Essential Day 3

Well, today was the day that we'll call day 3. Quite logical really as it was the 3rd day of Essential. Or you can call it Wednesday if you like. Either way, time to reflect on the day that was.

Prayer meeting was cool again (and surprise, surprise I was a little late for it - no change there then!). Went for breakfast in Rootes Restaurant with some of my 10:25 after this before doing some work for my course for a while. Wednesday is my day off so I didn't have any lectures or seminars, which is always nice!

The CU football team then had a session in the 24/7 prayer room. 'Twas cool to pray that we'd be effective witnesses both on and off the pitch, in what we do and what we say. Then we actually had a match straight afterwards - lost 2-0 against quite a tough team. Before the game we had the chance to give out some flyers to the opposition and the players of the previous game plugging the Essential meetings for the rest of the week. A couple of the international students gratefully accepted them. For the most-part though the other football players either turned down the offer of a leaflet with something of a scowl on their face, or else accepted it and rapidly stuffed it in their pockets in a manner that said "I'll probably bin this later". A bit sad really, but we did all that we can do: prayed about it and then stepped out and informed people - have to leave the rest up to God really. This also matched up to the attitude of arrogance that I've noticed at among footballers at Warwick in particular - a lot of them seem to be rather full of themselves. Maybe it's a bit unfair to pick on the footballers in particular but one thing I'm pretty certain on is that when you're so full of yourself like this there's no room for God in your life. A certain degree of humility is needed to accept that you might need God after all. But I'm being too negative - who know's what God is doing in their hearts under the surface. I pray that He might be an agent of change in these guys lives.

Because of the football match, us footballers arrived at the main meeting a little bit late. However, we did manage to catch most of the talk which was all about forgiveness. It was a really good message once more and Roger left everyone with the challenge of making a decision.

Globe Cafe was top notch again. Tonight was a Chinese evening. As well as a presentation about Chinese music, calligraphy and ying-yang, there was also a talk about whether Christianity is a religion just for the west. There were a couple of good conversations that I was involved in: about Christianity in Taiwan with some Taiwanese students and with a Japanese exchange student about why it's important to explore whether a religion could be true.

We're now over half-way through the week. I guess my biggest prayer at this stage would be that we'd see more of the same: more ground-breaking conversations as God changes more people.

[Currently listening to: Everything by Tim Hughes - awesome song, so encouraging]