Welcome to God First, a program committed to encouraging you to put God first while viewing life through the window of the Bible. Now, in honor of the one and only true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, please join us for today's episode.
I'm Ryan Thomas. And as always, it is a joy and honor and a privilege to join you each week. And I want to thank you for tuning in. Well, last week we were so blessed and honored to have with us twin sisters from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. We had Raina Harper and Ray Lynn Harper as they were continuing with us our series on how to keep the faith in college.
And we were just so blessed by them. So if you missed last week's episode, you can listen to it by visiting our website, Godfirst.org. That's G-O-D, the number one S-T dot O-R-G. And if you missed it, I encourage you to go and listen, because again, we were so blessed by all the wonderful things that these young ladies had to share with us. So they're back with us once again this week to continue our discussion. So I want to once again welcome Raina and Ray Lynn to the program. Thank you.
Thank you so much. So where we left off last week, I had asked the question to Raina concerning how should Christian college students decide on a Bible study or a church to attend when too far away from their home church? So, Ray Lynn, would you share with us your thoughts concerning how Christian students should approach this matter?
Yes. So I'm just kind of going to speak from the people that more so don't have churches that are near them like we do. So this is basically a decision you would make wisely. So I know that a lot of people aren't fortunate to have, you know, good churches that the pastor would recommend you go to and churches like us where we have one in our area and close by that we could go to.
A lot of people don't have that. And like I said, all churches are not sound churches. And so we have a church that preaches the doctrine, but some churches, you know, they'll blatantly let you know what they stand for, but some will just read from the scripture but take it out of context to try to justify their actions and try to please men with itching ears as Paul talks about in 2 Timothy 4 and 3. And also just deciding on what church to attend comes with discernment. Every day we just could be feeding our spiritual man, and also you don't want to be feeding your spiritual man the wrong thing, so you don't want to, you know, go to a church and be under the wrong leader. You want to have a sound church that preaches straight from the Bible, not taking anything out of context and truly understanding what God is saying to us in the scripture. And just depending on what church we go to, we could just be feeding our spiritual man the right way and just not listening to false doctrine because, you know, in the last days, God said that there'll be a lot of false doctrine taught. And some campus organizations that I know of, they will talk about Jesus and say they believe in God, but they don't really do what the Christians are supposed to be doing, so they'll still go out and they'll still drink, they'll still party and engage in fortification and homosexuality, and they don't really know the true gospel.
So we have to be mindful about those, too. And also it's important just to go home, study the Word for yourself. You know, we can't always depend on the preacher to do it for ourselves, because while that is their job to do it, we also have to know the Word for ourselves. And we have to go outside of, you know, going to church on Sundays, we have to spend time. If we don't have time, you know, to go on Thursdays, if we just go on Sundays, we should be spending time out of the week to really get into devotion and learn who God is for ourselves. And I feel like as believers, that's our job to go home and to study the Word for ourselves so that we can be able to teach other people about it, because while they may not have good churches around, we can still be standing in the gap and still be able to share the gospel with other people on our campus.
And I'll also just say, find some people online, as like Raina said, find some people online. But even with that, some televangelists, they are a little bit skeptical, and you have to kind of weed them out as well. So just find somebody that truly preaches sound doctrine, and just know the Word for yourself and see how it aligns, and just make sure that they're truly applying it to their life and taking it from the Word of God. And I'm just thankful for Bishop Wooden and our campus ministry.
You know, being under their teaching has really taught me so much. And while it is uncomfortable at times, because sometimes they're going to preach stuff that, you know, gets under your skin or something that, you know, hey, he's calling me out about something. But at the end of the day, you go home and you reflect on it, and you really understand because that's the Holy Spirit convicting you. And sometimes we need that conviction because that's where our spiritual growth comes in, just having that conviction. We don't want to go to churches that are all about just the shouting or just the worship. But we also want to go where we are learning, learning and growing and really getting correction so that we can grow in our everyday lives. Because, as I said, like believers, we are a work in progress.
