New Life

At the start of this academic year my team leader challenged us as a staff and relay team to try and study Uncover with someone seeking to find out more about Jesus.

I must admit that I was a little skeptical that I'd either a) have time to do it or b) be able to find someone to do it with.
Anyway, in freshers' week my relay worker Emma took the plunge and boldly invite a Macedonian student to look at it with her (see previous post). They began and as a met with Emma for supervision each week it was wonderful see how they were both learning about Jesus and growing in different ways.

A few weeks later, through the CU, I was introduced to Y from Malaysia. We had a bit of a chat and I asked if he wanted to meet up for coffee. He agreed. We met and got to know one another a little and decided to study Uncover together. As we progressed through the studies, straddling the Christmas break (we started in Nov and finished early March), it was clear that he was intellectually ascenting to the truth the Jesus is the Son of God, but he didn't think he had enough faith to step out and become a Christian.

His brother had become a Christian a few years ago and Y himself had been along to church a few times, and since moving to Teesside Uni for study had been attending the local Chinese Methodist Church where he was regularly hearing from the Bible and studying it.

At the end of the Uncover course I asked him where he thought he was in terms of becoming a Christian and he said he believed it all but wasn't ready to commit. So we decided we would keep meeting and as he read the Bible in his own time he would note down any questions and we would them chat about them when we next met up. By this time it was nearing the Easter break. We met a couple of times like this, but due to holidays and assignments for Y as well as holidays and busyness for me, we had a few weeks without meeting.

Just last week we met once again to chat. But this we mainly spoke about his course finishing, his plans between now and heading home to Malaysia, job prospects and the future. I finally asked him where he now thought he was in terms of trusting Jesus. He smiled and began to tell me that he had been challenged to commit to following Jesus a couple of weeks previous at his church and he had prayed with a friend.
I didn't quite catch what he said the first time, but had caught enough that I ask more directly whether he had prayed to trust Jesus and become a Christian. He had!

I was so excited, and told him that I was too!!! God had been working all along, in my weakness, in my skepticism, and while I wasn't even meeting up with Y. God has it all in His hands. New life is a work of the Spirit, not my efforts.

He worries that His parents think he is just trying to be like his elder brother. He believes they will be supportive of his decision, but wonders if they think he has just jumped on a bandwagon, to use a western phrase. He knows what he believes.

Pray for our new brother in Christ. Praise God for new life. Pray for deep roots to be put down into gospel truth and the character of God. Pray for Y to grow in love for Jesus and find a good church to be part of when he gets back to Malaysia.

Think about Easter

Why not think about the claims of Jesus this Easter?
Here's a few things you could do:

1. Read a gospel. Mark is the shortest.
2. Ask a Christian friend to tell you what he/she believes about Jesus/Easter and why.
3. Sign up to a course. Christianity Explored is suggested on the video but churches also run Alpha, or maybe check out Identity.
4. Or if you are a student, why not ask a friend, or contact the CU, and look through Uncover (a set of 6 Bible studies designed specifically for those wanting to engage with the person and work of Jesus).

It's a win/win situation for you:
If Jesus really did die and rise again then that changes everything = WIN!
If He didn't, you can pity Christians above all men, as the apostle Paul himself states in 1 Corinthians = WIN!

What have you got to lose?

Prayer News Jan/Feb 2012

Here is the latest prayer update for my work with CUs.
I hope that at least some of it will be an encouragement to you.

Look out for a fuller post about my Uncover study mentioned in the prayer points at the bottom of the update!

Read it here

More excitement!

At the start of last week both Teesside and Queen's Campus CUs had welcome events for the christian freshers who signed up to join or declare interest in the CU.

On Monday evening, I joined Teesside for some food in a local pub. On arriving I was expecting one or two sitting in a corner around a table because I was on time and students are normally late!
But a I entered the pub I was surprised to see around 12 fresh faces around a table getting to know one another.
As the evening went on and we order and ate our food, I think about 25 different people joined us for some or all of the time.
This was a great encouragement to me and to the current CU members. This was followed by the first CU meeting of term, where along with some local church leaders getting to know students and advertising their churches, I was given the privilege of speaking to the 20 or so students gathered about the purpose of a CU and the exciting opportunity there is for them to be part of the mission team on campus.
We looked at the gospel and thought about Jesus' high priestly prayer. Praise God for all of this.

On the same Tuesday, earlier in the day, QCCU had their fresher's fair, and though they were the furthest table from the entrance, had a bumper crop of sign-ups to the CU. Around 40 people gave their email contact details, which for a campus containing only around 700-800 freshers is great. I hope that many will come to the first meeting tomorrow.

But, the highlight of those 2 days is the conversation I had with the CU evangelism secretary for QCCU. She had been speaking to a friend about Jesus in the past. They got together near then end of the summer holidays, not long before returning to Stockton, and her friend asked if she would read the Bible with her!!! Awesome stuff! They are going to look at Mark's gospel together, and this all happened just after a training day at her house on how to read the Bible with a non-Christian friend. Added to all of that, when the CU met some of the freshers for afternoon tea, a muslim girl, who had just come along to find out a little bit about the CU, also got chatting to the same girl and they are going to look at Uncover (see below for details on Uncover)! Praise God!
(names excluded for privacy reasons)

"Who is Jesus?"

Yesterday Teesside University Christian Union had a table outside their SU with an A-Frame flip chart asking the question which is the title of the this post.
People were invited to write their answer on a post it note and stick around the question on the board (see picture).

It might not sound like much, but for the CU leaders it was big step, they were quite fearful but still wanted to go ahead with it.
God used them, and Emma and I as we helped, to bring about His purposes. There were many different answers, some quite comical written in jest, some very elaborate, some which you would expect like "A prophet" or "A man who brought people together through belief", and a surprising number who just said "I don't know"!
Here's a flavour of the answers given, some of them make for quite sad reading:

A Jewish, anti-imperialist freedom fighter.

A fictional character who was taken too far.

A top bloke.

A real person, but a judge. Keep an eye out and if you see Him, look busy.

The Dan Brown of 2011 years ago.

There were of course others who gave correct answers such as "Saviour and friend", "The Eternal Son of God", "The person who change my life forever".

But the highlight of the day, the one thing which stood out and made the whole time out trying to engage with people worth it, was this:
Emma (my Relay worker), who was a star all day being really bold and friendly despite being nervous, spoke to one girl who proceeded to write the words "a concept" on a her post-it note. Attempting to find out exactly what the girl meant by this, Emma politely asked her to explain. The girl went on to say Jesus was a concept to her because she had only heard of Him and didn't really know anything about Him. Emma's reply was almost instantaneous and I believe, totally prompted by the Spirit of God, she said "What if I could show you an orderly account of His life, would you be interested in looking at it with me?" The reply from the girl was a "yes" and they plan to meet for the first time on Saturday. What an exciting opportunity! What a testimony to the providence and love of God! The girl in question is from the FYR Macedonia.

Emma is going to go through a series of 6 Bible studies in Luke's gospel written by Rebecca Manley-Pippert called Uncover, check out the promo video here.