Fair Haven Camps

Well, it's been a long time since I've updated this thing. I figured I would write a post at how I am working this summer at Fair Haven Camps in Maine. How did I end up here? Well, that's a long story, but in short, God brought me here. I didn't know anybody when I decided to come and I drove out here from Upper Michigan by myself. It's been quite the adventure being a counselor for teens. I enjoy it a lot, but of course there are many challenging times as well. I have had campers that have had ODD, ADHD, PTSD, Autism and other mental issues as well which all present some difficulties, but overall, it's been super rewarding.

Currently, there is one week of camp left, and I have had 6 weeks done and I will be driving back shortly. I'm pretty excited to get back home, but I will definitely miss the many camp friends that I've made here with the other staff.

There is one main obstacle from me getting home right now and that is having a car that works. It is a really complicated issue that I won't try to explain here, but anyways, we're currently looking into what to do with it and it needs to be fixed in one week from now in such a way that it can make it back to Upper Michigan... so we have to make sure it is indeed fixed.

When I take the time to stop and think about it though, I realize that God is in control of everything and that I don't have to worry about it. I know that whatever happens, He will provide for all of my needs and I will praise Him no matter what happens. So many times in life, trials come and things don't go as we plan them, but time and time again, God brings me through them all while I grow in His likeness.

Hopefully I will get posting on a more regular basis again, but I don't find much time. At camp here, we only get to use laptops on the weekends and our hour off, but I use my hour off to sleep or call people on my cell phone, so my laptop is only used on the weekends where I catch up on my email and facebook checking etc.

The Story

You need to check this out.

Long time, no type.

It has been forever since I've blogged. Summer Project is definitely over. I haven't forgotten about this blog, I just have been to lazy to sit down and sort out my thoughts.

God has done many many amazing things in my life since my last post and a very small portion of them are mentioned on the summer project blog. This past weekend I just had an amazing time in Rogers, MN at my Summer Project reunion! It was fantastic! I loved seeing so many project friends again. Of course a weekend is not nearly long enough it seems, but it was well worth the 14 to 15 hours of driving almost 800 miles.

God just reminded me of his great love for me as I talked with some friends getting updated on what He was doing on their campuses and sharing the same for my campus and just seeing their excitement and passion for God is so encouraging. I was talking with my friend Joanna sharing a lot of this kind of thing and we were talking about how God's love is much more realized in view of his hatred of sin and his wrath. God's attributes are not mutually exclusive. In his love, he doesn't put his wrath of sin aside. Rather, out of his great love for us, he send Jesus, his only son to die for us when we deserved nothing. He poured out his wrath on Jesus because of his great love for us. The LEAST we can do is offer our entire lives on this earth. For all believers, we have been bought at a great price and we owe our lives to God. God doesn't need us, yet he loves us enough to bridge the gap between himself and us with the death of his son. Jesus' death paid our penalty because Jesus was perfect and when we accept Christ, we are crucified with him. As we live here on this earth, we are living in the death of Christ. We are in a sin-cursed world that has much pain and suffering, but in the heat of it all, knowing that God loves me, a hopeless wretch apart from Christ, I can have joy that God's plan is what's best for my life. I can live for God through trials with great peace when I am walking close with him. For to live is Christ and to die is gain!

I thought of an analogy in considering God's love. Imagine very clearly your best friend. If you don't have a best friend, just pick one of your closest friends in mind. Imagine someone kills that best friend. Some murderer who has killed many. Imagine your feelings towards that person. Now say they are caught and go to court and you are in court against them. The natural human response would be to hate them, to want the worst for them. We think, "They need to go to jail for life or get the death penalty. We can never get the life of our friend back..." Well we might be thinking it's only natural to feel that way, but as Christians, that's not how we are called.

Do you have a love for that person who killed your best friend to say to them that you forgive them for what they did? Do you have the kind of love for that person that wants the best for them. Would you be willing to take that person's punishment and go to prison for them or even take the death penalty? The punishment must be paid or there would be no justice. Would you love them so much that you would die for them? How would this love speak to them. They wouldn't understand how you could love them after something like that happened.

Do you realize that you are this murderer? Do you realize that God in his great love for you sent his only son Jesus to die for you and pay that penalty? If anyone hates another person, they have already murdered them in their heart. The punishment was poured out on Jesus. Jesus should be your closest friend. I hope when you hear the phrase, "Jesus loves me", you will think of what that cost him and you'll remember that it's true.

This kind of love is the kind of love that God has called us to love with.

John 15:12 says: "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you."

This is certainly a challenging thing for me. We can't love like this on our own strength. Don't even try. Rather go to God and ask him to show you how to love and ask that you be filled with the Holy Spirit and the ability to love.

1 John 4:10 says: In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

So how do we love God? We follow his commandments.

