November at UTD

November was such a great month for me personally and for our ministry at UTD.  At the beginning of the month, Kelly, who was a FOCUS intern up at UNT last year and alum of UTD, baptized one of the international students in the core she participates in.  Enjoy the video!  

Bringing people to know Jesus is what it is all about!  There are so many studies still going so I can’t wait to see what God is going to continue to do.  Please continue to pray for all of these studies.  I know with all my heart that God answers our prayers that we lift up on behalf of people.  Jesus is changing lives.

Each week on Friday night at FOCUS we have had students share their testimony of how God has made them new.  This month I think that I literally wanted to cry (happy tears) after each one of them.  All of the students who have shared so far are student leaders this year.  What blows me away is how God continues to work in so many people lives, changing them to be more like Him, year after year.  Some learn to overcome the fear of shyness and selfishness and others get a heart for evangelism, but in all of them the Spirit is working. 

A couple weeks ago we got students from all 4 of our campuses together to do a lecture on sex and marriage. We called it Pizza Theology because we served pizza for dinner.  Ronnie and Brandon delivered that and did such an awesome job.  The week before and after that Casey and I did sermons on dating.  I think that over the years, FOCUS has done some really challenging sermons on dating.  The fruit of the challenging sermons and dating culture has been some really awesome marriages.  I pray that with pizza theology and these dating sermons, our current students will catch a vision of dating in such a way to have an amazing marriage.  Please lift up our students as they date, our current culture makes dating so difficult.

Thanksgiving was such a great break for me.  I feel well rested and able to tackle the busy month of December.  

With December here and the Christmas break ahead of us, I would ask that you especially pray for students as they go home.  For many of them, going home is great.  I have already heard of a handful of students though who are really worried about going home for a month.  Home is not a good place for them and they don’t have the Christian community there that they do here.  Please pray that these students will continue to seek God and can grow closer to Him over the break.

I have so many other things that I could tell you about but this is getting long.  God is so good!