How a Worldwide Pandemic Exposes the Heart

I have shared publicly a couple of times that God uses trials to expose us.  He uses trials to expose what’s really in our hearts - where we’ve placed our hope.  God has used the trials of this worldwide pandemic and my life to expose a lot of false hopes and counterfeit gods in my life - and it’s been very painful. Maybe you can resonate with what I’m struggling through. 

Stuff like: 

Watching investments dwindle and our economy be dismantled.

Seeing ministry work with MSU come to a screeching halt.

Having a computer hard drive crash (never a good time to lose years of work).

Wondering how this virus will affect my friends and family.

A future that feels more uncertain than it ever has.

James tells us to consider it pure joy when we face trials of many kinds because the testing of our faith develops perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything (James 1:2-4).

Paul wrote something similar to the Church at Rome in Romans 5:3-5 ESV:

Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance,  and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,  and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

Did you see the progression there? 

Suffering -> Endurance -> Character -> Hope  

It would almost seem like we have to suffer in order to come out the other side of the equation with our hope placed firmly in Jesus.

God wants to help us learn to depend on Him.  And as we face trials, He wants us to come to the end of ourselves so that we can learn to fully trust Him:  with our finances, our health, our work, and our future.

We are entering into a season in life where our hearts have been and will continue to  be exposed. For me, as things are stripped away, I am forced to slow down and ask the question - can I be content without ________ (401K, vacations, work, health, school, March Madness, workout facilities, dreams, etc)?  Is Jesus enough?  

My encouragement to you is to take the time to slow down, get alone with Jesus, and deepen your prayer life.  Go to Him with your wrestling. Take your concerns to Him. Pour out your heart to Him. Ask Him to redirect your eyes off of the temporary and onto the unseen eternal.  Ask Him to fill you with hope - the hope of the resurrection, the hope of one day being with Jesus.

God is always about refining - remember His goal is to make you and me like His Son (Romans 8:28-29).  You and I aren’t the first to have struggled with our circumstances. God wants to put our lives on display to a watching world.  How do we respond to a worldwide pandemic? What really matters to us? How is God at work in our lives? Let’s lean hard into Jesus and point a watching world to Him.

What does it take to navigate Michigan State's campus life successfully?

Have you ever thought about what your vision is for your time on Michigan State’s campus? What do you want your time to look like? Even more importantly than that, who do you want to become over the next four years of your life?

How will you have the most deeply fulfilling experience over the next half a decade? How will you end up happy, healthy, and prepared to take on the challenges that our world throws your way? Here are 5 things to consider as you move to MSU over the next couple of days:

1. Find a great group of friends to connect with. Your community dictates who you will become. Step out of your comfort zone and meet people on your dorm floor and in your classes.

2. Get involved with life giving activities. Jump into a group with people who enjoy the same kinds of things you enjoy. If you love to run, join the running club. If you love to fish, jump into the MSU fishing club.

3. I’m going to sound like a dad with this one: Take care of yourself. Eating right, exercise, and getting consistent, solid sleep are a couple of great examples of ways you can take care of yourself. Talk to anyone who is trying to help students on campus in the midst of a mental health crisis and they will all say the same thing: sleep, diet, and exercise are all super important to your mental wellbeing.

4. Approach your school work like a job. My pastor when I was in college encouraged us to work at school as if it were a 40 hour week job. Put in an 8-5 with class and study and you’ll be surprised with how much free time you’ll have.

5. Pursue answers to the biggest questions in life: Why are you here (Purpose)? Does God exist? If so, who is He? What’s He like? How can I know Him? What happens after the grave?

We started the GreenHouse to help students pursue all of these areas. If you are looking for more information about finding a life giving community on campus, text the word “greenhouse” to 94090 and we’d love to connect with you and buy you coffee or ice cream and connect with you!

How do you choose which Christian group to connect with while you're at MSU?

In an age with lots of options, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and choose nothing. I would highly discourage you from making that choice as you’re transitioning to a campus like Michigan State. Here are a couple things to consider while making a decision:

1. Is the focus Jesus? Get involved somewhere where Jesus and the gospel message are the focus.

2. Is the group connected with a local church? The NT teaches us that the church is the vehicle to reach the world with the gospel. The beauty of finding a college ministry connected with a church is that you will learn about what it will be like to be apart of a local church - which is what you will be involved with for the rest of your life.

3. Is there a multigenerational influence? Wouldn’t it be awesome to find a ministry where olders and youngers interact together. It seems like young people need older people in their lives to offer wisdom and life skills that you may not have developed or seen the need for up to this point in your life.

4. Does the ministry have a dynamic community? Finding a community is huge - but you need to find a community that is healthy and focused outward on trying to serve and love people outside of itself.

You will become like the community you are a part of. It’s a principle that is true at every point in life - and especially when you are making a transition to Michigan State University. Make the decision before you arrive to jump in and be apart of a local church and ministry and join in the effort of taking the life transforming gospel of Jesus to your fellow Spartans!

Connect + Engage = Grow

I love to fish. And what makes fishing so enjoyable to me is hard to put into one sentence. But a lot of the pleasure that I get from fishing has to do with learning and success. I love learning new details about fishing and as I engage with those new concepts and techniques and experience success, I grow as a fisherman. And the same principles apply not only to other sports and hobbies and vocations, but also to our spiritual growth as a follower of Jesus.

As I connect with God and others about my faith journey and as I engage in loving God and others, I begin to be shaped and molded as a disciple of Jesus. That’s really what discipleship is all about. It’s about learning. A disciple of Jesus is someone who submits their life to be a learner and a follower of the most amazing Rabbi who has ever walked the earth - the God-man Jesus.

We believe that as you connect with God and others and as you engage with Him in the stuff that He’s doing around you, you will grow to become more like Him. And when it’s all said and done - we can say that God’s will for you is just that - He wants to make you more like His Son, Jesus.

Here are a few tangible ways for you to engage with Jesus and the work of God around you:

1. Look for ways to serve people. Serve your family and friends that you know, and serve people that you don’t know as well.

2. Look for ways to tangibly love people. This might seem redundant - loving and serving people is the same thing, right? Sometimes. Loving someone might be leaning in and listening. It might mean giving - being generous. Jesus said that we should do to others as we would have them do to us. So we could start by loving the people around us the way we feel and experience love.

3. Learn the art of engaging in relationship and conversation. This is huge and scary stuff for many people. But there’s no better day than today to start the process of learning how to engage in relationship and conversation. Start by simply taking an interest in the people around you. Look for opportunities to listen to them and learn about the things that they are interested in. That’s how you build relationship.

4. The most important step of engagement - gospel dialogue. Maybe it’s too overwhelming to begin with something connected with the gospel…that’s OK. Start by asking your friends and family this question: Do you have any kind of spiritual beliefs? What’s your perspective about the Christian faith? To you, who is Jesus? And become a great listener. Learn to draw others out - how did you come to that conclusion? What do you mean by that?

And as you engage, you will grow. My wife and I have always said that engaging in the ministry and mission of God is what caused us to grow up in our faith. I would nudge you to move out and see what God does!