Lizzy's Journey to Truth
Being involved in college ministry, summer is a unique time for us as students wrap up the collegiate year and take off to their various locations for the summer. But before that comes the month of June and the fear of all students...exams!
As the sun stays with us longer and longer each day, students can be found out and around their universities soaking it in as they cram for their finals. This provided us with a great opportunity to team up with staff from Campus Crusade’s high school ministry to go share our faith on a few campuses in Moscow. The first campus we visited was Moscow State University. The first group I got to share with had a few guys and a girl named Lizzy. This is Lizzy’s story.
Our conversation started out well as I asked Lizzy some questions about her spiritual beliefs. We talked about religion, philosophy and aspects of reason and faith. Lizzy has a deep and honest understanding of the spiritual world around her and the basic concepts of Christianity. We were dialoguing well when suddenly Lizzy opened up.
“I’m just lacking in confidence. I think about these things and try to reason them out in my head but in the end I just don’t like my thoughts. There are things I can’t explain and I don’t know what to do with that.” This simple acknowledgment opened the way to connect with Lizzy where she is. Sharing about my questions and struggles with faith, reason, doubt and uncertainty led us to Christ and the confidence that can be found in Him.
It’s obvious that Lizzy is on a journey. It’s a privilege to walk alongside her in that journey. Please continue to pray for her as she searches for answers, for confidence, for truth. She’s getting closer.
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2nd
City Wide
On May 15th about fifteen students and ex-students gathered to share what the Lord has been doing on their campuses. A representative of each major university reported about what evangelistic events they planned, how they felt about where things are now, what they would like so see in the future, and what roadblocks they have encountered as they invite their friends to know God personally.
What have they tried and how did it work?
They have tried all sorts of things: English clubs, philosophical discussions, handing out planners with evangelistic content, and just sharing with neighbors in the dorms. A few of them have seen people come to know the Lord this semester, most of them have seen some kind of spiritual interest in their friends, and all of them have been turned down or ignored by people who couldn’t care less about a man who died two-thousand years ago.
The most common problem they all saw was apathy.
The three questions there were all asking are:
1. “How can we get freshmen involved in the ministry, both the unbelievers and the believing students who feel alone?”
“Maybe some tours of the most famous places in Moscow, giving out planners with spiritual surveys, but either way it’s important to start preparing in August.”
2. “What about social projects? Should we be more involved with those?”
“There are lots of orphanages we could be visiting.” “We could take students with us to see the love of Christ in action.” “It might be easier to go with an organization that’s already doing social projects instead of starting our own from scratch.”
3.“How can we get students interested in what’s going on?”
“We need to make sure we are inviting them to topics they are going to be interested in talking about – like films, philosophy, music, business.” “Sometimes its better to invite someone to your home instead of to church or some other place. That way they feel more of a personal connection.”
These students are wrestling with how best to reach their universities for Christ, and it’s also very clear how difficult a road they have before them. But there’s a joy and excitment seeing these Russian students eager to share the love of Christ with their classmates. |
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