Overwhelmed (For the best reasons)

Our crazy start to the year has only continued. God has blessed us with so much growth and so many students who are eager to learn more about the Lord, dive deeper into their relationship with Him, and get plugged into a community. What a blessing! It’s been an absolutely beautiful season of ministry the last couple of months. Everything comes with trade offs though. The trade off for all this spectacular growth and eagerness is that our pastoral team and student leader team is having to scramble to be faithful with what God has so generously given us. The verse about the harvest being plentiful and the workers being few has never felt so true.

Jesus is the savior, not us.

One of the things that I’m learning in this season is to rely on Jesus’ strength, and to ultimately entrust the outcome of everything to His hands. The irony being that I was only fooling myself to think it was ever not in His hands in the first place. With all these students we are trying to minister to, I and some of our other leaders can have a tendency to feel pressure to perform in various ways. We start putting the burden on our shoulders instead of leaving it squarely on the shoulders of the One who can actually carry it. So one of the things the Lord has been leading us in is releasing our desire for control, and instead embracing reliance on God and the guidance of the Spirit.

Beautiful Moments

In the midst of these hectic times are beautiful moments where we get to see God work in powerful ways.

We’ve been having baptisms weekly lately which has been so sweet, and so many students come out to support these students who are publicly committing their lives to the Lord!

I’ve had sweet moments in my small group as well. We have several guys who are coming from a background of frat parties and getting black out drunk on the weekends, and are now coming to a Bible study to encounter Jesus! We also have a couple who aren’t Christian who are just curious about who this Jesus guy is and what makes these people who follow Him different. Seeing all this drive to know Jesus is so exciting and inspiring to me. It’s also so cool to see some of the older guys in our small group who are from those backgrounds ministering to and encouraging these guys. I love seeing God work in those ways and seeing Him inspire our community to be a welcoming place for all these new people!

Prayer Requests

I’d love if you’d be praying for all these new people, whether they know Christ or not, to dive deeper into relationship with Him and to build healthy spiritual friendships with their peers while they are here!

Also be praying for energy for our pastors and student leaders as we try to meet the needs of this year! The harvest is certainly plentiful! Pray that the Lord would send more workers into the field!

Pray that we can continue to be strong in the things that make FOCUS what it is as we go through a season of change and growth!