I John 5:3 says: "for this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome."

Brothers and sisters, reflect on the gospel and on God's great love for you. Realize the cost to God our free gift of salvation is and go and share this love with others. If you are not yet a believer and are reading this, you can have this great love. If you have been living thinking that Christianity is all about doing good works and following rules and doing this or that or abstaining from this or that, then you are missing out on the beauty of God's love! It is not burdensome to do the commandments of God and love him. Don't do it on your strength apart from God for you have none.

Ephesians 2:8-9 say this: "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."

Anyone wanting to talk about any of this with me, I would love the opportunity, so please let me know!

Summer Project

I forgot to sorta mention this on my blog. I have actually created a separate blog that I'll be updating now and then while I'm on Summer Project, so for at least another month or so I won't be updating this one. I don't know when I'll be able to even say what's going on soon in my other one because it's so busy on project. It's non-stopped, but that just forces us to rely on the Holy Spirit rather than ourselves because we simply cannot do all this work on our own. If you want to keep updated with it, my Summer Project blog is: http://nmbsp.blogspot.com

God's Amazing Provision in Trials

The following I copied and pasted with a conversation I had with a friend over Skype. It's a really cool story of how God worked in amazing ways last night when a typical trip to Hungarian falls turned into a real adventure indeed. Sorry for all the awkward formatting with time stamps.


