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NLI 24: Student Leaders Receive a Rousing Call to Campus

ryan.cheng@intervarsity.org — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 20:44:08 +0000

August 01, 2024

Hannah Keziah Agustin

NLI 24: Student Leaders Receive a Rousing Call to Campus

“The Lord met me face to face and showed me the revival starting in our generation,” said Nina, a student in the Greek ��ñ�� chapter at San Diego State University.

Nina is one of 65 ��ñ�� student leaders who attended the National Leadership Institute (NLI) in Wheaton, Illinois this past June. Students like her gathered from all over the country to engage in manuscript Bible study, participate in prayer and worship, and workshop with fellow student leaders about being missional on campus.

NLI was a unique opportunity for ��ñ�� student leaders to learn from national leaders in the movement. ��ñ��’s Executive Leadership Team hosted and served as small group leaders for the student attendees. Vince Bacote, IVP author and Professor of Theology at Wheaton College, taught them how to engage in conflict and to listen deeply as acts of loving their neighbor. Ed Ollie, the chair of ��ñ��’s Board, gave a challenging call to campus. And NaKhia Hopkins Grays, Assistant Regional Ministry Director of the Mid-Atlantic Region, led a Bible study on Moses’ life.

Learning to Trust

Students learned how to bring their whole selves into their leadership. Like Moses, some of them may have felt unworthy, unqualified, and anxious, but they were reminded of the importance of trusting in a God who qualified them and is the ultimate source of their qualifications.

One of the most powerful experiences for the students came during a 10 a.m. Bible study session. Students were struck by Moses’ words to God: “If your presence does not go with us, I won’t go.” The Holy Spirit moved in the room and the students responded by crying out to see God’s glory, presence, and holiness on their campuses. They were kneeled and cried, longing for revival on their colleges and universities.

Renewed Purpose

For some student leaders, NLI was a place of encouragement. “God confirmed my calling to campus leadership,” said Avion from the College of Wooster.

“I learned how to intentionally use my gifts for God’s kingdom,” said Isaac from Eastern Florida State College.

“God showed me the unique strengths he has given me to use for leadership,” said Olivia from the University of Utah.

For others, NLI was a space for discernment. “I felt God calling me to communities that the church overlooks,” said Emily from the University of Houston.

“God softened my heart to consider applying to be an ��ñ�� staff,” said Haley from The College of New Jersey.

“I have a renewed sense of purpose for leadership and a greater burden for the lost on campus,” said Esther from Hofstra University.

Faithful Steps Moving Forward

Through NLI, student leaders saw how they could live with purpose on campus and beyond and partner with God through small yet faithful steps of obedience. Students like Skylar and Maya were so encouraged by what they learned at NLI, they began taking bold steps to reach others with the gospel almost immediately after NLI ended. Skylar evangelized to people at the airport and Maya shared her testimony with someone who sat next to her on the plane. Another student even shared the gospel with his Uber driver! Many others continued chatting excitedly with one another over Slack about how God used them on their travels home.

As these students return to their campuses this fall to lead their ��ñ�� communities, may everything God began in them at NLI continue to fuel their faith. Join us in praying for them to lean into their God-given callings as they head to campus!

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Hannah Keziah Agustin

Hannah Keziah Agustin is a Social Media Coordinator/Writer for ��ñ��’s Communications Team in Madison, Wisconsin. You can support her ministry at givetoiv.org/hannah-keziah-agustin.

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David and Goliath & the Trial That Wasn't Really a Trial

ryan.cheng@intervarsity.org — Wed, 26 Jun 2024 20:17:23 +0000

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June 26, 2024

Nathan Peterson

David and Goliath & the Trial That Wasn't Really a Trial

David and Goliath. By far, it’s one of the most popular Bible stories of all time. It evokes all kinds of imagery from CG veggies clashing over the kitchen to every underdog sports movie you can think of.

The main message I’ve always associated with it is face your fears, take on the impossible, and you can actually win. And yes, while David’s victory over Goliath is truly inspiring and a testament to us about overcoming the insurmountable–with God’s help–I believe there’s another lesson we’re overlooking here.

Not Afraid

When you look at 1 Samuel 17, David doesn’t seem scared. At all. The rest of the army, including David’s brothers and King Saul? Yes, they’re absolutely petrified. But David’s ready to throw down as soon as Goliath opens his mouth, no matter how big he is.

“Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?” David asks in verse 26. And again in verse 32, he straight up tells King Saul, “Let no one lose heart on account of this Philistine; your servant will go and fight him.”

While the jury’s still out on how old David was at this point, we know he was young, likely still a teenager. His older brother, King Saul, and Goliath himself all make it clear that if there was a giant-killer to be found in Israel, David wasn’t the guy.

None of this fazed David in the slightest. As you keep reading, the most resistance and challenge he faces is trying to walk around in King Saul’s armor. The “battle” itself feels like it’s over before it even begins. David came, he saw, he conquered. Period.

The Trials We Didn’t See

So … how did David, little more than a kid, become so confident, so assured that he could overcome Goliath?

The biggest clue comes in verses 34-37:

But David said to Saul, “Your servant has been keeping his father’s sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God. The LORD who rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine.”

If you’ve heard this passage before, it may sound a little cliche. But take a second to let this sink in. According to the Cleveland Zoo, a lion’s roar alone can be heard from five miles away. Imagine the kind of power and strength that thing has when it’s right in front of you. And now imagine David, as a teen, chasing one of these lions down, grabbing a big ol’ fistful of hair, and killing it?!

If I managed to do this–and live–I don’t think there’d be a lot that could rattle me. But note where David’s confidence comes from. Not from boasting about himself or his great strength. It comes from God.

The testing and trials David went through when no one else was around were what shaped him the most. They grew him and enabled him to confidently step into the spotlight. That’s why the nine-foot-tall, monstrous Philistine trial that everyone else was freaking about didn’t shake David. To David, Goliath was just another opportunity for God to show up, just another lion with a big mouth.

What This Means for Us

I know the likelihood that you or I will ever square off against a full-size lion, let alone a literal giant, are slim to none.

But that doesn’t mean we won’t face challenges that truly test us and push us past what we think we can handle, whether it’s just making it through the semester’s coursework or battling daily with depression and anxiety. For that reason, David’s story can teach us several things:

1. The Importance of Perspective

In 1 Samuel 16, right before this story, David is actually anointed as the next king of Israel. Samuel the prophet is shocked because this kid is the youngest and smallest of seven older brothers. But God reminds Samuel: “People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart” (1 Sam 16:7). David’s heart was aligned with God’s. He was able to see the trials and challenges in life for what they really were. Goliath wasn’t just some big, scary bully. He was defying the God of heaven and earth, and David couldn’t just stand by and let that happen.

