Wow…just wow

This ministry is causing me to lose a lot of sleep. Some nights I’m lucky just to get a couple of hours. God is just to doing too much here, and I am so excited that I simply cannot sleep. A couple nights ago I met with my friend who just became a Christian. He had had a rough week, and was feeling a greatly convicted and remorseful of his sin (something we could all use more of!). This gave us the wonderful opportunity to talk about these feelings, as well as about the grace that is always extended to us. He is so mature in already realizing that God’s grace is always there, but it is not to be taken advantage of, or used as an excuse to sin more. I talked to him about Dietrich Bonhoeffer (who is amazing) and how he distinguishes between free grace and cheap grace. God offers His grace to us for free, but it was far from cheap. Jesus paid a mighty high price in order to offer us grace, and so each time we accept it, we should remember and give thanks for it, as well as stop sinning. We also talked a lot about how hard it is to stop sinning altogether, despite how much we want to. I talked about aiming for progress instead of perfection, so it seems more possible. I also got to show him where James talks about endurance, and how enduring through these tough times develops maturity and wholeness in us.

This was a great conversation, but that was far from the best part. About halfway through our discussion, his roommate came in. I hadn’t met his roommate before, and I was wondering how this would change the depth of our conversation. Rather than hindering us, we just carried on. We kept talking, looking at different passages of scripture and listening to some music that we had heard at a free Christian music festival we had gone to last weekend. At first his roommate kind of stood around, just observing us but not really getting involved. Then, while we were reading another passage of scripture he pulled a chair up and really listened. As we began to talk about it, he began to ask questions of his own; about the Bible, God and Christianity in general. This was really exciting, and his face lit up when I offered to bring him his own Bible the next night.

This wasn’t even the best part yet. The next night I went to their room with a new Bible in hand, and was met by both of these guys, as well as by two of our female Chinese coworkers. When I handed the roommate his Bible, one of the girls ripped it out of his hands to read it herself. They were all waiting for me to talk about the Bible and Christianity, and were very excited that I had more Bibles for them too.

We talked for about two hours about what the Bible is, who God is and what we believe as Christians. As they had many many questions, it was awesome to see my friend that just became a Christian begin to answer them and relate his own, surprisingly mature reflections and experience. He was able to communicate what prayer is to them better than I could, and even talked about how we pray and trust in God regardless of whether we get what we want or not. He told them prayer is to help us be closer to God, not just to tell God what we need or are thankful for, since He already knows. At the end we all prayed together to thank God for all He has done for us and to ask God to reveal himself to everyone there so that they may have faith. You see, I just couldn’t sleep after that.

Also, this morning after our service, as we were putting our materials away, another girl came up to me and started asking questions. We’re meeting later to get her a Bible of her own too and see what questions she has! I’m getting a lot of practice putting my complex, second-nature faith into simple terms and concepts, and as I do I fall more and more in love with God. It is the greatest joy to be able to share with someone about the God I love and attempt to describe Him and His love to others.