Throughout Welcome Week, Shandon College leaders met to pray for UofSC students together. It was these prayers as well as brothers and sisters' prayers from Shandon Baptist and throughout South Carolina that paved the way for so many Gospel Conversations. Even in the most impromptu ways, God opens doors as He hears the pleas of His children. That is how Harris, a second year UofSC student, heard the Good News from me on a casual Friday afternoon.
I was meeting with some old residents of mine- Mia and Morgan- for lunch to catch up. After an hour and a half with them, I left and ran into my friend Craig in Russell House. I met Craig a year earlier and adore his sweet disposition and kindness. I have been trying to plug him into Shandon ever since. While we are talking, one of Craig's friends walks by, and Craig invites him over.
Harris.
I met Harris briefly last year, but I never caught more than his name. I was telling them about my day and work as a college missionary when Harris started to ask me questions about Jesus and Christianity. I was surprised yet delighted to answer.
He asked me questions about the Sabbath and if Christians follow it like Jews do. He asked me what was up with our obsession with Jesus. Do you really think He was God? Harris asked about our sacraments, Old Testament law, drinking, types of prayers, and what the Bible really was.
Most strikingly to me, he commented that Christianity seems to easy. That was when he told me he was a muslim, and he believed that just faith in Jesus could never be enough. It is too easy.
Maybe I should have been taken back, startled or shocked, but I just grinned and told him about grace. Harris didn't know what grace was. He asked, "What is this grace? I don't know what that means." I told him grace was getting what you do not deserve, and, as sinners against God, there could not be anything sweeter and more radical than God's grace. We deserve eternal punishment because we sin against an eternal God, yet that same God gives us eternal life with Him instead. We get eternal life in deep communion with God when we deserve eternal punishment and God's wrath.
I could feel my eyes get wet with tears as I talked because it reminded me how much I needed God's grace, too. I would be so broken and wicked if God had not made me into a new creation through Jesus. I would still be a slave to sin, but instead I am free from sin and adopted by God. I told Harris this, and the concept of grace and of a new creation was wild to him. And, it was all through Jesus! It did not fit with what he believed as a muslim at all.
Our conversation lasted an hour or so until Harris had to leave for class. He wanted to keep talking because he still had more questions. As I walked back to my car, more tears fell from my eyes and a huge grin light up my face. It had been a long week- my body ached and my mind often felt like it was in a cloud. I felt like ministry was a nail needing to be put into a wooden post, and I was an unhelpful screwdriver. Yet, my weakness only brought more glory to God. No other explanation fits except to say the Holy Spirit gave me the energy and the stamina to talk to Harris. How sweet it is to know God has everything figured out, and He alone makes me strong. He can use a screwdriver to put in a nail, and it will works perfectly every time.
Romans 8
"21 But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25 God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— 26 he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus."
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