Too often when I face a challenge, I go immediately from observation to action, trying to outthink, outwrestle my way from the problem. But it’s so important to pause, to reflect, to pray for heaven’s perspective on things before we act. It will help us see what’s truly at stake and how best to move forward, not in a mad scramble to fix our problems but in confidence and peace. Often the best thing we can do when we’re tempted to scramble is just to be still.

2. The Mundane Matters

Sitting outside day and night with a bunch of less-than-clever animals in constant need of protection and supervision–being a shepherd was not a glamorous job. And yet it was here that David grew in his confidence and ability to do amazing things with God’s help.

Whatever boring things we might be stuck doing right now (and this comes from a guy who had to count worms for bait shops one summer during college), we need to trust that Jesus is using this to equip us and grow us. We need to be patient. Who knows how he might use today’s tedium to prepare us for tomorrow’s opportunities?

3. Relationship First

Before David became a king, before he became a giant-killer, before he became an author of Scripture, he was first and foremost a child of God. Just like us. No matter what we accomplish, we are valuable primarily because of who we are in God’s sight. As we read through the Psalms, we see David sharing an incredible intimacy with God. It was out of this rich relationship that David was able to face life’s challenges with such success and poise.

More than likely, David was alone out there in the wilderness when he had to fight off the lions and bears that were trying to attack his sheep. No one else may have known all the intense things he had to go through. It’s the same with us. You and I may go through hardships and trials no one else may ever know about.

But Jesus is there. He weeps right alongside us. He mourns when we mourn and grieves when we grieve. If we nurture that relationship, that will build a rich intimacy with him that ultimately enables us to trust him more than anyone else. It will empower us, like David, to grow and eventually reach the point where we can face trials of immense intensity and not even see them as trials but rather a fresh opportunity to see God’s incredible power and love on display.

If we’re willing to pause and let the truths of Scripture sink into our hearts and actually change us, I believe that we can experience the kind of transformation that David did. He was a human just like us. And God used him to do incredible things! May we all be so bold and audacious to take this story to heart and allow it to inspire us in the trials we’re facing now and in days to come!

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Nathan Peterson

Nathan served as a writer for ��ñ�� for five and a half years. He currently works for a ministry serving adults with disabilities. He enjoys writing and drawing and staying in shape.

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Nazareth U. and Central Indiana: The Spiritual Discipline of Uncool Places

emily.baez@intervarsity.org — Fri, 01 Dec 2023 19:08:14 +0000

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December 01, 2023

Drew Larson

Nazareth U. and Central Indiana: The Spiritual Discipline of Uncool Places

There is a place on Earth which is a smear of cornfields and grassland, a yellow-ish blur of land that ancient glaciers rolling-pinned into smoothness on their way from elsewhere to elsewhere. The wind races around those fields as if it could still catch the glaciers somehow, like a child chasing after an older sibling. It is flat enough, empty enough, that it almost feels friction-less. A place seemingly meant for gliding over and passing through.

This place is central Indiana. I went to college there.

Indiana is not, by any definition I or anyone else would ever use, “cool.” In the years since I’ve graduated, I’ve heard a million conversations about cool places people would love to live: Colorado, Austin, New England, Seattle, SoCal, Nashville, among countless others. I’ve never heard anyone say central Indiana.

Part of my heart still lives there and will forever. I like it that way.

Without central Indiana, I wouldn’t understand Nazareth. Or the spiritual discipline of uncool places.

The most certain fact we have about Nazareth from Scripture is that it was uncool. “Can anything good come from there?” Nathanael famously exclaimed when he heard it was Jesus’ hometown (Jn 1:46). We don’t know the exact reasons for Nazareth’s uncoolness. Perhaps it was its location, its culture and customs, its small size, or something else. We don’t know for sure if Nathanael is speaking a word of prejudice or describing Nazareth’s insignificance.

What we do know is that Nazareth was so uncool that its uncool-ness was the first thing Nathanael knew about it.

We know one other thing about Nazareth: it had a school. Sort of.

More to the point, it was a school. Luke 2:51-52 tells us, after the story of teenage Jesus’ synagogue adventure, “Then [Jesus] went down to Nazareth with [his parents] and was obedient to them … And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature…”

Jesus didn’t just grow up in Nazareth. Jesus grew in Nazareth, in wisdom and in stature.

As year stacked on year, as inch stacked on inch, the most important thing happening in Nazareth for Jesus is that he was—in the mystery of the Incarnation, unchanging God and humanity joined together—growing, taking shape, becoming.

For decades of his life, Jesus lived each day in an uncool city. He walked and played and learned and made friends in a town whose primary identity was its insignificance. I wonder if, on occasion, Jesus hiked to the top of the ridge and looked for miles on all the other towns who couldn’t care less that Nazareth existed. And in that uncool town, marinating in its un-coolness for year after year, Jesus’ wisdom grew. He learned, matured, became, in semester after semester in the college of life at Nazareth U.

So I wonder if un-coolness is why it had to be Nazareth. Of course Jesus’ becoming, whatever it was, could have been perfectly stewarded and achieved in fashionable and popular towns like Jerusalem, in geographically stunning locales like Capernaum. But what if the point of Nazareth is that ‘place’ is its own kind of school? That there are things “cool” places teach us that God would have us unlearn—and Nazareth-shaped ways of God’s kingdom that only can be learned in “uncool” places? What if “uncool places” – uncool campuses, even — are their own kind of spiritual discipline, unique settings where years of life might produce indispensable spiritual formation? If that’s true, then maybe that’s why God enrolled his one and only Son at Nazareth U.

So what fruit might grow from the spiritual discipline of uncool places? Two possibilities come to mind.

1. Trusting in God’s Story

We are all born into places and stories that we did not choose. Almost all of those places and stories are ordinary, anonymous, unspectacular. How will we think of them? As “less than” compared to the cool lives we wish we’d been given? And how will we live them? Always frustrated, sure that there has been some kind of mix-up in God’s Perfect Life Delivery Plan? Or fearful, certain that our lives will be lame and third-rate unless we can somehow run fast enough on the world’s Infinite Upgrade Treadmill?

It sounds exhausting. And it is.

The treasure of contentment can only be found by trusting in God’s story and his storytelling. Uncool places are the perfect setting for learning to trust that, wherever you live and whatever your story, God’s story is always at work in you.

2. Training in God’s Love

None of us begin following Jesus with advanced skills in unconditional love. We are not born with perfect instincts for loving the unlovable, for valuing the plain and common and unimpressive around us, for honoring them and speaking of them with the same loving delight that God does. We have to learn it.

