God is Faithful

I want to use this blog to talk about the faithfulness of God. And how faith-deserving He is.


I love the song "Faithful." One of the verses says, "Faithful, you are faithful. I have found nothing but good in your heart." That is so true, and also one of my favorite things about God. There is NOTHING bad in Him, nothing sinful, nothing wrong, nothing harmful, no lies or deceit...NOTHING but GOOD, nothing but truth. What good news is that! There is One who we can have complete faith and trust in. He is completely good, completely faithful, He will never let us down, never lie to us, never harm us. He is the "one and only," as John refers to Him in his gospel. 


Our semester has gone awesome at Collin. This is now my 5th year of doing campus ministry, and from experience, I can tell you it has been a very blessed first half. We have so many girls who have invested heavily in our ministry and who have begun to catch the vision of what God can do in and through them.


I had one of our freshman girls over to my house a couple weeks ago for lunch. I was so encouraged by her story. She graduated from Allen High School and had planned to go off somewhere for college. When it came time however some doors closed and those other schools didn't end up working out. She knew her dad preferred her to go to Collin anyways, so she reluctantly decided she would go ahead and go there just for this year. One of her friends that summer before starting college had met some of our guys while they were out playing ultimate frisbee one night, and so, knowing she was a Christian, told her about the ministry and that she should get involved. She didn't think much else about it. Once school came, she started her new job, and her boss happened to be one of the guys who was a part of our Collin ministry early on. He also told her about Focus and invited her that week. Since she had now heard about it twice she thought she better go, that maybe God wanted her there. She went that first night and as Casey talked, she said she got kinda freaked out haha. He was challenging all the students to not think of Collin as a stepping stone, or a waiting period, until they got to their "real" college experience, but to seek what God's purpose is for them here and now. She said that was the exact mentality she had. She didn't want to go to Collin, she thought she would be depressed and bummed out all year, and couldn't wait till she was able to go somewhere else. But those words caught her attention, and she has been one of our most faithful and involved members this year. She is happy, she has tons of close friends here, she is growing in her walk, and is considering staying at Collin another year, and maybe even going to UNT after that to be involved with our ministry there (at least that's what I told her to do :) ). I foresee her being an awesome leader in the Kingdom and, God willing, in our ministry.

This is a picture of her and I at my wedding.

That's just one example of the faithfulness we get from God. He takes care of us, He does what's best for us. He works everything out for our good. It is our job to listen for His voice, have FAITH, and just be obedient.

I will make a small note here: Yes, evil is in the world; bad things happen. Bad things happen to some of the best. But that isn't from God; God never wanted that. Don't let Satan fool you into blaming God for the bad in this world. If he can do that, then you have let him win. 

The good news is that God is so good that He can turn bad things around for good. And in the end God wins! We know the outcome of all of this. Good triumphs over evil! And until then, we've got the big guy on our side, working everything out for the good of those who love Him (Rom. 8:28).

Isaiah 48:17-18: This is what the LORD says— your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: “I am the LORD your God, who teaches you what is best for you, who directs you in the way you should go. If only you had paid attention to my commands, your peace would have been like a river, your well-being like the waves of the sea.

God's way is always the best way, not always the easiest I might say, but always the best. He is faithful to us, and He is deserving of our faith.


Keep praying for our ministry! Pray for our students' exams, pray that their winter break will be fruitful, and be praying for our winter camp coming up in January! That camp is one of the most important things we do all year, it has changed many lives, pray God will continue to work as He has in the past, and even more and more!

Here is a silly picture of our ministry at Fall Camp in September :)

Much love and thanks to you all! God bless!

October Update

October was a fun and very crazy month. For starters I got married, which if you’re reading this you probably already know. That caused me to have a pretty fast and furious October; I felt mentally and physically exhausted a lot of the time. With that said, I am very happy to be married now, and to not be planning a wedding anymore! The wedding was great, I was glad to have it, it was fun and special, but I am ecstatic that it’s over and I get to just enjoy the married life and do ministry again without having a constant haunting feeling that I forgot to get something done and that my wedding will be a disaster. Life is good.

Even though October was full of stress, God is good and God is faithful. He’s been working fervently in our ministry and He has continued to bless me by teaching me new things and reminding me of things I know but seem to forget about.

