As the quarter comes to an end, I felt it appropriate to write a blog and procrastinate a little on studying for finals.
Let me tell you about my friend. I will call her Faith.
I have been meeting with Faith for the past 10 weeks, every week except for 1. My discipler Shawnda and I have met with her to help answer some questions, enter into her spiritual journey and point her in the direction of truth. Meeting with Faith has been an overall fantastic experience, despite the discouragement and the frustration on occasional weeks. At first, it seemed like she understood the gospel and that all that was holding her back was her wanting control. We moved in a direction to help make this surrender easier, but found out last week, that we were essentially starting back at square one. It was difficult to have been meeting with her for so long, given her our "best" answers and her still not choose Christ over every other religion there is out there. The lowest point in all of this was almost a week ago, I had an unplanned conversation with her after one of our CRU weekly meetings and as I sat and listened for almost an hour and a half to her talk and question intellectual and spiritual topics, I realized just how lost she is.
It broke my heart to see her so unaware of the walls that she has built up around her with her own theories and philosophy about who God is, and about who we as humans are, and about concepts and ideas to explain all of it. I cried to my roommate Hannah the whole way back to my apartment. I couldn't fully understand just how lost Faith was, I could only imagine, and falling asleep that night, with tears in my eyes I prayed that God would bring her to the end of herself (a prayer that Shawnda and I have been praying for several weeks now), and that He would be the Author of her salvation and that He would open her eyes to the reality of who she is and bring her back to the Truth, bring her back to the One that cares and longs and loves her like no one else can.
Yesterday, we met as usual. Shawnda thought it was a good idea to get all of her questions out there, write them all down and then go through and determine which ones have significant value, emotional values and which ones do not. She went at it and filled a page and a half with questions that she has. We narrowed the list to 5 questions or topics of things that she wants answered. At that point, it was time for her class and that's as far as we got, but for the first time I hear her say "I don't know". It was wonderful! Not that I am rejoicing in her lost-ness, but an answered prayer from God, she is coming to the end of herself and yesterday was the first sign of that!
Before I finish though, let me share with you what God has done in me, through all of this. This has been a definite spiritual battle, and emotional battle, once I found out how fun and awesome Faith is. There have been discouragements, as I mentioned earlier, along the way, but the coolest part about all of this was hearing over and over and over and over again the Gospel and how great our God is to send His Son, Jesus, and restore relationship with us, all because of His grace. Wow! I am amazed again just to type it! Meeting with Faith, we always wanted to share the Gospel, to share the love of God with her, and I'm pretty sure we did just that every time we met, sometimes we even shared 2-3 times in one setting. But the best part of it was that I got to tell myself the same truth over and over again also! Despite the heartache for Faith, looking back at my life and placing myself in her shoes, and knowing how lost I once was, it is so beautiful to see where the Lord has brought me, all because of His grace! I am in awe!
The Lord has also showed me little bits of fruit budding in my work. Although it is hard to believe that anything is happening and the time that Shawnda and I spend with her is not wasted, the truth of it is that, if Faith saw her time fit better for something else, or if we were no help at all she wouldn't keep coming. But she has been coming- evidence that God is clearly up to something!
If you could join me in prayer, for Faith, that would be wonderful and also for Shawnda and myself that we would be humble servants to come alongside Faith and gently nudge her in the right direction. We are still planning on meeting up next quarter, for more journey-ing together.
As always, thanks for reading! :)
"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith- and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God- not by works so that no one can boast. For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared for us in advance for us to do." ~Ephesians 2:8-10
