Exchange Students and the Gospel

It’s been a week since our exchange student arrived from Germany. It has been quite a busy week with making adjustments to our schedule, but it has been well worth it. LaNae and I are learning a lot about the life of a teenager. He wakes up with nothing to say, but when it’s time to turn in for the night at around 9:30 pm, he is ready to talk about his day for the next hour or so. Needless to say we have had a few late nights getting to know this young man. Last night I had my first spiritual conversation with Julien, particularly as it related to Sunday mornings message from our pastor on the topic of “religion as the cause of problems around the world”. He agrees to an extent with this argument, but at the same time I asked him if he thought we were religious people. To which he replied, “yes”. Then I followed up with, “do you think we’re causing problems in the world?” He paused for a moment, then smiled and I think realized that the argument is a general statement that has no validity.

I decided that while he was here with us for the month of August (however we are praying about keeping him for the entire school year) we would go through the gospel of Mark for our family devotions. This was to give him a glimpse into the life and person of Jesus Christ. He actually looks forward to our Bible times in the evening. This evening we read Mark chapter 2 focusing on the story of the paralytic and the calling of Levi. The main point of our Bible time was that Jesus loves sinners and he wants to forgive them. He demonstrated both these truths in these stories. This theme forced me to answer the question of “who is a sinner” and “how does a sinner attain forgiveness?” It’s exciting because Julien has very little Bible background. In fact the only Bible story he is familiar with is David and Goliath. It seems like he’s open to having conversations about the Bible.

Please pray as we continue to show him the love of Christ both in the Scriptures and also through our lives.