Have you ever felt distant from God? I’ve been there too (sometimes for years). You find yourself saying things like, “I wish I could just see Him, talk to Him, feel Him near me!” You wonder whether it’s your fault, that maybe some sin is causing Him to stop talking to you or whether you’re just not “doing it right.”

After a while, God’s apparent silence can make us doubt our own salvation or even doubt God’s existence (even if we’ve had powerful reassurances and interactions with Him in the past). There’s a song that says, “we cry in anger when we cannot feel you near.” Some people cry out, others go exploring other religions, while some just quietly let their faith in God get forgotten and swallowed up by all the “real world” experiences that we CAN see and feel. CS Lewis says (in Screwtape Letters), that we have an enemy who wants us to think of our car, our phone, and our lunch as real while spiritual things (including God) are just sort of pretend and fanciful, when the very opposite is true. That’s how a lot of us here in the US are taught, and anything else seems mystical and weird.

I have some encouragement, however! I’ve been reminded to hold God’s hand in the dark by trusting in His Word, when I can’t see the truth for myself. Here are a slew of promises about how close God is to you right now (Ps 34:18; Ps 139:7-10; Ps 145:18; Phil 4:5; Acts 17:27; Rom 8:38-39; 1 Cor 3:16; 1 John 4:16). The Bible even lists a Hall of Faith of people who had to trust God without seeing (Hebrews 11). God doesn’t leave us with just a “trust me,” though. He is constantly proclaiming His love for us (Zeph 3:17) and revealing Himself to us (Rom 1:19-20).
This powerful and vulnerable video by Tim Mackie illustrates how every single aspect of our life is a chance to tap into God’s presence if we just turn our focus toward Him. That lunch that seems “more real” than spiritual things may actually point to God! In a previous article on Abiding, we talk about what it means practically and scientifically to abide in Christ (John 15:4-9; 2 Cor 10:3-5; Col 3:1-3; Phil 4:8). Even when you feel distant from God and cry out to Him, let that very crying be a reassurance, because the Bible says that crying out to Him is evidence of the Spirit of God in us (Gal 4:6; Rom 8:26).

  Jesus asked God for something “so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”  Wanna know what He asked for?

    Jesus asked for God to make us (the Church) ONE!  In this divisive world, there has never been a better witness than our unity and love for one another. This is why we are SO excited about the united efforts of over 120 ministries and churches across multiple denominations with the sole purpose of building gospel communities on the last campuses that currently have none identified.

     We had the opportunity to meet with Hispanic pastors from the 10 cities that have the most concentrated amount of unreached schools.  Pastor Jonathan and I prayer-walked one of those campuses a week later, and met 2 students excited to be part of the new movement we will seek to launch together next fall!  Please pray for Jonathan, the other pastors, and the 1,747 campuses with no known gospel presence.

  The energy in the crowded game room was electric, full of delighted cheers as students battled for victory. Between matches, a local high school student named Devyn experienced eternal victory as he heard the Gospel message and put his faith in Jesus! This was our first video game outreach, after months of research and preparation.

     We have a lot to learn still, but feedback from tournament regulars was very positive: “This was honestly one of the most well-run tournaments I’ve ever been to. Tournaments are often so transactional, but you made it feel much warmer and like a community.” Here’s a video recap!

     This outreach was done in partnership with the high school gaming club, a local church, and two other ministries. While we are thrilled that a gospel presentation was well received, and even led to someone’s salvation, we are ultimately trying to build something that will lead to Christian gamers on every campus to have an ongoing platform to deepen their relationships with their non-Christian friends.

     Please pray for us to listen closely to God’s leading, and for more campuses, staff, and students to lean into this incredibly necessary missional work!

   I’ve been working on a gospel summary from the perspective of a video game player. Let me know what you think!

   The Great Designer lovingly wrote the code of your body, soul, and whole identity (Ps 139:13-16). He designed a massive sandbox full of wonder to be safe and free to play (Ecc 2:24; Ps 104:14-15) because He wants us to play WITH Him (Ps 23).

     But, a Vandal introduced a Trojan Virus into our hearts, causing us to doubt God’s goodness and seek to control everything ourselves (Gen 3:1-6). We set PVP mode against God and glitched the system, locking the difficulty to impossible.  We violated the license agreement, got banned from the server, corrupted our firmware, and bricked our hard drive (Rom 1:21). That corruption tainted our relationship with everything, from plants and animals to each other and even our entertainment (Rom 8:20-22). Now, we live in a broken world, where toxicity, exploitation, addiction, and explicit content mix in with the pure delight God intended for us in every area of our lives (Rom 1:28-31).

     So, the Designer—loving His creations too much to let them go offline (2 Peter 3:9)—dove into the system Himself, an Avatar that was fully God and fully man (Phil 2:7-8). He did a perfect speed run (Heb 4:15), beat the boss (Rev 20:10), and offered to swap profiles (2 Cor 5:21), taking our pirating penalties so we can be unbanned, and paying for our subscription (John 1:12)!

     Now, longing to repair our broken connection and link accounts with us forever (1 John 5:11-12), the Designer waits for us to opt-in (2 Cor 5:20). We have to say “yes” to the quest from our Master of all Light or remain on the dying server forever (Mark 16:16).

    When we join the Guild, we get the promise of an invincibility (1 Cor 15:53) and, in the meantime, get equipped to go out on epic missions with Him to rescue our friends/family, and potential new guildmates all over the world (Acts 1:8) before we witness the final boss fight to end evil forever (Rev 20:7-10)!

