By Robby Barr
This past weekend, 140 students from all three of our congregations packed in at our University Campus for our 5th annual WAKE! Our students look to this weekend each year with eager expectation of fun, fellowship, and finding themselves in God’s care. It’s a time for overnight lock-ins, shaving the legs of leaders, RV trips, crafts, and playing massive capture the flag games with pool noodles. It is a time for us to be known by others, and known deeply by God. I’m confident these good things and more took place this year!
The passage of Scripture we studied was Revelation 3:14-22. Through four sessions of teachings and small group times, Pastor Adam Alexander from our Gateway Campus led our students to see the call from God to “get off the fence.” It’s a good thing we have a God that goes after our hearts and not just our behaviors. It means He cares about our whole beings! Furthermore, He cares that we would be with Him. Forever! Because Jesus came and went all in for us and proved more powerful than sin and death, we can go all in for Him; we can be confident in going from a shaky fence to His victorious throne (Rev. 3:20-21). The good news of Jesus is the confident assurance we all need, that we may walk with “the cross before us, the world behind us – no turning back, no turning back.”
“God used Wake to help me through so much. What we did helped me to look to Jesus and see myself in new ways.”
“I saw my peers worshipping God, pursuing Him, and opening up to others. Personally, God used Wake to show me my family and home away from home.”
We want to thank the many people that helped make WAKE such an amazing time. Thanks to our awesome volunteer leaders and their spouses for giving up their time. Thanks to those that provided host homes, cooking supplies, and transportation. Thanks to those of you that pled with God to meet our students with conviction. We are so grateful and encouraged by your support of our ministry to students in our communities!
May we continue growing to be people that earnestly, humbly, and joyfully open the door to the One who is still knocking on the doors of our hearts today.
“Through Wake, God showed me that I don’t need to hide myself. I was encouraged in Jesus through our small group times.”
“I’m so blessed to have been able to attend Wake this year. It helped me grow so much closer to others in my small group!”
