Saturday, August 13, 2011

Truth

I would like to share a story with you all about how awesome God is. Are you ready?
So to give you a little bit of background: All summer I was pretty apathetic to the idea of sharing the gospel, or the good news of Christ with complete strangers. I had done it before and had not seen any fruit come from the conversations, or had been rejected and my thoughts manipulated during my conversations with others about God and spiritual things. I had never had the experience of the Lord using me to lead someone to Christ or getting into a really good conversation with someone about what they may believe, or why I believe what I do. So needless to say, by the end of the summer I was pretty checked out in the area of outreach and evangelism. During the last week I was thinking that the Lord has already done all that He is going to do in my life and in others during the summer, and was just ready to go and get back on campus to see what He will do there. But the Lord totally proved me wrong (I love when He does: )). So as I am feeling this the last week, we had a couple more worship on the boardwalk outreaches planned and so, once again apathetically, I figured well why not, this will probably be the last outreach I will do here so I’ll go, and I did. As we were sitting on a couple of benches on the boardwalk worshipping, I saw my friend in a conversation with a girl, about our age, and decided to jump in on the conversation. The girl had told us that she had just lost her dad a few weeks ago and was dealing with a lot of questioning and stuff, but it was cool that she and I got to relate even in the unfortunate circumstance of losing a father. So we talked for a bit and got to a point where she asked what we were doing there and so we got to share with her that we were there with a campus ministry to share our faith and get to know people in the community. This then led to my friend and me sharing these four simple truths with her: First, God created us and loves us and has a perfect plan for our lives. Second, since we are human and are not perfect and holy, as God is, we are separated from Him and cannot have a relationship with Him on our own power. But this is where the good news comes in: thirdly, since God loves us and desires to have a relationship with us, He sent His one and only Son, Jesus, to die on the cross for our sins and our imperfections so that through Christ, we may have a relationship with Our Creator (how cool is that!?) As Ephesians 2:8-9 sates, “For it is by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the GIFT of God; NOT as a result of works that no one should boast.” We are able to have a relationship with our Heavenly Father not by works, but by faith in Christ. Lastly, we must accept Jesus into our lives as our Lord and Savior, so that we may know God personally and experience His love. After sharing these four truths with her she looked at me and told me that that is exactly what she wanted for her own life. So we prayed together and now we have a new sister in Christ!
I was so humbled and overjoyed that the Lord used a broken vessel such as myself to show Himself to the girl that I shared this with. He humbled my heart and showed me that He was not done with my summer and there were still things that I needed to learn and trust Him with. God shows up when you least expect Him to, and that just shows me that He is ALWAYS there, even in my hesitation, my brokenness, my doubt, He shows up and with His power, His glory, and His strength. Rejoice in that, friends. Our God is so good and so faithful.

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