By: Keith Collett
In the western world, we highly esteem strong-willed people. Especially those who have become successful by pulling themselves up by their bootstraps and making things happen. We admire fierce determination and unrelenting passion. However, throughout the testimony of scripture and history, we see that God highly esteems weak and broken people. He makes people successful by giving them His strength for their weakness. God’s fierce determination and unrelenting passion, towards us and released through us, is far more powerful than anything we can muster up in our own strength!
We know this but do we really KNOW this? We’ve heard this before and we know it in our minds but has it become fleshed out and solidified in our hearts?
Just a few months before my wife and I sold most of our belongings, said goodbye to our family and friends, and moved across the pond to England, we met up with some friends to pray in The Prayer Room at the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, MO. It was during this time of prayer that the Lord made it clear that one of the reasons He was sending us to Manchester was to pray for, connect with, and reach out to students at The University of Salford Manchester, a school of over 20,000 students.
After we moved, got settled, and began our work here in Manchester, I began to host prayer meetings focused on praying for the students at The University of Salford. With a desire to come alongside and serve what God was already doing, I also made numerous attempts to reach out to and connect with already existing campus ministries, but to no avail. The times of prayer were powerful and effective, yet my continual attempts to connect with and jump into hands-on ministry were not effective in the least bit. I didn’t understand what was going on and I became frustrated and felt weak and un-fruitful. However, my frustration and feelings of weakness led me into a deeper place of prayer and communion. This is exactly where God wanted me to be: at the end of my own striving, postured in complete humility, and solely dependent on His leadership. He wanted to, and He did, give me His strength in exchange for my weakness.
Within just a few weeks, He led me to begin prayer walking on campus. The very first time I went, He showed me what to pray and where to go and ended up leading me to a popular restaurant in the Student Union. I was sitting there drinking a cup of coffee and asked the two young men at the table next to me for the WIFI password. They didn’t know it, but they were surprised to hear my American accent. We struck up a conversation that ended with us adding one another on Facebook and deciding that we should meet up again. Since then, I’ve had the privilege of getting to know them better and I look forward to seeing what God is going to do in their hearts and lives!
A few weeks later, after some mutual friends had connected us, I met with a guy named Jesse who had recently been asked to re-build and re-launch a campus ministry called Ablaze. We connected right from the start and have continued to connect since then. As a matter of fact, God has led us to work together to build a team of people, all from different churches, who are passionate about praying for, reaching out to, and discipling students! It is clear that God is on the move and that He is uniting people together to accomplish something that none of us can accomplish on our own. God alone has transformed my ineffectiveness into a testimony of His divine strength and guidance!
The strength of the One who created the heavens and the earth and you and me, exchanged for the many weaknesses of us as human beings, produces far more than our own ability to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.
It is completely safe to fully trust, and to be completely dependent upon, Him and Him alone. This is what is becoming fleshed out and solidified in my heart and life.
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