So every day we're trying to get better and better and know we're not perfect, but that's what we're striving for at the end of the day. I love the fact that you referenced 2 Timothy, chapter 4, verse 3, because, yes, there are a lot of churches out there that are simply trying to please itching ears. And that is something that the Bible warns us about. And that's why we need discernment, just as you said, because there is false doctrine.
The Bible says that would be the case in the last days. So you don't want to go somewhere for entertainment. You want to go somewhere where you can learn. You want to go somewhere where you're going to get correction. And so that is why, again, we need discernment and need to look at the right things when searching for a church home when away from home.
So thank you so much for that. So next, I want to go to Raina concerning school, workload and church, how to balance those. I'm sure you have moments with your face with the question. I have a lot of school work to do. Should I attend church or should I study? So share with us how you balance that school workload with church and Bible study.
Right. Well, the first thing that really comes to mind when I think about answering this question is a song that I often hear on the radio and even have it in my playlist is a song by Jonathan McReynolds, which is called Make Room. And basically the gist of the song is how he talks about moving his itinerary over and moving on his plans and his schedule, moving it over to make room for Jesus. And that's really the big picture is making room for God. College can be super overwhelming when you're trying to balance your social life and your extracurriculars and your prayer life and your academics. All of it can be extremely, extremely overwhelming because you may find yourself falling behind in these certain areas every once in a while. And you might become really stressed out as a pre-nursing major.
Our course load is extremely heavy. And for us, we have definitely had to try to find that balance between, well, how many hours of studying should I do for academics and how many hours of studying should I do in the Bible? And one thing that I always try to remember is who's the one that gave you the willpower to do what you're able to do? Who gave you the drive? Who gave you the brain? Who gave you this to be able to complete your work and to do the things that you're able to do? And we always have to think about how Christ has given us all these things. We can do all things through Christ that strengthens us and he gives us all this. But we have to make time and give it back to him. Everything he gives us, we have to make time and give that back to him because he's the epicenter of everything that we do. And knowing this, I just try to find different ways I can prioritize time for him anytime during the day. Obviously, every day is not going to be the same. You might have some days where you're up early, early in the morning and up really late at night.
And you have to find different ways to just squeeze it in there somehow, but you have to do it. There's no excuse to forget reading your word and to forget studying your word or trying to push it off to a different day. And so the best advice that I can give is basically to plan around your church, your church activities and your Bible study, plan everything around that. You know that you have to go to church on Sunday. You know that you might have Bible study on Thursday night. So plan your studying routine around that. Don't wait all week and be like, well, I'm going to start studying on Thursday for this test. You know, start on Monday or Tuesday and start studying to make time for that. And even each day, you should always start your morning out with prayer.
Start it out with the Bible study, even if you have to fit it right before your classes or if it works better for you, do it right before bed. But always start your morning out with prayer and make time for God because there's seven days in a week. And the very least that we can do is give God at least one, if not one hour of our time during each day, one day of the week, whatever we need to do. Of course, you're not going to be able to make every church event. You're not going to be able to make every church service or outing. That's fine because we have lives outside of church and that's true. But this is not an excuse to not go and not attend. If we find ourselves constantly making excuses, well, I have to study.
Or, well, I forgot to do this homework assignment. If you find yourself procrastinating at that point just to avoid church, you need to check your heart and you know then, well, I need to change what I'm doing. There's no excuse to miss church because now you're just intentionally avoiding God. So one thing I know is, again, if somebody wants to do something, they'll make time and they'll do it. They'll clear their schedule.
They'll squeeze it here and there throughout the day. Even if you have to pray before every class that you go in, make time for God because He makes time for us every day. We can't put Jesus on layaway. We have to make time for Him every day because He is at the center of everything we do. He gives us the strength, the diligence, and He gives us the drive to do everything that we're able to do. That is such great advice that we make room for God because, as you said, Christ has made a way for us. So we make time for Him.
If you really want to be with Him, you want to make time with Him. And that's why you do. Yes, you plan around church and Bible study. And that's why we hear we say God first. You put God first. When you're laying out your weekly schedule, church doesn't come up on you by surprise.
