Wesley Foundation E-letter (Methodist Campus Ministry)

Dear Friends,

 

Hopefully by now you got our notice about the postponement of our South Lawn Cookout due to rain.  We will be out tomorrow 1pm- 5pm on South Lawn with 360 burgers, 360 hotdogs, drinks, and tons of chocolate candy to give away.  So come on down tomorrow and get fed.  It’s our little way of sharing God’s love.

 

Solid Rock Café – New Series Starts Thursday!

 

This Thursday night (free food @ 6:30pm, program afterwards) we are beginning a new series where we examine what it means to be United Methodist, what are our beliefs and how did we get them, as well as looking at John Wesley and why he is so important as a founder of Methodism.  This is a great time to come and bring your questions about who United Methodists are.  This is particularly good even if you are just curious about how faith expressions differ among denominations.  Feel free to join us, even if you’ve never been before.  For more info call 842-2880.

 

Now For Sami’s Ramblings About Jesus

 

Tomorrow we will be on South Lawn handing out free food.  Ever since I was a poor, starving college student I have always associated free food with grace.  To me, that’s what grace is:  nourishment that comes from unexpected places, given without price.  It is so easy to get caught up in the rat race of having to create your own life, manage your own affairs, assure your own success.  There is so much pressure in this world to perform, to produce, to prove.  There is no freedom in a life like that.

 

But there is tremendous love and freedom in Christ, in God’s grace, in simply finding oneself fed on the way to the next thing on the agenda.  Something about those surprise encounters with grace seem to change the agenda.  The need to perform, to produce, and to prove, just doesn’t seem so important anymore.  What becomes important is simply being in the Love that seeks and finds us.  My heart yearns to be found that way.  My heart yearns to be a part of God’s finding of others, who are lost little sheep like me.  And somehow this makes it all the more real to me.

 

My very dear friend often says, “The process is love; don’t hinder the process.”  And yet, I find myself getting in the way so many times.  I am so thankful that God is bigger than me.  And able to work around my stubborn headed willfulness.  Because sometimes I even turn the gift of being surprised by grace into another agenda item full of performing, producing, and proving.  Lord have mercy on me! 

 

Well, He does.  I guess what I most want to say in this rambling message is that God’s love is real.  And if you need a simple, tangible reminder of that, one you don’t have to earn, one you don’t have to buy, one you can simply receive without any cost or price, then stop in and eat a hamburger.  I will join you in remembering as I bite into mine, because I need those reminders too.  Maybe together we can know that God’s love is really enough, and the gift of the life we have really is good.

 

Blessings,

 

Sami

 

Sami Wilson

Campus Minister/Director

WKU Wesley Foundation

United Methodist Campus Ministry

842-2880

sami@wkywesley.org

www.wkywesley.org

 

Weekly E-letter from WKU Wesley Foundation

Dear Friends,

 

It’s cold outside!  If your folks are coming down for homecoming, now is the time to have them bring your heavy coat!  But it is also a beautiful time as well.  The leaves are changing and there is a crispness in the air.  It’s all good; at least if you can stay warm.

 

This week is a different kind of week because of the Homecoming festivities. 

 

We are partnering with the BCM (Baptist Campus Ministry) to build a float for the Homecoming Parade this Friday.  You are invited to work on the float with us Monday – Thursday, 3pm till midnight at the WKU Ag Center whenever you can make it.  Be sure to bring a pair of scissors!

 

HOMECOMING ACTIVITIES!!!!!

 

Tuesday Night—Movie Screening and Float Preparation!

 

We will meet at MMTH for the screening of our film that was entered in the Two Day Film Challenge 2006.  For those of you who worked on this project it will be a fun time.  For those who are just curious it should be awesome to see what your friends have been up to.  Afterwards we will go to the Ag Center to work on the float.

 

Thursday Night—Meal and Program (Prayer of Dedication for Float) and Float Preparation!

 

We will meet at our usual time (6:30pm) for our meal at the Wesley Foundation.  Then after a short devotional time and prayer we will head out to the Ag Center to work on the float together with BCM.  Come and join us for free food and fun!

 

Friday Night—Parade, Street Fest, Big Red’s Roar!

