Things we all have in common:

We’re stressed.

We’re tired.

We’re overwhelmed.

We’re over-scheduled.

Impact is for:

The stressed.

The tired.

The overwhelmed.

The over-scheduled.

And finally, those in need of love - the wonderful, life-giving, unconditional kind that we can only get from one source. College is hard, and goodness knows we can’t make it through the year running on only our own strength and motivation. 

The first weeks of Impact have really set the pace of what to expect for the rest of the year. Over 30 students have experienced a weekly life group, and about the same number attended our first Night of Worship. We appreciate the presence of each and every one of you, and we’re so glad you got to experience Impact firsthand - whether it be the first time you’ve heard of us or you’ve been a regular. We’re also incredibly thankful for being able to connect with all the students we’ve seen at the Involvement Expo and before classes even started at freshmen orientations.

This semester, we’re delving into the book of Acts. If you have questions about the start of Christianity - how ideals were formed, how the church was formed, how it all started to take shape - then Life Groups will quench your curiosity, and even spark more questions. We’ll explore events and things that real people dealt with in order to get the Christian Church started.

What does it mean to be a Christian? How can you be a light with your blessings and circumstances right now? How can you get inspired and inspire others naturally as a result? Every one of you holds an important place in the kingdom of God. To get connected to this study of Acts, you can start (or continue) attending one of our weekly life groups here on campus. We’d love to have you! Times and locations are here: http://www.impactatiupui.com/lifegroups. 

On your marks… Let’s make this a blessed semester.

Haley Welch, Student President of Impact Christian Fellowship at IUPUI

Why are you here? What brought you to IUPUI? The chance to get an education? To take a leap in your career? To make friends and memories? You’ve come here for a reason, but it may not be what you expected.

See, I came to this school because I had a scholarship. It was close to home. It had all the majors I liked. But as I’ve sought God in this city and on this campus, I’ve realized that he has brought me here for his purposes, too. The same is true for you. God has brought you into this city to tell of his salvation to unbelievers and to spread his glory through the city of Indianapolis.

Sounds pretty intimidating, huh?

Look at it this way: God has uniquely picked you to do Kingdom work in a very strategic location. The Lausanne Movement writes this in their Cape Town Commitment: “Cities are where four major kinds of people are most to be found: 1. the next generation of young people; 2. the most unreached peoples who have migrated; 3. the culture shapers; 4. the poorest of the poor.” Why does God want us to reach these four people groups?

1) THE NEXT GENERATION OF YOUNG PEOPLE

That’s us. We are the future leaders, movers, and shakers of our globalizing world. And not just us, but also our peers of other faiths, creeds, and cultures. Reach the young adults, and you will make a huge impact on the future of nations and societies.

A missionary from Cambodia testifies to this. He and his family are serving in a country that was devastated by genocide, and now nearly all of the existing population is under 30 years old. (Look up the Khmer Rouge if you want to learn more.) After witnessing such devastation, the young are desperate for truth, and God is providing. Before the Gospel has even left the lips of pastors, young people are running to tell their friends and neighbors, which has led to dramatic growth in Christianity, and to powerful social change. Praise the Lord.

2) THE MOST UNREACHED PEOPLES WHO HAVE MIGRATED

Cities are a desirable place to live. There are sights to see, people to meet, jobs to work, and opportunities to be grasped. Those with a hope for a better life will move into the cities to find it. As Christians, we know that a better life comes from salvation alone, and it is our task to share that with travellers from all corners of the earth.

3) THE CULTURE SHAPERS

While young adults are the future of our country, culture shapers are already influencing it. I see this all the time in the nonprofit community. The city is full of people who have identified problems in our society, and have decided to do something about it. (On the flip-side, those who don’t desire rapid societal and cultural change tend to stay away from the cities). If we reach these people for Christ, we go a long way in bringing the Kingdom to Indianapolis.

