Knowing Jesus Surpasses Comfort

 

For those of us in Texas it’s been a frigid couple of days, but it has made a perfect time for me to sit down and write a ministry update. Campus has been closed basically all week long, and with the roads being icy it’s hard to even go out to get groceries much less meet with people. It’s giving me flashbacks to the early COVID quarantine days. In some ways it feels like a forced rest, which has been good and given me time to reflect and think.

Some of our students who live in the same neighborhood as us trying unsuccessfully to sled down the icy road. 

The semester has been off to a mixed start. The first week is always really exciting. It’s when we have our yearly Winter Retreat with our students and is always a time of immense growth and change for our students. I don’t know why, and it seems like a cliché, but God seems to always show up in big ways at these retreats. I was able to have multiple conversations with students who seemed to be encountering God in new ways at the retreat. More than that we always have students who come back from the break feeling less that refreshed. Most of the time they spent the break doing just about nothing, which puts them in a low spiritually oftentimes. Winter Retreat is a way to breath some life back into their walk with God, and I saw that happen with multiple guys and even myself. Overall, the retreat went fantastic and was a great way to start off the year right.

Winter Retreat worship gets hype

One of the most encouraging things is that we have a student who has been coming around to our ministry for years now but hasn’t considered himself Christian. At the beginning he was staunchly atheist even but hung around because of the warm community and friends that he found in FOCUS. It seems that his views towards Jesus have been changing though. I had a conversation with him last week that seemed to indicate he was almost ready to make a decision to follow Jesus. He started asking me about where he should start with reading the Bible and has been asking about next steps. Although he’s not the only one in our ministry coming to faith for the first time, his journey gets me more excited than normal. Seeing Jesus change the heart of someone who started out so opposed to faith into someone yearning for it is just a sweet thing to get to witness. Be praying that he continues on his journey and that we can be a good help to him!

Some of our student leaders at our training before the school year

Those things have been encouraging, but there have been some rough spots to this semester as well. One of my best friends is struggling with some intense mental health battles that no one has been able to get real clarity of where they came from or how to help. And we have one of our students checked into an inpatient center for mental health struggles as well. I’ve talked to multiple students who are dealing with depression that the break only made worse. These things and a handful of other smaller events weigh on our staff. Sometimes in Denton it feels like we’re fighting an uphill battle against mental illnesses and just the darkness of the city we live in. But as I’ve had time to reflect this week, I’ve been thinking of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ. I think I can often buy into the worldview that life should be easy, that there should be no problems, and comfort is a top priority. But Jesus tells us that in this world we will have trouble, but to take heart because he has overcome the world. When I see the people around me despairing of life itself, I am reminded of Paul's words in Philippians 3.

7 But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8 What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. 10 I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.

Comfort and the lack of pain is a passing thing compared to the value of knowing Christ. Oftentimes we get to know Christ best through our pain and our trials. I keep having to remind myself of this as those around me are in pain. The lack of pain is not the end all be all. Certainly, it is a nice bonus to life, but the best thing in life is not the lack of pain, but a deep relationship with Christ that cannot be taken away from us.