I love this truth — the work of God is the work of God. Sometimes we forget that and we think the work of God is the work of us.  Now I know there is a tension there, because God calls us to partner with Him and God has not only created us, He has planned good works for us to do. Here is how we express that tension — between God’s work and our works — at Calvary. We say, “We give God our best, because He deserves it, not because He needs it!”

One of the many — very good — reminders that God gave us through the 21 Days of Prayer leading up to Calvary on campus is that when we pray…God works. Here is an email I received from a young man whom God is working in…and through…

Pastor Dan,

Calvary on campus hit me in an unexpected way this week. I was sitting close to the stage, so I didn’t see how many people were there until I decided to turn around and look in the middle of one of the songs. For some reason, in that moment, my entire Penn State career came together. This is my senior year and I hadn’t reflected on my time here as a whole until Sunday. Penn State has been my college and my employer, and Calvary has been my church for as long as I have been a college student. Gathering in Eisenhower brought together everything I have experienced here. Everything was represented on Sunday: school, work, church, friends, and a whole lot of life learning.

The question at the beginning of your sermon “Do you know how much you are loved?” literally brought a tear to my eye. I realized, possibly for the first real time, that I had survived and learned a lifetime of lessons in the past three years of my life now I am able to see God in every piece of it. Through each academic challenge, relationship issue, hard day at work, and especially in my many mistakes, I have seen God’s love. I didn’t see it or call it that at the time, but now I recognize his protection over me and his forgiveness for my stupidities.

I will be student teaching this spring, which means that I had to get many background checks and clearances to enter the school. I only say that to preface the fact that I have made several mistakes that could have kept me out of the classroom forever, but God patiently carried me through some very difficult lessons. Before I ever even imagined that I would be a teacher, God protected my career.

Standing, singing, surrounded by a few thousand people I felt God’s love as a real, tangible gift for the first time in my life. Thank you for helping to guide me to this.

Now really, don’t you just love to watch what God does so that we can talk about what God did?  If God did something in you at Calvary on Campus… we would love to hear about it.  Comment here or shoot me an email.