Trusting God for a Harvest

Email

2009-07-02T08:22:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone,

I am leaning toward sending out regular emails instead of a blog...there are only a few people who look at the blog, while everyone checks their email. I would still do it as a sort of journal entry, and if you would like to comment on it, you could just send me an email back! Just wanted to let you know. Look for an email soon!

Michael

Listening Prayer

2009-06-17T10:39:00.000-07:00

Before I write about listening prayer, I would like to give an update on what's been going on ministry-wise. For those of you who have been praying for Cat, THANK YOU! She came to church on Sunday and it was awesome! She got to meet people at the church and get loved on by them, and she's been reading through the book of Mark. We are going to get lunch tomorrow and she says that she has a bunch of questions for me! Praise the Lord! Please continue to pray for her to come to know Jesus and for her to see how great He is, how relevant He is for her life, and how much she needs Him.

I got lunch with Phil the other day, and praise the Lord, we had some significant conversation. We got to talk about loneliness and how people at Wake can easily get caught up in that and how much we need community. I got to share with him some about how hard my sophomore year there was and open up about some things. It wasn't necessarily a conversation about Jesus and how he's the Savior of the world, but praise the Lord that it was something deeper than just "so, did you watch the basketball game the other night?" haha. We did talk about that, by the way, and there's certainly nothing wrong with that, but sometimes it seems like that's all we ever talk about and I hunger to have an opportunity to talk with him about Jesus!

Luke seems to be doing just ok. I have gotten lunch with him recently and he seems to be struggling with making time to read the Bible and really living a life that is sold out for the Lord. I think part of the reason may be that the Christian community that is normally there for him during the schoolyear is not there during the summer. Please pray for consistency in the Word for him.

Ok, so I finally made it to listening prayer. I had an extremely edifying time of prayer with a guy who works for the church the other day. What started as me asking for his help with a computer problem turned into a discussion about evangelism and about our hearts for the Wake Forest campus! I knew that we were really connecting on some of these things, especially when at one point in the conversation both of us looked at each other, unable to speak, with tears in our eyes because of the passion the Lord had placed inside us for seeing students at Wake come to know Jesus and experience all that the Lord has for them. After that time of prayer, I felt led to go into the prayer room at Reynolda and just spend some time with the Lord, especially listening to Him and to His will for me. I ended up spending like an hour and a half in there listening to God and writing down what He was saying to me! It was so awesome, and so refreshing. It gave me so much direction, and the Lord placed a whole bunch of Scriptures on my heart. I look forward to digging into them more. All that to say, God still speaks today and I hadn't been taking the time to just listen to Him and go where He tells me to. I encourage you to do the same. Take some time out of your busy day, ask God to speak to you, and just sit in His presence and listen until He does. It's worth it. Jeremiah 29:13 says "you will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart." Go for it. :)

PRAISE GOD!!!

2009-06-09T13:34:00.000-07:00

I had an incredible experience today. I got lunch with my friend Cat, who I have been praying for off and on for a while now. She had emailed me earlier in the week and said, "There is something I need to talk about that I don't understand, and you are the perfect person to explain this to me." I figured that that meant something spiritual, so I prayed before I had lunch with her today and then got together with her.

We ended up having this really great conversation! One of the first things she said to me was "I want to talk about God." She told me that she had bought a Bible and started reading it and that she really liked what she was reading. She then opened up to me a lot and asked a bunch of spiritual questions, and was kind of confused about what it meant to be a Christian. I said, "Maybe we should clear up exactly what it means to be a Christian, first." She said ok, and was very receptive to what I had to say.

As I was explaining to her the entire gospel story, beginning with Adam and Eve and the fall and Sin entering the world, the passage from Luke 24 came to mind, where Jesus explained everything to the two men on the road to Emmaus. The Scripture says, "And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in the Scriptures concerning himself." (Luke 24:27). It was like that was exactly what was happening!!! She was so curious, and the Holy Spirit was definitely working in her heart and speaking through me, and it was AWESOME!!! I got to share with her about God's heart to restore what was broken, especially humankind's relationship with Him, and talk about Jesus, and why His coming was so important and how to become a Christian!

And she was able to ask questions like "What about different denominations?" and "Was my brother's muscular dystrophy a result of sin?" and she said she wants to come to church with me!!! And she said it was "kinda cool" how it all made sense, and I think she was really tracking with me and asking honest questions!

All this to say, PRAISE GOD for working in my friend's life, and PLEASE, PLEASE pray that she comes to know Jesus as her personal Savior!!! I'm so thankful that He is using me in this way. Please pray that Cat comes to know Him and that she gets involved in a community of Christians who will love her and help her in her search for Him. Hallelujah, praise Jesus.

Update/Prayer Requests

2009-06-03T10:08:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone,

I have created this blog so that my prayer and financial supporters can see what I'm up to and pray for me effectively.

I have been in Winston for 2 days now, and have mostly been working on tasks that are not very exciting to talk about. I've been making phone calls to potential supporters, responding to emails, etc.

On a more interesting note, I love the family I'm living with. They are a lot of fun to hang out with, and I really think that I'm connecting with them well. I have especially enjoyed hanging out with the two sons, Daniel, who is a rising senior in high school, and Michael, who finished high school a year ago and just recently got back from a YWAM trip. The parents, Pat and Jayne, go to bed early and the three of us have been hanging out in the basement (where I sleep) after they go to bed. We've had some good conversations, and I'm beginning to feel pretty comfortable around them. Which brings me to:

Prayer request #1: That I will be a huge blessing to the Nasrallah household as I live there, and that the relationship I have with each one of them will impact them positively for the kingdom. I especially want to set a good example for the boys.

On a different note, I got to go over to the Wake campus yesterday and connect with some students. I had lunch with Luke, a guy I've been discipling for about a year now, and his roommate, Phil, who I've been praying for for a very long time (about a year and a half). I'm very excited that those two guys are here for the summer. I yearn for Luke to grow a lot in his relationship with Christ this summer and really get set on fire for Jesus. I also desire to spend more time with Phil. God has really placed him on my heart to pray for for a long time, and to be honest, I have been really confused about how to approach him. In a nutshell, I feel like there is some spiritual warfare going on in his life, that the enemy wants his soul, and also I feel that there is some resistance on his part to talking about spiritual things. He acts like he just wants to "have fun with life" and never talk about anything serious or personal. Every time we've had some sort of spiritual conversation, it just sort of dies. So I'm left very confused. All that to say, please pray:

Prayer request #2: That I will be able to share my testimony and the gospel with Phil, and that He will see Christ's relevance for his life and be receptive to the gospel. That would be a huge victory for the kingdom of God.

Prayer request #3: That Luke will be a powerful witness for the Lord in Phil's life since they are roommates, and that Luke will hunger and thirst for Jesus and grow a lot in his walk with the Lord this summer.

That's all for now. If you would like to post comments, click on the bottom of this post where it says "0 comments". Just be sure to choose the option of posting as a name, rather than anonymous or something else. Then you can type in your name and I will know who you are! Thanks for reading!