There are plenty of ways in life to learn this. But surely one of them might be to look around at the uncool places that we or others inhabit and ask Jesus—Jesus, the one from Nazareth, the one who has been lovingly present in every uncool place on Earth—what he loves about that place, and what he might want you to love about it, too. A life spent asking this question will, over time, train your heart to love the way God loves.

Life in central Indiana wasn’t perfect. My face has never felt colder than it did walking to class during those four wind-ravaged winters. I had to drive 21 miles to reach anything resembling a coffee shop. It was so flat that sometimes the horizon felt like the literal edge of the world.

But oh, was it ever uncool. That is the one thing I would never change, the thing I loved about it the most. I don’t know what my heart would look like without central Indiana, what Nazareth training this spiritual discipline of uncool places gave me that I might not have found elsewhere.

What I do know is this: any semester at Nazareth U., if God uses it to give you a more Nazareth-shaped heart, is worth it. And then some.

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Drew Larson

Drew Larson works as a writer on ��ñ��’s Communications Team in Madison, Wisconsin. You can buy his book here. You can support his ministry with ��ñ�� here.

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Jesus Sees You: The ‘Good’ In Jesus, the Good Shepherd

emily.baez@intervarsity.org — Thu, 16 Nov 2023 23:23:51 +0000

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November 16, 2023

Drew Larson

Jesus Sees You: The ‘Good’ In Jesus, the Good Shepherd

In John 9 Jesus heals a blind man. A moment that, at first, doesn’t seem to naturally connect to a parable about livestock and one of the richest, most compelling pictures of Jesus’ love for us—but it does.

The Pharisees find out about this healing and, as you might expect, don’t like it one bit. The man who Jesus heals—who literally “sees” Jesus—is contrasted with the Pharisees who Jesus paints as “blind guides”, who even though they come to Jesus cannot “see” him, cannot understand him, and in their willful blindness, mislead God’s people. It’s a literal “blind leading the blind” situation.

So in John 10: 1-6, Jesus responds by talking about sheep.

Imagine a sheep pen, Jesus says, A sheep pen, which at that time would have been a walled enclosure, guarded by a gate and a familiar shepherd, under whose guidance and protective watch the sheep pass freely in and out of the pasture.

But threats to the sheep exist on both sides. There are thieves and robbers lying all around. (v. 1 and 10) As one commentator notes, there are two kinds of dangers here. Thieves break in; robbers lie in wait along paths and trails. In this vignette, the hazards of daily sheep and shepherd life are all around, inside and outside.

Then in verses 8-20, Jesus ends by telling the Pharisees, “This story isn’t just any old example or illustration. I am that shepherd. I am that gate. And if you’re really going to see me like that blind man I just healed, you need to know that.”

The Good Shepherd

The most famous verse in this passage is, of course, John 10:11: Jesus’ declaration that “I am the good shepherd.” Not just a regular, average, run-of-the-mill shepherd, either. But rather, “the good shepherd.”

What’s good about Jesus, the good shepherd? Lots of things, of course. But in this passage? It’s because he sees, knows, loves his sheep personally.

Personally. In every shape and contour and texture of your you-ness. That’s you, to Jesus: a glorious unique creation worth knowing in every possible way, all the way up and down and in.

In verse 4 Jesus says that “…the sheep listen to [the shepherd’s] voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. … he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow because they know his voice.”

This is what’s happening earlier in the Gospels when Jesus recruits his first disciples. He calls them by name… Simon Peter, come and see. Andrew, Nathanael, Philip, all the rest—come and see, come and see, come and see. It’s an early picture of Jesus’ personal care and attention. Even before this moment with the Pharisees in John 10, the shepherd’s voice had already begun calling his sheep.

That’s part of Jesus’ goodness—even before we knew him, he knew us. And in knowing us, he knew us not as abstract little sheep dots in some great big sheep blob, but as personally-known, greatly-valued sheep in his beloved flock.

Thieves and Robbers

To the thieves and robbers, by contrast, the sheep aren’t beloved creatures—they’re impersonal, anonymous, basically currency, and therein lies the danger. The thief and robber feel great freedom to steal and kill and destroy precisely because the sheep mean nothing to them. They don’t know them—their personalities, quirks, tendencies, eccentricities—and don’t love them. And because of that, they feel great freedom to do everything they want with them, regardless of whether it’s what the sheep want or what might be best for them.

‘Thieves and robbers’ is the basic dynamic of the world. It was true then and it’s true now. In most contexts we move around in, we’re anything but personally-known, personally cared for. We’re anything but called to by a loving voice. We’re just small-talk and chit-chat to be endured, one car among many in the traffic jam after work, just a face in the campus crowd, a grade going up and down in a gradebook.

One woolly dot in the sheepy blobs of life.

But to Jesus the shepherd, we have names. We are personally known, in all our shape and contour and texture, glorious unique creations worth knowing in every possible way. And when he calls to us, he calls with a voice whose clearest frequencies are friendship and intimacy, and whose resonance is so full of goodness that when we hear it, we want to follow. By contrast, when we hear the voices of those who are strangers to the ways of Jesus, made gritty and hoarse with calculating, impersonal extraction, we sense, deep down, the wrong-ness of those voices.

To Be Known

The good shepherd knows us. He also loves us.

Five times in this passage, Jesus talks about laying down his life. The hired hand, like the thief and the robber, has no stake in the survival of the flock. He cares nothing for the sheep. He’s just a temp in the field, supervising the sheep blob to ensure that none of the sheep resources are lost. He doesn’t know them or want to; he cares exactly as much as he’s paid to care and not a penny more, and not for any longer than the contract says.

Each night before clocking out, the hired hand tallies the sheep up as numbers and checks a box on his clipboard, which he hangs on a hook in the shed for the guy on the next shift. He doesn’t say goodnight to them by name as he scratches them tenderly behind the ear. Of course, when a wolf attacks, he’ll run away. The sheep are just numbers, they’re not even his. Why risk dying? Who cares?

The answer is: Jesus, the good shepherd, cares. Jesus, the good shepherd, will risk dying. For you, for us. To him we’re not just numbers on a clipboard. He knows us, and knows us with love.

Five times, Jesus tells the Pharisees, that’s the difference between a shepherd like me and shepherds like you. For these people, for these sheep that I know by heart and call by name, I’ll lay down my life.

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Drew Larson

Drew Larson works as a writer on ��ñ��’s Communications Team in Madison, Wisconsin. You can buy his book here. You can support his ministry with ��ñ�� here.

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Why You Should Join ��ñ��

emily.baez@intervarsity.org — Fri, 30 Jun 2023 18:32:17 +0000

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June 30, 2023

Emily Baez

Hannah Keziah Agustin

Ashlye Elizondo Vanderworp

Drew Larson

Why You Should Join ��ñ��

As people who Jesus has deeply shaped through ��ñ��, we believe that ��ñ�� is just the best. ��ñ�� is fun, it helps you grow, it introduces you to lifelong friends, and it turns you into a certified biblical scholar in just four years! (That last part might be a tiny exaggeration.) 

