Visions, LSD, and Odd Things I've Heard

I haven't updated in a few days and I feel little bad about that.  I just haven't had a lot of time.  Tuesday after bible study, Doug, Patrick, and myself went to a tent by Victoria Park and watched the Dutch triumph over Uruguay.  Yesterday, I didn't have a great conversation but I did spend a lot of time in prayer and really loved it.  That night I watched Spain beat Germany.  A lot of people were really upset, I guess it's understandable I am in Germany.  The Netherlands are going to beat Spain.

Today, I had a pretty good quiet time.  I woke up really tired and had a sore neck.  I haven't been sleeping well the past couple of nights, but I only a few more days in the bed I'm in.  In-spite of that I spent a good hour with God, asking for Him to refresh me and keep me burning for Him.  On campus today, Alyssa and I went sharing.  The guy we sat down with at lunch didn't speak English, so we just talked between ourselves since I don't feel confident enough to share in German.  When we went back to the south part of campus, the first guy we spoke with was from South Carolina.  He grew up in the church but fell away when he saw how people, in this case priests, can use God to do bad things.  But before we could really share and let him know that we are not called to live like that, he had to leave.  The next person we talked with, was this girl Ulli.  She was really nice but had some traumatizing experiences.  She said that she lost her faith at age 10 when something horrible happened in her life and that she didn't think God was with her through it.  We tried to say that God was with you through that, and His heart broke when it happened and that He can heal you.  As we started to explain that, she moved into how God was neither good nor bad and that Allah, Buddha, Krisna, YHWH, etc are all the same god.  When we asked her about what she thought would happen in death, she said that she had vision where she was approaching death and her grandma said it wasn't time for her to die but when it was she would walk with her through a purgatory type of place seeing everyone she's ever met before deciding if she wants to move on to something else or relive life.  It was very odd.  She somehow moved into how Jesus is viewed the same in both Islam and Christianity.  We tried to discuss that with her but she had to leave for work.

The last guy we spoke with was very odd.  I'm not really sure what he believed other than helping the poor and communism.  He was very smart, just very odd.  He kept talking about LSD, I kind of think he was on some sort of drug.  He believed that people have auras and energy but that Christians have weaker auras than the rest of society because we spend so much time serving others and that we steal other people's energy.  It was all really weird.  I spent some of the time in prayer and then the rest trying to figure out a way we could get out of the conversation since it was moving no where and we were supposed to be back at the hostel at 4 but somehow Alyssa found a way to share the gospel with him.  She was like "ok, you know how you keep talking about how there is so much suffering in the world?  It's because of sin and then Jesus came and He is the way for us to get out of it.  He came so we can find redemption and hope.  He taught that we need a relationship with Him to heal ourselves and then we're supposed to help everyone else."  We ended up giving him one of our pages that have the churches we got on it with our emails.  I hope he emails us and goes to one of the churches and sees how much people care about this world because God cares about this world.

For dinner, Austin, Alyssa, Jenna, Kathy, Patrick Martin, Christina, and myself went to this Spanish place for dinner.  It was so good.  I forgot how much I like Paella.

Last Full Week

This is my last full week in Germany.  I'm excited and kind of sad.  I miss my friends and family and AC.  I'm not homesick but I miss seeing everyone but I felt the same way when I moved to Pittsburgh.  Today was pretty good.  Patrick and I went out together.  He was kind of drained and tired, but we kept going.  We talked with this couple of five or ten minutes but they didn't really want to talk much and weren't interested in learning about God.  Maybe it just wasn't their time.  After that we went back and prayed for 10 minutes or so before deciding to do solarium.  It went really well.  I haven't done solarium here and Patrick has never used it, so I thought it might be a nice change of pace for us.  The first girl we talked with was a pantheist and we didn't really get to share with her but she was our first so it was a good learning experience.  She is also the first pantheist I've met here.  Then these two people came up and asked what we were doing, so we told them and they said they wanted to be a part of this.  The girl was an agnostic from Hungary and the guy was some what spiritual from Germany but he left before we could ask him about his beliefs.  After the girl finished solarium, she asked us why we were doing this and we told her why and that we believed in God and shared a little bit of our faith but she didn't seem like she wanted to learn more.  

We decided to pack up and try our normal method for the last 45 minutes.  We talked with this guy who grew up in the church and stopped believing in God after he was confirmed but still thought there was a higher power.  He thought that God wouldn't be able to have a relationship with all of the people.  We explained to him that since God was all-powerful that He could do that.  Then he thought that maybe God would favor the person who sinned less or had less big sins, like lying over murder.  We explained to him that God didn't differentiate between sin and that He would always love us like a father loves his children.  The more we talked with him, the more he started to think and start to agree with what we were saying about God.  Unfortunately, we had to leave as things were starting to get really good but we got his email.  Hopefully we'll meet up with him before we leave and continue sharing.  It was just an awesome way for God to show up and refresh Patrick who was tired and drained; feeling like he wasn't making a difference for God.