 

The Homecoming Parade is at 5pm.  We will meet at 4:15pm at the Wesley Foundation and go watch the parade together.  You can call the Foundation at 842-2880 for more info on where we will gather to see the parade.  After that we will enjoy the Big Red Street Fest (5:30pm Preston/South Lawn) and then go to Big Red’s Roar @ 8pm.  Be sure and wear your Wesley Foundation T-shirts!

 

Saturday Afternoon—Tailgating and Game

 

We will be camping out in the Valley with a couple of vehicles on Friday night to reserve a space in front of Gilbert, McCormack, and Rodes for Saturday’s Tailgating.  If you are interested in parking your car with us, let me know!  On Saturday at 11am we will gather in front of the valley to begin cooking burgers and dogs.  We will hand out as much as we’ve got until it’s gone, so stop by for some free food!!!!  We will stay until about 3:30pm, and then we will pack up and go to the game!

 

Now for Sami’s Ramblings About Jesus:

 

Water.  It’s important stuff.  Since I have been pregnant this time around, I don’t go anywhere without my water bottle.  And I find that things go a lot better with me when I am drinking water on a regular basis, which reminds me, I’m feeling kind of parched!  If I don’t get enough water during the day, my legs and feet cramp up in the middle of the night.  Or my big belly with a baby in it (and I do mean BIG!) will tighten up on me and make any kind of movement difficult.  Or I will find myself out of breath and lightheaded, and I will have to lie down on my side until it passes.  This is just an amazing time in my life when the extra physical demands upon my body MAKE (as in “He makes me to lie down in green pastures”) me aware of how much water is necessary to keeping everything going.  Our flesh needs water.  We cannot do without it.  When we neglect that need, serious consequences take place.  Our bodies start to kick us.

 

Likewise our spirits need water.  We cannot go without the water of God’s Holy Spirit without serious consequences happening in our lives.  And what affects our spiritual selves, affects everything else we are connected to.  I love the promise that Jesus gives to the woman at the well:

 

If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water. . . .  Those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty.  The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.  John 4:10-14

 

She says, “Give me this water.”  When was the last time you heard the promise of what Jesus offers and asked Him to give it, to be it for you?  I think all too often we settle for the water of the flesh, and never even realize there is water of the Spirit, unquenchable water that gushes up from within us, sustaining us, equipping up, empowering us, uplifting us, and connecting us to God Almighty who loves us more than we could ever know.  As I look at the way most of us live our lives (by doing a bunch of stuff to live up to impossible standards), I see so much cramping up of the spirit, difficultly of real movement, running out of breath, and incredible fatigue.  This is not what Jesus promised when He offered us Himself!

 

I have been under so much conviction in the last few months to return to that place where God’s Spirit flows freely within me.  I cannot experience it when I am bull-headedly trying to live up to some standard or unrealistic expectation.  In fact, the Spirit doesn’t flow for me where I am trying to earn anything.  It only flows from within me, in the way Jesus describes, when I purposefully expose myself to grace . . .  God’s grace.  That place where I am loved, and I don’t have to earn it, I don’t have to live up to it, I don’t have to manufacture it, I don’t have to manipulate myself or others to get it.  It is that place where I must simply sit in it and ENJOY it, letting Jesus’s love fall all over me.  And then the serving part isn’t such a struggle.  It just naturally results.  I want to share His love with others because I have been given His love to share.  I know myself as loved.  I know how to speak value into other lives because I know my own value, apart from what I do and totally connected with what He does for me.  This is the water that never runs dry.  It is the Water of His Holy Spirit.

 

My heart for you is that you would experience this artesian spring of Life welling up from within you too.  That you would know it is okay to not be perfect, it is okay not to have it all planned out, it is okay to be human after all.  It is okay to just . . . be . . . His.

 

You are His.  The blessing comes in knowing it.  Gosh you are so loved.

 

Peace on the journey from another pilgrim.

 

Sami

 

Sami Wilson

Campus Minister/Director

WKU Wesley Foundation

United Methodist Campus Ministry

842-2880  www.wkywesley.org  sami@wkywesley.org

 

 

 

Wesley Foundation E-letter, United Methodist Campus Ministry

Dear Friends,

Amazing how quickly the weather can change!  Hope you are finding a way to stay dry on these windy, rainy, fall days!

Here is what is going on this week:

Worship

Tonight at Soul Feast we will enjoy a Taize' worship service.  This is a meditative prayer service that is filled with music, quiet reflections, scripture readings, and community prayers.  We will meet @ DUC, room 340 at 6:30pm.

