A Home and a Hope

Ever since I've been at SAGU, I've been struggling with unbelief.

It's hard to believe that there are so many young people with such amazing calls to ministry.  It’s out of place to see such a warm, encouraging atmosphere radiating from these students and faculty. It's difficult to fathom there exists such a place with the same nuances as Magnet (the chapel speaker two nights ago wrapped his whole sermon around Adventure Time and I lost count of how many other people brought the entire Star Wars series) and an entirely Christian fellowship.  It’s incredible to sit in a class while listening to the professor lecture about world missions.  It’s stunning to see the answer to the prayer for the Lord of the harvest to send passionate young people into His harvest field.

But this isn’t fake.  This is real.  This is SAGU.  This is home.

Yet at the same time, this doesn’t feel like home.  Back at Magnet High, I was always ministering to someone in some way on campus—making a disciple, giving encouragement, sharing the Word of God, praying for someone in need, telling someone about Jesus, teaching the Scriptures, empowering the leaders of next year.  Here at SAGU, those opportunities, at least towards the unsaved, are no more.  Yes, we Christians still have needs and issues that are sought out and met within the love of this incredible fellowship of believers.   Yet as I talk with my Christian friends, learn in my Christian classrooms, and worship in my Christian chapel, my missionary soul grows restless.  This passion for lost souls to come to know Christ and desire to be poured out into someone’s unsaved life burns uncontrollably.  It is suffocating.  In hopes of channeling this anguish into ministry, I’ve joined several outreach ministries, one to international students at UTA, another to neighborhood kids, and soon one to the juvenile detention center.  But this fire remains unquenched.  The cool thing is that God noticed that.  I may have received some direction from Him to do something extraordinary… we’ll see how that goes.  

So for now, this longing “to preach the gospel where Christ was not known” (Rom 15:20) continues to outgrow this amazement of “how good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity” (Ps 133:1).  Maybe these are just freshman emotions; maybe this is just zeal without knowledge; maybe it's God.  My hope is that this turns into a good thing.