Texas Tech: Learning lessons while discipling others

I see God working through the questions, discipling and conversations that he has allowed me a part recently.

Two students came to me and asked me to disciple them this semester. For me, this is answered prayer. I had been asking my cohort—a group of other campus ministry interns who meet and share what is happening on their campus—to pray that God would show me who to disciple.

Since I have been meeting with them, I have seen the desire to know God the Father on a much more personal and devoted level. One of them recently talked about something the Holy Spirit was teaching him about the power prayer has on doubts and hesitation. God allowed me to share with him that when we pray in times where we are feeling that way, we are stepping into that chaos and laying it at the feet of God for him to see our hearts. We are opening a direct line to God on what is hard to understand about him. God wants any and every thought, concern, question and doubt to be shared with him. There is no such thing as a hard or wrong question when we bring it to God and want him to show us the truth—which is really just God and who he is.

God brought a student to the men’s group in just an incredible way recently. He told me how he usually takes the same way to his class each week, but a friend told him to take a different path for a reason I can’t remember. When he was on that new path, he stepped on a piece of paper. When he looked down, he saw that it was a flyer for the men’s group—a porn addiction support group. He read it and reached out to me, because he saw the value of the men’s group. Later, he signed up to be a part of it. It was truly amazing to see God bring this student to the group.

What is success in God’s eyes?

God has been reminding me what success looks like, because I was losing sight of God’s work and the kingdom. This semester, we did more outreach for the men’s group than we had done in the past. We put posters in many of the buildings on campus, and we put digital signage in the buildings where it was available. We got a lot of response. When I saw all the replies, I got really excited and thought that I was doing the right work and that we were a success.

But as we reached out to the students, we started seeing that most either would not respond or signed up their friends as a joke. This was heartbreaking for me. I really felt like I had failed and was not doing the right thing. I prayed to God asking the Lord to help me see what is going on and why would this produce no fruit.

As I prayed about it, I was reminded of a story that I read about in J.I. Packer’s Knowing God. In one part of the book, Packer talked about knowing what God is doing. He tells the story of a woman that goes deep into the Amazon rain forest to translate the Bible into a tribe’s language. During this mission, the woman faces many different obstacles. At one point, her main translator got in an argument with one of the people in the tribe, and he ended up getting killed. She was able to find another translator and continued to push forward. After many months, the organization that sent her told her to head out to go to another project, and they would send a team to finish her work. Only a couple of days after she left, someone in the tribe burned down the hut they were in and all of her work was destroyed. After hearing that, she did not understand why God would send her there for her work to just be destroyed. After many years of prayer, she learned God is working in everything, and when we think we know why God has us doing what we are doing, then we probably are farther from really seeing God’s plan.

I came to the realization that we are doing good work, and I have to trust that God is using our work for his kingdom, and that it is not being wasted. After I gave up control of the “why”s, the ministry started to bear some fruit. God is with me and taking the work that we are doing at BSM and using it for his kingdom.

Jason Perkins is a campus ministry intern serving at the Texas Tech University Baptist Student Ministry.