In all seriousness, we really do think there’s something for everyone in ��ñ��. If you haven’t checked us out yet, here are five reasons we think you should.

1. ��ñ�� is Holistic 

Emily: When I first met ��ñ��, I knew almost immediately that this group was different from other groups on campus. We didn’t just interact with each other when we absolutely had to. Instead, we were a part of each other’s lives in a holistic sense.  

One night after small group Bible study, my friend Sara shared very suddenly that she’d been stressed out for months about having to declare a major. She still wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with her life and it was keeping her up at night.

In other groups it might’ve been perfectly acceptable to respond with a “good luck with that, but I gotta go.” After all, we were just meeting for Bible study, it was getting late, and we didn’t have to stick around. But we stuck around anyway and talked to Sara for hours. While she didn’t come to a conclusion that night, I’d like to think that having friends who cared about her life beyond her role in the organization helped.  

This was the case so many times in my ��ñ�� community. We studied Scripture, worshipped, and prayed together. But we also studied for finals together, met each other’s families, attended each other’s concerts and soccer games, helped each other move, etc. And we talked about everything — mental health, justice, ethnic identity, calling, big life decisions (like how to pick a major!) — you name it. In that process, we met the spiritual, relational, and physical needs of each of the members of our community. 

��ñ�� cared about me as a multidimensional person with real needs both spiritual and not spiritual. Because of that, I could bring my whole self to my community.

2. ��ñ�� Offers Friendship

Hannah: ��ñ�� gives you a community of friends that will last beyond the walls of the university. The friends I made in my chapter have shared so much of their lives with me. We saw each other not as acquaintances who met up for formal organization meetings but as friends who did life together. ��ñ�� gave me a place to be seen, known, and loved. 

I met my friend Mitch on the worship team when I was a freshman. He helped me with music theory homework and had dinner with me in between choir practice and large group rehearsal. When we both became Bible study leaders, we encouraged each other to be faithful in serving our community. When we were both seniors, we sat with each other and discerned where God was calling us in the next season of our lives. Now that we’ve both graduated and have 9-to-5 office jobs, we FaceTime once a week to talk about After College, a book on how to navigate the transition from the university to the workplace. Even though we don’t see each other as often as we did in college, we still pray for one another and stay connected. 

These are the types of friendships you make in ��ñ��. I’ve met many soul friends who support me through the highs and lows of life and continually pray for me even when we live far away from each other. My friends in ��ñ�� embody God’s palpable love for me in places I never expected.

3. ��ñ�� is Fun! 

��ñ�� is a college ministry, which means we have college students who know how to have fun! In our chapter we held movie nights, played beach volleyball, and went on long drives to the gas station in the town fifteen miles away to get three-dollar cheeseburgers and talk about life. We had game nights, boba runs, and corn maze campfires. We grabbed meals together as often as we could because it was the perfect way to incorporate fellowship into eating (something we needed to do each day despite the busyness of our schedules). Our times were filled with the joy of the Lord! 

��ñ�� taught me that being a Christian doesn’t mean you have to be unhappy and stoic all the time. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom,” says Paul in 2 Corinthians 3:17. We are liberated to be joyful in hope and also follow Jesus faithfully. They’re not mutually exclusive. I could joke with my life group friends in the dining hall about difficult classes and the papers I had to write. I could also theologize with them and reckon with questions I didn’t have answers to in Bible study. I learned in ��ñ�� that even laughter can be holy in the presence of brethren in Christ. 

We have a God who rejoices over us with singing in Zephaniah 3:17. This then sets us free to have fun! Whether fun looks like sharing stories over coffee, baking cookies in the dorm basement, or hiking the trails near campus, ��ñ�� provides the space to have fun and the community to do it with. 

4. ��ñ�� Explores Faith and Scripture 

Ashlye: Before college, I don’t know if I’d ever experienced a Christian space where it was okay to ask questions or express doubts. Disagreeing with others who were nice and friendly and seemed like they knew more than I did seemed taboo. But ��ñ�� was different.  

My Christian experiences up to that point were centered around hearing pastors give sermons. They’d often share one small verse from Scripture and use that to expound for an hour on a topic or point they were trying to make. I thought this is what the Bible was –– a book with some good, encouraging insights on life –– not a love story about a Creator’s work to reconcile his people back to him and renew all things.  

The way ��ñ�� studies the Bible and talks about faith is deep. We dig deep into history, context, the audience it was written to, the culture at the time, word choice, and questions we have. We don’t ignore what most Christians know and are sometimes afraid to admit: the Bible is difficult to read and understand. Instead, we hear from each other’s perspectives to see that there may be more to the passage than what it seems on the surface.  

We also end Bible studies figuring out how to apply what we’ve read to our lives. In my ��ñ�� chapter, we all came from different backgrounds and had different experiences. We learned from each other and helped each other figure out how God was speaking to us through Scripture, like if the Lord was calling any of us to reach our individual majors, dorms, etc.  

I never knew before ��ñ�� that there was nuance to faith and Scripture. I never knew that there were stories and analogies and poetry and characters that could always be showing me something new –– about myself and about God. Even now, as I’m nearly a decade out of college, the way I learned to study the Bible in ��ñ�� shapes how I read Scripture and how I experience Jesus. It’s life-changing, and I hope you’ll experience it too!  

5. ��ñ�� Helps You Grow — As a Person and Leader 

Drew: I’ve sometimes described the essence of ��ñ��’s ministry as “Contact and Capacity.”  Our chapters, Bible studies, prayer meetings, outreaches, mission trips — all of it, and everything else, are about putting people in direct, personal contact with God, his Word, his love, and his kingdom purposes. And through that contact (and our obedient, trusting response to it), Jesus transforms us and grows our capacities: for love and forgiveness, service and obedience, maturity and leadership, and more. 

This is part of the great hope of Jesus that ��ñ�� helps students experience: that by trusting your life to God’s ways and your heart to his shaping touch, he will grow you into someone with emotional, spiritual, and practical capacities that you could never achieve on your own and that are, frankly, beyond even your wildest dreams for yourself. That’s good news!  

Following Jesus is the most potent investment you can ever make in your potential as a human person. He’s not necessarily making you into a Winner or an Alpha or an Influencer or a Very Healthy and Nice Person. He’s making you into something different and better: a disciple and leader, one whose depth of trust in God and capacity for his kingdom ways are equally immense.  

Doesn’t that sound like the best life you could ask for?  

Convinced by our list? Join an ��ñ�� community on your campus by clicking this link!

