An Excerpt from The Fuel and the Flame
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It seemed like it was just yesterday I was a freshman in love. Yes, I was a Christian as was she, but our emotions were more wrapped up in one other than in Jesus Christ. I kept having this gnawing feeling that the Lord wanted us to break up with each other, but I wouldn’t listen. I thought, “All my Christian friends have girlfriends, and certainly all my fraternity brothers do, why shouldn’t I?” I carried this heavy load of rationalization around with me until the end of my fall semester. We finally got enough courage to bring up the subject, talk about it, and make a decision. We broke up because both of us felt it was God’s will.
That night I went and hid out in an empty classroom and cried for three hours. I didn’t feel sad or jilted─instead 100 pound weights had been taken off my shoulders! I’m not very emotional, but that night there was a steady stream of joyous tears signaling I was finally free! I had fully obeyed and was now willing to do anything and everything God wanted me to do. This gave me the courage to make another important decision that night. I resolved that for the rest of my college years I would only develop friendships, not romances, with other Christian girls. I know making a commitment not to date may sound radical, and unrealistic for some, but for me, it was one of the best decisions I ever made. I’m not prescribing this step as God’s will for you, but I am saying that you may have to make some fundamental changes in your priorities to make room in your life for what’s really important.
Even though I’d been a Christian for over nine months, it was at this juncture my spiritual life really accelerated. I had fully submitted my life to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and I could now pursue Him with unhindered zeal. My love for Christ and desire to spend time with Him took massive steps forward! I searched for gaps in my schedule where I could steal away for some intimate fellowship with the Lord and time to drink deeply from the Scriptures. Early each morning I found a dark, lonely place among the discarded furniture in the third floor attic of my fraternity house to get on my knees, worship God, and intercede for the souls of all the men in our chapter.
On Friday and Saturday nights while the other guys were out with their dates, I would lock my door and click off the overhead lights, turn my little desk lamp on, spread out my Bible and concordance and spend huge chunks of time just soaking in the Word. It may sound weird or fanatical, but God and I were spending hour after hour, month after month digging, digging, digging a deep foundation in my life. I was finding a secret joy and fulfillment in this ever increasing love relationship with the Lord and Savior of my life. Understanding that He was all that I would ever really need, I sought to find my satisfaction in Him─and in Him alone.
Late night prayer walks on campus became my routine, many times crying out to God, “Whom have I in heaven but Thee, and besides Thee, I desire nothing on earth” (Psalm 73:25). Yearning to be totally abandoned to His purposes, I had this profound sense of destiny that God was preparing me─because He wanted to use me mightily. My great grandfather had studied on the same campus almost eighty years earlier, but I realized the Lord had placed me there for more than just academic purposes. He wanted me, a lowly college student, to impact the world for Jesus Christ…