You know already that it's coming. So you plan around that. And so that is such sound advice. And I love the fact that you say start your morning with prayer.
We really need that. And I think about how you said when it comes to Sunday morning or when it comes to a weeknight Bible study, I hear people that complain about giving God just an hour or two. And I hear people complaining because if church runs longer than an hour and a half, they're upset and they're complaining, they're griping with all the time that God gives us throughout the week.
And yet so many get upset about giving Him just a few hours on Sunday morning or on a Wednesday evening or on a Thursday night. And so you stated that so so well and so beautifully. So I encourage college students out there to take these things to heart what she's saying. So I want to go next to Raylyn, your answer to the same question about how do you handle school workload with church life? Yes, I would just like to elaborate on that.
So everything she said is kind of where I was going to the areas I was going to hit. And also just about prioritizing your time effectively. It's all about time management.
And I know a lot of people aren't good with time management, but it's really something like you said, you can't make an excuse about it. You have to pray about those things. But ask God, well, how can I organize my time, prioritize my time better so that I can fit everything I need to in my day? And making sure I'm giving the right amount of attention to this and the right amount of attention to that. And even though we have that balance, we still know at the end of the day, our relationship with Christ is the most important. And I've always had these three main priorities. The first being my relationship with Christ, then my schoolwork. And then, you know, your free time, your peers, like your family, your friends. That's who you give your time to when everything else is done. And a lot of times we can define ourselves making excuses for why we didn't spend the time with God.
Why we didn't go to dysfunction, why we didn't go to that system. And we fall into spiritual apathy. And so we have to learn that we can't become apathetic to the Spirit because we know that we have to feed our spiritual man, as I said earlier. We have to be feeding our spiritual man every day.
Just like we're feeding our natural man, we have to do the same for our spiritual man. And I know that it can be strenuous at times. You know, my major, it can pile up very fast.
There's a lot of work. Our meetings, club meetings, could be at the same time and they can interfere with our Bible studies. And sometimes we do have to miss a few because they're mandatory meetings that we might need to make.
But at the same time, if you can catch it at the end or get a little, the last bit of it, just try to go on and see if you can catch any of it. And just try to, you know, even pray throughout your day if you just want to whisper a quick prayer to God throughout your day while you're going in between classes. Something that's going to keep your spiritual man going and revived each and every day. And the thing, also, if we don't have time to talk to God, you know, why does He make time for us? So that's something I also think about. Like, if He wasn't so merciful and so grateful to give us time out today to handle our problems and listen to our prayers, you know, so we should be making those excuses because He doesn't make excuses when He's trying to solve our problems and listen to what we have to say. And so it's all about, you know, your time management knowing, hey, this is what I have to do today, this is what I have to do. And if I have a Bible study tonight and I have an exam tomorrow, I know that I'm going to study ahead of time for that exam so I can, you know, have enough time to study. And then I can go to the Bible study after. And so it's just, even on your busiest days, just try to fit that in, like Raina said, try to fit something in that's going to feed your spiritual man.
Because, you know, at the end of the day, nothing else matters but your relationship with God. And even though we do want to excel in school, He still gives us the power to do all that. All we have to do is pray and make sure that we're just staying prayerful because He can help us through those times because school can get hard. We may have hard exams, challenging exams, but we may have programs that we're trying to get into and that it takes a lot of prayer. And though it does, it comes with studying, but it also comes with a lot of prayer because it will get tiring. We will get burned out.
We will get frustrated. But as long as we, you know, keep our eye on the prize and remember what's important, then God will help us through that. Yes, time management is so important and that is why you need to prioritize. Just as you said, you prioritize your relationship with Jesus Christ. And I've noticed a recurring theme because each of you have continuously and repeatedly stated how important it is to feed your spiritual man. And I love that because the Bible says that we should not live by bread alone.
Jesus Christ said that that man shall not live by bread alone. And so you're you're stressing that. And that's so important because people tend to ignore.
