After throwing our Halloween party tonight and getting the opportunity to share with 6 Muslim friends about how Jesus has changed my life, I’m resting in the hope that all the world will praise His great name. I am praying that my friends here will know the God of the universe as Lord, King, Comforter, Friend, and Savior of the world. I pray that they will know the full extent of God’s love for them, that Christ meets us where we are and doesn’t need us to clean ourselves up in order to approach Him.
I ask that those of you who have given your lives to God and put your faith and trust in what Jesus did for you on the cross, that you’d listen to this song and praise God for what He’s done in your life. Please pray these lyrics for the six women that came to tonight’s party. Pray that the lost are saved, that they find their way at the proclamation of Christ, that they will know God’s forgiveness, that they would see the sacrifice Jesus made was the only way to God. Pray that healing would occur in these precious women’s lives. Pray for the sick students that couldn’t come tonight. Praise Jesus!
I’ve been going through the book of Colossians for the past 3 months. It’s been great to go through a small section, meditate on it, chew on it, and dive deep into what God is trying to tell me. I’ve been in Colossians 3:12-13 for over a week. It’s been more of a practical application rather than a “sit and study” type of passage. There are several things in scripture that we can logically study and never gain any heart knowledge from or learn how to be obedient with (ie: patience, love, serving, humbleness, meekness, etc). I can read all day about how we are to love our Christian brothers and sisters and Christ and still fall desperately short of God’s glorious standard of what perfect love is. Relying upon my own knowledge will never produce the fruits that come from being connected to the Vine.
Colossians 3:12-13 says, “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.”
The “Put on then…” part is an implication segment which points back to verses 5-11 where Paul tells us to take off what is earthly in us (impurity, sexual immorality, evil desire, anger, wrath, malice, etc). This is also known as dying to self or putting to death the flesh. So, we’ve taken off the bad and we’re putting on compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness and patience. How lovely. That was a good read. I’m done. Right?
Walking in this new life God has for me is an act of my will. Salvation is through His grace alone and not of anything I could ever do, but I have the active choice to daily take off the flesh and put on Christ.
One of the cool things about these verses was that all of these attributes are what accurately represents Christ. Compassionate hearts: He has compassion on the masses (Matthew 9:36). Kindness: He dies on the cross for wicked, rebellious people (Eph. 2:7). Humility: He, who is God, humbled Himself to the Father’s will and died for us (Philippians 2:8). Meekness: Jesus bore the sinner’s cross, although He knew no sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21). And finally, patience: I know this isn’t the most appropriate description, but sin screwed up God’s masterpiece. Sin entered the world because of our representative, Adam. After God made atonement for sin, we still rebell. And again. And Again. And again. And yet, He still loves us. He is in a constant pursuit to restore us back to Him, which is why He sent His son to die on the cross for us. If that isn’t a perfect example of patience, I don’t know what is.
We’re here, all people, to be a representative of God. We’re here to give Him glory by reflecting His character. Christ was all of these things. We are to walk in step with God to show those around us who God is.
A lot of our Muslim students will say, “The Qur’an is a lot like the Bible. It tells you what to do and what not to do.” Friend, the Bible explains how you can be reconciled to God and how to walk with Him after you’ve been reconciled to Him through Christ’s death on the cross. It isn’t a list of things to do and not do in order to present yourself as blameless before God. We cannot make ourself clean enough before Him.
As Paul would say, I am not perfect and have not obtained perfection. I still struggle with putting to death the flesh and choosing God over my impatience, frustration, bitterness, and overall moodiness. I just think it is very cool to learn that the sanctification process isn’t about us. It’s about God refining us so that we can more accurately represent Him in the world and give Him all the glory. Super cool.
I am so sorry I have neglected you my dear wordpress readers! I can’t even describe how busy we’ve been the past week and a half. But busy is good! I am attempting to work on my newsletter soon, so you will get something better than this post soon! I’m currently working on our content for a meeting tomorrow, so I’m a little scatter brained right now. Sorry! You will get a better post soon! I promise!
But, I wanted to share with you a photo from our first “Welcome Back” party. Here’s us with some of our girls! There were over 20 girls that came and were presented the gospel in a large setting and one-on-one. We’ve met with a few of these students and a lot of them are so close to receiving Christ. Please continue to be praying for our students at UCAD.
Today was our monthly day with the Lord. Basically we’re given a full-mandatory day with the Lord to seek Him and dig deeper into Him. The girls on our team went into the city to a fancy café/bakery. We walked down about 2 blocks to hail a cab, and took the longest car ride into downtown. Generally speaking, it takes about 10-15 minutes to get downtown. It took over an hour to get to our destination. On our way there we were stopped numerous times on the expressway and beach-strip due to what the Senegalese call “Monday traffic.”
There are some days that I forget I’m in Africa. Today was not one of those days. All alongside the roads to downtown were children begging for money and food, women in wheelchairs begging with their babies in their laps, and people who were sleeping on the streets. I hate that my initial response was to look away. I didn’t want to see their need and their hurt. To be honest, I felt really helpless, like I didn’t have anything to offer them. I didn’t have any money or food on me and there still remains the ever lingering language barrier. What on earth could I offer them? After walking into one of the nicest coffee, sandwich, and pastry shops in Dakar, I instantly realized the poverty gap and which side I was standing on.
