Ready for the next chapter

Putt putting during life group!

During my major trial a couple of weeks ago, I was feeling that I wanted nothing more than to just go home and get life back to normal. I was sick of not having the ability to go get something to eat after midnight. I wanted something besides freakin' McDonalds. I was just sick of Estes Park.

Now that the trial has passed and my heart has been restored by God, I'm feeling as motivated as ever to keep on going in ministry and at LT. Since that happened, that means that I should be dreading leaving here in a week and a half, right?

Nope. I want nothing more than to be back in Columbia doing work for The Rock right now.

Don't get me wrong, I'm really enjoying and savoring my last 10 days out here in Colorado. I've learned so much about leading out here in Colorado that I'm not even sure I've processed it all. God has been incredibly faithful with all my prayers and hopes and desires and I know he has what's best in store for me. I've got a great group of friends that I'll miss dearly when they go back to Bowling Green, Kent State, Illinois, Texas A&M, etc. I will miss the crap out of my project group, JDC, too.

Even with the amount of fun I am having and the growth and trust that I'm constantly gaining in God out here in Colorado, I still can't stop thinking about next school year and how we as a church can make the biggest impact for Christ at Mizzou. I can't wait to live in Columbia and be reunited with Irene, Elizabeth, Ben, Tony and all our other awesome friends in canvas group.

I love Mizzou.

This desire was fueled pretty heavily last night. We had an awesome Mizzou get-together last night that started with sharing a little bit of what God has done with us this summer and ended with a extended time of prayer in beautiful Moraine Park. After a long time of group prayer focused on the campus as a whole, we split up into canvas groups and made a number of specific requests to God for people in our group and for the health of the group in general.

Nothing could have excited me more than to hear my brothers and sisters in Christ from Mizzou praying expectantly for God to do crazy work this year on campus. I felt that insane passion that God has given me for the college campus rise up and really overwhelm me, so much so that my body was shaking out of excitement. I can't even fully express in words what I was feeling last night.

There is so much passion and desire for our church this year. We want awesome unity in our canvas groups. I felt God calling me to pray for specific people and for a huge focus on outreach throughout the whole 2012-2013 school year. We want to be able to raise up enough leaders to multiply canvas groups next year. We just want God to move radically in a way that no one can even imagine.

My heart for Mizzou is just overflowing right now. I just want to get to the next chapter of life and see what God has for me in the next year. I just want God to use me!

Stepping out in faith

Yesterday was supposed to be one of the more nerve wracking days of the summer for me. Our the project group spent the day focused on evangelism, so we spent an hour and a half in Boulder on Pearl Street sharing our faith and the Gospel with all who would listen.

I'd never done anything like that before because of some unexplained, deep-seeded fear inside me. Because of that fear, I probably should have been really nervous for the day and sharing my faith boldly to a stranger for the first time. God wasn't gonna allow me to be nervous though.

Through the quiet time we had in the morning before we left for Boulder, God gave me a whole lot of peace about the upcoming day. My co-leader, Michelle, put together an awesome guide of verses and things to pray about for evangelism and it really helped me put my focus on God and realize that the things I did during the day really didn't matter in the end. It wasn't my work that would help lead anyone to Christ, but instead I had to let the Spirit work through me and let it plant the seeds

When we got to Boulder, I was teamed up with a girl from Mizzou named Doona. We were walking around, looking for someone to talk to and I recognized a guy that I saw on an earlier trip to Boulder. When I was there earlier, I saw the guy and thought, "he'd be a good guy to talk to for evangelism." So when I saw him yesterday, I knew that God was telling me to go over to him and do just that

We walked up to him and asked him if we could play chess with him (he had a sign welcoming all challengers) in order to break the ice. After a bit of small talk, we got into a deeper discussion with him about spiritual things. He was raised by a staunch Catholic dad and chose not to be a Christian because the spiritual leaders around him couldn't answer all his questions about the faith and he "didn't believe in a bearded guy in the sky." Both were legitimate doubts, but it was clear that he had at least thought about the faith.

Still, this guy was obviously opposed to Christianity in general, but Doona and I still tried to share our faith in a way that would be appealing to him. Overall, I feel like we did a good job just making him feel loved, which he needed because he doesn't have any really good friends as a homeless guy in Boulder.

I could tell he appreciated us giving him some of our time, so maybe some seeds were planted there. We spent the whole hour and a half talking to him about his life, his past and his beliefs. How awesome is that? After the conversation I was full of joy because I felt God was there the entire time and he challenged me a lot to ask some tough questions. Sensing the things he wanted to ask me was really cool and responding to that push by the Spirit was great to.

I'd encourage everyone reading this to share your faith with a stranger as soon as possible, if you consider yourself a Christian. I think evangelizing is the best thing you can do to help strengthen your faith because you have to overcome fear and uncertainty.

Fear is a thing I dealt with a lot for the days leading up to yesterday, but God works through everyone who is bold enough to step out and just do it and he surely did that with our group. Everyone in our project group had a cool story about evangelizing and what God did to push them to another level. It was just an awesome picture of how God can empower people to do things they never thought they could do.