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Emily Baez

Emily Baez is a writer on ��ñ��’s Communications Team in Madison, Wisconsin. She enjoys long hikes, watching movies, and overly competitive game nights with friends. You can support her ministry here.

Hannah Keziah Agustin

Hannah Keziah Agustin is a Social Media Coordinator/Writer for ��ñ��’s Communications Team in Madison, Wisconsin. You can support her ministry at givetoiv.org/hannah-keziah-agustin.

Ashlye Elizondo Vanderworp

Ashlye works as the Managing Editor for ��ñ��'s Communications Team in Madison, Wisconsin. She enjoys deep conversations with friends and adventures with her husband (a Video Producer for ��ñ��) and their corgi, Penny. You can support her ministry here: donate.intervarsity.org/donate#21368.

Drew Larson

Drew Larson works as a writer on ��ñ��’s Communications Team in Madison, Wisconsin. You can buy his book here. You can support his ministry with ��ñ�� here.

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The Boredom of Good Friday

emily.baez@intervarsity.org — Fri, 07 Apr 2023 15:59:38 +0000

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April 07, 2023

Drew Larson

The Boredom of Good Friday

Life as a Roman soldier in Jesus’ time must have been quite dull.

Once you’ve conquered the world, as the Romans had, all that’s left to do is keep it. And occupying a country at that time, I imagine, would have been boring stuff on the day-to-day: lots of standing around, the occasional patrol or scowl at a local, hoping for a little action now and then. For a soldier, it must have felt like a life of inevitability, proceeding like the footsteps of a march, left, right, left-RIGHT-left. The next formation, the next order, the next arrest, the next tax collection, day after day, all of it numbing them into stupefied ennui.

Numbness like that cries out for interruption. Something different, anything different, to make you feel like you’re living and not just existing. Just one extra beat in the march so that, occasionally, it feels like a dance.

I wonder if that helps explain the curious part in Jesus’ crucifixion story when, after Pilate has sentenced him but before he is led to the cross, a moment of theater breaks out. (Matt. 27:27-31) The soldiers drag Jesus to the governor’s mansion, where “the whole company” gathers as an audience for a show (v. 27). They give Jesus a costume and props—the scarlet robe, fake staff, crown of thorns—and play out a scene of cruel improv, alternating fake worship (“Hail, king of the Jews!!”, v. 29) and real cruelty (“…they spit on him…struck him on the head again and again.”, v. 30).

This moment could perhaps be explained as common brutality, plain and simple. But v. 31 adds an extra detail that gives the game away: “… they took off the robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him away.”

If brutality were the point, the soldiers could have left Jesus in costume as they took him to the cross. If mocking him was the point, they wouldn’t have needed an audience. But they “put [Jesus’] own clothes on him” before they led him away. The costume and props had served their purpose. The curtain had closed, the show had finished, the soldiers’ brutal play concluded. This moment wasn’t about Jesus. It was about them. In the relentless banality of their daily life, they hungered for an interruption—any excuse to feel like their march of life could have one moment of dance, of novelty, of play. Even a cruel one.

In Jesus’ passion story, the violence often grabs us first. We’re startled by the whips, the beatings, the nails, the cross, one after the other. But behind Good Friday’s violence lies something more startling and, in some ways, even closer to our daily experience: Good Friday’s boredom.

It is true that each day is an exquisite gift of God, filled with new mercies and precious hints of his presence that ignite our gratitude. But it is also true that, in some seasons of life, each day can feel relentless in its monotony. Like the Roman soldiers, we wake up into stretches of life where the tedium of life has so blunted our sense of wonder at God’s world and his ways that when any interruption comes, whether sacred or sinful, we’ll seize it—and live it badly.

That is the tragedy of these soldiers. The boredom of their lives as occupiers corroded their hearts so badly that, when Jesus appeared in their lives, it wasn’t enough to just hurt him. They had to play with him. Had to perform with him. Had to put him on stage and do a venomous “dance” with him. Because for them, tomorrow brought them back to the grind, to the march, to the boredom.

The soldiers took God’s gift of creativity, of imaginative delight and play which is imbued into every human who bears the image of God, and turned it against Jesus, who is “the very image of God.” (Col. 1:15). It is a heartbreaking degradation to see, imago dei defacing The Imago Dei.

But look at Jesus among the soldiers, at the vulnerability and power of his love. They have missed the greatest Interruption of all, the entrance of God into history for the purposes of salvation and transformation, including theirs. Even in their mocking play, in their broken dancing, they rightly worshiped Jesus as King and didn’t even know it. They are face-to-face with the very interruption they secretly longed for, torturing the one who could break their chains of monotonous oppression and sin and liberate them into an exhilarating life of holiness, transformation, and love. Yet they could not see it.

This is the mind-blowing depth of Jesus’ love: he sat there… and allowed it. In his incarnation, Jesus entered the humdrum, the daily grind, the relentless tedium of day after day. Even more, he submitted to the brokenness this tedium produces in us, like it did in these soldiers. Offered himself to our trivial violence, casual disregard, mocking indifference—towards him, and each other.

He did it because he loves us. We know this because after the soldiers finished and put Jesus’ own clothes on him, they led him away—to crucify him.

The soldiers missed Jesus’ interruption into their lives. They could only use their sin- and boredom-dulled hearts to make sport of him, to make him a small blip of novelty when they could have had a seismic, life-altering experience.

But Jesus let them. Even as they toyed with him, Jesus knew that he was going to the cross, the grave, and the resurrection—the ultimate Interruption by the great Interrupter, the one who disrupted sin and death forever with salvation and new creation.

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Drew Larson

Drew Larson works as a writer on ��ñ��’s Communications Team in Madison, Wisconsin. You can buy his book here. You can support his ministry with ��ñ�� here.

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Interruptions as Invitations — Lenten Reflections

emily.baez@intervarsity.org — Thu, 23 Mar 2023 16:49:16 +0000

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March 23, 2023

Benjie Shaw

Interruptions as Invitations — Lenten Reflections

If it doesn’t go in my calendar, it doesn’t get done.

This is true for appointments, important tasks, and simple reminders (e.g., “Siri, remind me to call Mom on Tuesday”).

Having a plan of attack for the week has been a staple of my life since grad school. On the whole, it’s incredibly helpful. Planning for the week allows me to allocate time to things that are important and not just bounce around from urgent task to urgent task. I’m a big fan of having a plan.

But I’ve also noticed a subtle danger in my love of planning. My plan often places me at the center of everything (how many times did I say “my” and “me” in those two sentences?).

My priorities are what get elevated. My desires are made manifest. My timelines are formalized into the timelines.

As a good type-A personality, I have no room for interruptions or deviations from my plan. After all, it’s the plan!

Jesus Works in Interruptions

Our ��ñ�� chapter has been studying John this semester. I’ve been struck by how often Jesus was diverted from what he planned to do and instead ministered to someone who definitely didn’t have an appointment.