Weekly Meal & Program

Thursday for our Solid Rock Cafe' we will meet at the Wesley Foundation at 6:30pm for a meal and program.  Since it was too cold last week to watch "Glory Road" on the lawn, we will watch it together in-doors at the Foundation after dinner. We will also think together about the ways we see the gospel represented in the themes presented by the movie.  Just come and take a study break.  We'll pull out the popcorn!

Now for Sami's Ramblings About Jesus:

It is the coolest thing that just happened to me.  I'm sitting outside on the front porch of the Wesley Foundation, writing this e-letter, and one of my students walks by from one of my classes.  We just had the coolest conversation about faith.  It's not something we can talk about in class, in a secular university.  But as he reminded me, it is something we can live.  You and I are living words of Scripture.  We can live in such a way that people who are in the world and of the world will look into our lives and see a different quality there than what they experience personally.  It is true that when we "abide in Christ" that abiding has a tangilble expression in how we live our lives.  Boy this excites me so much.  I love seeing the power of the gospel really become good news for people. 

When I lived in Florida, I was an associate pastor at a large church.  I led a weekly ladies prayer group affectionately known as "the Naggy Ladies."  (Someone else named us, but we liked the name and kept it).  As one person put it, we nagged God until something happened.  The thing that so inspired me about these dear friends is that we would leave our prayer time and each of them would go into their lives in the secular world.  Some of them taught school, some worked in insurance agencies, some worked in very profit oriented businesses.  Each of them had to live out the majority of their lives on, what I like to call, the front lines.  What continued to amaze me in all the years we met and prayed together was how powerfully God used each of them as change agents in the circumstances they lived in.  And our little prayer group began to get a reputation.  People who would never step foot inside a church began to ask each of the ladies to pray for them or specific needs in their lives.  God used each of them to bring the light of Christ to dark corners of the world.  Indeed each of them were living Scriptures that shared the hope of Christ in tangible ways.  What is even coolest of all is that they are still doing it today.

As I live and breathe and work as a campus minister at Western Kentucky University, I find myself in the same position my dear Florida ladies were and are in.  As I meet students in all different places and circumstances on campus, I get to share the gospel on the front lines.  Often not by preaching.  But by trying to live in a Christ like way.  I really do admire and envy students who are people of faith.  You my friends are able to do this in ways that I can only imagine, because your whole lives are steeped in the front lines.  I want to say to you, do not be discouraged.  Just live the Christ light within you.  You are here for a purpose.  And you can be a vessel of good news poured out for others, even when you have to be careful about how you share it.  Live it first.  And know that by living it you are initiating that hunger and thirst within others to have that Christ light within them to.  And they will not go long without asking why you are the way you are or how to get what you've got.  This is what it means to be salt and light.

Know that Jesus loves you, and I do too.

Blessings,

Sami

Sami Wilson
Campus Minsiter/Director
WKU Wesley Foundation
United Methodist Campus Ministry
842-2880

 

Weekly E-Letter, Wesley Foundation, Methodist Student Ministry

Dear Friends,

 

I just got back from lunch with a dear friend of mine.  She is one of those people who helps me connect to the world beyond myself.  I hope that each of you have safe places in your life that help to transport you beyond the immediate here and now.  I always find I am refreshed and ready to step back into my day to day life afterwards.  Praise God for that!

 

Here is what’s going on this week:

 

Worship Tonight:  Soul Feast!

 

We are doing something a little different tonight for worship.  Last week we looked at what it means to take the love of Jesus beyond our own four walls.  This week we are going to do that—literally!  We are going to prayer walk campus.  Meet in front of Fresh Food Company at 6:30pm.  From there we will go two by two to pray for campus.  It should be awesome!

 

 

Thursday’s Free Meal and Bible Study:  Solid Rock Café!

 

We will be finishing up our movie series on the Lawn this Thursday.  We will begin at 6:30pm with dinner at the Wesley Foundation.  Then we will have a program that focuses on the God’s challenge to us to appreciate and celebrate diversity.  The title of our discussion is “What Color Is Your Rainbow.”  We will follow this with a showing of the movie “Glory Road” on the South Lawn at DUC (8:30pm).  So bring lots of blankets and warm clothes and join us for a challenging and worthwhile evening.