4) THE POOREST OF THE POOR

Anyone who has studied urban development can attest to this: cities are full of poverty. Whether by situation or by lifestyle, those in material, interpersonal, or spiritual poverty are right around the corner. Jesus ministered to the poor more than any other group. God has always desired to meet their needs through faithful givers. Just as much, he has called us to extend “water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4, ESV)

Maybe you are intimidated by God’s mission for Indianapolis. I promise, though, that if you start to follow his will in serving this city, he will do more through you than you can imagine.

This year we are partnering with a local church near IUPUI’s campus. As we approach the school year, pray about opportunities to work in the community. Pray also for opportunities to share the Gospel with you classmates and teachers. And I will pray with you “to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” (Matthew 9:38, ESV)"

Kaitlin Silvey, Student in Impact at IUPUI (former student president)

Busy, lazy, and Netflix.

Though we may all have had plans to dedicate more of our lives to Jesus this summer, I have recently found this not to be the case in my life. Due to the many distractions that summer brings, we need a plan to stay focused and dedicated to Jesus. I have found it is way too easy to blow God off, saying, “I’ll read my Bible in the morning for sure. I’m just too tired tonight.” John 15:4 says, “Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.”

So, how do we discipline ourselves to run toward Jesus and to remain in Him, and not these other distractions?

01 ;; Prayer. I can’t stress how important prayer is. When I say prayer, I don’t mean just saying a quick prayer in your head throughout the day (which is not a bad thing at all) nor do I mean on your face in your prayer closet (which we also need to be doing!). Rather, I mean getting away from the things of this world and just hanging out with Jesus. This could be putting all your devices away and turning on worship music and spending time in His presence. Just spending some quiet time with Him is crucial because we always need to be drawing closer to God. As Christians we’re supposed to follow Jesus, but how do we follow someone we don’t know. Prayer enables us to know the heart of God and effectively follow Him. 

02 :: Reading the Word. Too many Christians today think going to church on Sunday mornings is enough. Let me ask you this, is only eating food on Sundays enough to get you through the week? The word is like our food source. Going without it, we will starve, spiritually. Mathew 4:4 says, “It is written: “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” We’ve got to stay in the word! I’m not saying read all of Genesis in one day (which is probably impossible) but we have to be reading our Bibles daily. Even a few chapters a day is beneficial! It’s us refueling. You can only go so far before running out of gas.

The hard part is sticking with it. So while you’re trying to get a million things done at once, just pray that the Lord put a new fire in you. That you'll be hungrier for Him than ever before. If you make time when you have little of it, I believe whole-heartedly that the Lord will bless your time. Jesus even promised this Himself, “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” (Matthew 6:33) No matter what season you’re in, be sure to always be seeking God.

Kayla Morris, Student in Impact at IUPUI

The average nuclear missile contains approximately 15 megatons of nuclear material. If one “average” nuclear bomb hit downtown Indianapolis (which is not completely unlikely, see [1]), the majority of everything inside of the I-465 ring and slightly past that would be heavily damaged if not utterly leveled. If you go to school at IUPUI and your family is around a 10-15 minute drive from campus, you and most likely your family will die from the blast itself or the effects of radiation poisoning. In an instant, everything your life ever was and everything it was going to be doesn’t matter anymore. I apologize for the morbid tone, but it is a fact that you live with whether you recognize it or not. Maybe your mortality isn’t real enough for you yet, let me throw another scenario at you.  On the average college commuter’s day, he/she travels (via car or walking) from home to school in about 10-30 minutes liberally, eats some sort of unhealthy lunch or dinner, and probably doesn’t wash their hands every 3 hours. By living this sort of lifestyle you expose yourself to a lot of risk. The risk statistically is this: the chance of dying in a car wreck is 1/100; chance of dying by getting hit by a car is 1/36; the chance of dying by eating chick-fil-a everyday is 1/5 for heart disease and for a stroke is 1/23. [2] Now understand that these are national averages, and vary base on location and a lot of other environmental and individual factors, but I know of a young teenager that was just diagnosed with cancer for the second time, the likelihood of him getting cancer was 1/285 the first time. [3]

Obviously, normal people don’t live in fear of death everyday. We push through and pretend that death will happen when we are old and grey, which isn’t unlikely for a lot of people, but it makes us comfortable, it makes us quit questioning what’s beyond death. We leave the deep, eternally relevant questions for scholars and teachers to tell us about while we live for the weekend and the moment. I was one of them. I lived for the weekend, I took what I was told by people above me as truth and never questioned. With a lukewarm mentality of accepting whatever I was told, I walked into church, greeted people, and prayed for God to give me the strength to push through the problems of the immediate. I wasn’t a hypocrite, I tried my best to read and pray everyday, but it turned into once a week by habit, and at times once a month. How did it get to this? Lets take a quick overview of my history.

