What happens when you bring together 70 students from Ohio University’s Campus Crusade for Christ movement and put them in Panama City Beach, FL? Craziness, that’s what! But not your typical spring break craziness. We had some major craziness for God. Craziness for Christ!
When we got on the bus on Peden Stadium last Friday to begin our 16-hour journey, I knew I’d come home with some good stories and maybe a tan. I had no idea how much I’d be changed internally.
But I’ll get to that.
We stayed in condos at the Edgewater Beach Resort. I stayed with 5 amazing women. Between me, Emily, Sarah, Elaine, Jennifer and Rebecca, there was never a dull moment, especially when moments involved the life preserver we found.
It ended up in both showers, behind a curtain, all of our beds, in the oven, in the fridge, in the freezer, in the washer, in the dryer, and the grill. The object of the game was when you found it, you had to hide it somewhere else. Epic.
We had creative dates.
The first night of the dates, the boys (Joe, Kyle, Pete, Brett, Adam and Patrick) set up a tour for us on our way to their condo, and then served us a wonderful meal with smoothies for dessert, and then acted out Snow White. To give you an idea of the amazingness of the story, Patrick was all 7 dwarves. It was hilarious!
The second night, we cooked Kreg, Ian, Chris, Edison, Zac, and Hiram chicken kabobs and ice cream sandwiches. Then we put them in the “hot seat,” where everyone got to ask them whatever questions they wanted. We got some interesting responses.
Wednesday night, we had praise and worship on the beach, which was one of my favorite parts of the entire trip. Everyone was just so genuine with their worship and sharing their experiences from the week, and the entire thing was just such an encouragement!
Hot-tubbing also ensued.
But I suppose now I should go into what I gained from this past week.
Evangelism on the beach was fantastic. The first day, I didn’t do any of the talking, but I got to witness someone accept Christ into their life, which was the encouragement I needed to keep on going for the rest of the week. Later on in the week, I had the opportunity to initiate two spiritual conversations and go through the Knowing God Personally booklet with some girls. No one prayed to accept Christ, but they listened to me go through the entire booklet with them.
I know the Holy Spirit was in me during those conversations because when I’ve gone through the KGP with my discipler, Kacey, during our discipleship time, I’ve stumbled and struggled through it. But when I was on the beach, I didn’t stumble even once. Everything just flowed and I had the answers to their questions. I thank God so much for giving me the words to say, and I am so encouraged to go out even here at OU so that I can let people know of His glory!
Roger Hershey was the main speaker for our evening meetings, and one of his talks focused on yielding our rights. God created us; therefore, what right do we have to anything? Jesus yielded his. He could have summoned legions of angels to take him down from the cross—but he didn’t. He gave up that right so that we might have life. It is the point of our lives to be more like Christ. Philippians 2:5-8 says, “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross!”
What those verses are saying is that Jesus, who was God in the flesh, humbled himself to the point of death for us. And since He is our Lord and Master, who are we to demand anything? Everything we have is a gift from God. Everything.
I took so much away from this week, and I will forever thank Jesus my Lord and Savior for the opportunity that I had!