 

Now for Sami’s Ramblings About Jesus:

 

This past Sunday I was blessed with the opportunity to bring the message at Broadway UMC.  It was so awesome to see how a word of encouragement that God had laid on my heart met with what God was doing in lives of folks that I had not met yet.  I love that about the way God works.  He knows what needs are there, and uses ordinary people of faith to meet them, working in such a way that only He can take the credit.  It reminds me of something that someone in Gulf Port, Mississippi said to our group who went to do Hurricane Relief last Spring:  All we have to be is available; God does the rest.

 

We might think that leadership changes the world, or courage, or intelligence, or super-human strength, or money, or influence, or ___________________.  But really, the thing that really, really changes the world is the gift of our available-ness, to God.  What if our concept of being “available” was no longer associated with whether or not we were in the market for a love relationship and instead was related to how available we are to the Living God?  What if the conversations surrounding availability went something like:  “She’s totally available.  Wonder how long it will be before her life becomes an incredible adventure?  You know God doesn’t waste any time.  Give Him and inch of availability and He turns it into a mile.  Did you see how that guy really made himself available?  Look at him now!  It’s like he’s a totally different person.  God has totally transformed everything in his life, and he is, I don’t know, radically on fire for this new thing God started!  It’s like he could change the world or something!”  Could you imagine how the world we live in would be a different place?  How things would change if people, just believers even, were to radically release their own agendas and came to God as if their lives were a blank check that He could fill out any way He wanted?  Wow!  The implications stagger me!

 

Of course this comes from someone who struggles with availability everyday.  Especially when I think I know what God has in mind, but I get so intent on doing whatever “it” is that I forget to fellowship with HIM.  I do get glimpses though.  Of when God does something really cool, and I get to be a part of it.  Like when a message that was on my heart to give connects with a life, that I had no way of knowing would bring a positive impact the way it did.  Only God could know that.  Only God could connect dots that I can’t even see.

 

So be encouraged.  Know that He is connecting dots in your life too.  And live with me the challenge of being available.  Maybe together the sum of our availability will be greater than our individual parts.  And we will see God’s glory in a way we never imagined.

 

Blessings,

 

Sami

 

Sami Wilson

Campus Minister/Director

WKU Wesley Foundation

sami@wkywesley.org

 

 

 

Weekly E-Letter, Wesley Foundation, Methodist Student Ministry

Dear Friends,

 

I just got back from lunch with a dear friend of mine.  She is one of those people who helps me connect to the world beyond myself.  I hope that each of you have safe places in your life that help to transport you beyond the immediate here and now.  I always find I am refreshed and ready to step back into my day to day life afterwards.  Praise God for that!

 

Here is what’s going on this week:

 

Worship Tonight:  Soul Feast!

 

We are doing something a little different tonight for worship.  Last week we looked at what it means to take the love of Jesus beyond our own four walls.  This week we are going to do that—literally!  We are going to prayer walk campus.  Meet in front of Fresh Food Company at 6:30pm.  From there we will go two by two to pray for campus.  It should be awesome!

 

 

Thursday’s Free Meal and Bible Study:  Solid Rock Café!

 

We will be finishing up our movie series on the Lawn this Thursday.  We will begin at 6:30pm with dinner at the Wesley Foundation.  Then we will have a program that focuses on the God’s challenge to us to appreciate and celebrate diversity.  The title of our discussion is “What Color Is Your Rainbow.”  We will follow this with a showing of the movie “Glory Road” on the South Lawn at DUC (8:30pm).  So bring lots of blankets and warm clothes and join us for a challenging and worthwhile evening.

 

Now for Sami’s Ramblings About Jesus:

 

This past Sunday I was blessed with the opportunity to bring the message at Broadway UMC.  It was so awesome to see how a word of encouragement that God had laid on my heart met with what God was doing in lives of folks that I had not met yet.  I love that about the way God works.  He knows what needs are there, and uses ordinary people of faith to meet them, working in such a way that only He can take the credit.  It reminds me of something that someone in Gulf Port, Mississippi said to our group who went to do Hurricane Relief last Spring:  All we have to be is available; God does the rest.

