Finals Week and More

It is finals week at Michigan Tech. I took one of my two so far and the next one is Wednesday at 8 AM. Once exams are done, because I will be going on Summer Project, I can't get a job for the 3 weeks of summer that I will be in the UP of Michigan. I need to be down in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina on May 26th and will be carpooling with people from all over and we're meeting at the twin cities. I just have a huge gap in between now and then.

Now it's a matter of figuring what I'm going to do in this gap. I definitely want to take some more time to read a few books I've been wanting to read and I hope to finish the New Testament in that time. I am currently in 2 Timothy on my read through. I want to prepare for what God is planning for my life through Summer Project.

One way in which I started preparing this morning is through listening to a sermon by Alistair Begg. (If you have the time, I highly recommend you listen to that sermon that I linked to). He is my favorite preacher and I have many of his sermons on my Zune. The one I chose to listen to, or rather, the one God brought to my attention through the random shuffle on my Zune was one I had heard before, but I remember it being really good so I wanted to listen to it again. He talked about the necessity of weakness and how God chooses to work through weakness. The Bible teaches that God's power is made perfect in weakness and when we are weak, then we are strong. Conversely, when we are strong, we are actually weak. He specifically brought up the story of Gideon and the Midianites in Judges 7. In Judges 7, Gideon's army starts out with 32,000 men. At this point, they are probably looking at the enemies great numbers (like locusts in abundance who had camels without number) and thinking that 32,000 isn't even enough.

So what does God do? God says that they had too many people to fight. What?! Too many people? Should it surprise us that God does thing different than we do them? Isaiah 55:9 says: "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." We don't understand why God does things the way he does, but we do know that "[...] for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose." - Romans 8:28. Because we know these things, we can have peace that God is in control and has a great plan for our lives.

So getting back to the story of Gideon, God ends up narrowing the 10,000 who stayed down to 300. Many people try to teach Sunday school lessons on why God did what He did the way He did it. They say that we should be the people who were lapping as opposed to the people who were kneeling down because those are the one's God chose. Then they go on to try to draw parallels and hidden meanings that simply aren't in the text and they miss the whole point. God was not narrowing down the number to only those who were most adequate for the job or who were most prepared. Rather, God was simply using their method of drinking water to reduce the number way down to 300. Now Gideon had 300 people to fight a very large army whose number of camels alone were comparable the number of grains of sand, in other words: a lot! Why did God do this? The very simple answer is that God worked through this situation with a man who was weak. Gideon could not have defeated to Midianites on his own with the army he had. Rather, it was 100% of God delivering them and turning the army against itself in great fear. God lowered the numbers of his army so that no one could say it was anything that Gideon did. It was only by the power of God that they were saved. Does that sound familiar? This points to the New Testament to Ephesians 2:8-9 which says: "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast." It is God alone who saves and God works through our weakness.

If you are not convinced of this yet and want it more explicitly stated, the Bible has that covered in 2 Corinthians 12:9: "But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me."

God doesn't need you to have great credentials in order to serve him effectively. Rather, he desires obedience and a willingness to be used by Him with the power of the Holy Spirit to do His will and that will bring more joy that anything you could possibly imagine. Seeing God work through you is far better than anything else.

So often I find myself taken up with our culture which has nothing to look forward to. In order to remedy this, we've created things like TV, and movies. Have you ever watched TV for any period of time where they didn't say: Coming up at 6, this amazing story, or "Next week, final episode of...". The point is that our world is looking for satisfaction in constantly looking forward to the next big thing.

As Christians, we have eternity with God in Heaven to look forward to! Why do we waste so much time doing what our culture tells us when the Bible is so clear on how to spend our time? Our world is jumping from one pleasure to the next trying to get the most out of it. We are incapable of doing any good on our own and if it were not for the Grace of God, I would be in a hopeless state as that so I praise God for all the ways He has been working in my life, using me in my completely inadequate state to accomplish his ultimate purpose of bringing glory to Himself which is where it all belongs.

This is all Summarized in I John 2:15-17:
"Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world— the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever."

I want to close with I Corinthians 10:23: Do All to the Glory of God. “All things are lawful,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful,” but not all things build up.

True Joy and satisfaction in life come from God and God alone. That doesn't meant that we won't have problems, but God will carry us through them if we yield to Him. The true joy that surpasses all understanding is not dependent on circumstances, but rather on the Truth of God we have access to through Christ Jesus!

I Agree with John

I wrote the following paper for my creative writing class. It's all about our I Agree with John outreach on campus this year. Maybe you'll want to read through it.

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I am very involved in Campus Crusade for Christ on Michigan Tech’s Campus. This year we were thinking of a big outreach to do on campus so we can share with others what we believe. Our focus in this outreach was not to try to say that we were right and others were wrong, but rather tell other people what we believe and invite them to look into it for themselves. I personally believe that nothing should be accepted or rejected until it’s looked into. If what I believe really is The Truth, then what would make me keep it from people? If there really is a heaven and a hell and believing what I believe means eternal life as opposed to eternal separation from God in torment, then keeping this to myself would be the worst thing I could do for anyone.