On our girl’s side of the ministry I estimate that we have over thirty one-on-one bible studies going on. That is awesome! These are with girls that are involved in our ministry as well as those who aren’t. We aren’t a ministry that is focused on getting people to our large group meeting and building up our numbers. We are focused on helping people find Jesus, fall in love with Him, and ultimately give their life to Him. And if that happens through them coming to our ministry, great, but if not than that’s God’s business and we are happy to play whatever part He’s given us. One really cool thing from this month that I would like to share with you is a story of one our student leaders. She works at a bank with I think five or so women who are all quite a bit older than her. She was telling me that she has had some religious conversations with them here and there when it has come up, and has given bibles to two of them on different occasions after they had approached her with various spiritual questions.  She then told me that she felt like God was wanting her to ask a particular one of them if they would be interested in studying the bible, and although scared to do so, she did. The lady said yes and was very excited about the opportunity. Running into the girl’s mom later on she said, “You’re daughter’s gonna teach me!” How cool is that? A twenty year old has trusted God, despite fear and intimidation, and is going to teach the gospel to a forty-seven year old! God is good you guys, and He is working! I encourage you to look at your own life. What has God been pushing you to do? If you can’t think of anything, then you’re probably not opening your ears and listening. Paul tells us that “those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.” If we are being led by the Spirit then we should have plenty on our minds of what we should be doing for Him, because there is plenty of work to be done. I was encouraged and challenged by this story, and hope you will take it to heart also, being spurred on toward saying “yes” to God in whatever He asks of you, and keeping your eyes and ears open to the Spirit.

We've got about a month and a half left of the semester and then it’s winter break. Which winter break is actually still a great time for ministry in our community college realm because no one really “goes home” since they all live close, so that will be just as exciting as the semester. Please keep praying for us! Pray big prayers, have big faith, and be looking for what God is calling you to do as well. I love you guys and gals. Thank you for your support in letting me get the chance to work for God in a really cool and exciting way, it wouldn't be possible without ya’ll.

Let this be a month full of praising God and doing big things for Him!

September!

           Another month gone and another one already underway! This has been a great month! I have been blessed to get to observe all the things God is doing already in this early stage of the year. First of all, we have so many girls in our ministry! I have been overwhelmed by how many new girls have been coming, and staying, and how more just keep coming haha. As a ministry whose primary focus is one-on-one ministry, trying to make sure all of these girls have a personal connection with someone on my leader team has been a challenge. But I must say it’s a great challenge to have, and my leader team has done a great job rising to the challenge. Each of these girls are probably putting in anywhere from 10-15 hours a week for ministry purposes, all the while going to school and working. That’s quite a bit to take on. Five one-on-one bible studies a week is a lot to take on for a brand new leader who has never done that before, but she has risen to the challenge, and is doing great! I could go through the list of all the things they are doing, because I am so proud of all of them. Giving so much of their life for God and others as a college student is a rare and big deal.

          Besides just having so many new girls, I have already seen God impacting them. At our Fall camp a couple weeks ago, which went awesome by the way, while talking to a couple girls about their lives and listening to some of the high and low points in their life, they said that this was their high point so far in their life. They said that coming to Focus has been such a blessing, what they’ve been praying for and what they needed. That is just so neat and encouraging to me. And it’s not about Focus. We don’t do these things for Focus, to advance that name or be known as some great organization. That doesn’t matter. If Focus becomes the biggest campus ministry in the country, it still doesn’t matter. It’s all about God. God is the one that can make things happen. He is the reason for these things. He alone is good, and nothing that we could do in our human efforts would even compare to what He can do. We’re just a bunch of people who have decided to live for Him and do our best to do that, we’re nothing special, but God is, and He has been doing a great work in our ministry. All glory to Him!

