7 Non-Negotiables

This past weekend was the CCC Pacific Southwest Region's Staff Conference. The main speaker was a guy named Dennis Rainey, and on Saturday morning, he gave a great talk called "The Seven Non-Negotiables for the Christian Faith". The seven points are simple, yet profound. Just wanted to share them :)

1) Seek God, not sin. (Amos 5:4,6,14. Why does the Bible command seeking God? Because we are prone to wander)

2) Fear God, not man. ("What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us... the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like." -A. W. Tozer)

3) Love God, not the world. ("The essential task of all people is to set their loves in order" -J. R. R. Tolkien)

4) Believe God, not the deceiver. (Satan's mission is to move us from faith to unbelief)

5) Obey God, not your appetite. ("The great doors of opportunity swing on hinges called obedience")

6) Serve God, not self. (Total surrender is all that is acceptable, and life is found in it)

7) Worship God, not comfort. (Nowhere is worship more important than when you suffer... celebrate and rejoice in the Lord in the good and the bad)

Vida Estudiantil

Back to DR posts!

This is what ministry looked like at UASD...

First, this is the entryway to the campus. We were encouraged by Jeremiah Kepner, one of the staff people from Northern Arizona University, to check ourselves everyday before passing through those gates, to ensure that we were being Spirit-filled and Spirit-led going into ministry.

Once we got to campus, we went over to the English Immersion Program. Though we didn't go into the building itself, we met students as they came out for break, and spent breaks and their after-class times with them.

On one of the days, we got to lead the first Vida Estudiantil (DR's CCC) meeting in the Arts department- until this point, Vida Estudiantil was only having their gatherings in the Humanities dept. During this meeting, Christina shared her powerful and personal testimony,

Chris shared his equally powerful testimony,

and Bree gave a lesson on assurance of salvation, with Lori, our trusted interpreter and staff person from NAU, piggy-backing off of her to share the Gospel with the group,

Before the students came out for their breaks, we would spend time praying in small groups to prepare us for the day ahead. Good stuff!

During a certain break on Wednesday (I think), I looked up and noticed that the tree/bench area where we almost always hung out was completely surrounded with people having conversations, and upon closer inspection, I discovered that every single conversation was a Gospel conversations- our students (and even some of the Dominican Cru students) had Knowing God Personally booklets and Bibles out and were sharing Christ with Dominicans left and right. What a great moment!

Christina blended right in with the Dominican students, and they would often speak Spanish to her, assuming she was from the DR. Doesn't she fit right in? I guess the cardinal and gold shirt that says "FIGHT ON" is a bit of a giveaway...

These are some of the Dominican students involved with and helping lead Vida Estudiantil. Most of them came to Christ through the Summer Project that was there last summer!

Back row, L to R: Nick, me, Elvis (no joke, birth name), Gerard, other Nick, David (not a Christian... yet)

Front row, L to R: Sonia (another team member often mistaken for Dominican), Starliner (no joke, birth name)

It was so cool getting to meet them and even getting to do evangelism with them and watching them share the Gospel in Spanish with their fellow Dominican students!

These are the students I became closest with during our time in the DR. Sonia, Kristen, Chris and I got to share the Gospel at length with them, and had phenomenal conversations with them. We don't know quite where they are spiritually, in terms of decisions, but they really seemed to understand and appreciate what the Gospel said! They were very sad to see us go, and we were very sad to leave them.
L to R: me, Flor, Chris, Rafael, Sonia, Liliana