Here

Our students worshiping at Winter Camp. It's amazing to see so many people from so many college campuses pursuing God.

"When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, 

God called to him from within the bush, 'Moses! Moses!'

And Moses said, 'Here I am.'"

Exodus 3:4 (NIV)

"But Moses said to God, 'Who am I 

that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?'

And God said, 'I will be with you.'"

Exodus 3:11-12a (NIV)

Have you ever felt like God gave you a New Year's resolution? 

You're getting ready for the year, thinking about the things you want to accomplish, the kind of person you want to be (if you're like me, these ambitions are well outside reality). Then you talk to God about it, and He says: "presence," and you think to yourself: "what?" 

That seems to be one of the main ways I see God's Spirit guiding my growth. He knows my heart much better than I do, and often that means He will lay something on my heart that I have not yet realized I need to be thinking about and growing in. As I entered this semester, I've been pushed to think through the idea of presence a lot more. What does it look like for me to truly be present when I'm with people? Jesus says he will be with us always, and promises to send the Spirit to live in us- what does it look like to live in light of that? 

It's hard to really be where you are, and to be aware that God is really there too!

So Much Preachin'

This semester has started off a bit differently from most for me. Brandon (the FOCUS director, and now my direct supervisor) wanted to give me more "reps" with sermons so I could get more comfortable preaching. So, I've already gotten to preach twice this semester, and I'm going to get to preach again this week! 

If you ever want to be really, really challenged by a sermon, write one. Nothing brings conviction quite as much as preaching what you believe is true in front of a bunch of people and then realizing how much your life doesn't match up with that afterwards. We've been talking about prayer in our sermons lately, and it's really challenged me to grow my prayer life more intentionally. 

Here are links to the sermons if you want to listen!

https://anyfocus.org/media/what-is-prayer/

https://anyfocus.org/media/prayer-for-the-mission/

Alone time with God...together!

This is what happens when you want to capture a moment, but don't want to distract people from what they're doing.

One of the most common complaints among Christians seems to be: "I want to spend more time with God, but I'm always tired, distracted, restless, busy, etc.!" 

Last semester, Brandon shared a blog post from a woman named Shannon who does campus ministry in Washington with an organization called Campus Christian Fellowship (we work with them quite a bit) in which she shared about having personal devotional time in quiet spots on campus, and inviting students to do the same with her.

So I've started spending an hour a day in the library from Tuesday to Friday, having quiet devotional time with God, and inviting students to do the same. Most of the time, we're just quietly in Scripture and in prayer while sitting together, but sometimes good discussions will come up. A lot of people in our community are reading through Acts, so that's given us a lot to share about with one another. 

Prayer

• Please be praying for our next generation of student leaders. In May, we have a leadership conference called the Student Institute of Campus Ministry, in which we send our most faithful young disciples to CCF in Washington to learn how to be missionaries on their campuses. Raising money and coordinating for that is a lot of work, and my hope is that these students begin to have a vision for the kinds of disciple-makers they can be.
• I've recently started studying the Bible with an international student who has a Jainist background, but is very open to conversations about religion and philosophy. Please be praying for openness, wisdom, and God's hand to be at work in all of it.