All Things Learned 1 | SYATP

This starts entry one in a series of entries about what I'm learning lately. I've been trying to get this post out for a while but keep getting distracted, and the following is just a portion of what all I want to share, but this is it for time one. (I plan on filling in other stuff later.) :)


Things learned at Saw You At The Pole:
We had our youth See You At The Pole two Wednesday's ago at 7 a.m., and it was so great to see middle schoolers leading prayer and worship songs in front of their school. It has to be all student led, so we got the privilege of being spectators there for support and praying over the kids. It might have been a little rocky, but still great! That night, Park Hill hosted the Saw You At The Pole Rally, which is a city-wide. We had it all planned out for Ericka, on of the admin ESL teachers here for the semester, to talk to our kids, however her mother fell that morning and broke her leg so Ericka was not able to make it. Ericka works in Asia teaching English and telling others about Jesus. So, we scrambled around and found another lady who works in our admissions office that does stuff in Asia similar to Ericka and who was willing to speak to our youth.
Amy talked a lot about what she did while she was a journeyman in China a few years ago right after she graduated from OBU. What stuck out to me the most was her relationships with her teammates. She went to China to teach English with eight girls on the team.  The way she described their team was a eight ladies that were as far across the spectrum as you can imagine. On one end is a girl from New Jersey who was loud and brought the party when she walked in the room. On the far other end is a shy quiet girl who is pretty serious. And in between are six ladies who fill in the spectrum. You get the picture. The mission of these girls was to go and teach English in China and reach people for Christ through their relationships.
The verse that kept coming up to this team was:

John 13.35:

By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.

Basically what I learned from this verse and Amy was that our relationships should be deeper than friendships and completely captivate others to Christ. We should have so much love for one another that it radiates Christ's name. 

I think this really spoke to me because I was dealing with a lot of things in my close friendships where I wasn't completely loving the other persons as I should have been. It was frustrating and we just weren't clicking, but God told me on this crazy Wednesday night that we should love one another so much that others will see that and know Who we truly follow. This is what I want our friendship to be about. Drawing others to Christ because of how we love one another and live life together. :) 

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