Having said that, I considered it a privilege to be able to help think of a possible outreach to do so we could effectively share what we believe and give others the opportunity to hear it. I believe the Bible where it says: “Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” – Philippians 2:3-4. This just more adequately reflects why I would want to share with others what I believe because I believe it is in their best interest to know what the truth is.

In coming up with the idea, someone had mentioned that in the past, they did sort of a viral advertising event called “I Agree with Dan” about 4 or 5 years ago. It had a big turnout so we started to talk about what it was and how we could change it a bit and be more effective with it. The premise was that there would be a speaker named Dan who would share what the gospel was and the point was to try to advertise using simple free methods on campus.
Thus, “I Agree with John” is what we came up with this year. The actual event was a presentation of who John was and what he said. We were referring to the Gospel of John in the Bible. John knew Jesus best and made plenty of radical claims about His life. He wrote a first-hand eye-witness account of Jesus’ life. We would be having a speaker come up who would effectively present who Jesus was by going through some things that John said about Him. Before the main speaker, we had a couple people share their personal testimonies about how Jesus made a difference in their lives and how before they gave their life to Christ, they found no purpose in life and really messed it up a lot. In fact, one of them was an atheist and the other almost died after getting into drug use and getting mixed with the wrong crowd. Then the main speaker presented the gospel that made such a radical difference in the lives of the first couple of people. Then we opened it up for questions for everyone who was attending the event and had a discussion panel that would try to answer them best. There were definitely some tough questions that were asked that require some faith to believe in rather than things that have definite answers, but they don’t call Christianity a faith for nothing. Evolution is a faith in itself. You must have faith that somehow something started from nothing and just happened to turn into everything that we see today.

Leading up to the actual event, we did plenty of advertising for it. We started the first day by writing “I Agree with John” on the sidewalks and then labeling it with CCC which stand for Campus Crusade for Christ. It didn’t take very long for people to respond with chalking of their own. Many different things started showing up like, “I agree with Darwin” and random things like “I agree with Boyle’s law”. This was a good thing though. People were noticing it and everyone was talking about it and was wondering who John was. Then most people in Campus Crusade for Christ bought T-shirts. These shirts said: “I Agree with John” on them and then repeated it on the back in fifteen different languages. We also setup tables by all the dining halls and in a couple of halls in classroom buildings. People who had the special lime green shirts on sat at the tables with a sign. Anyone who was wondering about what “I Agree with John” was all about could go up to anyone with a shirt on and ask about it. We also actively pursued people about it. For anyone who had a shirt on who wasn’t at a table, it gave them an opportunity to share with others what we were doing. We had the Gospel of John in booklet form with an invitation insert on the inside for the event and encouraged them to look into it for themselves before they accept or reject what we were saying.

We challenged people to read a chapter a day in the Gospel of John until they were done. There are 21 chapters so we called it the 21 day challenge. We passed out hundreds of them all around campus to people.

I found the weather to be interesting. I had never seen it so warm in April ever before that early on. I had been praying for good weather, a mild winter and a short one and that’s what we got. The warmest days of the year up to that point coincided with the days we chose to wear the t-shirts on so we wouldn’t have to cover them up with a jacket. I can’t help but praise God for working through this ministry.

In my institutions class, the teacher really had no idea what this “I Agree with John” stuff was all about. He asked a girl I knew in our class who had the shirt on if she would share with the class, so she got to present the gospel briefly to the entire class.

Organizing and putting on this event is something that was really important to Campus Crusade for Christ on Michigan Tech’s campus. It is one of many ways to fulfill the Great Commission which is to spread the gospel to the entire world. As Christians, our view is that it is our job to be obedient to God and step out in faith in the power of the Holy Spirit who is living in all believers. God is the one who changes the individual, not us, which gives us peace.

In order to put why we do this into perspective, I am going to give an illustration. Let’s say that you are standing in a road. If I believed beyond a shadow of a doubt that a truck was coming to hit you, and you didn’t believe it, there comes a point where I would come and tackle you out of the way to save your life. With Christianity, I believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is a God and there is a real Heaven and a real Hell. We are convinced of that and all we are trying to do is point others to what believe is the truth. How much would a person have to hate someone in order to see that “truck” coming at them and do nothing about it? The subject of eternal life is so much more important than our short lives here on earth if eternal life really is the truth. We are out sharing what we believe because we love people and care for people.

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” – John 13:34-35. Many people who call themselves Christian spend so much time trying to be right and trying to win arguments that they forget our greatest command to love. Biblical love is different than the way our culture usually defines it. Real love is self-sacrificing, patient, kind, and it never fails. More can be read about love in I Corinthians chapter 13, but love really is dying to yourself and putting others interests first.

Would it be easy to say nothing? Would it be easy to just do what the culture of the day says and just accept everything as being neutral? I believe saying nothing is the deepest hate you could have for someone if you believe you have the key to their escape from a hopeless life wondering what the purpose of it all really is. The whole reason I have for writing this paper is to share with you what I believe the truth is and to encourage you to look into it for yourself. Will you take the 21 day challenge?