I grew up in a middle class Christian family from Anderson, Indiana. My parents took me to church every Sunday and I even went to a Christian private school from third grade to ninth grade, my dad was even a pastor at my church. As a high school sophomore, I attended my first public school and got myself into trouble.  It carried over into my junior year and part of senior year. However, God got ahold of me my high school senior winter. I changed my life style, and my attitude and gave God my whole mind and heart. Fast forward to college, freshmen year, and my first college biology class. Evolution and secular thinking run unchecked and unchallenged, and for once I take it into consideration. I spoke to my father about it, but never seriously confessed my struggles with secular thought and Christian truths. Sophomore year, second semester, a new set of classes and a new set of challenges. Particularly, a new class was an outlier of the normal set of science classes: comparative religions.

In comparative religions I expected scenes from the movie “Gods Not Dead” to be relived. I prepared for blatant atheism and one-sided arguments. Instead, the instructor came off reasonable and rational. Likeable and levelheaded are the first adjectives that came to mind when meeting the instructor. His lessons came off as unbiased and evenly argued from a social and historical perspective. The class, in summary, compares all the major religions of the world to one another while informing students of each religion’s general information.  My lack of base from freshmen year left me without the truth I needed to be ready for the lectures I was experiencing. Weeks pass, and I found myself questioning the religion I had always believed in, and grown up believing. The truth, in my mind, had disappeared and I was beginning to fall sway to secular reasoning. My sinful nature kicked in and laziness took hold of what I believed. For a small amount of time, I was a stereotypical millennial, only living for the weekend, and pushing aside the questions that were relative to eternity, because why question something that you aren’t for sure is even real? 

I brought my questions to my Bible study group and a lot of people came and supported me. They wrote multiple short papers and blogs on why the Bible and Christianity are different. God brought me the evidence, but my laziness and sinful nature looked past it and took it for granted. I presumed I knew everything there was to know about what Christianity is and what God is. Remember, I grew up in a Christian home. This class was telling me that Christianity was just like every other religion. Nothing was different about my God. Everything about my religion only relates to the devices of man, and whatever men want from it is only for their social, political, or economic gain. 

God was sick and tired of my fence riding, and one day it hit me like a disease, the feeling of being alone. My father came down to console me, and answer my immediate questions, however it became increasingly clearer for me to make an eternal choice rather than examining evidence, no more fence riding.  You either make a step of faith for God, or you choose to go the way of self and sin. I was presented with evidence for faith in Christ, but a combination of doubt and laziness shaded my eyes from recognizing the choice at hand. My heart had to make a decision; because reason and logic would not find the answers it was looking for in this life. 

I made the decision for Christ based on the soul reason of him giving me hope to live and for giving me something to live for. However, everyday college kids just like me don’t care about these questions, often because the answers make them accountable for an eternal decision. Little do many of them recognize is that being on the fence is a decision. Doubt is a choice, because doubt  ignoring the truths and evidence that is in the world for us to examine, also its ignoring God’s role in our lives today. God wants everyone to make an eternal decision. God is real to the people that reach out and ask for the truth to become prevalent in their life. The individuals that truly search and hunt after the real truth of the world find their answers. While others that scoff and throw doubt are the ones that choose themselves as well as the broad road.  

You don’t have to live in fear as a Christian, not because you choose to be ignorant of the fact you could possibly die before you are “ripe and old”, but because God has you in his hand and his plan exceeds yours. God is real in the world when you look for him, and he gives you hope that your life has more meaning than self pleasure followed by death. I hope this blog was not interpreted as a call to salvation (fire and brimstone kind of preaching), but rather a call to get off the fence. 

