The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.

Here at Teen Challenge I sometimes hear stories that amaze me. I once spoke to a guy while he was in a hospital bed awaiting a liver transplant. He took 500 Tylenol tablets to try to kill himself! I didn't know that that was a sure way to end your life, perhaps even more successful than a bullet! But in the end he was blessed because he had people praying for him, God did heal him and he was delivered! He came to San Francisco TC and God was able to do a work in his life. The previous story though has really opened my eyes to how easily the enemy of your soul can enter in and destroy a family, especially one that is not Christ centered. My prayers have always been for the lost or those in bondage to some drug or other life-controlling problem, until at one of our TC choir outings I preached a sermon in a small church about a year ago. As I prayed for God to give me a message He opened my eyes to one very real truth, People come to our Center because other people lead them here. It is not very often someone comes to us because they themselves decided to seek help, (unless they have been here before). And we don't go out and do an outreach and bring them in right off the street. They come because someone who loves them searched for them or was waiting for them to finally "get tired" and in the mean time they prayed for them believing God will someday reach them and when He did they brought them here because they heard about what God is doing in Teen Challenge. That is the effectiveness of our outreach endeavors, we do evangelize the lost but mostly we reach out to churches, (meaning the people in the church). In almost every case a wife or mother or friend or even Pastor says to me "I have been praying for him for so long..." Since that morning in that small church my prayers have changed! Today I pray for the family of believers who pray for their loved ones who are dying of addiction. I pray that they will always hold on to the Hope that is in Christ and in His promises. I pray that God will remove the spirit of judgment and allow a mother or wife, a father or son, or whoever it is that is praying to do so without any prejudice or pride or condemnation, that every hindrance will be removed, that faith and the power of love will be the catalyst for change. We are all in need of His mercy, none any more than the next guy. I don't care if you're a drug addict, drug dealer or prostitute, whether you are a teacher, lawyer or housewife, God's mercy is for the poor in spirit. It's not measured out because of where you sleep or where you work or what you do with your day. It is given freely to all who will ask, whether you are asking for yourself or for another. I also pray for my sister who is lost and addicted to drugs. I still have a heart for the countless others out there who are hurting and I do still pray for them from the deepest reaches of my spirit, but when I pray for my sister there is a level of pain involved that can only come from a deep-rooted personal connection. Just as so many others out there, I too understand what it is like to see someone you've always known and loved become someone you don't recognize any longer. We pray for them and wish that they can return to us and have things as they used to be. The truth is, they are forever changed as we too are changed by the experience. But Christ has overcome the world and we are the spoils of His victory! Us and them! Some years ago a survey was done that stated that every 30 days there are 20 million people using illicit drugs in America. And for every one of those people they directly affect 5 other people. There were 300 million people in America back then, so that means that one third of our nation was directly effected by the drug epidemic. Today those numbers are even higher. Because of the meth epidemic and the growing abuse of prescription drugs, America faces it’s biggest challenge yet! What make us effective in what God has called us to do, IS YOU. You are one of the other five! God wants to use you to save them all! Cy L. Nunez

Dusting:

One thing about being involved in frontline ministry is that you run into a lot of people who have very touching stories. Either they are extremely uplifting and very powerful in a way that you know that only God can do such tremendous things in a persons life or they are so very sad that you run towards the cross and fall on your face knowing that we are but a moment away from having all we hold dear and precious snatched away and nothing we do can change or even prevent it. God is sovereign! And we are in reality only passing through this world on our way to eternity.This story is one of those sad ones, please read it. It may save the life of someone you hold dear and precious.

