Uhhh-Mazing!!!!!

Wow! What a day! What a day! What a day!

Today was pretty amazing! I had two papers due and a test today, and I was running on like four hours of sleep from studying and writing the night before. But God is soooo gooood! He got me through the paper writing and helped study pretty efficiently last night, and I feel pretty good about the test. But that was just the beginning of God's awesomeness today.

So today, in class my professor had a really awesome lecture about just the inconsistencies in our culture as we venture to see more sustainable development. The class is International Development and Sustainability, and it's a really cool class because it talks about the different ways that we need to approach making our communities more sustainable. I see God revealing Himself so much in that class by seeing the ways in which God wants to bring restoration to society. Sustainable development has a lot to do with maintaining resources while meeting the needs of the underprivileged and overlooked. It's cool to see how the strategies that are deemed to be most successful have been the projects that incorporate grassroots mobilization and local participation. Sustainable development points to the ways in which the large-scale development agencies are most successful when the empower the local people. Why is this so cool? Because God wants to use the marginalized and overlooked in society to restore our generation. Sustainable development is seeing the ways in which indigenous knowledge and empowerment is often the most successful in seeing this restoration. Likewise, this idea of local empowerment and grassroots mobilization is the whole idea of the simple church! When we empower from the bottom-up rather than reinforcing a hierarchy of power from the top-down, we will see God do some amazing things. I see this happening on the campuses especially through the freshman class of 2012. God has awesome things in store for them, and we must empower them to know who they are in Christ so that they can step into their identities. But a little more on this later.


After class, I saw J'shon, and we go to talk about some awesome stuff going on in our lives and pray over the campus. I also got to meet with my discipler Shaun, and we got to talk and share what God was doing in our lives. He gave me this sweet vision map of the things he sees God doing in my life. It was super legit and so encouraging. After that I got to hang out with the discipleship group I lead. We were celebrating Zach's birthday, so we went to go get frozen yogurt! Man, this day just keeps getting better! I got my favorite green tea frozen yogurt! It was muy delicioso!

But it gets even better. Maybe one of the greatest highlights of the day was going to our Asian Coalition meeting. Asian Coalition is the umbrella organization that oversees the different Asian clubs on campus. We joined the group to be able to gain connections with the Asian American community and help make an impact in the community. The Asian Coalition helps fund different cultural activities and events. Since we are going as a group to Epic Conference this semester, we needed a lot of money to get plane tickets to help lower costs for our members. So we made a proposal today asking Asian Coalition to support our group going to Epic Conference. I will go into more detail on this in the Epic Movement Blog sometime this weekend because it is an awesome story. But long story short, God totally had favor upon us and provided us $500 to help with airplane and registration fees! Thank you Jesus! It was soo awesome! God is doing awesome things in the Asian American community and has been blessing us like crazy. One of the girls was telling us afterwards that the Coalition said that we gave the best proposal the ever had. In return for the money they are supporting us with, they want us to hold a workshop talking about the things we learned about the conference and describing the overall phenomenon of Asian Americans being an invisible minority! It is going to be such an awesome opportunity that God is going to use to speak truth and freedom to the Asian American community. Seriously!? God is soo Legit!

Than to top it off, I went to our final Crusade meeting tonight. Since it was the final meeting, we had an open mic night where people could share some of the things God was putting on their heart. I had talked to Shaun a little bit earlier about some stuff, and so he encouraged me to go up and talk tonight. As they called people to go up, I knew that God wanted me to go up there, but I was pretty nervous. I stood in line to speak, and I was feeling a little of the nerves. I haven't been to Crusade or spoken publicly in a while so it was pretty exciting. As I went up to speak, God totally gave me a peace of mind. It was so awesome to be just relaxed up there knowing that God would give me the words.

I got talk about how God has been putting the freshman class of 2012 on my heart. I asked the freshman to raise their hand, and it was so awesome to see how many freshman were there. Crusade has grown a lot this year, and there are probably about 200 people or so that come every week. So there was a good amount of freshman! So awesome! So I told them a little bit about my freshman experience and how I was totally different. I told them how God wanted to use the freshman class to do amazing things. God has been showing me awesome things about the freshman class. He has drawn my attention to the numbers 2,1,2 in the number 2012. When you put those numbers together you get 212. It takes 212 degrees to reach boiling point, and I believe that God wants to use the class of 2012 to see our campuses reach boiling point for Jesus. In addition to this, God showed me an awesome verse at Crossroads last weekend that I think encapsulates what God is calling the freshman class to do. This verse caught my attention because I remember trying to look for a verse that God would use to describe the freshman class. And I think, He has begun to reveal it. The verse is 2 Chronicles 20:12 which is crazy because it has the numbers 2012 for the class of 2012! ya!!!!

Anyway, in the verse, King Jehoshaphat is about to be attacked by an army and he doesn't know what to do. So in verse 12 he prays this prayer that I believe is going to be the defining prayer of this generation. He prays this prayer to God saying, "We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you." I think there is this conception that we must know what we are doing to do God's will, or we must be super-qualified to be leaders. For so long we have relied on leadership structures that focus on leaders at the top telling those under them what to do. But I believe that God wants us to shift away from this and empower a leadership structure from the bottom up. God wants us to empower people like the freshman to hear God's voice and respond. This may seem scary and filled with uncertainty. But what Jehoshaphat's prayer reveals is that we don't have to know what to do. All we must do is set our eyes on Jesus. If you keep reading in that chapter, you see that the Spirit of God comes upon a young man and he tells the whole assembly of Israel what to do. In the midst of the King's prayer, God spoke to a young man to direct the entire nation of Israel.

I believe that God wants to do similar things with our freshman on our campuses. But not only the freshman but all those people in our ministries who think they aren't cut up for the job. I believe that this will have domino affect as we see freshman begin to empower other groups that have been marginalized in our society such as immigrants, minorities, and the poor to walk in the power of the Holy Spirit. I saw this cool quote on a prayer board during 24hour prayer, it said, "God doesn't call the qualified; he qualifies those he calls." In Colossians 1:11-12, it states, "May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light." It is a lie of the enemy that says you have to be qualified to be a leader. God is the one who qualifies us through His son Jesus Christ. We are more than conquerors. We must empower this generation to know their identity so that there destiny may be released. Our generation must know that they are loved by God, and it is out of this love that we will step into the fullness of God has called us to be. God is calling the little children to Him. Don't think that can't use you. Throughout the Bible, God has used the young! He wants you!

God, I pray that you would raise up a generation who will respond to your call. We break off the lies of the enemy that have subjugated your people for too long, in Jesus name. Raise up a might generation who knows the essence of their identity - we are beloved children of God. God, I pray you would release destiny to this generation. Raise up forerunners who will speak your message of truth, and raise your brave warriors who will respond to the awesome adventure you are inviting us into. Thank you so much for all the blessings you have poured out to me this week and especially today. God, I know that nothing that has happened today has been due to my personal abilities. I am weak and inadequate, yet you have empowered me to know the great I AM. Lord, humble my heart and break off all pride. All glory and honor to you. Thank you for you amazing love! Your grace is sufficient for me. Thank you for abounding us with the richness of your glory. You are Uhh-Mazing! I love you. In Jesus Name, Amen.