 Joseph Rodriguez, Student in Impact at IUPUI, IUPUI ROTC

Sources

[1] https://heavenawaits.wordpress.com/top-american-cities-to-be-nuked/

[2] http://www.livescience.com/3780-odds-dying.html

[3] http://www.acco.org/about-childhood-cancer/diagnosis/childhood-cancer-statistics/

If there is one pivotal belief that defines Christianity, it is the existence of Jesus Christ.

Christ as teacher, example, and most importantly as savior is the foundation and the center of Christian worship. But many have asked the question: did Christ exist? How can we trust the accounts of Jesus when the Bible is the only source?

Internal References *

Before we can defend Jesus outside the Bible, we must defend his validity within the Bible. Because of the Bible, Christians believe that Jesus was a wise teacher and a sinless man who was also fully God. His life and death served to remove the sins of the entire human race, past and future. He was raised from death into eternal resurrection and is coming again to make the whole world new.

Many have argued that the four Gospel accounts of Jesus’s life (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) were exaggerated by early believers. It is true that the Gospels were compiled as early as 50 years after Christ. However, earlier Biblical texts discuss Christ as divine in the same way as the Gospels do. One essential passage is a letter written by the apostle Paul to a church in Corinth about 15 years after Jesus’s death:

“ For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to [Peter], and then to the Twelve [disciples]. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep [died]. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.” (1 Corinthians 15:3-8)

Paul identifies, directly and indirectly, more than 500 people who were witnesses to the life and resurrection of Jesus. Importantly, Peter, James, the disciples, and most of the 500 witnesses are still alive at the time this letter was written. Paul makes great claims about the divinity of Christ and the purpose of his life, and he invites the readers of his letters to confirm these claims by asking the people who witnessed Jesus’s resurrection.

External References **

It’s great that the early believers could confirm the teachings about Jesus, but how do we know that Jesus wasn’t still a legend made up by the apostles? The written testimonies of the 500 have not been found. However, the Christian can take comfort that Jesus and his movement were recognized by many non-Christian writers, too.

First and second century historians of the Roman empire, Tacitus, Suetonius, Josephus, and Thallus, have all made references to Christ as the source of explosive Christian movements. Tacitus, who recorded Annals, directly mentions Jesus’s crucifixion as the start of the Christian movement. Suetonius, chief secretary to Emperor Hadrian in the early second century, references the early church and its persecution and also identifies Christ as the instigator of “continuous disturbances,” or major religious disputes. Thallus, whose first-century writing has been preserved in part by other historians, even references the darkness that occurred at Jesus’s death (Luke 23:44-45).

Josephus, a well-known Jewish historian and revolutionary, references the life of Jesus in his Antiquities. While Josephus did not believe Jesus was the Jewish Messiah, he does include a glowing description of Jesus’s life and works. A disputed manuscript describes the three-day resurrection of Christ and the great miracles he performed. Since Josephus denied Jesus’s Messiahship, it is unlikely he wrote about the resurrection so confidently.

The passage, though, does not seem to be made up. An Arabic manuscript contains the same basic sentence structure about Jesus’s life, death, and ministry, but without claiming that he was truly the Messiah. This accepted passage is still significant because it corroborates many claims of the Gospel writers: that Jesus was wise and virtuous, that he cultivated many followers (Jews and gentiles), that Pilate ordered him to be crucified, that the disciples claimed his resurrection in three days, and that he claimed to be the Messiah of the Jewish prophecies.

Without Jesus, the Christian movement would have died out quickly. Jesus taught equal treatment of all people, including women and outsiders, and often challenged Jewish traditions that were not prescribed by God’s law; he demanded religious reform and condemned the worship of anything besides God. In this way, his teachings threatened the Jewish and Roman culture that surrounded the early Christian movement.

Both Biblical sources (the books Acts) and external sources discuss the heavy persecution Christians faced when they adhered to this teaching. In the early second century, letters were exchanged between Emperor Trajan and his officials describing the practices of early Christians and prescribing punishment and forced conversion should a person claim to follow Jesus. The fact that the church grew exponentially under this persecution shows the dedication of Jesus’s followers to his revolutionary teaching, a dedication that would not be possible without the hope of Jesus’s resurrection.

