Glen Davis

Wow!
How can I begin to describe how Chi Alpha has lit­er­al­ly changed my world,
turned it upside down, made me a new per­son! When I came to col­lege my
heart was aching and ready to encounter Jesus Christ, although I didn’t
know it. When I first came to Thurs­day night fel­low­ship, I was uncom­fort­able
and a bit tak­en aback by the atmos­phere. But soon God dis­played His incred­i­bly
amaz­ing love through all of the peo­ple involved at Chi Alpha. I joined
a small group, and in Novem­ber of my fresh­man year, after TNF one night,
I gave my life to Christ. I began an amaz­ing jour­ney into life
with Him. Through Chi Alpha here at SMS I have met two of the most gra­cious,
lov­ing, and influ­en­tial peo­ple in my life, Glen and Paula Davis. Start­ing
my sopho­more year I was just fine, but dur­ing the Christ­mas break I expe­ri­enced
an enor­mous­ly con­fus­ing, depress­ing, and life-chang­ing stage in my Chris­t­ian
walk. I began ques­tion­ing almost every­thing I could make up a ques­tion
for. Dur­ing this time Glen began doing his “Bowl­ing Alley The­olo­gian”
thing, and I start­ed com­ing to talk to him about my ques­tions. I found
that he has abound­ing wis­dom from God, and uses that wis­dom to share God’s
love in a prac­ti­cal way. I dis­cov­ered that he was able to explain things
in ways that I could under­stand, ways that no one else could. And he cared
deeply about me and my life. Because of Glen’s help, I grad­u­al­ly made
my way back to a healthy life of love for Jesus. Last semes­ter I also
began to talk to Glen’s wife, Paula, about oth­er issues I could not talk
to Glen about because he sug­gest­ed she could help me. I am now in my junior
year, and Paula and I have become very close friends too. She has shown
me so much love and appre­ci­a­tion that when­ev­er I need or desire com­fort
and care, I can just seek this awe­some cou­ple out and they let me know
how much Jesus loves me. They dri­ve me to church every Sun­day, take me
out to lunch to talk with me about my life on a reg­u­lar basis, and inspire
me to love peo­ple more. I can­not thank God enough for plant­i­ng Chi Alpha
here at SMS and for plac­ing Glen and Paula here at this time to min­is­ter
to me and the oth­er needy stu­dents on cam­pus.

P.S. Nic­ho­lette has her own blog!

This first time I heard Glen speak was in the fall of 2000. Glen’s mes­sage was about attain­ing a desire for wis­dom. His mes­sage began with a mem­o­rable sto­ry about he and a room­mate acci­den­tal­ly lit his car­pet on fire. This usu­al­ly hap­pens when flam­ma­ble liq­uids and aerosols are sprayed on the car­pets. This thought was for­eign to Glen’s room­mate before he struck the match.

As Glen told his sto­ry, every post-teenage boy in the room, that had ever tak­en a match to aerosol can, played WWF in the back­yard, or licked a pole in win­ter, sat with and atti­tude of under­stand­ing and agree­ment. This was real­ly a fun­ny sto­ry, but the impor­tance was stressed lat­er. Proverb 1:7, “The fear of the Lord is the begin­ning of knowl­edge, but fools despise wis­dom and instruc­tion.” Glen has under­stood the val­ue of wis­dom and has been encour­aged to desire Gods wise instruc­tion. This was evi­dent to me, that Thurs­day night a year and half ago, when I heard his mes­sage.

I spent the next month out­lin­ing Solomon’s teach­ings and instruc­tions laid out for his sons. I can say, because of my rela­tion to Glen through his mes­sage, I was encour­aged to learn the Fear of God. Since then I have learned about obe­di­ence, a right behav­ior, patience, humil­i­ty, dili­gence, and above all love.