          In addition to those things, my internship is going great. I’m learning and growing more and more every day. We’ve been studying through the gospels and that has been such a neat experience. I had read through them all before, but when I thought about it I hadn’t read them all the way through since junior high. Turns out the gospels through the eyes of a 23 year old look a little different than they did through the eyes of a 12 year old. Last week we read through Mark twice, and a few weeks ago we read through Matthew twice. I was surprised at how much Jesus talked about faith. Not faith as in just believing that He was the Christ but faith in His ability. Constantly the gospels refer to people’s faith in regards to Jesus’ miracles. “Your faith has healed you,” “because of their lack of faith,” “Jesus saw their faith,” “according to your faith,” “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted;” Mark tells of a time a man brought his son to Jesus and wanted Him to cast an evil spirit out of him, he begged Jesus to do something if He could. Jesus’ reply was, “If you can?” and He went on to say that “Everything is possible for one who believes.” At one point Mark says that Jesus was in His home town but could not perform many miracles there, and it says He was amazed at their lack of faith. Later He told the disciples that if they told a mountain to throw itself in the sea and believed it would happen without doubting in their heart, then the mountain would obey them. It seems to me that faith in Jesus’ ability and His will to do the things we ask of Him makes a big difference in the actual outcome of the things we ask for. Perhaps the reason we don’t see big things happen that often is because we don’t believe it actually will, or we just don’t ask for big things altogether. The things we pray for become more of a wish or something that we hope will occur by some lucky chance that God does it. So we ask and cross our fingers and wait and see. That’s not faith. There have been a couple times in my life that I have asked for God to do something big in someone else's life, something that I KNEW would not happen unless God made it happen. I asked for it and I chose to believe God would do it. And He did. Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see (Heb. 11:1). Our God is big. Our God is able. Our God is good. Let’s pray for big things. Let’s ask God for the things that only God could do, and let’s have faith that He will do it.


God is good!


Love you guys :)

First Month of Ministry

Well that went fast. As of today I have my first month of full time campus ministry under my belt. It's been a whirlwind! It's been smooth yet very stressful; discouraging at times and highly encouraging at others; it's been tiring; it's been fun; it's had lots of ups and of downs...but it's been AAWWEESSOOMMEE. Honestly after the first week I thought, "What was I thinking committing to live a year of my life like this?!" but now I'm thinking "Praise God I committed to live a year of my life like this!" God is good and this first month has been wonderful! I have fallen more in love with Jesus, I have been more joyful in Him than probably ever before, more reliant on Him, more thankful for Him and what He's done in and for me, more excited to do His work, more focused on His will, and I have been completely humbled that He calls me His daughter in the midst of all my shortcomings, and still allows me to work alongside Him in His mission. Now, more than ever, I have no doubt this is where God has called me to be.

Personal Growth

I don't want to spend this whole post talking about myself but I do want to give God glory for what He has done in me and is doing. This month has been a STRUGGLE. Managing and organizing my time wisely, or really being organized in anything for that matter, has never been my strong suit. Well a big part of my internship is time management and being balanced in my lifestyle. I report hours spent on all kinds of things to my supervisor each week and those hours are supposed to be balanced a certain way depending on my goals and the expectations for me. I have felt SO uncomfortable living like this! I don't naturally like having to think about where my time is going and being purposeful with it and putting much thought at all into that but I am being forced to, and I absolutely hate it, but actually love it. I want to live purposefully, I want to accomplish a lot for God, but it's not going to happen on accident, so time management is a wonderful thing.

Collin College Ministry

Our ministry is off to a great start! Collin didn't start school until the 22 of August so I spent a lot of time those first few weeks just getting to know our girl student leaders I'll be working with this year, and beginning to cultivate a friendship with each of them. I can honestly tell you we have such a neat group of leaders at Collin. These girls have such a heart for God and their willingness to step up and step out of their comfort zone to try and do something big for God is inspiring! Those first few weeks were also spent getting our student leaders (Corefas,"Core Facilitators"), as well as our other ministry returners, prepped and ready for the year.This is our second week of school and we are full steam ahead. We strongly believe as a ministry that the first few weeks of school are critical. There are so many new students on campus trying to figure out what this whole college deal is like, where they fit, who their friends are gonna be, and ultimately beginning to shape who they're gonna be the next four years, and quite possibly the rest of their lives. So our goal is to be up on campus, meeting and befriending people any chance we get, and I feel like our students have done a great job of this. At our first Thursday Night Fellowship probably about a third of the people there were people who had never come before! That's a big deal. An even bigger deal is that since we don't have a ton of opportunity to advertise on campus, most of these people were met and invited personally by members of our group. I have been so impressed with the students in our ministry and their excitement to reach as many as possible for Jesus. Another cool thing, is most of these people requested to be involved in one of our small groups during the week, our CORES. This is where the CORE of our ministry happens and we're pumped to get those started this coming week!

So all in all, it was a successful first month but we're just getting started, "the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few." Collin College is huge and there's so many people there who have never met the real Jesus. What a tragedy! Thank you to all of you who are supporting me and other Focus staff members. You are doing God's work through us! How cool is that? Please continue to pray for our campus mission work. It's far from done!