Jewish officials were also well aware of Jesus and the movement he sparked. Several passages from the Talmud, a collection of Rabbinic teachings on history among other subjects, reference not only the early Christian movement but also Jesus as its source. One revealing passage discusses the execution of Jesus “on the eve of the Passover” after many days of attempted stonings under the accusation of sorcery and blasphemy. This historical account follows the events of John 8:58-59, 10:31-33, 10:39 and Matthew 26 (and the corresponding Gospel accounts) perfectly.

In addition to these sources discussed, many, many historical accounts of the life of Jesus can be found in manuscripts and records of all major contemporary powers - political, religious, military, and legal.

Like the early church, we as Christians take our hope, comfort, and peace from the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The best way to resist the ministry of the Gospel is to deny the source of its meaning, but this is a foolish endeavor. There is overwhelming evidence for the life of Jesus as described by the Biblical Gospels. Because of this evidence, we must accept that Jesus lived, and that his teachings sparked a controversy so strong that it led to his execution on the cross and the martyrdom of countless early followers. Who would know the content of that teaching better than the disciples, eyewitnesses to Jesus? We must accept these Biblical accounts alongside secular and historical accounts.

If, as the Gospels claim, Christ has died for our sins and lives eternally, then we must evaluate our lives. Jesus has offered us freedom from the unpayable debt of sin. He has offered us divine love and the security of our salvation despite our perpetual condition of sin.

“For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.” Acts 2:39

Kaitlin Silvey, Impact Christian Fellowship at IUPUI Student President

*This argument is derived from Timothy Keller in The Reason for God.

**For a more detailed discussion of the external sources and their translations, see The Big Book of Christian Apologetics: An A to Z Guide by Norman L. Geisler under "Jesus, Non-Christian Sources for."

Every time I think about why I’m a Christian, the fundamental answer at the bottom of all the other ones is that I’m a Christian because of stories. Because when the world whispers “chaos”Christianity speaks of a narrative, both for all of history and for my day. Because God gets my English-major storyteller’s heart, because he made it and made it to look like his own. So when I look at the world through God-changed eyes, I see a story, with a plot arc and conflict and characters, and it’s a story about God and it’s a story of love and victory.  

This story comes in two forms: the textual and the actual. The textual is the arc laid out for us in Scripture, of Creation, Fall, Redemption and Consummation. The actual is the history that we live, and track by calendars and clocks, and watch unfolding through news reports. One way we know we can trust God’s story is that these two forms of the story match. They affirm each other. This principle is the subject of libraries’ worth of discussion, and miles too deep to cover here, but we can look in a selective, close-up way at a few reasons to trust God’s story.

As Christians, we trust the Bible because we trust the character of God. However, as responsible students, we trust the Bible for the same reasons we would trust other history books. For example, we have far more original manuscripts or manuscript parts of the New Testament than of any other piece of literature from around the same period. This is important mainly because it shows us that what our New Testament says today is the same as what the copies hand-written almost 2000 years ago said. The story hasn’t changed. From this step, the next question is whether the people writing the original manuscripts were telling the truth about what happened. We can tell this through at least three trains of thought: the internal logic of the people writing the accounts, how soon after the events the accounts were written, and whether non-Christian historians of the time tell the same stories.

By the internal logic of the writers, I mean reasons we can believe they are trustworthy by the same kind of standards we would use to trust the people around us. For example, we tend to trust people humble enough to admit embarrassing things about themselves, and acknowledge when they make mistakes. The apostles who wrote the gospels admit that they did not always understand Jesus, that they fell asleep on him in his greatest crisis after he had asked them to stay awake and pray, and that they doubted his resurrection. Hardly a glowing recommendation for their own agenda. So maybe they weren’t trying to give a glowing recommendation. Maybe they were just telling things as they happened. In addition, we trust people who invest themselves. Who are in it through the hardest times and for the longest haul. The boss who puts in the latest hours and does the dirtiest work earns our loyalty. The apostles spread accounts of Jesus across hundreds of miles without cars or airplanes or even high-tech hiking boots , and then stuck with their stories through criticism, persecution, prison, and death. That kind of commitment earns my trust.

