Making Good Relationship Decisions

by Tyler Zach

I was standing in a room full of 30 girls feeling a little awkward. Unlike last year however, I had my beautiful wife Lindsey standing next to me. Having her present with me made this talk a lot easier.

My sister’s sorority, Chi-Omega, asked me to come into their chapter meeting again and talk about relationships. Dating and marriage is always on the minds of college students, especially girls.

Lindsey and I spoke of our past failures in relationships – hoping that these girls won’t do the same. The talk was less about how to find the perfect mate – and more about how THEY could become the perfect mate for someone else.

We shared that relationships are three-fold: physical, spiritual, and emotional. The relationship lie that most of them have bought into is this: If you have physical relations with a boyfriend, girlfriend, or with a random person on a random night – then it won’t affect you emotionally or spiritually.

We proceeded to give examples of how such a lie is not true. We wanted them to see that the physical effects the emotional, which in return effects the spiritual. This is a hard to take in for a girl who has led a promiscuous life with a sexual history. But, we offered a message of grace in that Jesus can heal us of all our sin at any time and renew our hearts, minds, and bodies.

Lindsey and I also shared that the spiritual side of our relationship was the thing that bonded us the most and that it was necessary in order to have a relationship that will last (on unconditional love).

Please pray that these girls would make good decisions in dating and see that “the one” must be a man who loves God with all of his heart. Pray that they have patience in dating and not give into the temptations of being promiscuous to get attention from the wrong men at college.

960 Hours of Continual Prayer

by Tyler Zach

Some students are setting their alarm clocks to 5:00a.m. Why? Because they have to get up early and study for a test? Not the case this time.

Students around the nation are responding to our forty day prayer challenge. The vision is to see college students come together around the world via the internet to pray for God to move on college campuses everywhere.

Each student has been given the challenge of signing up for one hour of prayer at least three times during the next forty days. Some of these students will be waking up at odd hours of the night to kneel down and pray for their fellow students.

We are expecting God to do radical things during the next forty days. It is exciting to see how He has placed such amazing passion on the students' hearts to do this.

This continual prayer chain will start tonight, November 14th, and end on December 23rd. The first few days have been filled up - but it will take a lot of work to fill up the remaining nine hundred hours.

I Almost Forgot What It Was Like

by Tyler Zach

As I walked into the meeting last night, I was a little shocked because I had almost forgotten what it was like.

I had gotten a hold of a fraternity president and asked him to speak at his chapter meeting. Ministry has not gone over very well on this campus and so I’ve been scheduling appointments to go into as many fraternities and sororities that I can… and try to surface Greeks who show at least a little interest in spiritual things.

When I walked into the fraternity meeting there were two commonalities that I recognized from my weekly meetings as a Greek: loud and obnoxious guys and lots of alcohol. The funny thing was that this fraternity wasn’t supposed to have alcohol at their meeting not because it was a chapter rule, but because they were meeting in a college classroom.

Because I have a fear of rejection, I was sweating a little because I didn’t think that these guys would want to hear what I had to say. As I stared to speak I felt myself stumbling over my words a little and swallowing a little too much. I handed out some surveys to get some feedback from the guys – to see which ones would show even a hint of interest in growing spiritually. I’d say about 1/3 of the guys didn’t even fill out a survey and about 1/2 of the guys indicated that they weren’t interested.

However, the fraternity leaders on the executive board all put down on their survey that they had a very high interest to grow spiritually. So, in the midst of a very unresponsive crowd, God was showing me that he had prepared a few very strategic people to hear the gospel. I will be meeting with these leaders one-on-one to follow up with them to see where they are at with God.

Please pray that these guys would listen and respond.

I have found that walking into a fraternity house is the hardest part of my job, but the most fulfilling because God always rewards us when we take steps of faith. And that reward is seeing glimpses of how He has already been working – even before we show up.