His first miracle of turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana was not on his schedule (Jn 2). Nicodemus came to ask him questions at night when he was likely ready to go to bed (Jn 3). As he traveled, Jesus healed a man who had been born blind seemingly only because the disciples asked who was to blame for his condition (Jn 9).

The disciples appear to have learned the value of divine interruption from Jesus. In Acts 3, as Peter and John were going to the temple to pray, they stopped to heal a lame man when the man interrupted their holy pilgrimage to ask for money. Do you know how late this probably made Peter and John??

Imagine what would have happened if none of these interruptions occurred, if everything went according to plan. We probably wouldn’t have even heard about it. But these interruptions are recorded in Scripture as the Word of God to us because someone was willing to deviate from the plan for the day to respond to an interruption. As you go about your day, walking to class, working, or studying, how open are you to interruptions?

What’s the Goal?

Over the last few years, I’ve felt the Lord inviting me to embrace interruption more. Since you’re reading this, it means I still have work to do.

With Lent upon us, I’ve again sensed the Lord inviting me to embrace interruption to experience his work, his provision, and his care for me in new ways. Beyond that, I’ve felt the need to repent of the pride inherent in my love of my plan.

I’ve begun wondering, Why do I care about my plan so much? It’s not that it’s bad, but what does unyieldingly holding to my plan accomplish? And for whom.

The answer to both questions centers on myself. I hold to my plan because it makes me feel in control. Accomplishing everything in my plan makes me feel useful, purposeful, and proud. It locates me at the center of all things. And I can miss Jesus entirely.

Saying Yes to the Unexpected

It’s been a few years since the Lord first started impressing the importance of embracing interruption. Several weeks after I first felt this prompting, I was sitting outside at a coffee shop getting some work done. A young guy approached and asked if he could sit at my table since all the other seating was taken. Being a Southern man, I politely obliged and continued my work with my headphones in.

Then he started talking. I would smile, engage a little, and then go back to work. But the guy was relentless! He kept talking, and I kept giving him the bare minimum in an attempt to get back to my work.

Then it hit me. This was exactly the kind of situation that the Lord had been inviting me to embrace. So I did something radical. I closed my laptop, put away my headphones, and started asking him questions.

What followed was an hour-and-a-half conversation on life, animation styles, homemade soaps, and Jesus that left my head spinning in its breadth and depth. I was able to share the gospel with him and attempted to get him connected to a friend who was on staff at a church around the corner from his house. We followed each other on Instagram to stay in touch (and we still do!).

I left getting far fewer things done but began the process of saying yes to Jesus even when it doesn’t fit into my schedule.

Pride is insidious. It’s subtle enough that we often overlook it but repulsive enough that we resist the implication that we may, in fact, be proud. Yet it’s one of the most renounced sins in the Bible: “God resists the proud” (Jas 4:6).

As we enter into Lent, a season marked by repentance and contemplation of the death of Jesus for our sins, let’s ask the Lord to rid us of our pride in our schedules. Let’s ask him for the sensitivity to respond to his leading through interruptions. Let’s resolve to linger in a moment instead of rushing off to the next thing.

Let’s view interruptions as invitations.

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Benjie Shaw

Benjie is a campus staff minister at the University of Georgia. His desire is to see students engage their classmates, friends, and family with the Gospel and pursue Jesus faithfully into adulthood. Support his ministry here.

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Reading the Bible with a Diverse Community

AD-16225 — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 14:35:10 +0000

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February 02, 2023

Steve Tamayo

Reading the Bible with a Diverse Community

We’re sharing some of our favorite posts from over the years! This post was originally published in April 2013.

Each of us wears cultural lenses.

Our cultural lenses shape our worldview, our relationships, our behavior … even the way we read the Bible.

Think about that: your cultural lenses may distort your reading of the Bible. But your cultural lenses may also serve as a gift to your community. They’re wild things, these cultural lenses.

If you’re like me, though, you’re often completely blind to cultural lenses.

Discover Your Lenses

I discovered my cultural lenses in a diverse small group. To my left were African Americans. To my right were Asian Americans. Across the circle — we always sat in a circle — were our White folks. And then there was me: White and Cuban, jumbled together.

We were talking about Ephesians, a letter written by Paul the apostle. In it, Paul talks about the diverse Christian community that Jesus is creating in the world.

When we shared what jumped out to us in Ephesians 2, my African American and White friends mentioned reconciliation. My Asian American friends noticed peace with God our Father. But all I saw was this: “He made one new man out of the two.” Paul uses a biracial person as a metaphor for the community Jesus is building. And I noticed it. No one else noticed it. That’s when I saw one of my cultural lenses for the first time.

The Secret about Cultural Lenses

Here’s the secret about cultural lenses: the best way to discover them is to read the Bible in a diverse community.

Read the Bible with people across the ethnic spectrum.

Read the Bible with men and women.

Read the Bible with people of different ages.

Read the Bible with people who are more and less mature than you.

Read the Bible with people who have lots of faith and with people who have lots of doubt.

The broader, the better.

Share Your Lenses

Your background, experiences, journey through life — really, everything about you — have positioned you to read God’s Word uniquely. In other words, your unique lenses, through which you read the Bible, are gifts from God.

The rest of us need your lenses. Much dysfunction in the Christian community stems from our failure to look at God’s Word through the diverse set of lenses he’s given us in each other. When we cluster around people who only share our lenses, we miss important things.

I was reminded of this recently at my church small group. In the current group I’m in, most of the other members have a lot more life experience than me. During one discussion, my friend Erika pointed out a fresh angle on a familiar passage: a man born blind miraculously receives sight, but this might cost him his job as a panhandler. How’s he going to make a living? Was it worth it? Yes. Was it easy? No.

I’ve read this passage a dozen times and never noticed the job aspect. But then again, I’ve never started my own business, never scrambled to feed my family, never wondered if my spouse’s company would survive an economic downturn. I need people like Erika to see what I cannot see and share what they see with me.

I’m glad Erika shared with me. She has a gift. So do you. Share it.

Challenge Your Lenses

None of us comes from a perfect culture. All our cultures need Jesus’ redemption. Cultural lenses get scratched.

A few months ago, a young man on campus shared that he felt that the Bible permitted him to hit a woman if she got out of line. Given his background and culture, I understand why he saw this in Scripture. But he was wrong.

This is the trickiest aspect of cultural lenses. How do I know when someone has a scratch on a cultural lens? How can you distinguish between diversity and error?

I don’t have a perfect answer. But I’ve learned this: you can tell a tree by its fruit. Over time, the fruit of healthy cultural lenses is a person who grows in love for God, God’s Word, God’s people, and God’s purposes in the world.