cookingdoggy(cookingdoggy is me):So last night a bunch of my Cru friends wanted to go to a series of waterfalls up here... it's really cool and picturesque
[4:45:55 PM] cookingdoggy: however you spell that
[4:45:59 PM] cookingdoggy: it's call hungarian falls
[4:46:24 PM] cookingdoggy: anyways, I had to go to the evening service at my church and I did and right when church was out, my cru friends left to go to the falls
[4:46:36 PM] cookingdoggy: (they don't go to my church and don't go to any other evening services so they weren't with me)
[4:46:57 PM] cookingdoggy: and so I invited my high school friends at my church to go too, only they had to eat first which took a while and then they said they would come
[4:47:12 PM] cookingdoggy: we finally head out about half an hour later than the others or even longer than that...
[4:47:24 PM] cookingdoggy: and my high school friends went in 2 vehicles
[4:47:54 PM] cookingdoggy: one group went first (my car), and the other group were gonna go pick up some other friends and meet us there
[4:48:13 PM] cookingdoggy: well on the road to the waterfalls, there are two turn-offs, one with a gate and one without
[4:48:18 PM] Timothy Wallace begin_of_the_skype_highlighting     end_of_the_skype_highlighting: ok
[4:48:34 PM] cookingdoggy: and so I went up the the usual crusade one that apparently my high school friends didn't know about
[4:48:43 PM] cookingdoggy: with a couple of my highschool friends in my car
[4:48:54 PM] cookingdoggy: then we waited a bit but didn't see them so we didn't know where they went
[4:49:06 PM] cookingdoggy: we decided to finally get out and walk down the trail a bit
[4:49:24 PM] cookingdoggy: now this is going to be hard to keep track of the rest of this until you have a good sense of what it looks like
[4:49:31 PM] Timothy Wallace: ok lol
[4:49:46 PM] cookingdoggy: so the main road is sorta parallel to the the waterfall/river but a distance a way from it
[4:50:00 PM] cookingdoggy: we were at the north entrance and walked west towards the waterfall
[4:50:07 PM] Timothy Wallace: ok
[4:50:44 PM] cookingdoggy: once we finally just about got to the water, there was a fork in the road and my friends who were with me didn't want the others to get lost so they turned around RIGHT before we got to my cru friends where they were
[4:50:58 PM] cookingdoggy: I was like... "They're right here, why don't you meet them first"
[4:51:10 PM] cookingdoggy: but they wouldn't, and I guess that was ok
[4:51:20 PM] cookingdoggy: so they went back towards the car to see if they showed up there yet
[4:51:32 PM] cookingdoggy: meanwhile, there was a further north waterfall that my friend wanted to show me
[4:51:46 PM] cookingdoggy: so I went with him and saw it and it was sweet...
[4:52:10 PM] cookingdoggy: then i went back and looked for my friends but they weren't there at the car so I figured they walked along the road towards the other entrance to find them
[4:52:18 PM] cookingdoggy: so I walked back towards the river to find them
[4:52:21 PM] Timothy Wallace: lol
[4:52:41 PM] cookingdoggy: oh wait... right before I ran to the car, I walked south a bit and found the rest of the cru friends again
[4:52:48 PM] Timothy Wallace: ok
[4:52:53 PM] cookingdoggy: so I ran to my car and then ran back figuring I'd me them as they hiked up the waterfall
[4:53:03 PM] cookingdoggy: or... along side it
[4:53:08 PM] Timothy Wallace: right
[4:53:24 PM] cookingdoggy: well, I did meet them right where I thought I would... my whole high school group, but then all the cru people were gone
[4:53:26 PM] cookingdoggy: i was like... what?
[4:53:29 PM] cookingdoggy: haha
[4:53:45 PM] cookingdoggy: then I went exploring around with my high school friends a bit and showed them some of the cool places
[4:53:52 PM] cookingdoggy: and it was getting darker
[4:54:10 PM] cookingdoggy: at one point, I saw a couple of cru friends seperated from the rest and asked them where everyone else was
[4:54:33 PM] cookingdoggy: they told me that one of my friends named Cory took a slip and slid like 30 feet down a steep hill and tumbled down
[4:54:41 PM] cookingdoggy: he got hurt pretty bad and his arm was fractured
[4:54:53 PM] cookingdoggy: so they told me the rest headed back to the hospital and they were heading out
[4:55:28 PM] cookingdoggy: well, I figured I'd head back and finish up with my high school friends and we got back to my car right when it was getting really dark
[4:55:49 PM] cookingdoggy: I decided that I would drive alongside my other friends as they walked down the road south to where they parked their cars
[4:55:53 PM] cookingdoggy: got everything so far?
[4:56:03 PM] Timothy Wallace: yes
[4:56:04 PM] cookingdoggy: ok
[4:56:19 PM] cookingdoggy: so when I got back to my car, I noted that one of the crusade vehicles was still there and I thought they had all left
[4:56:36 PM] cookingdoggy: well anyways, we got to the other entrance towards the waterfall and got to my friends car
[4:56:47 PM] Timothy Wallace: ok...the high school friend
[4:56:52 PM] cookingdoggy: yeah
[4:56:57 PM] cookingdoggy: i was with my high school friends still
[4:57:02 PM] Timothy Wallace: right
[4:57:03 PM] cookingdoggy: i was "escorting them to their car"
[4:57:25 PM] cookingdoggy: and we got there... but yet another one of my high school friends apparently showed up and must have been looking for us somewhere
[4:57:34 PM] cookingdoggy: so we waited a little bit and started calling him
[4:57:38 PM] Timothy Wallace: ok
[4:57:39 PM] cookingdoggy: his name was Justin
[4:57:54 PM] cookingdoggy: we called out "JUSTIN" really loud and we heard a girl respond
[4:58:10 PM] cookingdoggy: there was another girl and guy there and the guy's name was Justin but it wasn't the right Justin
[4:58:11 PM] cookingdoggy: haha
[4:58:16 PM] Timothy Wallace: lol
[4:58:51 PM] cookingdoggy: but as I was looking for my high school friend Justin, and it was dark at this point... my Cru friend Joe showed up running around and I thought they had left at that point
[4:59:15 PM] cookingdoggy: aparently, this whole time, my friend Cory that got hurt was still on the side of the hill and they were helping him out the best they could when he broke his arm
[4:59:15 PM] Timothy Wallace: lol ok
