Please Pray

We are now EIGHT days into a new semester!  Tonight is the second Equip Large Group Worship meeting, and I would greatly appreciate your prayers for God to work in the hearts and minds of the students he has granted us to minister to.  When I really stop and think about the responsibility that we have to preach truth to a few dozen students each week, it can give me great pause.  I believe I should feel that 'pause' much more often and more powerfully.

So please pray that God would call unbelievers to our meeting tonight, and that they would hear the gospel and God would grant repentance.

Also pray that God would grant a great increase of faith and conviction of sin to the students who are already christians.  Since I'm talking about "Justification" tonight, and since I'm speaking primarily from the text of Luke 18:9-14, I hope that those who are finding their justification in the things they do and the people they are, they would see clearer tonight that "all they have is Christ".

Ps.  I'll be posting some pictures from the past week's events in the coming couple days!  It's been a good start of a semester.

What is the Gospel?

I had the privilege and weighty responsibility to stand up and explain the gospel at Dawson Covenant Church this past Sunday morning.  I did my best to expound Ephesians 2:1-7, relatively verse by verse, for the passage is quite clear: vv1-3 is the [very] bad news, and 4-7(10) is the very good news.  So, I just wanted to do a quick followup and put a few of my favorite short gospel explanations for you.  There are countless others I'm sure, and of course explaining the gospel can and often does last much longer than a couple minutes, but here are a few short examples:

Matt Chandler:

Trip Lee, in  format than I'm sure most of you are less familiar with: (or click here for HD quality)

John Piper on the gospel (in a little diddy called a "sermon jam"):

Conrad Mbewe using John 3:16: (or click here for better quality)

Enough for now, I hope these will be helpful in refreshing and causing you to consider the gospel today.  Pass them on to your loved ones

"I'm a Pagan"

"I am a pagan" it's not something you hear every day. Although technically I didn't "hear" this, this was the first on the new student orientation surveys that one girl filled out. We're up to almost 500 service so far this summer, so praise God for that!



And if you're interested, the following three snapshots are what are current statistics are of the incoming freshmen class.
Encouraging more than most of everything else: more than 25% of the students put a '10' on their desire to grow closer to God.  Additionally, 60+% of the students say that they're fine with us following up with them, so that's good!

"I don't have any spiritual interest..."

"I don't have any spiritual interest".  "Well, that's okay, you can still fill out the survey and just write that down", I responded to an incoming freshmen girl named Chelsea.  

She filled out the short "spiritual interest survey" at the booth last night during the fourth New Student Orientation.  Afterward, I took the opportunity to quickly tell her about our apologetic/christian education options we have at Equip.

"Monday nights" I told her, "we have a smaller, informal meeting where we gather to discuss some deeper and harder things of life, such as the existence of God, or the history of the bible, or the nature of sexuality, etc."  She seemed to be genuinely interested, and she quickly pointed out that she had put a level '10' in the category for "interested in considering the reasons you believe what you believe".  She remarked that she really liked to not just "believe" things, but understand and think about them.  

This is certainly a praiseworthy thing, regardless of just how much this may or may not happen.  So, I encouraged her in this, and explained a bit more about Equip and what we do (especially in those ways).  Please pray that God would open a door through this to declare the gospel to her, and to have many opportunities to explain and re-explain the nature and glory of God in the gospel.

(This isn't Chelsea's survey, just fyi)

3rd NSO

The third "New Student Orientation"of the summer the past 3 hours.  A bit slower night tonight, only about 65 surveys filled out. But it was a good night!

First NSO

First "new student orientation" of the summer! Please pray for fruit. The spiritual kind...

Asher Ascending...

I couldn't think of a better alliteration...

As you most likely know already, Emma and I had our baby boy on April 3rd!  Baby Asher Thomas was 7lb .5ounces, and has currently been packing on the weight, at least a couple times now put on a pound in a week, and is almost 11lbs now!

I won't continue to be that parent who talks about nothing but their kid...so I'll just post a bunch of pictures, instead. :)

still the 1st or 2nd day of being 'out'...he has grown since! 

He still loves to stick his hands on his face

There are 6 boys in the church under 6ish months
 (one was absent this day) 

thanks to the Isenbergs...

he has good form, but I'm working on his distance 

he has started smiling a bit

 

I missed the moment before when he was stretching
and his arms were sticking straight up even further