Update #5 - Thoughts, thoughts, thoughts

I decided not to update you on all the details of what actually has happened in the past few weeks, but instead present to you lessons I have learned from these events. But in short, in terms of outreach events, we have had one community Barbeque successfully hosted with West End Baptist church on Saturday, June 30^th; a showing of the film “End of the Spear” and a discussion session that followed here on St. Mary’s University campus on the same day; and also a few other events like coffeehouses and soccer games where we got to meet with yet a few more students, mostly international students. Next Saturday will be the annual Tall Ships festival here in Halifax, a weekend we are looking forward to as downtown, especially the waterfront area, will be packed with people.

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With only a couple more weeks of project left, it’s really time for all of us out here to keep focused with the end in mind. As for me, since the beginning of project there were a few things that I specifically prayed for. In fact, right now I’m fasting during lunch hours on weekdays to pray for these very things (given the fact that most food places are actually closed during the summer at Dalhousie University, where I am working, it’s not as hard as it could be).

1. The first thing for me to learn is to die to self and live by the Holy Spirit everyday. I was really reminded this past Monday by our guest speaker Karmal, who is a passionate, passionate Christ-follower from India, about how the most important thing in our faith is that Jesus Christ changes lives – as in 1 Corinthians 1:18, where Paul says “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God”.

The Gospel is the power of God! If I am not reborn in the Spirit, constantly drawing on the source of all strength and wisdom, why should I even bother going out evangelizing, telling people about something I have not even experienced myself?

Living by the Spirit means that we will no longer gratify our self-centred desires, but live lives so that our bodies are worthy to be called the temples of God. Hence, one issue we as a whole project addressed in the past few weeks was personal purity – especially purity against sexual immorality for us guys. It is such a common problem amongst both Christian and non-Christian men nowadays that I am very thankful we took the step to address it as a group. On the same line, we have also addressed the issue of wearing modest clothing, especially for the ladies here on project. Us guys have really appreciated how the girls have reacted to this and found it to be very edifying.

2. Back to the whole “things I fast for” topic, the second thing I have been fasting for (and praying for since the beginning of project), is that God will help me see that He is more Holy than I have ever imagined, and that people are more sinful that I would like to think. Again, I quote Paul, as he says in 1 Corinthians 2:12: "Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God." What better way to understand truths than to simply ask God to freely give them to us through His Spirit?

God has really answered the second part of my prayer. On both of the last 2 Saturdays, I got the chance to share my faith with 2 homeless men, Wayne and Robbie respectively, who both know God and claim to be Christians, but suffer greatly under the influence of alcoholism and simply the harsh way of life on the streets. At the West End Baptist barbeque, I spent a few hours just listening to Robbie and I have to honestly admit that he was the most broken up man I have ever met. It really brought me down to earth to see how far our sinful nature can take us if we let it.

3. The third and last thing is that I really hope that God will use me to bring one guy to Himself. There are a few guys I have met here that I have made especially stronger ties to, and it would be (in my shortsightedness anyways) such a waste if I was not able to fully share with them what Christ means to me and to them.

Lastly, I finally got a full time job! I am now working as the scholarship coordinator (big title but it’s really just a data entry job) at the Faculty of Graduate Studies at Dalhousie University, and it’s been really enjoyable so far! I thank God for both the timing of the job and the things that I get to learn out of it. I thank God for His timing because if I got the job any sooner, I would have lost lots of opportunities to learn and experience the things I did so far on project. I thank God for things I am learning because, to be frank, project life has gotten a lot more difficult since I got the job but I understand that is the reality of life and that self-control and time management comes right into the equation here.

Anyways, that was a long update, I hope that it is encouraging news to you! Again, it would be really encouraging if you could leave me a comment or e-mail me with your thoughts, take care and see you soon!

I'll leave you with a photograph of my lovely food group (a group of project people I have dinner with every Tuesday and Thursday, where we take turns cooking for each other), the SHALOM FOOD GROUP: