This past Friday the 21st was Texas Woman’s University Baptist Student Ministry’s first day of the Alpha course.
The Alpha course is just a beginning point to ask questions and explore the christian faith, but also allows followers to ask hard questions, solidify their faith, and grow in community.
Alpha started in London, England at Holy Trinity Brompton church and is now all over the world.
But this blog isn’t really about promoting Alpha or the alpha course at all, but it is about Jesus and what He did that Friday.
After covering the campus sidewalks with question marks and some information we hoped for a good turn out on Friday.
Every Friday we meet together around 11am and I do some evangelism training, and we pray walk the campus and evangelize.
Well only one student showed up this Friday and the olympics were on and so many other things were happening. My director and I also got caught up with getting things done that needed to get done so we didn’t pray and we didn’t evangelize.
While my Director was in a meeting I knew I needed the pray. I turned off the TV hoping someone in the lounge area would join me, but no one really seemed interested, so I went into the prayer room and prayed.
I became really discouraged and knew that I needed to trust God no matter what the outcome was.
As the time got closer to 3pm when Alpha would start and as a few of the leaders trickled in I became even more discouraged and I couldn’t hide it.
Together with my Director and a few students leaders who were there we prayed.
I made a whole pot of coffee, my director left to get food and pick up her children and then I received a phone call from someone with Alpha. He wanted to call and check up on us to see if we had any questions, wanted training, or needed any help. Wow, what an answer to prayer. He encouraged me, gave me some ideas, and then prayed with me. It was just what I needed. /
I got me fired up and gave me hope.
I got a few texts saying people couldn’t come, but by 3:30 I knew we needed to start.
Now it was me and 3 student leaders.
So as we four started to listen to Charlie Mackasy talk about if there was more to life than this one of my residents from when I was living on campus and working as a Resident Assistant with campus housing walks in.
Then as 2 other leader came in and Sydney (name change), who is a student that is blind and who I have known and been trying to minister to the last 3 years of being at TWU, just decided to walk in and see what was going on. No one had told her about Alpha, she can’t see the promotional flyers and chalk around campus, but something lead her to come that Friday afternoon.
Now Sydney* grew up in a Christian home, but got caught up in new age religion and is now really spiritual and looks at God as mostly love, and doesn’t really believe Jesus is the only way. She will talk about God and the Holy Spirit, but Jesus really isn’t in most of her conversations.
Now it was 2 students, 3 leaders and I while the other 2 leaders were working on things in the kitchen.
I rewound the talk and us 6 listened to it.
As we giggled at the jokes and how Charlie tried to talk in a Texan accent, God was at work.
When it was done I asked a few questions.
One was, “If God was in the room, what question would you ask Him?”
Here are a few that I got:
“What is my purpose?”
“What about good people of other religions, where will they go?”
“Why are children sexually abused?”
“Why do people die of hunger?”
“Why do bad things happened to good people?”
“Why does God allow serial killers and can they be saved?”
Through tears and laughter we spilled our hearts with hard questions like these and even some like “where is my husband?”
Their vulnerability blessed me so much.
In that short amount of time we had together, community was built, relationships were made, walls came down, and God started a work.
Now I could try to answer all of those, but I knew that they needed to figure out the answers for themselves, and over the next few months I hope that through teaching, questions, and sharing God will reveal to them the answers they are looking for, and if now than maybe give them peace knowing that it is okay that we don’t have all the answers and that they can still trust knowing He is good.
Next week we will talk about who Jesus is. I have a good feeling more people will be there, so please pray that God continues the work He started and continues to bless each one coming in and paves a way for hearts to be reconciled to Him and be made new, through Jesus.
Together we can start a new beginning with Jesus.
My Journey 