In November of 2011 I suffered a strain in my right hip flexor and what should have been a minor injury has now turned into a year and a half of 0 physical activity for me. It's kept me from doing many things I wanted to do like attending A&M football games, playing for Dozen Ultimate, and being able to labor physically while in Honduras last summer. In addition to all of this, one of the biggest pains for me was having to turn down a job at Pine Cove this summer, where I have wanted to work since I first went there after freshman year of high school. Today God showed me one reason why he kept me from working there.
I am currently teaching Spanish at a local summer school in Dallas and have been laboring to preach the gospel in my actions and have been praying for opportunities to preach the gospel verbally to my students. I have had conversations here and there about Jesus and my faith with my new batch of students that I got last week but today was HUGE. The topic of dating came up and I spoke about what I wanted my marriage to be like/the qualities I desired in a wife. I spoke about Ephesians 5, "love your wife as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her." I said plainly that that was my desire. To love a woman like that. I apparently have lost sight of exactly how countercultural aligning yourself with scripture is. My students were blown away. One girl said to me, "Talking to you makes me want to start going to church again." Another guy in my class echoed this. I will never forget those words. This opened up a big fat door for me and I began to preach to them the gospel and talk about salvation for a good 20 minutes.
Pine Cove is an incredibly ministry and I am who I am today because of that camp, but God said to me, "I'm going to put you somewhere where, if you weren't there, the people you'll come into contact with would not hear the Good News of Jesus Christ." I am not sure if my ministry here will save any souls for the Kingdom of God but my job is not to save people anyways. My job is to plant seeds, which by God's grace I have faithfully done and will continue to do. I am praying earnestly that God will give growth to these seeds and that eternal destinies would be changed. I ask that you pray for this too. Please. Thank you.
Be encouraged by this. Learn from me what I have learned from God - that God, in His sovereignty, has placed you exactly where he wants you. Look at the people that God has sovereignly placed in your life. Preach the gospel to them in word and in deed. Please. They may have never met someone who was truly following Christ, and it might change their life or even more importantly their eternity.
