Kevin Pike Apprenticeship Blog #7

 Christmas Break 

    Hey y'all, I hope everyone had a great Christmas break and was able to spend some quality time with your families! The students left to go back home, giving us ample time to rest, reflect, and recharge for the coming semester. 

     Before every semester, our entire staff team goes on retreats to shake off the cobwebs of the break, realign ourselves with God's will, and spend some time with staff members of other campuses. This retreat was much needed and gave me many things to think about as I prepare for the upcoming semester.

  During the Staff retreat, God revealed to me that he wants me to focus on spending more quality time with Him in prayer. This is not just praying more, but focusing on being in his presence and treating Him as more of a father than just a complaint box. 
    For one of the spiritual exercises, we read Exodus 33:12-23 over and over again and listened to see if God would highlight a specific verse or word to us. The Spirit kept drawing me to the word "Presence" (NIV Version) which was mentioned three times during that passage. After some prayer, God showed me that I mainly only use my prayer times as a place to complain to God about things in my life or whenever something troubles me. God of course wants us to go to him with our worries, 1 Peter 5:7, "Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you". But, when that is all I do, I am missing out on a deeper relationship with the God of the universe. I frequently forget that our God is a God that created us to be in fellowship with him. Someone once told me, how rude would it be if every time you met up with someone, all they did was complain and leave, without letting you even say one word? 
    There are multiple verses throughout the whole Bible talking about God wanting a close relationship with his creation. Exodus 33:11, "Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend...", Revelation 3:20, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and eat with him, and he with me." There are many more, but these are the ones that stand out to me the most. I am excited to see how the Lord can grow me in this area. 
    Even though it was Christmas Break for the students at Collin, our small group has been able to meet up to play board games and video games, which was been a lot of fun. I am thankful for these guys and can't wait to start up our weekly meetings again! 

    For this next semester, all of the apprentices are going to be starting a New Testament class. We will be reading through the entire New Testament while simultaneously reading a textbook and listening to seminary lectures. I am very excited to explore the New Testament and see the connections to the Old Testament since we took that class last semester. 

    Thank you all so much for all the support you give. I am truly blessed to be doing this and I can not do campus ministry without your help. I ask that you pray for the students as they come back this semester, that they can handle their workload and want to pursue a relationship with Jesus. Also, that us ministers are able to lean on God as we go and outreach to the students across the DFW campuses. God bless you all! 

P.S. Here is a student testimony, I had the pleasure of knowing her when I was at UNT and have seen how much of an impact that FOCUS has had on her.