Unbelievable!

Greetings friends,

I've got an unbelievable story to share, I hope you are blessed by it! (Sorry for the length, I think it’ll be worth your time to read it...)

I was set to speak on Wednesday night (9.9) at Central’s LG and was planning on giving a call to faith out of the prodigal son, but the story really gets kicking early that morning...

I awoke at 4:30a sweating like a pig and with our bedroom spinning all around me. The only thing that made the spinning stop was when I laid on my right side (even on my back, it was out of control). I was able to get back to sleep until about 6:30a, when my daughter woke up. I tried to walk to the kitchen to get her some milk, but was on the floor by the time I got back to her room. I woke my wife up, and tried to get back into bed, but was so nauseuous that I detoured to the toilet. I eventually got back to bed and slept till about 7:45 when I started texting people to pray. At that point, I still couldn’t do anything but lay on my right side, and even then, my head was spinning a bit.

So, things were not good. I couldn’t even sit up, let alone be able to give a talk. My wife spent some time praying for me (along with those I had texted) and very quickly, I started to feel some relief. I was able to sit up in bed within a few minutes and walked out to the living room. Gradually, I regained equilibrium to the point where I took a shower and went for a walk around the block at about 11am. I continued to improve through the afternoon to the point where I felt pretty much normal (although very tired) by about 3pm.

So, I went into the night thinking that God might have some big plans given the morning, but I never would have expected what happened...

The night got off to a great start, and I felt good about how my talk was going as I headed toward the call. I had planned on inviting people to stand who identified with the younger son (irreligious, shady past, etc.) and the older son (cultural “christians”, pseudo-religious, etc.), and then I had about 15 student leaders/staff ready to follow-up immediately with whoever stood, thinking that maybe 5 or 10 folks might stand (not exactly “more than you could ask or imagine”, huh?!)

To my shock, when I made the call, about 30 people stood up, and instantly, I assumed I just hadn’t made it clear that it was a call for people to “follow Jesus for the first time”...I was later proved wrong! I asked everyone to come up to the front so I could pray for them (while the follow-up folks surrounded them), and then I invited them to break off into pairs/threes to talk about what God was doing and what decisions they had made. Here’s a sampling of the reports from the student leaders...

Rick
Sort of knows a little about Church but stopped going in high school and has lived with no regard for Jesus since. Wants to follow Jesus but is scared that he wont be able to overcome temptations and not fall away.

Karen
She said that she has never really been religious and doesn't know a whole lot about Christianity/following Jesus, but she has been coming to the Calm and Nine and keeps just feeling like its right and keeps getting chills all the time when she's there :)

Amelia
She also has never been religious and did mention that she feels like she understands the younger son because she has done things in her past she isn’t proud of. She did however talk about her love for doing service work and helping people, and we talked about how she can continue to do those things and share Jesus' love with people through it.

Mia
This was something she was wanting for a while. She's been looking to talk to someone about this for a while and it was for her tonight. Her legs were shaking the whole night pretty much, and she stood up and they stopped. I feel like I really didn't say much but God was already doing stuff. She grew up Catholic and has struggled a lot with earning salvation and has come to the realization while here (she transferred) that coming to events and doing church doesn't result in satisfaction/salvation. I talked with her how it is by grace we are saved- she's said the prayer before, so we did not do it again- and that it is a gift we can't earn. She seemed pretty excited about it all. She went for a walk afterwards to just "think."

There’s more where those came from, but at the end of the day, I think about 14 folks gave their lives to Jesus for the first time and another 10 recommitted their lives to Jesus; 2 more folks said they wanted to explore more in GIGs!

It was unbelievable. I was driving to Iowa City this morning and crying like a baby thinking about how good our God is that he steps into students’ lives like this, and that he gives us the chance to be a part of it.

Thank you to all of you who prayed for the night (and for my dizziness). God answered in a resounding way.

Beyond grateful,
Jon