Faithfulness Amidst Struggle

 

    We’re at that part of the semester when things really start hitting the students. Schoolwork ramps up, and for some reason it seems that the random struggles and pains of life flair up during this time as well. But amongst that we see God being faithful and working through the storms that we all weather. There are a couple main areas that I would ask you to be praying for our students, and a couple ways I want to highlight what the Lord is doing.

    The first area I would like to ask for prayer in is the realm of schoolwork and busyness. It seems more than in years past our students are becoming overwhelmed with the amount of work in front of them. What we keep seeing is professors upped the homework load during COVID to make up for not being in-person, and many didn’t lower that once we came back to in person classes. What that leaves our students with is a more than average amount of class work. It seems that students just have much less free time than in years past, which means it’s harder to get people to make their relationship with God a priority, and instead the schoolwork crowds that out. So, prayers for our students to have relief from the amount of work, to developing good time management skills, and to make God their top priority would be amazing.

    Despite students’ busyness which makes some of our week-to-week ministry challenging, we had more students show up to our fall camp than the last couple of years. So many students shared about how getting plugged into FOCUS and coming to fall camp has been a game changer for their college experience. That they are making some of the deepest friendships that they have ever had, and that they are getting to see God working in their life in new ways.

    Another area you could be praying for that seems to be hitting our students are mental health struggles and loss. We’ve had multiple students have loved ones die or have family going through different sorts of medical problems. On top of that it seems like right on track with national trends we have more and more students dealing with depression and anxiety and some even with self-harm thoughts. Prayers for our students to experience the love and peace of God and for fellow students and staff to be able to minister into those issues with wisdom would be greatly appreciated.

    On the other hand, we are seeing God do really encouraging things with some of our non-Christian students. We have quite a few people involved, several in the small group I lead, that have little to no experience with faith or the church in general. Yet they are growing more and more curious about Jesus and are eager to learn more. The couple I have in my small group in particular have almost zero knowledge about scripture or faith. Two of them had never actually opened up a Bible before. Yet they keep coming back week after week because of what they see God doing, and we’re seeing this kind of thing across the ministry. It’s incredibly excited to be able to witness that and be a part of it, especially when in a year like this year we’re seeing more of that than ever.

    I’ve been continually reminded that God continues to be faithful amidst the hard times that come, and that often periods of struggle can be opportunities for growth and change. That is one of my prayers for the rest of this year. That God continues to show up in big ways in our ministry. Thank you for being a part of that and praying alongside me!