If you haven’t ever read Oswald Chambers let me encourage you to find “My Utmost for His Highest” and work through it.  If you have spent time with his challenging insights in the past, maybe this would be a good year to do so again.  Here is a stout word from today’s entry:

“For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel.” 1 Corinthians 1:17

Paul states here that the call of God is to preach the gospel; but remember what Paul means by “the gospel,” viz., the reality of Redemption in our Lord Jesus Christ. We are apt to make sanctification the end-all of our preaching. Paul alludes to personal experience by way of illustration, never as the end of the matter. We are nowhere commissioned to preach salvation or sanctification; we are commissioned to lift up Jesus Christ (John 12:32). It is a travesty to say that Jesus Christ travailed in Redemption to make me a saint. Jesus Christ travailed in Redemption to redeem the whole world, and place it unimpaired and rehabilitated before the throne of God. The fact that Redemption can be experienced by us is an illustration of the power of the reality of Redemption, but that is not the end of Redemption. If God were human, how sick to the heart and weary He would be of the constant requests we make for our salvation, for our sanctification. We tax His energies from morning till night for things for ourselves - some thing for me to be delivered from! When we touch the bedrock of the reality of the Gospel of God, we shall never bother God any further with little personal plaints.

The one passion of Paul’s life was to proclaim the Gospel of God. He welcomed heart-breaks, disillusionments, tribulation, for one reason only, because these things kept him in unmoved devotion to the Gospel of God.

I don’t know about you, but I would benefit from re-reading this every morning and keeping it at the front of my brain.

I was just looking over some comments on a Facebook status I posted and as I chuckled I thought about  how good it is to really be known.  It is a deeply satisfying feeling.  As our pastor says, “Fully known and fully loved” - deeply satisfying.

This is a lot of ministry.  Paul said it this way.

    ¹⁰You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, ¹¹persecutions, sufferings—what kinds of things happened to me in Antioch, Iconium and Lystra, the persecutions I endured. Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them. ¹²In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, ¹³while evil men and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. ¹⁴But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, ¹⁵and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.   2 Timothy 3

Timothy knew Paul fully well.  He had spent untold hours with him, beginning with hearing him speak and then seeing him stoned and left for dead.He knew not only what he taught, but how he lived. You learn a lot by being around someone, not just when you have a Bible open, but when you have your life open.  Paul was not perfect and probably had to work a bit to keep relationships clear and reconcile things from time to time.  Yet he could say to Tim to continue in what he was convinced of because he knew those he had learned from.

Paul consistently and intentionally speaks of this:

⁸We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us. ⁹Surely you remember, brothers, our toil and hardship; we worked night and day in order not to be a burden to anyone while we preached the gospel of God to you. 1 Thess. 2

⁹Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.  Philippians 4

¹Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ. ²I praise you for remembering me in everything and for holding to the teachings,^[a] just as I passed them on to you.  1 Corinthians 11

So it seems Paul’s method of discipleship was not just preaching alone, but fully sharing his life - the good and the bad and how he handled the bad and the good.

And we do all we can to model this method with students.  Our homes are open to students and they are in it regularly - though not all the time.  They are able to see our lives and we are known.  Hopefully and prayerfully and intentionally, people around us are able to be more like Jesus because of this, or at least understand Jesus’ way.

It is good to be fully known and fully loved.  It is good to be used by God to move students closer to Jesus.  It is good to have people know you on Facebook.  It is better to have them in your house.

Last week after our study on Monday night, one of the students had a question about the Bible.  Two hours later I looked up and everyone was gone and my family had gone to bed.  Two and a half more hours later I took him back to the dorms.  He is trying to decide if this God and Jesus and Bible thing is really true and worth following, so he had a lot of sincere questions.

Sometimes student ministry fits in a somewhat regular schedule and many times it doesn’t.  We have a lifestyle job instead of a time clock job. So normal doesn’t always apply.  Monday nights may end at 8:30 or 1 am.  Wednesday nights our after weekly meeting talking may end at 10 or midnight.  Friday nights our Friday Night Thing may end … well, you just never know.

The common thread through this is discipleship.  Some of the time may be fun and most of the time there are good discussions where we share life together, understand Jesus better, encourage one another in the midst of present circumstances, etc.   And then sometimes the most powerful discipleship words are “I’m going to bed.”

Sometimes in student ministry you get an opportunity to serve at a moment’s notice.  Last weekend we were able to host 5 guys from a ministry in Nebraska who had come to Denver for a big concert.  We found out the details the night they were going to stay with us.  So all 5 holed up in our basement Friday night after the Friday Night Thing.  We had a great time around the late breakfast table on Saturday.

In cruising this morning, I came across a great site for biblical training.  For anyone wanting to learn basics or gain seminary level teaching - its all right here.  The applications for remote places are incredible.  I love things like this where vision has born tremendous fruit and become highly applicable and effective.

On our leadership team, called Losers, we have been working on the skill of listening.  Not just being attentive, but allowing God to use us in His redemptive work in the lives of others through how we listen.  It is very difficult.  We are pretty much taught that we must speak into people’s lives.  After all,  power people are all talkers.  Wisdom can’t be shown if we don’t talk (or blog). Right?  So we listen just long enough to access the appropriate data file in our brain and then begin to download when the person speaking breathes. We also have our own problems and want someone to hear us too, so we often start relaying that info before we have truly listened.

We are learning that we need to die to our self (or be a Loser) to really listen.  And when we do that we can invite the person to speak more.  Often, listening in this way will remove barriers to grace that may exist and the person who is sharing can begin to feel the calming presence of Jesus and even understand what God is moving them to.

Listening in this way begins with being firmly rooted in Christ and knowing we that we are known by Him and safe in Him.

A challenging discipleship.

Christian Challenge

I was talking with my buddy Stan Wu about Col.2:6-7 and the image of walking in Jesus - the Christian walk.  As we talked we brought up the other image of standing firm.  So Stan put it all together, “You have to stand firm to walk.  And you can’t walk sitting down.”  There it is.  Standing firm and walking are not opposed to each other, but two ways of describing different aspects of the Christian life.  Sitting down, however, is opposed to both.

We had our first meeting of the semester last night.  It was a good re-gathering of students and a few new ones added in.

We are unpacking a theme of “Pursuit of Holiness” and to start it off we gave everyone a small package of floss.  The connection?  Well, its good to develop habits that will keep your teeth in good condition.  Its even better, way better, to develop habits that will help you pursue holiness.  We are called to be holy so lets do those things that will move us toward holiness.

We had a really good study with the freshmen this week and a new guy.  Aaron had not been able to attend last semester because of school, but got connected enough to start coming this semester.  The topic was God as supreme authority.  Last week was God as a Loving Creator.  Now people don’t mind the latter so much,  thinking of God as loving is not so bad.  But when we bring up the notion that since He created everything He is also in authority over everything, people don’t seem to get the same warm fuzzys.  So we discussed this and dealt with several verses about God’s authority.  Read Paul’s speech in Acts 17:22-31.

This discussion also challenged us with making sure we are under God’s authority.

Yesterday I began a little conversation known as Table Talk Tuesday @ 12:22 ( or just T3).  The freshmen liked this idea and others have joined in as well.  We find a table in the student union (University Memorial Center or UMC) and have a discussion over a certain topic.  Yesterday’s question was “Is man born evil?” which we modified to “Is man born with a sin nature?”

Its sort of a come and go thing and everyone is welcome.  I hope this can become an encouraging time to help people move closer to Jesus and to teach them to think critically about difficult and challenging issues and understand  what the Bible says about it even if they don’t agree with it.  We had a great time and everyone is looking forward to next week.