God can and does mend our scratched cultural lenses. He does this by placing us in communities who receive our gifts and correct our errors.

Have you ever read the Bible in a diverse community? What was it like? If you’ve never experienced this before, search for an ��ñ�� chapter near you.

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Steve Tamayo

Steve Tamayo is a strategist serving with ��ñ��’s Latino Fellowship (LaFe), Creative Labs, Graduate and Faculty Ministries, and Multiethnic Initiatives. He recently published the Ethnic Identity LifeGuide Bible Study with ��ñ�� Press and hosts the Con Confianza podcast. He’s married to Amy, and together they have four children and lots of adventures. You can connect with him on Twitter at @yostevetamayo, and you can support his ministry using this link: donate.intervarsity.org/donate#9101.

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What Is the Bible?

AD-18513 — Wed, 20 Apr 2022 20:37:00 +0000

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April 20, 2022

Rick Mattson

What Is the Bible?

“Make a Christian Squirm” was one of Cole’s favorite pastimes. He’d mine the Bible for challenging passages like Leviticus 20:9: “Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.” And then he’d ask Christians questions like “Do you really support a God who commands his people to kill children that speak out against their parents?” Then he’d sit back and watch the person squirm …

But then one cloudy afternoon, Taylor, an older mentor, invited Cole on a hike up the popular Living Room Trail behind Cole’s campus, The University of Utah. On the ascending path, Taylor began to explain how she read the Bible in its various genres and historical contexts. And she told Cole how the Holy Spirit had inspired the biblical writers to reveal God and his Son, Jesus Christ, to the world through Scripture.

This perspective — so dramatically different from Cole’s own view of the Bible — was a groundbreaking revelation to him. He experienced his own private epiphany on the mountain, complete with a sudden appearance of a rainbow to mark the moment. (You can see this captured in the unedited photo above.)

Maybe you’ve had your own sudden realization of what the Bible really is. Or maybe you’re a little more like me, who, over time and training through ministries on campus like ��ñ��, came to better understand God’s Word and its purposes. Wherever you’re at, I pray that you find the following overview of the Bible helpful and insightful.

Bible Origins

So just what is the Bible? Where did it come from? The 39 books of the Old Testament (OT), or the Hebrew Bible, were composed over a period of about 1,000 years from roughly 1400 to 400 B.C. Its authors include Moses, prophets such as Isaiah and Jeremiah, David, Solomon, Samuel, and others. The texts were accepted as authoritative because God was speaking directly to the author, sometimes in highly critical terms of Israel. Just read through Jeremiah, as I’ve been doing lately, to see the prophet’s scathing critique of his wayward people. This should deter us from any notion that the Israelites wrote a kind of hagiography (self-congratulatory account) of themselves as the “chosen people” throughout the OT.

The final version of the Hebrew Bible seems to be fully in play during the time of Jesus, but exactly how it was finalized isn’t clear historically. For a scholarly overview of the origins of the OT, check out this helpful article based on teachings from John Walton and Andrew Hill.

The 27 books of the New Testament (NT) were written and assembled over a period of about 300 years. The full story of the NT’s formation and accompanying doctrinal disputes can get complicated and nuanced in places. (If you’d like a more in-depth account, check out Roger Olson’s “The Story of Christian Theology”). But the main criteria for a text’s inclusion in the NT was apostolic authority. Thus, a book had to be closely identified with one or more of the 12 apostles to be considered for the NT. Olson’s account reminds us that God used both human brilliance and weakness to accomplish his purpose in assembling the books of the NT.

The Purpose of the Bible

If we zoom out a bit and ask what the purpose of the Bible really is, beyond its origins, various answers will be given. In “The Epic of Eden,” Bible scholar Sandra Richter gives the following summary: “The Bible has one very specific, completely essential and desperately necessary objective — to tell the epic tale of God’s ongoing quest to ransom his creation” (emphasis added).

Let that sink in for a moment. The story of the Bible is the story of God and his plan for saving the world from sin, for ushering in a whole new creation. And while the message of the Bible is never less than this particular storyline, it’s also not more. The intent of its authors is always in the service of redemption and shouldn’t be bent toward other purposes. Richter comments in “The Epic of Eden,” “We forget that [the Bible] was not intended as an exhaustive ancient world history, or a guide to the biology and paleontology of creation, or even a handbook on social reform.”

Nature of the Bible

The lesson just mentioned is to take the Bible for what it is. Don’t fall short or go past its original intent. And that leads to an important point: the Bible is the inspired Word of God. It has an overarching divine element mixed with a human element to accomplish a divine purpose. The ��ñ�� doctrinal statement uses these words: “We believe in the unique divine inspiration, entire trustworthiness, and authority of the Bible.”

We don’t generally hold to a “dictational” model of writing Scripture — that God controlled the pen of the authors in some robotic manner — but rather an inspirational model — that by his Spirit, he inspired or moved the human authors within their personalities and historical locations to give us his Word. Thus, discerning the intent of the authors of the Bible is vital to us. Sometimes we use the analogy of the incarnation to compare this blend of the divine and human found in the writing of Scripture. Jesus was fully God and fully man. So, too, does Scripture have a unique combination of the two. (One needs to use such analogies with caution and not press them too far, of course.) The apostle Peter puts it this way:

Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. (2 Pet 1:20-21)

Exactly how a perfect God can speak through imperfect human authors, we don’t know. But that’s what he did. And that gives us confidence that we can know the living God and know his master plan of redemption for the cosmos!

As we consider all these details — the Bible’s origins and purpose and nature — I pray that we’ll find ourselves renewed and reformed, traversing our own Living Room Trail like Cole. I pray that we’ll be awakened to the truth of Scripture and encounter God, see his signature written in the sky above and, most importantly, written on our hearts.

Want to learn more about studying Scripture on your own or with your small group? We have a whole site dedicated to our inductive Bible study approach — carefully considering the authorial intent and learning how to apply God’s Word to our lives as we engage Scripture from within our personalities and our own cultural and historical locations. Check it out here!

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Rick Mattson is a national apologetics specialist and evangelism coach for ��ñ��. He is author of Faith is Like Skydiving: And Other Memorable Images for Dialogue with Seekers and Skeptics.

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You Can’t Out-Want God

AD-18513 — Fri, 18 Mar 2022 16:05:39 +0000

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March 18, 2022

Drew Larson

You Can’t Out-Want God

Here’s a common scenario from my college years (and many afterward): I’d be praying in my dorm room, often for a recurring request. As I’d pray, I’d notice that I was just … asking. My heart didn’t feel totally engaged.

I’d remember Jesus’ command to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mk 12:30). Then I’d recall some vague caution I’d heard somewhere about rote, mechanical prayers and treating God like a vending machine.

