salvation came.
As fun as all of that was, the story is even bigger. The buzz going around afterward was that Jesus had brought salvation. What happened through our little offering of worship was amazing. One guy who walked in off the street because he heard music came to know Jesus last night. Another guy heard Matt talk about joy that never goes away and he experienced a whole new freedom. Another girl was speechless after the Lord set her free from what was holding her back from a life of joy.
Last night seemed to be a night of setting the captives free to experience a new joy in the presence of their King.
"Now to HIM who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of HIS glory blameless with GREAT JOY, to the only God our Saviour, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen." Jude 1:24
We are praying for our community this week as we all fight for joy.
posted by grace campus ministries at 3/03/2006 10:54:00 PM
5 Comments:
The day of Encounter I read a book on how we should delight in serving God instead of viewing joy as a thing to be repressed. God wants us to feel good about submitting to Him, because it is this pleasant feeling that convinces us to praise Him.
Anyway, later that night I found out that I did not receive a position I had been applying for during the last month or so. When I applied for the position, I told God that the rest was up to Him and that I would accept His will for that situation. I had no idea how tough this would be when he said no.
Walking from my dorm to Encounter, all I could feel was a disappointed rage. How could God take this away from me when I had been wanting it for so long? In that moment, I realized that this was a chance for God to change me - to change who I was in the core of my being.
I searched within myself for the energy to give it up to God and let go of the disappointment and resentment that I felt. It wasn't there. In the depths of my despair, I pleaded to God to give me the strength to give it up to Him. And He delivered that strength.
The moment that God provided me strength to surrender to Him was one of the best moments of my life. What I normally would consider one of my worst days became one of the best. I felt joyous freedom from all of the pain and sinful thoughts from which I had been suffering.
This week's Encounter tied in beautifully with what I had been experiencing that day. The joy (that God gave me) in the fact that God knows better what is good for me than I do made it possible for me to give up my frustration to Him.
Before I went to sleep, I had the opportunity to share what I learned from my experience with my roommate, who is not a strong believer. While it did not bring him around entirely, I hope that it sparked some interest in him in the life that is available in Christ.
All of this is to say the following:
1. God can use seemingly unconnected circumstances to bring about great change in a person's life.
2. God desires for us to seek after the joy that He provides.
3. James 1:2-4 "Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perserverance. Perserverance must finish its work in you so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything."
I'm sorry that this post took so long, but that's because God has been that much good to me!
Tito
Wow! Last week's Encounter was AMAZING!!!!! I have been SO busy the past three weeks- but encounter always provides that break that i need to slow myself down and concentrate of the important things...
Like i said- i have been busy- and in all of that rush0- i think that i have lost sight of some of that Joy...
And Matt was right in saying that when you loose joy- you loose perspective. And when you loose perspective- you are so much more vulnerable to Satan's lies and that is when he will tempt you the most.
But no matter what--- God is good and so is His grace.....and that why we sing to Him!
wow... last week was so so very powerful !! im praising the Lord for the salvation of his chilren last week ... may he continue to draw all men to himself...
In the words of a friend,
so power, so energy, so power.
Wow! As a recent Auburn graduate and one of the originals who remembers a time when there was no Encounter in Auburn, I'm so glad to see what the Lord is continuing to do through Grace Campus Ministries.
In 1999, when I was a freshman at Auburn, my old friend April Dean (then April Darnell) called me up to tell me that she would be doing a Bible study once a week at someone's house and to ask if I was interested. I was, and thus began one of the greatest journeys I have ever taken.
The Lord has done an amazing work through April. I have since come to realize what a surrendered life looks like. April may not have been very old when she started this ministry, but the God of Wonders was in her and worked through her. He saw exactly what Auburn needed and used April to fill that need.
In 2001, my then-roommate Katherine Oliver, who was on staff with GCM at the time, told me that they would be starting a weekly large-group meeting to go along with the small groups. I was so excited. In 2002, I attended the first-ever meeting of Encounter, in Langdon Hall. That building seemed so huge for the thirty or so people that were there. Eventually we moved to the chapel, which seemed a much better fit until we began to have to set up an overflow room every week. Then the Lord opened up the position at Auburn United Methodist for Matt and for the ministry.
Fellow Auburn Tigers: I say all of this to say... I cannot even begin to explain to you what a difference the Lord is making. As a college student, it was the exact right time for me to hear what he had to say. He chose April Dean and Matt Dean and Katherine Oliver (and many others who have since moved on) as vessels to express those words to me. Each of these people has an unusual gift. It is just that - a gift. Because they chose to surrender to His will, He has done such an amazing thing on Auburn's campus.
I have been away from Auburn for close to two years now. I have found a phenomenal church with a floundering Singles' department. I began to consider why these people, many of whom are older than me and who grew up in the church, were having such a hard time with such seemingly "easy" issues for me. It occured to me that they have never heard the truth as I did through Encounter and small groups at GCM. So many truths that I know and take into the core of my being came from the time when I was learning and being fed by the Lord through Grace Campus Ministries.
Trust me: you are in a unique position there. The Lord IS working, and it's an amazing work. Feel blessed to be in the middle of it and allow the Lord to work through you as He has done through April and Matt and John and all of the new staff members. We never would have thought back in 1999 that all of this would have been possible, yet here we are. Stand back and take a moment to look at the Lord's work. Wow.
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