First, I'm going to tell you a little about me and my family. My name is Jeff. I am a Police Officer for a city which is known nationwide for its crime rate. I also have a police K-9 named Thor. He was certified in drugs and general duty. He retired at 3 years old because he was shot in the line of duty. He lives with us now and I still train with him because he likes it. I always liked the fact that there was no way to bring drugs into my house. Thor wouldn't allow it. He would tell on you. The reason I say this is so you understand that I know about drugs.I have taught in schools about drugs. My wife asks all our kids at least once a week if they used any drugs. Makes them promise they won't. I like building computers occasionally and started building a new one in February 2005. I also was working on some of my older computers. They were full of dust so on one of my trips to the computer store I bought a 3 pack of DUST OFF. Dust Off is a can of compressed air to blow dust off a computer. A few weeks later when I went to use one of them they were all used. I talked to my kids and my two sons both said they had used them on their computer and messing around with them. I yelled at them for wasting the 10 dollars I paid for them.On February 28 I went back to the computer store. They didn't have the 3 pack which! I had bought on sale so I bought a single jumbo can of Dust Off. I went home and set it down beside my computer. On March 1st, I left for work at 10 PM. Just before midnight my wife went down and kissed Kyle goodnight. At 5:30 am the next morning Kathy went downstairs to wake Kyle up for school, before she left for work. He was propped up in bed with his legs crossed and his head leaning over. She called to him a few times to get up. He didn't move. He would sometimes tease her like this and pretend he fell back asleep. He was never easy to get up. She went in and shook his arm. He fell over. He was pale white and had the straw from the Dust Off can coming out of his mouth. He had the new can of Dust Off in his hands. Kyle was dead.I am a police officer and I had never heard of this. My wife is a nurse and she had never heard of this. We later found out from the coroner, after the autopsy, that only the propellant from the can of Dust off was in his system. No other drugs. Kyle had died between midnight and 1am I found out that using Dust Off is being done mostly by kids ages 9 through 15. They even have a name for it. It's called dusting. A take off from the Dust Off name. It gives them a slight high for about 10 seconds. It makes them dizzy. A boy who lives down the street from us showed Kyle how to do this about a month before. Kyle showed his best friend. Told him it was cool and it couldn't hurt you. It's just compressed air. It can't hurt you. His best friend said no.Kyle was wrong. It's not just compressed air. It also contains a propellant called R2. It's a refrigerant like what is used in your refrigerator. It is a heavy gas, heavier than air whenyou inhale it, it fills your lungs and keeps the good air, with oxygen, out that's why you feel dizzy, buzzed. It decreases the oxygen to your brain, to your heart. Kyle was right. It can't hurt you. IT KILLS YOU!The horrible part about this is there is no warning. There is no level that kills you. It's not cumulative or an overdose; it can just go randomly, terribly wrong. Roll the dice and if your number comes up you die. IT'S NOT AN OVERDOSE. It's Russian Roulette. You don't die later. Or not feel good and say I've had too much. You usually die as you're breathing it in, if not you die within 2 seconds of finishing 'the hit.' That's why the straw was still in Kyle's mouth when he died. Why his eyes were still open.The experts want to call this huffing. The kids don't believe its huffing. As adults we tend to lump many things together. But it doesn't fit here. And that's why it's more accepted. There is no chemical reaction, no strong odor. It doesn't follow the huffing signals. Kyle complained a few days before he died of his tongue hurting. It probably did. The propellant causes frostbite. If I had only known. It's easy to say hey, it's my life and I'll do what I want. But it isn't. Others are always affected. This has forever changed our family's life. I have a hole in my heart and soul that can never be fixed. The pain is so immense I can't describe it. There's nowhere to run from it. I cry all the time and I don't ever cry. I do what I'm supposed to do but I don't really care. My kids are messed up. One won't talk about it. The other will only sleep in our room at night. And my wife, I can't even describe how bad she is taking this. I thought we were safe because of Thor.I thought we were safe because we knew about drugs and talked to our kids about them.After Kyle died another story came out. A probation Office r went to the school system next to ours to speak with a student. While there he found a student using Dust Off in the bathroom. This student told him about another student who also had some in his locker. This is a rather affluent school system. They will tell you they don't have a drug problem there. They don't even have a dare or plus program there. So rather than tell everyone about this 'new' way of getting high they found, they hid it.The probation officer told the media after Kyle's death and they, the school, then admitted to it. I know that if they would have told the media and I had heard, it wouldn't have been in my house.We need to get this out of our homes and school computer labs. Using Dust Off isn't new and some 'professionals' do know about. It just isn't talked about much, except by the kids. They all seem to know about it.April 2nd was 1 month since Kyle died. April 5th would have been his 15th birthday. And every weekday I catch myself sitting on the living room couch at 2:30 in the afternoon and waiting to see him get off the bus. I know Kyle is in heaven but I can't help but wonder if I died and went to Hell.

Water or Sponge What are You?

Years ago my older brother told me before he moved out of town to direct a Christian Men's home in Stockton, that as a new convert the most important thing that I must do was to get under my Pastor and learn as much as I can from him. Because I was a new convert this concept wasn’t entirely clear to me, so I took what he told me and fed off my Pastor’s anointing. I was like a leach, every time I spent the day with my Pastor I left him feeling tired and empty. And even though that was the case he never sent me away without feeding my eager mind and heart. Slowly it began to be revealed to me that I was a spiritual glutton, all this time I was taking and taking and never giving anything in return, and you know, he never asked either. How many hours of prayer did this man spend on his knees to replenish the spirit that I absorbed from him each and every day like a dry sponge? I mean every day for hours I would be there asking and needing and never giving back. Then one day at church I saw the tiredness in my Pastor’s eyes and his willingness to go on as if he was well rested. It was then that the Lord spoke to my heart and showed me what a true disciple was. He isn’t a taker, his call isn’t to weaken his Pastor, God did not place this man in my life so I can sap him of his energy and strength, He placed me in his life so that I can serve him and lend him my strength. We would talk into the late hours of the night, pray in the morning and still conduct kingdom business in a growing and struggling church. It was my obligation to God to be a bearer of this man’s burdens so he can bear the burdens of the church. Please do not misunderstand this post to be one that preaches bondage, or legalism, cultism or any other kind of ism. This man was an example not a slave owner. Again he didn’t need to ask, God asked me for him. The time would come that I would still be at his house until late, still show up at 5 or 6 in the morning to go to the church to pray, I would still keep him after church or any other meeting to learn from him. But now instead of all of our time together being spent giving to me I spent a lot of that time giving to him. I would show up and wash his car, clean his yard, cook for his family, sweep his garage, (which incidentally was also his office so there was many chances to hear his sermons before he preached them), and it wasn’t until our relationship became a mutual partnership of give and take that I really started to learn what a true disciple was. He is a servant, not only to God but also to man, especially the man of God. I learned so much from this Pastor and other Pastors that I would have the pleasure of knowing, not because I came around and just took and took, but because I came around to serve and carry and they gave in return. Never forget church, your Pastor loves you. He could not do what he does if he didn't, love him in return