll never forget that week.

God did some wonderful things to confirm that He was in this War of Special Forces concept. And I’m telling you, friends, we were just thrilled. As a result there, in the end of 1994, we made a plan, let’s do a full tour in 1996 in the spring.

And we did our very first tour in the spring of 1996. Had three young men with me, Dan Winberg, Steve Strickland, and Brian Peterson. I bring their names up simply because they were pioneers.

God used them to really help frame that program that very first year. And boy, what a semester that was. I don’t think any of us will ever forget those first two weeks when God broke through in two pretty tough Christian schools.

And we definitely saw a move of God. We’ve learned things since. We’ve learned how to perhaps do it even better.

But there was no doubt God touched down and did a work in hearts. And ever since then, I’ve been doing the War of Special Forces, and we’ve done it every fall since 1999 and many of the springs. We’ve seen God do some marvelous works, literally hundreds of War of Special Forces.

And all I can say, gang, is this. Trust in the Lord with all thine heart. Lean not on thy own understanding.

In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. It’s such a joy to look back and see what God did. Because it was God.

It wasn’t me. It wasn’t even the great young men that traveled with me and helped me get it started. God used us all.

We didn’t know what we were doing, but we were doing what God wanted us to do, and God led us. And He used principles to help us learn some things, and good people encouraged us. And I’ve looked back and said, what a journey.

I love doing more special forces. I can’t wait to this fall. I can’t wait to see what God’s going to do.

He’s already done some great things. I love to see teenagers revived. I love to see the power of the gospel.

And I believe we’ll see it multiple times in these next weeks ahead. Now, most of you are probably younger listening to this. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you.

But I’m telling you this. Trust in the Lord with all thine heart. Don’t lean to your own understanding.

Just acknowledge the Lord. Say, God, I want you. Follow Him.

And He’ll do great things. He’ll lead you. And you’ll look back and think, wow, that was a miracle.

And it really is. And so, young people, be encouraged. All of you that are part of Thee Generation, remember it’s a total surrender to the will of God because God’s will is just a wonderful thing.

It’s the greatest thing in the crucial life. Total surrender to the will of God and a total dependence on His grace to live.