Hawaii: God at work in Hilo

I had cleaned the floors and the bathrooms. I set up the chairs for our first Thursday night worship service of the semester here at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. I pulled together a slideshow with all the lyrics for the night on it. The stressful part of the day was over, and I was ready to just sit back and sing praises to the Lord. However, God had a different plan.

I had done plenty of work that day. That night, God worked on me.

I spent most of the two hours of worship in tears. God began convicting me as I stood there singing. Reading the words as they came across the screen, the Lord showed me how much I was still holding onto and how I was still trying to do things on my own.

As we sang “How He Loves,” which I had sung hundreds of times before, I buckled. I no longer could stand. I had to drop and cry out to the Father. I was reminded how much I didn’t deserve that love I had been singing about. God made me aware there was nothing I could do to earn his love, and I realized how much I had taken that for granted. I am a sinner, set free by grace, with no room to boast.

But this story doesn’t end there. Praise God, I wasn’t the only one the Lord was speaking to that night. A guest speaker told his story. After finishing, a young man walked up to him and asked him to share more. The student wanted to know more about Jesus and how he had changed the speaker’s life. That night, the young man gave his life to the Lord.

God is working here in Hilo, drawing people to himself. Praise God that he allows us to take part in his ministry. 

The author was a graduate student at Wayland Baptist University, serving thorugh Go Now Missions as campus ministry intern with the Baptist Student Ministry at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. He now ministers in an area where his identification would put fellow Christians at risk. So, his name has been removed from this post.