The
sum­mer before I start­ed col­lege, I was real­ly strug­gling spir­i­tu­al­ly.
A friend told me that I should check out Chi Alpha, so a lit­tle grudg­ing­ly
I went to the first meet­ing. I felt the pres­ence of God in that meet­ing
like I had nev­er before. I decid­ed to get involved in a small group
Bible study and began to let God change things in me. I was tak­en through
sev­er­al dif­fer­ent stages of dis­ci­ple­ship and learned what it meant to
tru­ly wor­ship. God brought me from a luke­warm­ness and cre­at­ed a great
pas­sion in me for see­ing His mes­sage car­ried across our cam­pus and into
the world. Last year I was able to serve as a small group leader and Paula
was my small group coach. She taught me a lot about lead­ing people–being
real with them, meet­ing them where they are at, and grow­ing with them.
I am thank­ful that God put Chi Alpha and all the peo­ple that are a part
of our min­istry in my life. The lessons I have learned in the past three
years have been invalu­able.

Chi Alpha has rocked the very foun­da­tion of my life. 35mm lens on canon dig­i­tal cam­era
It pro­vid­ed an out­let for God to take a pride­ful, back­slid­ing kid who enjoyed
play­ing church and turn him into some­one who is con­stant­ly seek­ing and fol­low­ing
after God. I became a believ­er in high school, but XA is where I learned
to walk the path of the believ­er. The course of my life was changed because
an intern from XA decid­ed to talk to a young, pur­ple-haired, fresh­man while
he was tak­ing a nap out­side. This is my third year in col­lege, and my third
year in XA. Last spring break I had the priv­i­lege to go on a XA mis­sion
trip, led by Glen Davis, to South Beach Mia­mi. A good word to use when describ­ing
Glen is knowl­edge­able. When men­tion­ing him to oth­ers I often say, “If it’s
a book, Glen has read it.” But know­ing about God only takes you so far;
know­ing God is much more impor­tant. Both of these kinds of knowl­edge are
dis­played through Glen. I real­ly saw this dur­ing the mis­sion trip. We did
some wit­ness­ing on the cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mia­mi. While we were
there, Glen did some open air preach­ing. This was not “hell-fire and brim­stone”
stuff, but the respectable, hon­est address­ing of ques­tions peo­ple had about
Chris­tian­i­ty and Jesus. Not only does an activ­i­ty like this take gall, but
also it takes authen­tic wis­dom to do it effec­tive­ly. Need­less to say, Glen
knows his stuff. But as I men­tioned ear­li­er, knowl­edge about God can only
take you so far. Glen’s knowl­edge of God is dis­played just as much. We did
home­less min­istry in South Beach. We did more than just tell these peo­ple
about God’s love for them; we actu­al­ly demon­strat­ed it in a prac­ti­cal way
(James 2:15–17) by feed­ing them and lis­ten­ing to them. When­ev­er I have a
ques­tion about, gen­er­al­ly any­thing, Glen is almost always the first per­son
I go to. Glen and Paula are both real­ly great, God-fol­low­ing peo­ple. And
I would be say­ing that even if they weren’t let­ting me do my laun­dry at
their home. 🙂

I have been active­ly involved with Chi Alpha over this
past year. My fam­i­ly back­ground is strong­ly Chris­t­ian and I have par­tic­i­pat­ed
in the church for as long as I can remem­ber. But when I came to SMS, I
was in need of more than the typ­i­cal Chris­t­ian sup­port group. God has
done so much in me per­son­al­ly through the stu­dents and the lead­er­ship
of Chi Alpha. My small group has con­nect­ed me close­ly with girls who
have brought me encour­age­ment, account­abil­i­ty, and sup­port. Rela­tion­ships
I have built with stu­dents and men­tors have been a vital part of my spir­i­tu­al
growth through­out this past year. I most recent­ly had the oppor­tu­ni­ty
to go to Inver­ness, Scot­land, on one of the Chi Alpha mis­sion teams. What
an expe­ri­ence! I was blown away at the things God was doing while we were
there. The high­light of the trip for me was the hon­or of lead­ing a stu­dent
to Jesus…a first for both of us. I have nev­er felt such a free­dom to share
God’s love in such a real and prac­ti­cal way as I did then. That moment
was one of the most pre­cious I have ever expe­ri­enced. My eyes were opened
to how sel­dom I have tak­en the time and ener­gy to invest in those around
me here at the uni­ver­si­ty. I now pur­pose to be inten­tion­al about impact­ing
my cir­cle of influ­ence. Please pray that God would con­tin­ue to use Chi
Alpha and the stu­dents at SMS to make a mark for Christ on the cam­pus.