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.

Gift of Life/Learning to Trust God

I've wanted to write this blog for a while, but life has been getting in the way in the past couple of weeks, so I’ve had to move the blog to the backburner. Now that I’ve pushed through the unstoppable rush of tests, research papers, online Spanish and work, I’ve got time to breathe for a week or so. PTL!

A major thing that has been on my mind the last couple of weeks has been the gift of life. I’m not just talking about the blessing of living in a country like the United States that has many freedoms (which is awesome and something we take for granted far too much), but mainly the idea that we even have a chance to have life on this earth.

This has been on my mind because it seems like over the past couple of months, a lot of friends and acquaintances from my high school years in Texas have been losing family members, friends, etc. It hasn’t just been losing grandparents to old age or things like that, but instead people from my age group or people that are my parents’ age.

For example, a couple of my high school classmates were killed in a car accident a couple of weeks ago, our high school’s long-time basketball coach died from cancer, etc.

Death hasn’t ever really been a huge part of my life, so this has been a bit of a shock for me, thinking of my own morality.

These events have made me think about how much we should appreciate life on this Earth while we still have it. We must treat life as our most sacred gift, because it simply is. You hear people say this all the time, but how many of us actually live that way? How many times do we get caught up in the trials of life and find ourselves with no joy or passion to do anything?

The fact that God even gave us life is one of the most amazing things to just think about. He didn’t need to make us to make himself happy, but he wanted to spread his immense love, so he created us! Awesome.

We constantly see people stumble through their days, complaining about the little problems in life, while not taking the effort to enjoy life itself. I’ve done it, you’ve done it, we’ve all done it.

One thing we can do to make sure that we can stay happy is by remembering that our whole life is all in his hands and he knows what he’s doing. If we can always trust that God knows what he is doing, we can stop wasting time worrying on if life will work out the way we planned it.

This brings up another topic that calls back to the Idols series we had at the Rock last month. If success is one of your idols, you will always chase after it but will never be satisfied, no matter how much success you achieve. If you put all your eggs in God’s basket, he’ll take care of you and direct you in the way you are supposed to go. Once again, much easier said than done.

This situation made me think of a song that really had a good impact on me once I got to college.

Ruin my life the plans I have made
Ruin desires for my own selfish gain
Destroy the idols that have taken Your place
'Till its You alone I live for,
You alone I live for.

-Ruin Me (Jeff Johnson)

We have to be willing to get rid of what we think is best for us and listen to what God thinks is best. It’s tough to actually admit that we don’t know what the heck we are doing, but the sooner we do that, the sooner we can trust God and find joy in him.

I wanted to talk about this because of my personal experience I've been having in the past couple of months.

In my first blog post I mentioned how I was really focused on trying to get a journalism internship this summer so I could feel better about my post-graduation job outlook. I thought that if I got a good sports writing internship, I could network and almost be assured a pretty good job coming out of college, which would allow me to do what I am passionate about, give me a comfortable life and probably good enough money. I guess God had other ideas.

Late last semester, God turned my attention to the LT program that our church is having in Colorado this summer (check the picture at the top). I don’t know how I got interested, but I guess I just was desperate for some solid plans this summer and God provided it. As I thought about my decision, I could hear God telling me that Colorado was the place I should go and that getting an internship probably wasn’t as important as I thought it was. I'm fairly solid in my belief that this is where I'm supposed to be.

This experience has taught me a good lesson: always trust God. You may think you know how your life is going to play out and what the best scenario would be for you, but God probably knows a little bit better than you.

He’s got it all under control.