They think you can go to church once a week or some people every other week or once a month and that they're going to be OK spiritually. But no, we need more than that. Just like we feed our physical bodies, we need to feed that spiritual body. And so that is so so beautifully stated. So I want to thank you both for coming on and just again blessing us because you've just said so many wonderful things. You're two mighty warriors for the Lord. And I'm just so impressed by your level of maturity and how you are walking with Jesus Christ even during this time. And I know that college students out there are being blessed by this. I have been blessed.
And I think a lot of others who are not not in college, but who have long gone from college, who have graduated many years in the past. They're going to be blessed as well by the things that you're stating. So I want to thank you both for coming on, taking time from your schedule to join us. And I pray that God will bless you mightily as you continue into the school year and beyond. So thank you once again for coming on to join us. Thank you so much.
God bless you. I enjoyed our time. Amen. So again, two great, wonderful twin sisters, Raina and Raylene Harper. So we are folks just so wonderful, wonderfully glad at what we're seeing from these college students these last four weeks. They have just really blessed us again.
We had in week one. We had Karis Williams from the University of East Carolina or East Carolina University, I should say. She was joined in the same episode by Caleb Owens, who attends Campbell University. The next week, we had Angel Hunter from North Carolina Central University, joined by Jonathan Geiger of North Carolina A&T University.
And again, this past two weeks, we've had the Harper twins. And so I just want to thank each and every one of you. It is so encouraging to see the things that these young people are speaking, that they are living for Christ, young warriors for Jesus Christ. And they can be example to all of us.
Again, for those of us at any age, we can learn a lot from these young people. Also want to acknowledge, as we are wrapping up this series, Elder James Fason and his lovely wife, D, as they have been so instrumental in bringing this together, this series and getting these college students to come on and speak with us. And I want to thank the parents of these students because the parents have done such a fine job, obviously, of raising them, pointing them to Jesus Christ. And last but not least, Bishop Patrick Wooden, as he is the bishop and pastor of these young students.
And again, you can just see the teaching is very evident that they've been taught well over the years by their church leadership. So again, I want to thank all of them for the fine job that they have done. And we're going to now take a short break. But don't go away. I'm going to come back on the other side and give some final thoughts about our college students and things that are going on in the world today, because there's so much that is happening. We as believers in Jesus Christ need to continually look to our Lord. So don't go away.
Back with more on the other side. You are tuned into the God First program. You are listening to God First. If you believe in what we stand for at God First Bible Fellowship, would you consider partnering with us? Our God First Partners program is based on Matthew 633. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added on to you. For a recurring donation of $6.33 per month, you can help us share the message of placing God's commands first when viewing the issues of our culture. Please visit our website, GodFirst.org, or write to us at God First Bible Fellowship, P.O.
Box 266, Knightdale, North Carolina, 27545 for more information. Now, let's return to the conclusion of today's program. Welcome back to the program.
My name is Brian Thomas, and I want to thank you again for joining us for the last four weeks for this great series. Again, I am just so encouraged and so impressed by these college students, all from the Upper Room Church of God in Christ. They have blessed us so mightily. Well, folks, we see that although there is a lot of darkness in the world today, that God still has a remnant. Jesus Christ said that He is going to build His church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. It seems sometimes that evil is winning and is going to win. If you're not careful, you would lose hope. But we don't lose hope because the Bible said that this is what would happen before the return of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
The things that we see going on in the world today. And I don't make predictions. I never make predictions because no one knows when our Lord will return. But Jesus said that we can know the season of His return. And as I look around in the world and I see things that are happening on so many fronts, there's just so many different things.
Every day there's something new. And that is why, again, the church needs to be on guard. We need to be watchful, just as Hebrews tells us that we are to not fail to assemble as we see the day approaching.
And it troubles me when I see so many churches that have been shut down during the pandemic, some still shut down a year and a half later, still not assembling. And our Lord says, as you see the day approaching, do not fail to assemble, but to encourage, exhort one another. That is to encourage one another as we see the day approaching. And so I study heavily on the topic of Bible prophecy, eschatology, because I see things that are taking place and I see everything coming together in accordance to God's plan. And I just want to share that to encourage those who may look like it may look like when we look around in the world that all hope is gone, that there's no no reason for us to have joy.
