Ministries
It has been a spiritually rich month here in Princeton as our students have returned from break with a desire to seek the Lord. As you may know, Princeton’s usual academic calendar means that January is the month of final papers and assignments for the students. During this time, we have developed a tradition of hosting our daily prayer meetings at the Melrose Center. In the midst of exams and assignments, our students have been faithful to pray. Over this month, we regularly had groups of well over a dozen students praying together. Overall, we sense our students are showing an increased desire to seek the Lord and we praise God for this.
We have begun our second semester at Cornell as students have come back from winter break. After a period of transition, we now have a new director on our staff. Greg Ray has come from Madrid, Spain, where he was doing missionary work to lead our team. As we move into this new stage, we look forward to seeing how God is going to work through the team on this campus.
I pray that you are having a blessed start to the new year.
Christian Union at Columbia started 2020 with a new Ministry Director and some faculty transitions. The students recently returned from vacation after Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, and we are truly excited for this upcoming semester.
College students often share a common blind spot that we all fall prey to: the tendency to think of life through a very narrow and individual filter. I don’t blame the students—the schools cultivate that brand of individualism, and we as a society certainly model it as well. So even as we draft our own personal goals and resolutions for the new year, allow me to offer some perspective from C.S. Lewis:
"The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
- Philippians 4:6-7
Psalm 2 is a majestic description of Christ’s coming and rule. God gives the Psalmist the ability to look beyond earthly constraints and context to see a place of transcendent and righteous rule - whose kingdom reaches to the very ends of the earth. This vision of a righteous kingdom runs through the narratives of both old and new testaments, and motivates the events and initiatives we do in New York.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
I just listened to a sermon by the late, great pastor Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. He summed up Paul’s epistle to the Romans as “Soli Deo Gloria!” The summum bonum of the cosmos and all of redemptive history is the glory of God in Jesus Christ. As we near the completion of this fall semester, God’s glory is particularly evident on the campus of Penn.
“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” (John 1:14)
Blessings to you during this season of Advent! At this time, we and our students are reflecting on Christ’s incarnation that we might become like him and have eternal life. We trust that during this season you will also be able to reflect on this profound truth that God dwelled among us in the person of Christ.
Dear Prayer Partners,
I deeply appreciate you and all the prayers that you have offered to the Lord on our behalf in 2019!
As you may know, every Christian Union Bible Course on every campus studied Colossians this fall. The theme of Thanksgiving resounds throughout Paul’s letter. As this holiday season can easily be filled with unchecked expectations and the strangest of insecurities, I encourage all of you who know and love God to enter into the Christmas season “already full”. Full of joy with the good news that God has lifted the crushing burden of sin off our shoulders. Full of the abundant life Christ has given us in exchange. Full of many good moments with family, friends, and members of Christ’s body. Fully assured in all the will of God — that he is working out holiness in you and bringing to more maturity in Him.
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