It’s 4 in the morning, you’re sat with cheesy chips on the table in front of you with more garlic mayo than cheese. Everyone’s settling in after the night out and the discussions move onto life goals or maybe even the success that your housemates aspire to have and how they live to satisfy that. All of a sudden your housemate turns to you and asks “what is it that you believe?”.

At this moment, that almost every university student tends to find themselves in some variation of, all of these terrifying thoughts begin to rise: “this is it”, “live or die”, “I don’t want to get this wrong”, “I don’t want to scare them off”, “how can I explain this without sounding crazy to them?!”.

The reality is, this isn’t the one and only conversation you will ever get to explain the relationship you have with God or how much He loves us. These people have been seeing you live for a few months at this point. They’ve seen how you present yourself. They’ve seen you either reject or rise to that opportunity to gossip about that person on your course, just as they’ve seen you either prioritise church on a Sunday or that rugby game that always seems to clash. 

 

The reality is, you tell more about who Jesus was through how you live than what you say in that one conversation.  

 

In Matthew 4:19, Jesus calls His disciples saying “Come, follow me, and I will send you out to fish for people”. We should be actively thinking about how this plays out in our next 3 years. How are we going to live for Him and His Kingdom instead of our CVs?

Recently at my church we did a “Sober Night Out”. Same as any other night out. We got our housemates involved, we met for pre-drinks at one bar and then moved onto the uni club night ... except we were pre-drinking on water. For the Christians that came, it showed them that they could have just as much, if not more fun when alcohol wasn’t involved. It also gave us the opportunity to show that to our friends that didn’t come to church as well.

This sort of thing is brilliant as it gives a testament to how you choose to live your life so that when your friends do ask that ever-hyped question, they won’t be surprised by the answer. 

 

What are you actively doing to be a representation of Jesus in student life?

 

What is it about how you live that your friends notice as being different within this culture?

 

Do these things align with the calling that Jesus gave to us?