But we are to be joyous as believers in our Lord Jesus Christ, because Jesus is coming soon. One of the things that has troubled me and I'm sure it's troubled you so much is what we see going on in Afghanistan. It just tears my heart apart when I see the desperation of so many people there. And there are reports that there are the Taliban that they are going around door to door looking for Christians to to kill them.
And so, folks, this is a dire situation. And there are American citizens that are still there hoping to get out there. Afghan Afghanistan's who Afghanistanians who are who are desperately wanting to to get out of the country because they know what their fate is with the Taliban in charge. And so I want to just close out the program by by just praying for all of those people who are affected by the situation. And and even loved ones who are here in our nation who are heartbroken and just so worried about their loved ones who are still back there.
We just want to pray that those people can can get out of harm's way and can make it safely out of the nation of Afghanistan. So I want you to touch in agreement with me. We cannot touch physically. We're on the radio, of course, but let's touch touch in agreement spiritually with one another. So, Heavenly Father, we come to you today, Lord, giving you thanks. First, Lord, we give you honor. We give you glory. We give you praise for the mighty God that you are. And, Lord, we're not going to be discouraged. We're not going to lose hope because of the things that are taking place because you are a God that sits high and looks low.
All things are under your control. And as I look at Afghanistan and as I look at places in the world in which there are those who are against your people, who are against you, I ask, Lord, that you remind them to not fear man who you said in your word can destroy the body, but to fear the one who can destroy both body and soul. And so we ask, Lord, that for any who have not yet received you as Lord and Savior, that they will turn to you during this dire time, that they will know that in you is salvation, in you is eternal life, regardless of what happens on this earth, that we can rest in your presence for all of eternity. And so, Lord, I just pray right now that you will bring people out safely from Afghanistan.
Those who are there, those who are being persecuted, the women and just the terrible way in which they're being persecuted and tormented. I just ask, Lord, that you would be with them, Lord, give them strength, give them encouragement during this time, that if they would just turn to you and reach out to you, that you said, I would never leave you nor forsake you. We know, Lord Jesus, the power that you have. You came out of a perfect heaven and you came to this earth and you did it, Lord. You stood in our place because of your love. You came so that we can have eternal life. And you died on the cross, Lord, but you showed that the grave could not hold you as you rose from the grave on the third day with all power.
You came out of the grave showing that you have power over sin and you have all power over death. And so, Lord, we just ask right now that you would just be with the people in Afghanistan, Lord, those who are calling out to you. And for those who are not calling out to you, I just ask that you would use this as a time, Lord, to draw them to you, prick their hearts and let them know that they need you as Lord and savior in order to receive eternal life. And so, Lord, we just thank you and we just pray that what is going on right now, that it would be used for your honor and for your glory, that there would be those who would come out and can give a testimony of how you brought them out. And Lord, we just pray for the wisdom of our nation's leaders, Lord, that they would use wisdom, godly wisdom, that only you can bring in making decisions that are for the benefit of the people. And again, Lord, we just lift all these things up to you. We pray for forgiveness for the transgressions of our nation. And again, Lord, on this day, we just honor you. We glorify you. We praise your holy name. In your name, Jesus, we pray all these things. Amen.
Well, folks, I want to thank you. And let's again, let's not forget our brothers and sisters in Afghanistan. They're going through some very, very tough times. Keep them continually lifted in prayer. And it just reminds us of how blessed we are that we're not having to face these things. But we should not get too comfortable because the same thing could happen to our country as well.
We could be facing the same thing. So we should be continually grateful, continually looking to our Lord and always praying for our brothers and our sisters. So I want to thank you for tuning in with me.
We are all out of time. But please come back next week as we continue to encourage you to put God first while viewing life through the window of the Bible. Until then, remember to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Bless God's great nation of Israel. And to the only wise God be glory through Jesus Christ forever. Amen. Thank you for tuning in to the God first program. Please come back and join us next week as we continue to encourage you to put God first while viewing life through the window of the Bible. Until next time, remember to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Bless God's great nation of Israel and seek first the kingdom of God.
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