I went to Oral Roberts University.
Just saying that is a big step for me. It’s been a long time since I’ve said that with any sense of pride. Yet, over the past few weeks, God has been working in my heart, and I’ve begun the process of coming to terms with a lot of things related to my time at ORU.
This is one of those things.
On the back wall of Christ’s Chapel (pictured right) on the campus of Oral Roberts University is a quote. The quote is from the word that God gave to Oral Roberts when he was told to start a university. Here’s the quote:
“Raise up your students to hear My voice, to go where My light is dim, where My voice is heard small, where My power is not known, even to the uttermost bounds of the earth. Their work will exceed yours, and in this I am well please.”
I can’t begin to tell you how many chapel services at ORU, we heard that quoted. We read it every time we left that building. It was a statement that permeated the very core of that university.
I never got it.
I never saw it as more than a “Holy Ghost Pep Rally”.
See, when you get to the core of the ministry, you will find that Oral Roberts had a ministry that is nothing less than unfathomable. He was a vessel for God in scores of countries. He was the voice of God calling to tens (maybe hundreds) of thousands of the lost all over the world. His were the hands used to bring God’s healing to tens of thousands. The way that God used Oral Roberts is nothing short of spectacular.
And, the work of the students of this small university in Tulsa, Oklahoma will exceed his?!?
Made no sense to me.
Until.
Thanks to the catalyst prayers of sksimants, in the past few weeks, God has begun to work in my life in a number of ways. One of the side-effects of this work has been the realization of what this statement means — on a personal (recipient) level.
Finally.
A lot of the changes that have been going on in my life have been through the ministries of a handful of guys.
The guys who’s ministries have been the spur of my reconciliation and relationship with God are all fellow ORU Grads. They’re guys with whom I went to classes, chapels, the cafeteria, and events around campus.
I stumbled, thanks to a Facebook posting from a dear simants friend, Lisa S., on the ministry of Jared Anderson. I found Jon Egan and the Desperation Band. From there, I discovered the ministry of Glenn Packiam — who’s book Secondhand Jesus: Trading Rumors of God for a Firsthand Faith was truly life-changing. Their music, their teaching, their books, and, most of all, their example has shown me that God had Oral Roberts build a university to raise up a multitude of people who were intimately connected with God.
On a personal note. Guys, thanks for sticking with God. Thanks for listening to the call, and following it. Thanks for not giving in when no one in the world would have blamed you for doing so. Each of you are so immensely talented that you could easily have gone and done other things and been incredibly successful. Yet, you stuck with God. You stuck with the call. You are living examples of the word of God to Oral Roberts.
That pretty much sums up the last several weeks for me. It’s all about coming back. It’s all about taking that step back to God. It’s all about going back to those “God-Dreams” that pointed my bow to ORU in the first place. It’s all about rediscovering that relationship with God that existed in the first couple of years that I was at ORU.