[4:59:38 PM] Timothy Wallace: so they hadn't left for the hospital yet like the other group thought?
[4:59:45 PM] cookingdoggy: yeah
[5:00:05 PM] cookingdoggy: so then I told my high school friends that I was gonna run up the path north up the waterfall/river
[5:00:33 PM] cookingdoggy: and that I would be back in a couple of minutes
[5:00:42 PM] cookingdoggy: i followed Joe along this trail to see what was going on
[5:00:48 PM | Edited 5:01:15 PM] Timothy Wallace: okok
[5:01:10 PM] cookingdoggy: I got way down the trail and another Cru friend named Andy was looking for a backpack that fell down a cliff that had a camera and a rope in it in the river but he couldn't see because it was dark
[5:01:23 PM] cookingdoggy: well I had a little keychain flashlight LED thingy and I used that to help him out
[5:01:30 PM] cookingdoggy: meanwhile, I heard the other guys helping out Cory
[5:01:48 PM] cookingdoggy: and I decided to try to crawl up the hill to see if I could help them out with some light
[5:02:05 PM] cookingdoggy: we left the bag for the night and they went and found it today...
[5:02:36 PM] cookingdoggy: anyways, so as I was climbing up this really steep hill I found myself on this little patch of dirt that was giving way and there were no trees to grab onto
[5:02:49 PM] cookingdoggy: as I started to fall down the hill
[5:02:58 PM] Timothy Wallace: oh boy
[5:03:17 PM] cookingdoggy: and then I kinda ran into a tree, but wasn't going to fast so I was fine at that point
[5:03:35 PM] cookingdoggy: it was really muddy as it has rained recently but there were leaves on top so it was deceiving
[5:04:20 PM] cookingdoggy: so anyways, I finally found the path that I had been on which was really close to the water at the bottom of the hill and finally found where Cory was
[5:04:47 PM] cookingdoggy: they asked me to find the trail i took to get there because it was easier to get Cory down the hill to that trail rather than going up the hill any farther
[5:04:59 PM] Timothy Wallace: right
[5:05:01 PM] cookingdoggy: so by using ropes and my flashlight, they were able to get down through much difficulty
[5:05:11 PM] cookingdoggy: there were like 5 other guys there too
[5:05:26 PM] cookingdoggy: but one guy's flashlight died and the only other one they had was really dim
[5:05:39 PM] cookingdoggy: so they couldn't see anything without my little LED keychain which was surprisingly bright
[5:05:49 PM] Timothy Wallace: yea they are
[5:06:16 PM] cookingdoggy: and we got down to the path to walk like the quarter mile back along the river South towards my car using my light as a guide
[5:06:24 PM] cookingdoggy: which is like the only good light they had
[5:06:32 PM] cookingdoggy: going very slowly cuz Cory was in pain
[5:06:32 PM] Timothy Wallace: cool
[5:06:40 PM] Timothy Wallace: was he walking?
[5:06:45 PM] Timothy Wallace: or did he hurt his leg too/
[5:06:54 PM] cookingdoggy: his legs were ok which was good
[5:06:56 PM] cookingdoggy: so he was walking
[5:06:58 PM] Timothy Wallace: yea
[5:07:11 PM] cookingdoggy: so I didn't know about that trail either until I used it to find them
[5:07:34 PM] cookingdoggy: we FINALLY made it back to my car and all my high school friends had left as it took like half an hour or more to get back
[5:07:44 PM] cookingdoggy: My car was ready to take Cory to the hospital
[5:07:48 PM] cookingdoggy: and his Mom was up for mothers day
[5:07:57 PM] cookingdoggy: but there is no cell phone signal out at that waterfall
[5:07:57 PM] Timothy Wallace: ha so everyone left in the other car?
[5:08:16 PM] cookingdoggy: well another guy ran to get his other car which was farther away and took the rest of them that couldn't fit into my car
[5:08:25 PM] Timothy Wallace: oh ok
[5:08:33 PM] cookingdoggy: but it was good my car was there so Cory wouldn't have to go any farther
[5:08:37 PM] Timothy Wallace: yeah
[5:08:45 PM] cookingdoggy: and it was good my high school friends left so I would have room for more people
[5:08:51 PM] Timothy Wallace: haha true
[5:09:06 PM] cookingdoggy: we got him to the hospital and finally to a good cell phone spot so he could call his mom
[5:09:09 PM] cookingdoggy: and she met us up there
[5:09:28 PM] cookingdoggy: then he got a cat scan cuz he bumped his head and an x-ray, so it took a while and we left while his mom stayed
[5:09:49 PM] Timothy Wallace: sounds like a crazy night haha
[5:09:51 PM] cookingdoggy: so that yesterday evening for me... but here's the cool part...:
[5:10:23 PM] cookingdoggy: I didn't know about that lower entrance to the waterfall and never would have parked my car there if it wasn't for my high school friends going there with me and that trail would have been unknown to all of us
[5:10:35 PM] cookingdoggy: and they wouldn't have had my keychain light either
[5:10:40 PM] Timothy Wallace: yeah
[5:10:42 PM] Timothy Wallace: hero! haha
[5:10:48 PM] cookingdoggy: so God put me exactly where everything would work out great!
[5:10:57 PM] cookingdoggy: it's really unbelievable how it all worked out
[5:11:05 PM] Timothy Wallace: yeah
[5:11:08 PM] Timothy Wallace: it's cool though
[5:11:17 PM] cookingdoggy: definitely!
[5:11:20 PM] Timothy Wallace: he's got it under control
[5:11:27 PM] cookingdoggy: that He does
[5:11:36 PM] cookingdoggy: now you can see why I kinda wanted to tell you over the phone
[5:11:45 PM] cookingdoggy: cuz it's a long story with a lot of details
[5:11:49 PM] cookingdoggy: but i think i covered it all
[5:12:20 PM] Timothy Wallace: sweet
[5:12:25 PM] Timothy Wallace: well thanks for typing it all out haha
[5:12:30 PM] cookingdoggy: and we just found out while I was telling you this story that he only fractured his arm in a couple of places but the rest of his body is fine other than a few bumps and bruises
[5:12:34 PM] Timothy Wallace: now copy and paste it for the next person so you don' thave to retype haha
[5:12:47 PM] cookingdoggy: haha, i wish I wrote that in a blog
[5:12:53 PM] cookingdoggy: maybe I will eventually


... and I did and that is what you just read. How cool is it that God works through things so well and we so often worry about circumstances out of our control. When things are out of our control, they are in God's control and we have nothing to worry about.

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?