In my last post i longwindedly described my experience sharing last week.
Here's a brief post on why that was so fun for me.
Ellicott is ridiculously large. Over 3000 students live there.
All last semester i had been praying for God to show me where His Kingdom was already active in Ellicott. As i followed up dining hall surveys our movement had taken i visited maybe a hundred rooms or so, but most of the time, no one was around. i did everything i could, i varied the times i walked by, dropped by two or three times. For all my effort i couldnt find interested people. This motivated me to pray for help! Of course i needed it! It felt like even in such a large place there was no interest in God so i asked God to reveal to me any sort of Kingdom life in that place.
He blessed me with two great conversations at the end of the semester, but i left the semester feeling horribly defeated.
So that's why seeing such interest in the early weeks of the semester was so great. God had answered my prayer by leading me to two girls who mentioned they've been thinking about going to church and that they have friends and an RA who want to go with them.
In the middle of my feelings of failure and defeat i found God's grace lifting up my chin. i'm so thankful for His hope welling up in me.
Monday, January 29, 2007
Saturday, January 27, 2007
God's grace exemplified
Part of my job as an intern with Campus Crusade for Christ is to do evangelism. Right? That's what everyone pays me the big bucks for... jamie's gonna go out and talk to everybody at UB, sharing the gospel, reasoning with the heathen to bring them into the Kingdom! (maybe i should define "evangelism" in a later post...)
Well, to be honest, when i heard at my intern training that interns were supposed to pursue an evangelistic strategy for about 16 hours a week a grimace slowly crept across my face. My face began to transform gradually from the top right corner to the bottom left into a look of utter petrification!
i dont do 16 hours a week. In fact i'm frightened when it comes to even trying to talk to people about faith.
So this past Tuesday i decided that i should share my faith because... well, because i wanted to be good at my job. There may have been high holy motivations, but those werent the kickers. i decided that Wednesday would be the best day and i would do it in Ellicott from lunchtime until my meeting with my director about the talk i was giving the next day.
Writing the talk didnt go as well as i planned, so i weaseled my way out of doing surveys in Ellicott Wednesday. i pushed it back to Thursday.
Thursday came along and i was still behind on my talk, so i said "Ok James, you should go, how about going from 3-4?" Three came around and i said i was behind... then i said, "Ok James, go at 5." Five came along and i was still sitting at home. But i felt guilty so i stepped out the door and went to my car at 5:15 and drove up to North Campus. When i got there, i limited myself saying i would only go until 6:30, and then i limited myself to talking to one person. i approached a guy, asked if he would want to do a survey with me and he said he was leaving in a minute...
Time to make a choice...
Let's talk to those girls over there. i asked two girls if they would help me out by taking a survey about their faith background and they said yes! Ok, thanks God, i can actually talk to someone now! We talked about their faith, how they grew up, what was going on in their lives... i think they had a hard time answering my questions. It's not everyday someone comes up to you and asks extremely personal questions about faith and the meaning of your life. They had both grown up Christian - one Catholic, one Protestant, and they said God had been there through hard times. i couldnt let that go, so i asked what they meant by that. One girl spoke up... She had just heard that her friend had died in a car crash the day before.
After a while i asked the girls how sure they were they would go to heaven, one of them said 100% and the other said 98%. Wow, i rarely ever hear percentages that high when i ask that question. At this point i went through a basic Gospel presentation. It was a lot of fun.
Afterwards we talked for a bit and i found out they were looking for a church. And not just them, but some other girls on their floor, including their RA! That was so cool! i invited them to church. i still have another day before they come so i'm still hoping and praying. Either way, i hope God gives me more opportunities to interact with them.
This post is really long, so i'm going to spare the commentary for the next post. In the next one you'll see why i'm so excited about this conversation... It's a beautiful intersection of God's grace, timing, and answer to prayer!
i'm so excited about this semester, i feel like a stored up flood is about to be loosed!
Well, to be honest, when i heard at my intern training that interns were supposed to pursue an evangelistic strategy for about 16 hours a week a grimace slowly crept across my face. My face began to transform gradually from the top right corner to the bottom left into a look of utter petrification!
i dont do 16 hours a week. In fact i'm frightened when it comes to even trying to talk to people about faith.
So this past Tuesday i decided that i should share my faith because... well, because i wanted to be good at my job. There may have been high holy motivations, but those werent the kickers. i decided that Wednesday would be the best day and i would do it in Ellicott from lunchtime until my meeting with my director about the talk i was giving the next day.
Writing the talk didnt go as well as i planned, so i weaseled my way out of doing surveys in Ellicott Wednesday. i pushed it back to Thursday.
Thursday came along and i was still behind on my talk, so i said "Ok James, you should go, how about going from 3-4?" Three came around and i said i was behind... then i said, "Ok James, go at 5." Five came along and i was still sitting at home. But i felt guilty so i stepped out the door and went to my car at 5:15 and drove up to North Campus. When i got there, i limited myself saying i would only go until 6:30, and then i limited myself to talking to one person. i approached a guy, asked if he would want to do a survey with me and he said he was leaving in a minute...
Time to make a choice...
Let's talk to those girls over there. i asked two girls if they would help me out by taking a survey about their faith background and they said yes! Ok, thanks God, i can actually talk to someone now! We talked about their faith, how they grew up, what was going on in their lives... i think they had a hard time answering my questions. It's not everyday someone comes up to you and asks extremely personal questions about faith and the meaning of your life. They had both grown up Christian - one Catholic, one Protestant, and they said God had been there through hard times. i couldnt let that go, so i asked what they meant by that. One girl spoke up... She had just heard that her friend had died in a car crash the day before.
After a while i asked the girls how sure they were they would go to heaven, one of them said 100% and the other said 98%. Wow, i rarely ever hear percentages that high when i ask that question. At this point i went through a basic Gospel presentation. It was a lot of fun.
Afterwards we talked for a bit and i found out they were looking for a church. And not just them, but some other girls on their floor, including their RA! That was so cool! i invited them to church. i still have another day before they come so i'm still hoping and praying. Either way, i hope God gives me more opportunities to interact with them.
This post is really long, so i'm going to spare the commentary for the next post. In the next one you'll see why i'm so excited about this conversation... It's a beautiful intersection of God's grace, timing, and answer to prayer!
i'm so excited about this semester, i feel like a stored up flood is about to be loosed!
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