As we sat inside to study God’s word, listen to podcasts, and learn more about God, I realized my plan to learn more about God’s grace was going to be righteously usurped by God. He wanted to sweetly remind me that Christ is worth losing everything to gain Him alone. Philipians 3:8-12 were a sweet reminder that righteousness (a right standing before God) does not come from the law and my own efforts. It comes through faith in Christ and is dependent only upon that faith. One of the key phrases that stuck out was, “that I may know Him.” Gosh, what a passion for Christ that I often lack! I want to lose all, count all as rubbish for the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my lord!
As I meditated on that scripture, the events and sightings of the day hit me in the face. Christ is worth giving up everything because when we put our faith and trust into what He did for us on the cross, we become righteous before God. I might not have had any money or food on me, but I am able to tell all the poor and powerless that there is a God who loves them so much that He gave His only son to bring us back to Him.
I love that God is constantly making the gospel more and more precious to me. It is for everyone, especially all the poor and powerless.
I have so much to update you on! Business in the front: October 4th (this Tuesday) is International Day of Prayer. So, we’re asking that you would prayerfully come alongside our STINT team and Campus Pour Christ team that day.
Prayer Requests:
Pray for our students to arrive on campus safely. Some students are traveling from villages that are hours away.
Pray that their hearts would be softened to hear the gospel and that God would go before us.
Pray for our hearts to see these student’s needs and to not become hardened to it, that it may burden us for the sake of Christ!
Pray that God would provide support for the Senegalese staff families.
Pray for the health (emotional, physical, and spiritual) of our team, the Senegal team, and the Congolese team.
Pray for the upcoming elections (they are in February). Pray that riots/political deomonstrations would be limited and wouldn’t keep us from campus. This was a slight problem last year.
Ministry Stories: Last week, Whitney (my lovely, hysterical, and Spirit-filled roommate) invited a student over to our house to hang out. They hadn’t ever met, but this student was a contact from the summer project team that came for six weeks earlier this summer. The sweet Senegalese student, Khoudu, traveled over an hour by bus to get to our apartment to hang out with Whitney. I decided since both of my roommates were in the kitchen hanging out with her, I wanted to join too. So, I invited myself along for the conversation.
Khoudou was SO funny. In the middle of our conversation she said, “You shouldn’t be called Campus Pour Christ. You should call yourselves the ‘Jesus Lovers.’” Whitney shared her testimony of coming to know God through Jesus with her, and sweet, little Rachel passionately shared about how she knew for certain that she will be in Paradise with God because He has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” I feel like I said so much, and tried to explain so much, to Khodou but one thing in particular stuck out to me.
We started talking about the differences between different religions. She mentioned that all religions teach the same thing: be a good, moral person. The problem with that argument is the fact that Jesus, the person Christianity was founded upon, never said that. Therefore we have to eliminate Christianity from that argument thus making it different than the rest of the world’s religions.
One of the cool things about God is that He directs your path. I’ve been in the book of Colossians since July 27th. For those of you who aren’t familliar with Colossians, it’s only four chapters long. I’ve been there for a while because I fully believe God wants me to grasp this book in it’s entirety. The first chapter of colossians presents the gospel and the divinity of Christ. The second chapter goes through not being persuaded to another gospel, but the true one of Jesus and how to walk in truth. And the third chapter starts with how to walk in step with the God.
The amazing thing about chapter three is that if you are looking on from the outside, it looks like a “do this, don’t do this” chapter. For example verse five: “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry…” But there are a few words in the beginning of this chapter that change the whole meaning. 3:1, “If then you have been raised with Christ…”.
This part of the book is not about how to impress God apart from Christ, how to earn God’s favor, or how to make yourself righteous before God. This part is about how to walk with God once you’ve been raised with Christ. The only way we can have a restored relationship with God is if we are sinless. All of us, especially me, are sinful. We cannot change our ways on our own and think we are acceptable in the sight of a holy and just God. The only way we can stand before God as innocent is through double imputation=Christ taking our sin, us receiving His righteousness. We cannot earn/be an active participant in the saving work of God. We can receive Him, and that’s it.
So, the application verses are only for the process of sanctification (becoming more like Christ) rather than justification (being made innocent/clean before God).
I thought it was super cool that God had me in Colossians for so long to be able to understand that what makes Christianity different is that we cannot do anything to earn His favor. It isn’t about us. It is about what Christ did for us on the cross, and about God loving us so much that He wanted to redeem us from this mess.
We have been in a country for almost a month where people are striving to make themselves acceptable before God. We see it everyday. We cannot earn God’s love. He freely gives it to us (that’s the definition of grace). I pray that the students we encounter this upcoming year will be open to hearing that Jesus paid it all, and all to Him I owe! I pray that Khoudou’s eyes and heart will be open to seeing God’s goodness and redemption plan.
So, that’s that. Sorry this is so long. Here’s some lyrics to a really great hymn called Rock of Ages that really brings to life the gospel for me. And here’s a modern version of the song. I love it. And I love you too.
Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
let me hide myself in thee;
let the water and the blood,
from thy wounded side which flowed,
be of sin the double cure;
save from wrath and make me pure.
2. Not the labors of my hands
can fulfill thy law’s commands;
could my zeal no respite know,
could my tears forever flow,
all for sin could not atone;
thou must save, and thou alone.
There were over 20 girls that came and were presented the gospel in a large setting and one-on-one. We’ve met with a few of these students and a lot of them are so close to receiving Christ. Please continue to be praying for our students at UCAD.