For the dates of the books in comparison with the time of the events, we can argue backward from the book of Acts. We conclude that Acts was written, at the latest, around the early 60s AD, mostly because of what it does not mention. Luke, the writer of Acts talks about both Jerusalem and Rome, but does not mention the war between them or the world-changing fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. Similarly, he talks about the activity of Paul, Peter, and James, but stops before their deaths (which are all recorded by other historians to be in the 60s). We can conclude then that Acts was written about AD 60, and that the gospels (specifically Luke, since Luke starts Acts by referring to the previous account) were written before then, putting them well within the lifespan of eyewitnesses who would have influenced and corroborated their accounts. 

Other historians of the time also encourage us to trust the accounts in the New Testament. At least twelve ancient historians (including Jewish writers, Roman historians, government record-keepers, etc.), mention the death of Jesus, happening as the Bible records it. Others mention how he fulfilled the prophecies about the Messiah, his resurrection, how his followers suddenly began preaching, and additional details about his life. Writers who made a living and a reputation by telling history tell us about Jesus, the same as the apostles who lost their lives to tell the same story. Individually, there is reason to trust either of those categories of people. But together? They leave me with nothing to say.

Compared with the Bible, no other religious text meets these criteria. The Qur’an, for example (because it’s the only one I’m sufficiently familiar with) gets its credibility from the claim to be the literal words of God; it never pretends to be a historical record. It tells stories, like about Abraham and Moses and others, but mainly ones that were already ancient, not ones that happened a few decades prior. Never do the accounts include placement details, like the New Testament’s way of saying “when so and so was governor of this province, these events happened in this city,” and so affirmation from writers of the same time is irrelevant. The Hadith, or the accounts of the life of the prophet Mohammed, do little better in terms of corroboration, and have little narrative logic. In other words, there is little relationship between spiritual story and textbook story, and thus little reason to believe that my story fits into God’s.

But when I look at the Bible, I can see God’s story. And it’s the best story I know. 

Obviously, these notes are just a beginning. You could write books on these subjects, and many people have. In writing this, I looked at an essay by Gary Habermas titled “Why I Believe the New Testament is Historically Reliable” in an anthology called Why I Am A Christian and a chapter called “The Top Ten Reasons We Know the New Testament Writers Told the Truth” in Norman Geisler and Frank Turek’s I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist (a great and very readable intro to apologetics), in addition to the Qur’an and the Bible. Have a look at all of the above. Compare them with one another. I hope you find the same story I do, and I hope it’s a story that transforms the way you see all of history and the way you see your right-now life.

Because our God is the best storyteller there is. Pull up a chair and listen in.  

Krysitiana Kosobucki, Student in Impact Christian Fellowship at IUPUI

In a sense, the world is full of religion.  The Bible is but another face in the crowd when it comes to the abundance of religious texts available.  This situation has naturally caused Christians to question the validity of their holy book.  Why is the Bible the Truth above all other texts?  What makes Jesus so special?  Why are The Gospels superior?

These questions are difficult to answer and may cause Christians to shake in their shoes before summoning up a rebuttal.  However, the answer may be simpler than one would expect.

I believe the answer lies in one word – Grace.  The Bible offers Grace.  The word “Grace” is mentioned in the New Testament a total of 156 times, and I don’t think that was a mistake.  Titus 2:11 states that “For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people.”

What is Grace?  Well, in the words of U2’s lead singer, Grace “takes the blame, covers the shame, removes the stain,” and “finds beauty in everything.”  Jesus Christ, a non-sinner, gave up his life so that we, sinners, may have life.  God offers Grace to all who mean to redeem themselves in Him.

So, why is the Bible the Ultimate Truth?  It addresses the most beautiful gift provided to the entire human race at no cost – Grace.  There would be no room for hope without it.  To me, there is no sweeter aspect of Christianity.

Haley Welch, Student in Impact Christian Fellowship at IUPUI.

“Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” James 1:27

Like many children in high school, I was faced with the decision: What am I going to be? I considered my interests, talents and skills, and there was no clear answer. There were so many different career choices, each one having its own tug of war on me. When I asked myself what I wanted to be, I was convicted that I should be a Christian first. There is nothing nearly as important to me as having my entire identity bound up in Christ. 

Now, given that definition, I still had to decide how I was going to earn a living. Keeping my identity in Christ central, I decided to pursue a serving professions. If a leading role of a Christian was to love, serve, and minister to the lost, why wouldn’t I pursue a career in which that ministry would not be limited to nights and weekends? I couldn’t do nursing (since I often lose consciousness at the sight of blood), I wanted to avoid an excessive amount of school (not a fan), and I didn’t feel called to be a preacher (at least by vocation). So naturally I landed on social work as my profession of choice. 

It seems that social work is a field that Christians have shied away for some time. After my very first course I understood why. Some ideals of the field are in direct opposition to values held in Christianity. Nevertheless, the need for Christian social workers is great. How a Christian operates in this field is something I am still figuring out, but step by step I’m moving forward. 

In recent years I’ve seen the tendency in myself to take the easy route. To find a place where I’m comfortable, surrounded by brothers and sisters who are like-minded, and stay there. However, our God is a missional God, who sends his people which generally means motion.

Through this, I see it as my mission to “go where the glow is low.” When someone asks where I see myself in five years, it’s such a difficult question when I hardly know where I see myself in five months. The fields are too ready for harvest, and the laborers too few to settle into that kind of certainty. I’m simply relying on God to bring me through, and shine his light through me.

Philip Fischer, Student in Impact at IUPUI

It is human nature to always be concerned with what the future is going to bring. Constantly we plan things out in our head, and often times we think we know exactly what is going to happen. However, the thing we tend to forget is that God already knows exactly what his plan is for us.

I remember going to bed as a child and not being able to sleep at night. This was because in my simple mind, life was nothing but a giant dollhouse where after some time we would be thrown aside and that would be it.

 As a young child my family did not regularly attend church. Even though I was not attending church, God was working on me through two people. One of these was my grandmother and the other my babysitter, Janet. Now just to give you the proper image, Janet was a sweet grey-haired lady who stood no taller than 4’8. I went to her house every day while my parents were at work, and because she did not have any grandchildren yet, she treated me like her first. 

To this day I can remember her pushing me on the swing set she bought for me and singing songs like ‘Jesus Loves the Little Children’. Because of her influence and the few times I had gone with my grandmother to church, at age seven I went to my parents and told them we needed to go to church. 

Looking back on it now it is amazing how God used me as a seven year old to get my family to attend church. So I started attending church regularly, and quickly the void that had used to keep me up at night was filled. I attended all throughout school and later became a leader within our youth group.

Many of the friends I made in high school were through this group. Having a strong support system was always extremely helpful, but upon graduation we all went off to different schools. While we still kept in contact the daily and weekly support was no longer there. It was time for me to start over and really define myself.

Freshman year I made the mistake of trying to do everything by myself (and of course I failed). I went back home after my freshman year and started going to church again, because without a car I did not have any luck finding a church as a freshman. Sophomore year had its own struggles, but by the end I had really began to build my relationship with God again. However, again without a support group and a home church, when the busy summer came I began to fade again. 

As junior year came my faith had fallen out of routine. I began to realize this and decided that I needed to find an on campus group, but I was not sure what group that was going to be. Knowing that I was not going to be able to do it on my own, I simply prayed about it.

I had every expectation God was going to answer my prayer and give me the support group I needed, however I never could have imagined the way in which he did it. This is when Janet came back into the picture.  Her health had been declining since I left for college, and at the beginning of the fall semester things started to take a turn for the worst. 

I went to visit her in the nursing home, and at this time she was not responding to anyone. I sat by her bedside and told her how much she meant to me and that I hoped I had made her proud of the man I had become.  During this time I saw her smile, something her daughter said she had not done in days.

