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 :)