Meeting Muslim Students

It’s been a while and I’m not too good at keeping up with this blog or too motivated to keep writing on it. A lot of cool stuff has happened since the last post and a lot of not so cool stuff has happened too, but some cool stuff happened today that I really want to share. So that is why I’ve finally gotten motivated to write on here. God is moving and He wants to do so much here on my campus and really, anywhere.

So today was a cool day. So some friends of mine have been coming down about every Monday to hang out, pray, encourage and equip us, meet new people, and help us make disciples. So today they came down and we were hanging out and decided to go meet some new people. So I went with my friend Jessie–I’m not really good at being social and talking to people, especially strangers– and we talked to a couple people and that was cool. Later we found our friend Amy who was just hanging out with Jesus in a lounge in the student union and saw this girl that she had a vision of earlier. Amy said she saw a picture of a girl with a tan headscarf of hijab. So I said hey, I know kind of know her, she’s in my Faith and Atheism class. So we waited a little while and finally decided to go over and talk to her. Amy didn’t know what to say in order to approach her, so I just asked her about our Faith and Atheism class and what she thought of it. And it felt pretty awkward at first and I was super nervous, but it turned out pretty cool. We chatted for a little bit and met her husband who was there too. So eventually, she asked me if I wanted to study with her for our exam we have next week. Hmmm, studying for a Faith & Atheism exam, a class where we examine and critique philosophical proofs for the existence of God, with a Muslim student, sounds like a great opportunity to share with her about Jesus!! So, of course I said yes. Plus, if I can help someone get a better grade that’s sweet too.

A couple weeks ago I was in the student lounge studying and there were a bunch of Muslim students hanging out and studying in there and I just felt like they were a group of students on campus that we needed to reach. I attend Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA, where the Catholic charismatic movement started in 1967. In our chapel, there is an upper room, where this movement started 42 years ago and God showed up and moved mightily among some students. Recently, this room has been turned into a Muslim prayer room for students on campus. I understand that Muslims also have the right and freedom to worship whom they choose, but I don’t think its right for them to be in that room. This room is significant because of what happened there 42 years ago and I think that the devil is trying to, or has already, uprooted what God has done. Several weeks ago I went up in that room and prayed to Jesus and reclaimed the room for Him. I also prayed that the Muslim students would come to know the truth and who Jesus is.

So, please pray. Pray for the Muslim students at Duquesen, that they would come to know Jesus. Pray for my Muslim friends , that God would begin to move in thier hearts and draw them to himself. Pray that God would continue to allow me to build relationships with them and other Muslim students.  Finally, please pray for me, that God would give me the boldness to share the Good News of the Gospel and give me the words to say.

It’s Just Straight Up Sweet to Pray for People

I had a pretty awesome time last Wednesday at the Crossroads Christian fellowship meeting on campus. I got there a little early and was talking to my friend James. I remembered  the he hurt he his knee a while ago (torn acl) so I asked if I could pray for it. So I prayed and he didn’t really feel anything. So I prayed again and he said it felt a little better. He kept bending his knee and stretching out his leg to see if it felt better and said it really affected him when he was walking up stairs. So I told Bethany to come and pray for his knee because her knee got healed a couple days before and I prayed again too. I asked him how his knee was the other day and he said it wasn’t really feeling any better.  I prayed for this other girl’s shoulder, who was having some tendinitis, but I don’t know how that turned out. And I prayed for this other guy who’s thumb was hurting, but nothing happened there either.

Overall, I didn’t see anyone get healed, but it was just excting and fun to pray for other people. Even if I don’t see anyone healed, I still know that God’s still in the business of healing people. I just witnessed seeing a knee get healed a little over a weak ago, so that’s a testimony to what God is doing.  What I know is that God is good and he does good things like healing sicknesses, diseases, and other physical problems. Even if I pray for someone and don’t see a miracle, I still know that the fact of the matter is that God still heals. Therefore, I want to continue to pray for sick and injured people based on what I know is true and not based on whether or not I witness miracles and healings. I heard Bill Johnson say once that even if he never saw another person healed, he couldn’t change his beliefs based on what he experiences, but he would still believe that God is good all the time and still heals people due to what he has already seen and experienced.