  Since Covid, the campus ministry staff here at world headquarters have largely been spread out and isolated.  On top of the pandemic, the space we were gathering in has been under construction for 2 years, and that has made it difficult to cross-pollinate in the ways Karen and I are particularly gifted.

     That is one reason our team made it a priority to host a retreat this month, where we could re-connect and celebrate what God is doing through our work around the US. Our theme was “how God loves the outcast.” Many learned that they were not alone in feeling like outcasts themselves, and we worked to build safer community.

     Karen shines in these spaces especially, because she has discovered her calling is to provide prayer and encouragement for God’s people. She leapt up on stage to identify as someone who doesn’t have a permanent spot in the office, but comes in to fellowship and bless people from all departments. She also took every opportunity to get to know people and make them feel special.  We were thrilled to be able to bring our own children as well, so they could get to know the other Cru teens in our area.

  Braelynn, a young adult leader in SoCal had this to say about her church’s experience partnering with Cru:

We wanted to do a better job of outreach, but didn’t know how to get started. A local Cru leader began helping me, and this training really gave our people some confidence and a vision for how God could use us. Fifteen young adults went to a community college near our church to ask students about their faith background and perspectives. At first, our group was pretty timid, but our first steps to engage with students completely opened our eyes. We quickly saw the openness and spiritual interest of many of those who were willing to talk with us. The Soularium tool we used made it really easy to open up great conversations.

     Cru winter conference shifted how our church and students see evangelism, and the time there has motivated all of us to think about those who aren’t involved anywhere yet. We’ve started making outreach a normal part of our ministry. We’ve done some Prayer Walking on campuses, and we’ve decided to launch a new campus ministry at another college near to us, where our young adults are leading and owning the ministry.

   This month, Karen and I had the opportunity to attend a 2-day mental health workshop, learning more about the incredible stigma that keeps people with real and valid struggles from getting the help and support they need. Cru missionaries are no less susceptible to these challenges, so it was incredibly important to learn and discuss alongside many of our leadership. Toward the end, we took a suicide prevention course called “QPR” (sort of like “CPR” for someone who is at risk of suicide). I’ll paste an info card here (as well as a picture of our suicide-prevention manga comic from Cru Japan), but the biggest takeaway I got is that it is better to ask and enter in even if you don’t know what you’re doing.

  Last fall, Cru students organized a “games and food” hangout in the grassy quad of a California campus. Alden, one of the freshman leaders, invited his friend Ernesto to the hangout. That day, Alden and Ernesto began talking about faith & what it means to follow Christ.

     A few weeks later, Ernesto started texting Alden with questions about God and the messages continued over Winter Break. Alden decided it was time to invite Ernesto to ask Jesus into his life, so he planned to text him about that the next day.

     The next day, Alden sent his message with the invitation and was thrilled when Ernesto responded: “I just did last night!” (at a church service he attended while visiting his cousins). Now, Alden is being trained in how to mentor a new believer to grow in their relationship with God.

     Please pray also for Lalo (pictured here). Just like Ernesto, Lalo has been intentionally coming every week to these hangouts right after Bible study. He enjoys playing games and community, and he is open to talk about faith but unsure about what he wants to believe. Thank you for investing in these students who are taking bold steps of faith so that their friends and classmates can come to know Christ!

  Empowering Christian students to reach their friends with the gospel is the core of what Cru is about, but some students have bigger hurdles than others.  During our week-long Design Sprint, we decided that one of the hardest students to reach is the female gamer (we named her “Zelda”).  Gamers in general often have stories of having felt rejected by the Church, but women who play games are frequently hurt by other gamers as well!

     So, we designed an event intended to deepen a trust-based relationship between “Zelda” and her Christian friend who’s involved with Cru (named “Peach”). The event is called #LFG-IRL, because gaming students experience isolation and are “Looking for Group – In Real Life.”

     Please pray for us as we seek to experiment with this and other strategies to meet students of all kinds whom God is calling to be part of His family forever. Pray that we can work out financial, logistic, and manpower hurdles, and that we would learn quickly how to honor these folks and point them toward Jesus!

   Frequently in life, forces beyond my control throw off my plans (can you relate?). I don’t want to ignore or fail to process the hard things that happen to me—it’s important to grieve and bring those pains to the Lord. On the other hand, we sometimes dream of being some big success, then get stuck in a rut of blame when reality doesn’t turn out as we hope. What we choose to focus on grows bigger in our minds and in our lives, so we need to be careful not to focus on what is not up to us.

     In his book The Great Divorce, CS Lewis imagines how Napoleon spends eternity in an enormous empty house, “walking up and down—up and down all the time—left-right, left-right—never stopping for a moment. The two chaps watched him for about a year and he never rested. And muttering to himself all the time. ‘It was Soult’s fault. It was Ney’s fault. It was Josephine’s fault. It was the fault of the Russians. It was the fault of the English.’ Like that all the time. Never stopped for a moment. A little, fat man and he looked kind of tired. But he didn’t seem able to stop it.”

     Later, he explains: “it begins with a grumbling mood, and yourself still distinct from it: perhaps criticizing it. And yourself, in a dark hour, may will that mood, embrace it. Ye can repent and come out of it again. But there may come a day when you can do that no longer. Then there will be no you left to criticize the mood, nor even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself going on forever like a machine.”

     By contrast, Daniel from The Karate Kid is taught to diligently and faithfully serve in humble tasks with no glory (Luke 16:10). There’s no better example of this than Jesus (Philippians 2:3-11). Instead of dwelling on blame and regret, I want to be thankful for every breath, be content with what God gives me, and focus on being faithful with what IS my responsibility in the moment. Will you join me?