Kenny and Patrick met a very interesting group of people today.  There is a group of "Christians" who are going around talking to people and teaching that the way to salvation is through works and not grace.  I understand that many people do see that passage in James as saying that we need to do works or else our faith is dead, but they teach that God merits us salvation based on how well we perform.  They also believe that there is God the Father and a God Mother.  They cite Revelation 21, where the Bride comes down, but they refused to tell Kenny more about this God Mother unless he agreed that he would follow their teachings and spread what they believed.  He said it was a very strange experience.

Friday

So Friday was a little different.  I woke up and had my quiet time at the Tiergarten with Doug.  It was nice.  I sat in the little garden by the coffeehouse I like.  At Humboldt, Micaiah and I went sharing before he discipled me.  We shared with this one guy and it was a pretty good conversation.  Micaiah is a really good evangelist, but it is his job.  The guy enjoyed talking with us and listening to our viewpoints.  This one guy next to us didn't like that we weren't speaking German so he asked if we thought we were condescending by sharing our faith and by not speaking in the guy's native language.  He just wanted to make us embarrassed and stop sharing.  Micaiah told him that was a valid point and that he would love to discuss that with him after our conversation with the guy in front of us ended but the guy just left.  After that conversation, we had discipleship which was pretty good.  We talked more about why I struggle with some of the things I struggle with and just ways to work on changing that.

That evening was mens time.  So we decided to play soccer.  I was so happy about that.  We went to this park where a local club has a few fields and played there.  If a club has fields they're usually turf unless they're pro.  It was kind of interesting but cool.  It was more like carpet that turf that I'm used to.  As we started to play a few German players at the club wanted to play with us, so we split them up among our two teams.  I started off playing behind the striker, but eventually I became the striker.  I forgot how much I love to play up front or from the middle.  We played for a couple of hours, and it took until right before we decided that we were going to stop playing soon that someone scored.  I hope we play again sometime before we leave.

Pergamum

Today was kind of hard.  Aaron and I went out sharing together.  Within 3 hours, we initiated 10 conversations, 7 of those conversations lasted 30 seconds, shared the gospel twice, and were blown off three times.  It was kind of a rough day for us.  The first time we shared the gospel was pretty good.  We shared it with two guys, and one of them seemed interested in possibly learning more about God and Christ but didn't speak up much because his friend is against the church.  All in all, it was a good conversation.  We gave them a flyer for this thing some of the stinters are speaking at on who Jesus actually is.

This evening, I went to see the Pergamum Museum.  It was incredible.  The archeologists excavated the steps, the alter and a couple of other things.  It was really incredible.  To sit where ancient worshipers sat and to see what they saw was great.  We also saw some other artifacts from Syria, Babylon, Arabia, and Islamic Spain.  Two of the coolest things was a room from Damascus, that had verses from Exodus and Deuteronomy written in Arabic on it.  The other really cool thing was another room brought back to Berlin that had Psalms in Arabic and pictures of Mary and the child Christ, the last supper, and Isaac's sacrifice.  That room also was from Damascus.  It was just really cool to see some of Biblical history in real life.  One of the guys Patrick Martin talked with today was a history major and said 90% of the New Testament was 100% reliable which was kind of cool.

Night of Reflection

Today was pretty good.  This morning, we went to a Jewish cemetery for our morning devotional.  This morning we talked about faith in God and walking by faith.  We read from Hebrews 11, looking at the sections on Moses and Abraham.  After we were done, we had some time to pray and just spend with God.  As I sat in prayer, I came to the realization that walking by faith and finding my identity in Christ are the same.  To have one, is to have the other; and to not have one, is to have neither.  If I walk by faith, I do so knowing that my identity is in Christ, my savior; to know that my identity is in Christ, is to walk by faith knowing God will provide and be there with me.  To me, this was a pretty huge realization and something that I hope will help me through the rest of my life to know that I am a son of the most high God.

Sharing today was ok.  Patrick and I talked with one guy at lunch, but it didn't move to a spiritual direction, it stayed very superficial and surface.  But that's ok.  I think after so many rejections yesterday and feeling like I needed to impress Uli, the head guy in Germany's Crusade, that just taking this step to talk and be friendly was good.  After lunch, we asked two guys about the survey and both said no.  The third guy we asked, was willing to talk.  We had a lot of small talk but we also were able to ask him about his spirituality.  He said he didn't know much about Christianity, I asked if he wanted to learn more about it but he said no.  Hopefully he will someday reflect on God and desire to know more about Him.  I think without this hope, that one day the students we meet will consider Christ, I would burn out and maybe give up.  But God is hope and my hope is in Him and His power.  