Sweet Testimony #1

1/31/2009

So this is the first, of hopefully many, testimonies of God’s goodness, power, and love that I have to share with you. So it was Saturday night after the worship service/commisioning/imparting time we had after Lee Myer’s funeral and I was riding in a car with some friends, heading back to school. I was sitting next to my girlfriend, Bethany, and I asked her how her knee was feeling. Her knee had started hurting the past week because of running. So I told her we were going to pray for it. I put my hand on her knee and prayed a short prayer. I finished and asked her how her knee felt. She seemed a bit surprised and said it didn’t really hurt. “Really?” I asked because I was pretty surprised too and wasn’t sure what to expect. So she starts bending her knee, moving it around, and stretching out her leg to make sure her knee wasn’t hurting, which it wasn’t. Later, she told me that when I was praying she felt heat on her knee and she was kind of scared and assumed that it was just heat from my hand, but realized that God really touched her.

It was pretty sweet. haha. I remember earlier that night my friend Elana told me that God was going to surprise us and to be ready for it. I was definitely surprised and just sat in awe of what God did for the rest of the car ride home.  This is really the first time that someone has been healed as a direct result of my prayer and I am simply amazed at what God has done. I’m ready to start contending for healing and praying for more sick and injured people. I know that God has a lot more in store because I know that God is moving in mighty ways these days. So again, I hope that I will have many more testimonies about the goodness and love of God to share with you in the future.

Yay God!!

God is Good….All the time. Right?

I was hoping to maybe have a more light hearted topic to discuss in my first post, but I’m not feeling light hearted at the moment. I did start a couple posts last week when I started this thing, but for now those aren’t going anywhere. So here’s how my life has been going: Pretty much sweet, like amazingly sweet, until about 10:30 on Friday night when I got a phone call informing me that an old friend of mine had committed suicide. It was really a shock at first. I didn’t know how to feel and sometimes I still don’t know how to feel. I had a rough weekend, and even after the funeral yesterday, I sometimes can still not believe that Megan’s not here anymore. I hadn’t really talked to her or hung out with her for several months, so she wasn’t really a part of my life anymore and I was okay with that, but now she’s gone and I wish that maybe I hadn’t felt that way.

So anyway, here’s what I really want to get at and its something I’ve learned over the past several months, which is that God is good, all the time. He is 100% good. He is so good, there is nothing bad about Him. That’s the bottom line. Right? So, that is what I’ve learned and even in the midst of tragedy, I’m trying to walk in that truth and know that God did not cause this to happen. Then why did this happen? I don’t know. All I do know is that we live in a hurting, broken world and its been that way since sin came into the world. Some people have said that Satan attacked her mind and the only way to solve the problem was for God to take her away. I know that this is something that is comforting to think and it helps provide an answer to the things in life that we don’t understand. But should we sacrifice an absolute that we know–that God is good all the time–so that we can try to understand what we don’t understand.Pastor Bill Johnson says that one of the most freeing things we can learn to say is “I don’t know.” Why did this terrible thing happen? I don’t know. It’s also foolish to make up answers to things we don’t understand, especially when our answers contradict an absolute we have learned about God.

So, sometimes I find myself asking why this tragedy happened and I really don’t know. That’s all I do know, is that I don’t know. And I know that I can’t try to make up an answer to try to ease the hurt and pain I feel. The other thing I know is that God is good and even through this tragedy I still believe that He is good. All the time. I know my heart hurts and haven’t been spending a whole lot of time with God the past few days, but I’m not mad at God or anything like that.

Anyway, here is a song I have been listening to lately, called Your Love Never Fails by Chris Quilala, because it reminds me that God is good and that his love is perfect and never fails. And why does His love never fail? Because He is good all the time. So listen to it because its a good song. 

So this is my first post and this is just what I’ve been going through lately. I suppose I’ll eventually figure out how all this stuff works later. And for now, I’m peacin out.