I cannot even begin to explain how excited I am about FOCUS at UTD this year! On Friday nights in our large group we have had such a diverse group of people still coming. The week before last, I looked around the room and over 30% of the people there were international students. Many of them have no experiences of Christianity until recently. We have had American students from various places on their spiritual journey. Some are atheist or agnostic exploring Christianity and some with a strong faith just looking to be part of a Christian community.
This diversity is also flowing into our cores. One core had 4 Americans and 15 women from China who all want to study the Bible! Another one of our women’s cores has only a couple of Christians and about 8 who are not yet Christian. I could go on with so many stories from cores. I could not be any more proud of this group of leaders and really ask you to continue to pray for them. The needs they are filling are great and I know they feel such a burden because they love the women in their cores.
We had 153 people sign up to come to Fall Camp which we just got back from today. I CAN NOT wait to hear the stories from the corefas about how people were impacted there. I will share those with you when I write again. It was a great weekend though!
I want to leave you with a scripture and some thoughts on it that we read in time of worship, prayer, and communion last night at camp. Revelation 4:9-5:14. Renee Doty read part of this aloud to us last night and it brought such powerful thoughts to my mind and heart. I wish I could share them all with you but I will keep it really short. John weeps because no one is worthy to open the scroll when the elder tells him not to weep because the Lion of Judah has triumphed. How powerful to think of Jesus as the Lion of Judah. He is so great, powerful, strong, and fierce. All sorts of thoughts like that come to my mind when I think of the Lion. BUT, when John turns to look at him he sees a Lamb looking as if it had been slain. This has to be one of the most powerful images to me in the Bible. The elders sing a new song to him because he is worthy and with his blood he purchased for God all people. Our God, the Lion of Judah, is a slain Lamb. We serve a God like no other. We serve a crucified God and we lay our crown before him. “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power for ever and ever!”
Oh goodness about the women's cores being so full! I almost feel bad sending any more! I did help plug a godly young woman into Ashley and Sloan's core, and Mike C. and I are encouraging her to help and dive deep.
ReplyDeleteIt's strange, the lion and the lamb. I remember hearing about the gospel recently. The gospel is the good news of Jesus being slain as a lamb. And the spreading of the gospel is a caged lion. It does not need to be defended; it just needs to be let out of its cage (Spurgeon).
But more biblically, to reign in life (the life of Christ) as a lion, we must first die to ourselves (the death of Christ).
Praise and honor and glory and power to Him forever and ever!