Howdy guys, I hope everyone has had a good semester so far,
and good luck to everyone on their upcoming exams. I was thinking about what to
write and it dawned on me that one of this year’s themes here at Wesley was
“change”. So I figure that’s as good of subject as any to talk about. As I
mentioned in my leadership themed message just after spring break, a leader
should seek significant change in trying to better his organization. With the
school year coming to a close, some of us will indeed face significant change.
A month from now, I’ll be on my way to sleep in a tent all summer in the
mountains that I am flying over as I type now. Some of us will be moving on
either to other schools or to getting a full time job in the workforce. These
are indeed significant changes. But what I want to talk to all of you about are
the changes that can be made to improve the Wesley foundation when we all
reconvene in the fall.
This fall’s theme was “Embrace the Change”. Forgive me,
maybe it is just my failing eyesight here in my old age, but I was quite a bit
unsure at what I was supposed to be embracing. New people are a form of change,
I suppose I could go around hugging all the new people. But, I feel like that
has been tried in the past to mixed reviews… I mean, I guess I could embrace
the new color on the bathroom walls or the new name of the Wednesday worship
service, but I’m not really sure how to embrace that, nor am I sure how that
even constitutes a change. After all, “What’s in a name?...”. All in all, I
thought things appeared to pretty much run the same as they always have. I
still see new people walk out without being greeted by anyone, people still
don’t give others the time of day if it disagrees with their own idea, leaders
setting a poor example, and people still won’t sacrifice their personal time to
help anyone but their significant other.
But enough about the past, this year is practically over, so
I want to focus on next year, and in doing so I want to propose a slightly
different mantra. Rather than “Embrace the Change”, how about something on the
lines of “God will change you from the inside out”. As stated earlier, many of
us will be leaving College Station for the summer, and many of us will also
have much more free time on our hands than we do during the semester when we
are all so poor at managing time. I just want to urge everyone to take
advantage of all that free time and take a look inside yourself. What things
can we change as an individual that will help make Wesley more like the image
God had in mind when he created us, aka how can we improve ourselves to help us
better show God’s love to each other, new incoming students, and the community?
After all, “If I speak in the tongues… of angels, but have not love, I am only
a clanging cymbal. If I can…. fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I
have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing”.
All of us have things that we can change in our lives to
make us more like Jesus. Maybe it’s that we’re selfish or too arrogant to truly
listen to others sometimes. Maybe we have anger issues or cannot control our
tongue. Maybe we have issues with sexual immorality or covetousness. Maybe we
are lazy or quarrelsome. Maybe we simply lack the faith to step outside of our
comfort zone. The list goes on (for a more exhaustive list of things where each
of us has room for improvement, please see the Bible for reference) but there
are traits in all of us that could obviously use some work, and all of these
individual failures detract from the experience that those around us have when
they come to the Wesley Foundation. True none of us can achieve perfection, but
we are to be moving toward perfection and are called to run the race in a way
that we may win the prize, and the further from perfection that each one of us
is, the further from perfection our organization is.
In summary, please take some time this summer for some
introspection. We have googols of great opportunities here at the Wesley
Foundation, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few… Beseech the
Lord to send workers into His harvest”. We must prepare ourselves to be sent
into the harvest as workers in the Lord’s kingdom. Besides, the peace of Christ
passes all comprehension. In addition to helping out the Wesley Foundation and
our fellow classmates, we will all be more free to live life to the fullest
with the peace and joy of Christ. That’s a change I can embrace.
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