A normal day

Another defining moment during my three year stint at the Durban university was on a normal day when a friend and I felt strangely emboldened and went on a mini healing crusade during one of our seemingly endless free periods. Anyone that looked remotely sick or of a fragile disposition was moved in on at a rapid pace. After a few colds and headaches that were swiftly dealt with, as well as a slightly bemused guy’s broken leg healing in front of our eyes, our courageous faith mission for the day became an unstoppable Gospel agenda in our hearts as we became almost rabid to see the ill healed! What happened next though (as if the preceding miracles weren’t impressive enough) was something that I have held onto as a lifechanging moment ever since.

We had found ourselves by the Student Union buildings when a young gentleman approached us and asked if we were the guys praying for the sick people. We looked at each other excitedly as we realised that the word had spread. After affirming that what he said was true, he beckoned us to follow him up several flights of stairs, down a corridor and into the very heart of that particular building. Without another word spoken, he stopped outside a closed door, took off his shoes and motioned us to do the same. In a similar fashion, we removed our footwear and followed him into the dimly lit room. As our eyes adjusted to the light (or lack there of),  I became aware of several hindu students kneeling in corners, muttering almost silent prayers while desperately clasping beads of some sorts. Amongst them were golden statues, posters adorned with sacred mantras, and smouldering incense sticks. Unwittingly (for us) we had stumbled into the Bhakti Yoga Society’s head quarters! This was the mother load!

Our pied piper who had lead us thus far, spoke up for the first time since our first exchange outside. “This girl is anaemic. It’s bad. Can you pray?” The girl in question looked up nervously. In normal circumstances, a situation like this would be somewhat nerve-wracking for me. This was no Sunday morning church meeting where a Christian had come up to the front for prayer. Here we had walked straight into the enemy’s camp and by any casual observer we looked like fish out of water. But as I said, this day seemed different. It just didn’t feel like a normal day.

Not waiting for my logic or rationale to catch up, I looked at this young girl and asked her two questions. Did she want to be healed and was she alright for me to ask Jesus for that healing? She nodded in agreement to both. We laid our hands on her and prayed very simple prayers that I can’t even remember. I wasn’t even too sure what the full implications of being anaemic meant! But what I did know for sure was that my God was good. Maybe a bit iffy on what the disease was, a tad so-so on what to pray, but I was pretty confident in His willingness and ability to show His kindness!

Nervously, we opened our eyes. She opened hers. And down the tears rolled over her face and onto the floor. To this day I won’t forget her words, “What power is in your hands to make me feel this way?” As we preceded to explain that it was not us but the love of a Father who was desperate for her, I realised that this was not a place to fear. This was very rightly a holy place.

After we left the room, put our shoes back on and walked bemused back into the sunshine outside, my friend casually asked me if I knew what I had been doing while I had been praying with my eyes tightly shut. I answered in the negative. “Bud, you had your whole weight leaning on a statue of a hindu God!”

This was by no means a normal day.

Or maybe, just maybe, this             is                 what             normal            really           looks            like.

The BEAR essentials!

One particular incident that frames my university years was how one day a group of us christians who were desiring to see the power of God unleashed through our lives and onto our campus asked the question, "how can we draw a crowd large enough and keep them around long enough for us to be able to preach the Gospel to them?" Being at a universe where people tended to shy away from anything that looked remotely "religious", the answer to our question was obvious: FOOD!
But as the conversation progressed, we realised we needed something to get them to know that there was free food somewhere. The usual medium of posters and fliers on already overcrowded noticeboards would not suffice here. So like any normal, self-respecting christians we pooled together our slim financial resources...and hired a MASSIVE bear costume! Yes, you read that right. Our missional strategy was to a costume rented from a party-hire store!

So the big day arrived, the booked lecture venue was kitted out with tables laden with chocolate eclairs, chips, pies, coke, donuts and cakes, and the unlucky volunteer from our band of merry men donned the bear suit with a sign pinned to his front that read, "FREE FOOD IN LECTURE HALL 5 AT 12PM"
The response around campus was better than we could have ever ever imagined! Crowds flocked around our friend, people posed for photo's with him, others high-fived him...a few just were content to hug the massive cartoonesque bear that trundled amongst the students.

Come 12pm, our moment of truth, close on 200 hungry and very intrigued universty scholars pushed through the lecture hall doors. The tables were cleared quicker than you can say "Yogi Bear", but we were now all set to rock and roll. Without a moment to lose, I jumped up onto a table near the front and preached a stumbling version of the Gospel. Well, in retrospect it was nothing more than a bold declaration of who Jesus was to me and a question of "who do you say He is?". But as I came to the end of my weak oratory appeal to a crowd full of food but full of doubt, something very strange began to happen. People all around the room began to lift their hands, some more confidently than others, in an attempt to get my attention to pray for them to know Jesus like I did!
The very life of God, the miracle of salvation, the raiding of hell was happening before my very eyes and all on the back of a bear suit and some free food!

The crowd that day were hungry and they got fed...more than they could have imagined!

Reminds me of a boy who just had some fish-sticks and sandwiches for lunch...

Sink or Swim

University was an incredible experience for me. Doing only subjects and courses that I wanted to do, "intellectual" conversations with intellectual looking people, skipping lectures to enjoy the new found freedom post school days, the best rhoti's and bunny chows in the varsity gardens, as well as learning the "if you get 51% you're working too hard rule".
But besides all the many happy memories, the thing I loved the most about my 3 year varsity stint was really seeing my faith in Christ fleshed out more and more. Out of all sheltered christian environments, it really was sink or swim time as I came face to face with a tertiary experience that so often separates the proverbial men from the boys in this regards. But swim I did, as a few friends and I decided that we were not merely positioned at university to get a degree that would someday be hung on our various office walls but our presence there for 3 years (others quite a bit longer) was to love on people and to make His name famous.

Over the next few blogs, I'm going to retell some of the best stories of how God pitched up and demonstrated His power and goodness over and over again throughout those years. We were a bunch of wild young people who maybe were foolish enough to believe God when He said that nothing was impossible for Him.

As I take the luxury of walking down memory lane for a few blogs, my prayer is that my heart and yours would both be stirred to trust God more and more for the miraculous where-ever He has positioned us to be.

Acts.17:26-27
"26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us"