 

We might think that leadership changes the world, or courage, or intelligence, or super-human strength, or money, or influence, or ___________________.  But really, the thing that really, really changes the world is the gift of our available-ness, to God.  What if our concept of being “available” was no longer associated with whether or not we were in the market for a love relationship and instead was related to how available we are to the Living God?  What if the conversations surrounding availability went something like:  “She’s totally available.  Wonder how long it will be before her life becomes an incredible adventure?  You know God doesn’t waste any time.  Give Him and inch of availability and He turns it into a mile.  Did you see how that guy really made himself available?  Look at him now!  It’s like he’s a totally different person.  God has totally transformed everything in his life, and he is, I don’t know, radically on fire for this new thing God started!  It’s like he could change the world or something!”  Could you imagine how the world we live in would be a different place?  How things would change if people, just believers even, were to radically release their own agendas and came to God as if their lives were a blank check that He could fill out any way He wanted?  Wow!  The implications stagger me!

 

Of course this comes from someone who struggles with availability everyday.  Especially when I think I know what God has in mind, but I get so intent on doing whatever “it” is that I forget to fellowship with HIM.  I do get glimpses though.  Of when God does something really cool, and I get to be a part of it.  Like when a message that was on my heart to give connects with a life, that I had no way of knowing would bring a positive impact the way it did.  Only God could know that.  Only God could connect dots that I can’t even see.

 

So be encouraged.  Know that He is connecting dots in your life too.  And live with me the challenge of being available.  Maybe together the sum of our availability will be greater than our individual parts.  And we will see God’s glory in a way we never imagined.

 

Blessings,

 

Sami

 

Sami Wilson

Campus Minister/Director

WKU Wesley Foundation

sami@wkywesley.org

 

 

 

Weekly E-letter, Methodist Student Center

Dear Friends,

 

Gosh, it’s gorgeous outside!  Hope you’ve gotten to enjoy it.  As I was walking up the hill from lunch I saw a young woman sitting on the side of the wall drawing.  She was looking at butterflies playing in the flowers.  How beautiful is that!?  Sometimes we just have to sit and watch the butterflies.  I hope your day was filled with a special moment like this.

 

Tonight at Soul Feast we will be joined by Broadway UMC’s praise and worship team.  They have a really hip, acoustical sound.  They are awesome, and I know you will enjoy them.  So meet at 6:30pm in room 340, DUC.  The message tonight centers on the last part of our mission statement:  Taking the Love of Jesus Beyond Our Own Four Walls.  I believe the heart of Christ longs for those who most need His love, and He wants us, needs us, to share that love.  Come find out how you are an important part of this mission.

 

Since it’s fall break, we will not meet this Thursday.

 

Now for Sami’s Ramblings About Jesus:

 

As I have spent time with the Lord in my quiet times, I have begun to get a sense of God’s presence in a way that has been inaccessible before.  Or rather, spending time with Jesus, just for Jesus’s sake, not to study up on my next message or lesson, or because I am desperate, has opened in me an awareness of who He is in my life, rather than constantly dwelling on who I need Him to be.  One of my favorite passages of scripture comes from Ephesians, where Paul explains that the power of God that raised Christ from the dead is at work in us and through us (1:17-22).   But what caught my eye this morning was the following:

 

I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, . . .  Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever.  Amen.  Ephesians 3:16, 20-21

 

The thing that fell all over me with a freshness that really opened my eyes was this sense of God’s power strengthening us in our inner person.  That God cares so deeply for us and answers the questions we live by giving us strength, and possibility.  I love that I haven’t even begun to imagine what God can or even desires to accomplish in my life and the lives of those around me.  I love that God is ready at any moment to lift the veil of unknowing and reveal that thing that we cannot even dream about, because our minds cannot conceive of that kind of wonderful. 

 

I guess what I have been suffering from was a sense that my God was too small.  Gosh!  (favorite word of the day, in honor of Napoleon Dynamite) who is this God who can part the Red sea!?  Who is this God who can bring manna from heaven!?  Who is this God who can defeat the entire nation of the Midianites with an army of 300!?  Who is this God who can provide great favor to Nehemiah in a foreign king’s court so that he not only returns to rebuild Jerusalem’s walls, but the king sends the supplies to do it!?  Who is this God who continues to speak life into our lives, with the power of the resurrected Christ!?

 

The real question I have to ask myself is, “who have I given Him a chance to be?”  It’s so easy to look at the storm and never see the Man walking on water, much less walk on water myself.

 

So, I invite you to accept this challenge with me:  Give God a chance to surprise you, to speak into your life and your circumstances with the power to raise the dead, with the power to “accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.”  To Him be glory!

 

Blessings,

 

Sami