A Week of Devotion to God!

To those who read my blog,

This past week has been a week devoted to getting to know God. I would say this started with the Spiritual Retreat on Saturday and carried on through the Spiritual Emphasis Days (or if you're a woman, then it ended with Female Frenzy which I hear was a blast). I'd like to take you through this week as well as I can so you can get a picture of how Ambrose University College is reaching out to our Father.

Spiritual Retreat:

As V.P. of Spiritual Life at Ambrose, it is my job to put on Spiritual Retreat. The theme I picked out for student council spiritual stuff is "Struggling with God". This came out in a few ways throughout the retreat. First we did a prayer walk. On this walk we stopped off at a stair case that was sandwiched in between two areas with amazing houses. I told the people to look out over the houses and see the beauty of them. I wanted them to see how big theses houses are because there are a lot of people who don't get to live in houses as nice as the ones we saw. Basically I wanted the people to struggle with the fact that we have so much, and others have so little.

After the prayer walk, we went back to my house and shared fellowship over food. We got to know one another a little better and then we got to know most of the members of Team Peniel (the spiritual formation team at Ambrose) a little better through testimony. The only one who did not share their testimony was me. But everyone else on the team did! Their lives showed a lot of struggle and trust for God. It was such a blessing to see.

Beggar's Feast:

I was happy to see Corey Garnett (our Beggar's Feast co-ordinator) lead Beggar's this time round. He did a great job. He chose a very specific theme (as all leaders of Beggar's Feast will have to do) and that theme was 'Jesus is Lord of all'. I was blessed to be allowed to read scripture at this event. I chose Joshua 24:22 which reads, "Then Joshua said to the people, "You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the LORD, to serve Him." And they said, "We are witnesses". I did this very intentionally so that I (a different Joshua) could charge the people in the same manner. I wanted them to say (at least to themselves, if not out loud) that they would be witnesses to the Almighty and therefore make Him to be the Lord of their lives!

I had two favourite parts to Beggar's, though. The first was being able to pray with and for a good friend of mine, and the second was how Corey ended the feast. A lot of worship leaders leave people on a happy note with an upbeat song, but Corey did not. He left the people with a song that was much more introspective. He left the people thinking about their relationship with God (or at least that's how I felt). It is so easy to do what everyone else does, but Corey went against the grain and did what he needed to do to get Jesus' love across!

Spiritual Emphasis Days:

You know those Billy Graham type guys who get up on stage and just preach it? Well we had the privilege, nay, the amazing honour, to be in the presence of a guy like that. Dr. Barry Moore (Dr. Tim Moore's father) came all the way from the beautiful lad of Ontario to bring the heat like nothing else! Now don't get me wrong, there were some things that I did not like in what Dr. Moore had to say. I did not like how Dr. Moore separated the social work of the Church completely from evangelism. Actually, it was kind of funny. There were break-out sessions. I was able to go to 3/5 of them. The first one I went to was about a Church on the Fringe. This Church meets in a bar to reach out to the broken. One of the things they mentioned was how they just lived their lives in a way that was separated from what the world does and they don't even mention Jesus all the time.

Dr. Moore talked about only mentioning Jesus and these people talked about avoiding talking about Jesus. I fall in the middle. I personally think we need to earn the right to tell people about our Saviour and God. I don't believe that with every person we come across, we have to share the entirety of the Gospel (although God does open the doors for that sometimes) but we do have to share the gospel with people who we have earned the right to speak to. A lot of people have been hurt by well-meaning Christians and so Church becomes a tough conversation. If we don't know where they are coming from, then we won't know how to tell them about Jesus.

I think this idea is backed by scripture as well seeing as Jesus did a lot of healing and feeding, and loving. I can think of one exception off the top of my head where Jesus pressed for salvation first and that was when a paralytic was lowered into a house where Jesus was because the crowd was too thick for his friends to get him in. Jesus took away the man's sins first AND THEN he took away his illness. I think this story demonstrates where God places the topic of salvation. Jesus considers salvation of more value than health and well being. So even though I say, "we need to earn the right" I still believe that we also need to give people the message of salvation as it is the most important message someone can hear! I may one day take a bullet for someone and therefore save their life, but I did nothing for that person if they don't know Jesus. Maybe it would make it easier for them to know Jesus, but it is still nothing if they do not form a relationship with Jesus.

All in all, I was impressed with the Spiritual Emphasis Days. Dor. Moore brought what we needed to the campus: an urgency for the gospel. Dr. Moore's heart was and is to see as many people come to know Jesus as possible. For him, there is not greater calling! Jesus is who he wants you to know and that is why he pushed so hard for us to evangelize.

Summary:

Between struggling, Lordship, and evangelism, this week has been phenomenal! I learned so much about what it means to have a deep relationship with Christ and I am happier for it. I want to encourage you all, oh readers of my blog, that if you don't know Jesus, get to know Him as Lord, struggle with Him on issues you don't quite understand, and then share Him with the people around you because at the end of the day, He is what truly matters!

Sincerely,

Joshua