I have been praying about my involvement with college students here in Fayetteville. In Evansville it was a no brainer. I was on campus almost everyday teaching, coaching or visiting. Students were constantly coming and going and our family developed many wonderful relationships with students from all walks of life. I am not on campus right now, but we have a lot of students at our church and that seems like a logical place to begin connecting. I have been anxious at times and just down right impatient at my worst moments. At first I thought it needed to be a formalized structured "ministry" that I could plug into, but a new friend encouraged me to make it more one-on-one and informal to get relationships started. This should have been a bit of a no brainer too, but being the new person in town I wanted an easier way.
In my reading today, I was reminded of the shortness of life and how abruptly one can be taken from this world. So the question becomes am I living intentionally in this moment God has given me? Am I investing in eternal Kingdom business? Or am I caught up in selfish ambition, worry and busyness. James 4:13-17 says, "Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them."
I first read these verses "on accident" when we were considering the move to Arkansas. It was an ahh ha moment in that we knew we should only stay in Evansville or move to Fayetteville if God was directing us to do so. It would have been comfortable to stay. We really liked Evansville, the University, our jobs, etc. It was scarey to move to a new place again which was much farther away from our families. On the other hand, it appeared to be a great career opportunity for Tyrone and a pay increase. In the end those things were only items to put on a list of pros and cons. The real decision was in the overwhelming peace we felt from the Holy Spirit after countless prayers, godly counsel, and talking it over and over and over again.
So with a renewed sense of God's purpose for sending us to Fayetteville, I walked up to one of the few college students I know at church and invited her to lunch at our house. Then I texted the other two college girls I know and invited them as well. It is exam week and I had no idea of their schedules, but it happened that all three had no exams today. Yeah God! no coincidence in the timing. We had a wonderful lunch today and I believe it is the beginning of discovering part of God's plan for me here.
I am excited and it feels great to have stepped out in faith to ask young ladies I don't know well to just have lunch. Now I must "Trust in the Lord with all [my] heart and lean not on [my] own understanding; in all [my] ways acknowledge him and he will make [my] path straight." Proverbs 3:5-6 It's the only way to proceed. Whether lunch today was the only opportunity I have to engage the college students here or it is the beginning of something more, without God's continued leading it will not be for His glory but my own.
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