English papers, fire alarms, and wrestling with God

God works in mysterious ways. He'll use whatever is at his disposal (everything) to get our attention. This evening I was working on a paper for my english class that is due in the morning, but try as I might, I couldn't focus and make progress on the paper. Frustrated I thought to myself, "I'm going to be at this all night". Suddenly I realized that it might not be such a bad thing. I'd been able to sleep in quite a bit that morning and after I'm done with my last class today I've got 24 hours during which I've got no classes, no meetings scheduel, not even any pressing homework save for making revisions to the same paper after we go over it in class. Out of all the nights this week, tonight I could afoard it. The next thing that hit me was a call to prayer. I knew if I had a couple hours left after I was done with the paper I could always sneak over to the prayer room to spend some time with God.

So what does all this have to do with fire alarms? It's because of what God spoke to my heart next, he brought back the memory of a time of prayer that I spent with him last year. A year ago, perhaps even to the day (I'll have to see if I can find my old journal and see) at roughly 4:00 in the morning a fire alarm went off in Walace. The weather that night was about the same as it has been tonight -- COLD. So outside Wallace stood many blurry-eyed dorm-dwelers. After a while of hudling together in the freezing cold many of us made our way to the LLC to wait until we would be let back in the building. It was quite a while until they opened the building back up, at which point in time I finally returned to my room and crawled back into my bed.


I think that I was there a whole thirty seconds when, sure enough, the alarm went off again. It was at that moment I heard God say to me, "Nathan, we need to talk". I headed out of my room and began to walk through the campus, praying to God. I prayed to God for the upcoming Shalom conference as well as many burdens that were on my heart. I wrestled with God that morning, bringing my frustrations, my hopes, my dissapointments, my life before God as I prayed for the things that were going on in my life at that point in time. And the sun rose on a new day.

As I think back upon the burdens on my heart that I brought before God that cold February morning I'm amazed. A year has past and I've gotten to witness the wonderful ways in which God has answered that prayer.

God answers our prayers!

God loves us!

God wants to spend time with us!

God wants us to bring him our hearts, and our lives to him, he's big enough to handle it!

So here I am again, wrestling with God, calling out to him, pouring out my heart. All the prayers that have been prayed in this room have been heard by a loving God. I can only imagine what it will be like in a year as we look back at the things that we prayed for this week, and the miraculous ways in which God has answered them.

-Nathan Green