Tonight was the night of reflection, where we just take a night to spend with God or as Jarrin would put it, date night with God.  I went to the garden at the Tiergarten and just spent some time in prayer; talking to God about how I don't always find my identity in Him and that I hope to find it in Him solely.  I wanted something to read and the first thing that popped into my head was Song of Solomon.  When I turned to that book, the first passage that came to me was 2:16a "My beloved is mine, and I am his".  It just reminded me that I am God's, no one can take me away; that my identity is in Him.  God's spirit just works in wonderful ways.  He knows what to say to break down your walls and remind of your brokenness, and in the same moment comfort you and lift you up in His strength.

3 Weeks In

Last night during the Argentina-Mexico game, some of us played a game called Fishbowl or Can of Worms (people call it both).  It was a lot of fun.  It started off just random questions but then Austin asked if there were anything scary or intimidating about the opposite sex which lead the girls to grill him and I about how guys view this or that.  It was a lot of fun.  For a while they wanted to know about how/why guys communicate and I was able to explain most of that stuff from what I learned in school, which was kind of cool.  I felt like those of us playing really bonded and connected during that.

This morning,  we talked about what we find our identity in other than God.  It really helped me to see that I find my identity in relationships and my grades.  I never would have thought until now that I find part of my identity in relationships and grades.  We just did some serious self analyzing.  I just realized how much I identified myself with my relationship with Amy and now that its over, I had a hard time identifying myself.  I realize now that I found too much of my identity in our relationship.  I think its ok to have some identity in a long lasting relationship but I think I put too much into that.  When I was introducing myself to people at school I didn't know, I'd say "I'm Chris, Amy's boyfriend".  Hopefully now that I know this, I will let God work in me about how and where I find my identity.

Today at Humboldt, it wasn't quite as good as other days.  Aaron and I went sharing and only had two conversations and shared the gospel once.  I know its not a numbers game, and I'm ok with what we did today for God.  The first guy didn't want to talk about religion but still wanted to talk with us.  He was really nice.  He grew up in a unique household, his father was a communist and his mother was Lutheran.  I really wanted to know how that affected this view on religion and God, but he didn't want to talk about it, which is cool.  The second guy agreed with the bible intellectually but couldn't believe in God.  I think for both of these guys, God had in mind just for us to talk and maybe get them to think about Him in a new way or for the first time in years.  After the second conversation, Aaron and I just talked and got to know each other on a much better level.  Him and I just really haven't connected much on a personal level and it was great to do that today.

This evening, we did a personality test.  It revealed that I am an extrovert, that I I use my intuitive sense over my other senses, that I got my feelings over thinking things through.  It was really interesting.  I think I would agree with those assessments of myself.  I know for a fact that I usually go my gut feeling over thinking things out, but I didn't think I relied on my intuitive sense instead of of sensory organs to describe something.

The Weekend

Yesterday was a bit of a free day, where we could do whatever we wanted until 12:30 before we were going to Lake Schloctonse.  Kenny and I decided to go to Balzac coffee again for our quiet times.  It was good.  I really like enjoy the tea there and that it usually is quiet there.  We were there until about 11 before heading back to the hostel.  On our way to Schloctonse, we stopped off at Potsdam which is where the palaces are.  They are so beautiful.  I really like the beauty of the palaces.  Someone said they thought they were more beautiful than the Palace at Versailles.  One of the couple who are leading the trip have a 5 year old little girl who wanted me to carry her all over the palace.  I carried her most of the time until it was too hot.  After the palaces, we went back into Potsdam and looked around at the little shops.  I bought the one thing I really wanted to buy while I'm here, a German copy of the book Siddhartha.  When we reached the lake, I really didn't wanted to swim since I was afraid I wouldn't get back in time to watch the USA-Ghana game, so Alyssa and I left before everyone else since she wasn't feeling well.

This morning, I went to Berlin International Church.  It was nice, all in English and a pretty good sermon.  This morning's sermon was about forgiveness and the story of Joseph.  The pastor pointed out that Joseph wanted great blessings poured out on his brothers, even after they sold him into slavery.  The only thing I didn't care that much for was the worship music.  It was good, but I didn't know it so it was harder to prepare my heart for worship that way.

After church, we went to a biergarten to watch the Germany-England game.  I didn't stay long, I didn't sleep well and I had a hard time seeing the screen from where we were sitting.  At least Germany won.  Too bad the USA didn't.