So I’d refocus, trying to pump passion, hunger, need into my soul — this time really trying to mean it just in case “not being serious enough” was the reason God hadn’t answered yet. Then I’d say amen and head to class, emotionally wrung out but satisfied that at least I’d prayed hard enough.

I think, for most average Christians with average prayer lives, this is a common experience. There’s a sense that we need to emotionally “muscle up,” generate some passion, to do serious prayer. Otherwise, it’s just an empty ritual. And that’s not good, right?

To be clear, I’m not cautioning against praying from the heart. Nor am I arguing that a just-check-the-box prayer time is the healthy alternative.

At the same time, I think this scenario reveals something fascinating that’s worth bringing to light: You can’t out-want God.

It seems like an obvious statement at face value. Of course, no one can want something more than God. He is infinitely loving, overflowing in mercy, and abundant in grace. Yet I think our prayer lives show we believe a different story — a story of a God who is flinty and tightfisted, a Scrooge-like hoarder whose attention and gifts can only be captured by raw emotional force.

Thus, our lived experience of prayer and God’s heart is less like a relationship and more like a battle of wills. We sense a desire asymmetry between God and ourselves. He knows what we need and won’t give it to us, we think. Whatever we want so badly, we feel like he doesn’t want us to have it. All the desire is on our side of the equation.

True, sometimes “praying hard” is an honest outpouring of our real feelings. But sometimes it’s also because deep down we think that to get God to care about what we care about, we have to make him care, to make him want what we want.

The Desire Asymmetry of Psalm 131

We get a fascinating and subtle picture of this in Psalm 131. It’s a short psalm, a sliver of three verses wedged into the back of the Psalter:

¹My heart is not proud, LORD,

my eyes are not haughty;

I do not concern myself with great matters

or things too wonderful for me.

²But I have calmed and quieted myself,

I am like a weaned child with its motherl

like a weaned child I am content.

³Israel, put your hope in the LORD

both now and forevermore.

The focal image of the Psalm comes in verse two with a mother and child resting together in peace. The key detail is that the child has been weaned from breast milk and now eats solid food.

The Psalm invites us to imagine, first, unweaned children: squalling, crying, screaming with tears for help. Unweaned infants haven’t learned to trust that their mother wants them to live, grow, and thrive even more than they do.

Contrast that with weaned children, who have internalized the beginnings of this trust. They know that meals will come at regular times — and maybe even at surprising, delightful ones. They are confident that their basic need for food will be met by a mother who cares for them. Even when hungry, they can wait in contentment.

Unweaned children are in bondage to their needs. But weaned children have their first taste of freedom, a freedom that (hopefully) grows up as they do — learning that their parents’ love and longings for them are so much deeper and more expansive than even their own.

Psalm 131 inverts the desire asymmetry that we so often bring into prayer, perhaps even into our life with God as a whole. It invites us out of life as a tug-of-war with God into one where his desires, wants, longings for us (and the world) are not competing against ours but are grander, better, simply more. There is indeed a desire asymmetry between us and God, but not like we think — we can’t out-want God.

This is how Paul can want the Ephesian church to know “how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge” (Eph 3:18-19). No matter how much we want God to love us, God wants to love us more.

It’s how Jesus can tell his disciples (and us) that faith the size of a mustard seed can move mountains (Mt 17:20). However weak-faithed our prayers are, God wants to hear them more.

It’s how we can pray without needing to psych ourselves up with fake emotion or spiritual tantrums or long-winded monologues or masks of piety. No matter the condition of our heart, God wants to connect with us — the real us — more.

And it’s how we can be free. Free from a pathological need to “pray hard” just to show God we’re serious. Free from the fear that whatever God cares about or wants in this world, it isn’t our lives or our needs. Free from the crushing, paralyzing sense that our prayers ricochet off the ceiling of God’s indifference rather than rising like incense into the pure ether of his love.

To be sure, Psalm 131 is not the final word on prayer. Scripture has examples of lament, grief, and wrestling that all have their time and place in our relationship with God. And the mystery of unanswered prayer will always be with us, at least this side of heaven.

But Psalm 131 is, in its little three-verse way, the final word on God’s heart. He can be trusted with our wants because we can’t out-want him. Like Israel in verse three, we can “put our hope in him” today — with finals and relationship questions and career worries and fears for the future — trusting that he joins his richer, grander, greater desires to ours, strengthening them to their fullest expression as they rise to his heart.

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Drew Larson

Drew Larson works as a writer on ��ñ��’s Communications Team in Madison, Wisconsin. You can buy his book here. You can support his ministry with ��ñ�� here.

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NLI 24: Student Leaders Receive a Rousing Call to Campus

NLI 24: Student Leaders Receive a Rousing Call to Campus

Learning to Trust

Renewed Purpose

Faithful Steps Moving Forward

David and Goliath & the Trial That Wasn't Really a Trial

David and Goliath & the Trial That Wasn't Really a Trial

Not Afraid

The Trials We Didn’t See

What This Means for Us

1. The Importance of Perspective

2. The Mundane Matters

3. Relationship First

Nazareth U. and Central Indiana: The Spiritual Discipline of Uncool Places

Nazareth U. and Central Indiana: The Spiritual Discipline of Uncool Places

1. Trusting in God’s Story

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Jesus Sees You: The ‘Good’ In Jesus, the Good Shepherd

Jesus Sees You: The ‘Good’ In Jesus, the Good Shepherd

The Good Shepherd

Thieves and Robbers

To Be Known

Why You Should Join ��ñ����

Why You Should Join ��ñ����

1. ��ñ���� is Holistic

2. ��ñ���� Offers Friendship

3. ��ñ���� is Fun!

4. ��ñ���� Explores Faith and Scripture

5. ��ñ���� Helps You Grow — As a Person and Leader

The Boredom of Good Friday

The Boredom of Good Friday

Interruptions as Invitations — Lenten Reflections

Interruptions as Invitations — Lenten Reflections

Jesus Works in Interruptions

What’s the Goal?

Saying Yes to the Unexpected

Reading the Bible with a Diverse Community

Reading the Bible with a Diverse Community

Discover Your Lenses

The Secret about Cultural Lenses

Share Your Lenses

Challenge Your Lenses

What Is the Bible?

What Is the Bible?

Bible Origins

The Purpose of the Bible

Nature of the Bible

You Can’t Out-Want God

You Can’t Out-Want God

The Desire Asymmetry of Psalm 131

Why You Should Join ��ñ��

Why You Should Join ��ñ��

1. ��ñ�� is Holistic 

2. ��ñ�� Offers Friendship

3. ��ñ�� is Fun! 

4. ��ñ�� Explores Faith and Scripture 

5. ��ñ�� Helps You Grow — As a Person and Leader 