Tales from the First Quarter at Stanford

Well, I am in my last week of my first Stanford quarter. Strange to think I'll soon have an entire quarter of college under my belt. The past week has been a great encouragement as I have seen God answer prayer and also reveal many new things to pray for. I now want to give you a glimpse of what is happening out here so that you can both praise God with me for the answered prayers and also commit to God with me the situations and opportunities that are coming up. This will likely read something like a journal entry, as I am still in the midst of everything which I am describing.

As I tried to convey in my last letter, I was blown away by seeing God answer prayer when I first came out here as God placed me into a community of both strong Christian friendship and evangelistic opportunity. It feels like wherever I go God is paving the way for me. From that beginning, the great struggle became stagnation as the busyness began to take over and time with God became more of a struggle and the divine appointments seemed to be few and far between. As November came, the question I was asking God was "What next?---It seems like you have prepared this place for me and you have made it better and transition for seamless than I would have ever expected. Why? What are you calling me to here?" As I was praying tonight with a couple guys, I realized that over the past week God has begun to answer this question . . .

Last week I had the opportunity to have lunch with a friend of mine who is a relatively new Christian and is now really struggling with why God has him here both at Stanford and on earth. Stanford is a place where you are surrounded with people who can do everything you do, only better. Why did God make me, if for everything I can do, someone else can do it better? This is the question that is haunting him. Further, the dorm he lives in does not have Christian community, and he is continually drilled by people wanting to know his answer as a Christian to all of life's toughest problems. He trusts there are answers out there, but as such a new Christian he simply does not know them yet. I had the chance to simply listen to him, and to pray with him and encourage him. Please pray that God will reveal his purposes to him and that he can know he is loved as God's son. Pray also that God will show me how to love him and will also help me to share with him some of the answers to those questions which have been so helpful to read.

At a random lunch conversation later last week, I got another chance to talk to a guy from my dorm who is an atheist/agnostic, but loves to talk about philosophy and religion and seems to actually be interested in finding the truth. Earlier this quarter, he was struck by the way that what I believed actually affected the way that I lived and through that God opened the door for conversations about God and Christianity. (It was a great encouragement to see that the idea of living out the gospel actually has real meaning!) He loves philosophy and is taking a philosophy seminar right now. One of the greatest ways I have found to interact with him is simply to listen to what is going on in the seminar and hearing what he is excited about and what stance he is taking in the papers. Sometimes I get the opportunity to share my own views with him. (Worldview Analysis has been extremely helpful for this. While I am an utter novice at philosophy compared to him, I am convinced fully that Christianity is the soundest philosophy to live by, and I have some ideas about how to go about showing that.) I think just the fact that I listen to him has made hum excited to come talk to me about the new developments in the class. So last week over lunch, he began to tell me about his final paper for the philosophy class. It dealt with whether universal ethics exist and whether morality could be applied to beliefs. After hearing about the take he was taking in the paper, I was able to share my view of it--that there is a universal sense of morality and that there were right and wrong beliefs. God gave me the clarity to share it with him in a way that he acknowledged made sense to him, although he didn't necessarily agree with it. Cut ahead to this Sunday. This past Sunday night, Testimony, the Christian a cappella group that I am in, put on our Christmas show. It went very well-we had a packed out house and a lot of fun performing for everyone. Near the end of the show, Tina, our director, shared her amazing testimony about how God had restored wholeness to her in the midst of life's brokenness. Walking down the aisle after the show, I ran into him--he had come for the show. He loved being at the show and getting to see me perform. It was a great answer not only to my prayers but also to many other people's prayers that he came to the show--please pray that the message Tina shared will hit is heart. Pray that God will show him that his intellect does not stand between him and God, but that our God is God of both the mind and the heart.

Every Sunday night I meet with my friends Mickey and Ryan (and anyone else we can get to join us) to pray for Cedro, our dorm, and for all that is coming up in the next week. This past Sunday we were joined by another guy from our dorm. He was interested to see how we went about praying, and he shared with us that he came from a Unitarian Universalist Christian Church which basically believed that the most important thing was to be on a "religious path"--it did not matter which path. His particular church chose the Christian path. He wanted to hear our views on this. I was able to respond to this idea (thanks to Wilson's and Delvaux's teachings) and to share with him what we believe. It was a great encouragement because it was my first opportunity to straight out share the gospel with someone, and God helped me to do it both boldly and gently. He told us that he very much wanted a relationship with Jesus but he couldn't reconcile the fact that God could send people to hell. After we spent some time in prayer I took him back to my room and read with him through the Apologetics lecture on Heaven and Hell, looking at what the Bible reveals about them. He said that the ideas presented made sense and he was open to having me pray for him. Please pray that God will reveal himself to him and that he will know the truth that can set him free. Pray also that God will show me how to continue to witness to him, as he is not one of my close friends.

Another major request--one of the guys in my dorm has been struggling, as many people do at Stanford, with feeling like he cannot cut it here. This feeling has affected him to such a degree that he has run away twice in the past month, leaving cryptic text messages for my roommate, one of his best friends, and some other people. Both time he was able to be stopped at the San Jose train station and brought back to school, and both times it seems like when he returns the conflict is resolved--he seems to know that he is loved and wanted here. Yet this weekend he went off again, this time not making contact until he was all the way in Chicago. Friends of his have been able to convince him to come back and he is currently on his way back here. Please pray that he can know he is loved, not only by all of us here but by him Maker. Pray that God will show me specifically how to love him, and pray that he can find grounding for his significance in the one true source. The struggle to "cut it" is not a huge struggle for me, and I can easily forget how much it affects other people. Events like these remind me just how serious this struggle is for so many people, especially here at Stanford. Please pray that God can break apart this mindset that so dominates this campus.

We have a God who answers prayers, as he has shown by answering my prayer that he will show me what is next. God is showing me the ripeness of this place for Him. Please cover me and Stanford in your prayers. Pray that God will work in the hearts of the students and faculty here and will capture these amazing minds for his kingdom. I desperately want the covering of your prayers as I finish out this week and again when I go back in January. I hope my testimonies of how I have seen God answer prayers so far will be an encouragement to you.

Some Final Random Musings . . .

I have survived my first final here at Stanford, Math 51, and I think I did quite well on it. The last few weeks it has finally clicked and I am beginning to "see" it--you know what I mean. It's helped that recently I have been able to teach it to other people who are struggling with the concepts. Over the next few days I will tackle Chem and English. I have begun to read a book called Joy Unspeakable by Martin Lloyd-Jones which deals with the baptism and gifts of the Holy Spirit. It has been a great encouragement to see how the moving of the Spirit can come together with sound Biblical doctrine. I am only a little ways into it, but I am looking forward to what else I will learn. On Saturday I leave early in the morning with Testimony to drive up to the upper reaches of America as we go on tour to Bellingham, WA and Vancouver, Canada. It should be a whole lot of fun. I will be heading back to Nashville on Dec. 20, and I look forward to seeing many of you as I am home over Christmas.

I pray that this letter finds all of you well, and I pray that each you is seeing God work in the place that He has you. Let me know how I can be praying for you as well.