A short time later she went home to her Creator and we gathered at her funeral. It was a hard day, but God’s was right there. After we put her to rest, I sat with my family and ate dinner at the church. While we were eating, the pastor came over and sat with us. Interestingly enough, he too had attended the Kelley School of Business. After this connection he realized he had an introduction he needed to make.

At this time I met Andrew Hodges, who told me that he led a student fellowship group at IUPUI. Now if there is any doubt this was God, let me tell you that there were no more than 30 people at this dinner, and the overwhelming majority was family. I got Andrew’s contact information, and two weeks later I joined Impact at IUPUI and started regularly attending one of their life groups.

Since joining Impact at IUPUI I have found a life group that I attend weekly, which is exactly the support group I had been looking for. Also this semester I shared my testimony at our night of fellowship, and I have begun to think about what I want to do for the group I will lead next semester. Through this group I met several people who led a college bible study on Sundays at a church close to my apartment, so now I also have the home church I have been wanting. I can now feel God at work in my life.

So do not get discouraged when things do not go as you had planned. God is there in those times, and believe it or not he knows exactly what he is doing. The best part about it is that he will do it in the most unimaginable ways. Ways that will cause you to look back and smile, because he was there even in the times you doubted.

Zach Treon, Student in Impact at IUPUI

People, senioritis is real.

As the year goes on, it gets harder and harder to justify putting a lot of effort into schoolwork. My grad school applications are already out (meaning no one is going to see these grades, right?), there are people to spend time with whom I might not ever see again after May and, if nothing else, three and a half years of college tell me that sometimes it’s just more important to sleep.

Feeling a lack of enthusiasm for school this semester was no big surprise. But it’s a little more complicated than that. Mostly I think it’s the gap in time between submitting grad school applications and hearing back. The initial work is done. I’m just waiting. 

And waiting is a complicated place.

I’m a planner. Having a schedule makes my life more comfortable, and when a long term schedule just doesn’t exist, I subconsciously retreat into wishes. Maybe it’s a coping mechanism. I have no idea where I’ll be living next fall, but it probably won’t be here. I can spend the time that I would naturally spend in planning what comes next by imagining how life would look if I moved to such a place or if I had such a job or if I got into this Masters program. It’s something I can put mental and emotional energy into, almost as if it was a real plan. And really there’s no harm, right? I’m just waiting anyway.

Except that’s wrong. There is harm. There is deep spiritual and emotional harm in putting my mental energy into pretend plans just because I’m uncomfortable not having real ones. There are a few things that happen.

1. If I invest emotional energy into my imaginary future, my prayers become less about surrendering to God and more about what sounds lovely in my head. But God, Chicago would be fun. Isn’t Chicago a good idea, God?
2. I’m not practicing gratitude. If I’m slipping into daydreams about how fun it will be when I’m somewhere else, that’s kind of like coveting a life that isn’t this one.
3. I’m loving nobody well. Not my professors, if I’m not demonstrating the investment they deserve in return for teaching. Not my friends, if I’m only viewing them as people I’m going to leave soon, as a commodity on which to glut my heart now. Not my family, if I let my worry about the unknown overshadow everyday joy for the last few months I live in the same house with them. (It turns out, a fairly accurate litmus test for the spiritual wholesomeness of a situation is how it causes me to treat the people closest to me. And worry and weariness don’t make me a very good daughter.)
4. My eyes are not open to ministry right here and right now. If I’m emotionally checking out, thinking that it doesn’t matter much what I do because after all I won’t be around much longer, then I’m subconsciously telling God that I don’t trust him very much. That these next few months just aren’t long enough for Him to accomplish anything through me, so I can pretty much stop caring.

These are individual problems, but they point to the general need to practice presence. The need to work diligently, trust God joyously, and love the people around me in practical, un-jealous ways. To trust that God has given me these day and these minutes with as much intentionality as he’s given all the rest of them. And to be thankful.

So that’s what I’m working on this semester. In the fourteen weeks until graduation, as well as in whatever comes after, I’m praying for the grace to be present. In all the unknown, I’m seeking the rest that comes from confidence that my God is faithful. And He’s given me this day.

How do you practice presence in times of uncertainty?

Krystiana Kosobucki, Student in Impact at IUPUI