Laying a Good Foundation

I became a Christian at the age of seven when I attended a Bible camp with my best friend and some leaders preached the gospel to us. I prayed to receive the Lord at the camp and since then I have had a very real and sweet relationship with the Lord Jesus. During high school, I went to church and still maintained a healthy relationship with God.

When I came to UCLA, it was the first time that I would be living away from home. I had a distinct feeling from the Lord that it would be a good thing for me to find some believers on the campus and establish them as my social network, otherwise I would likely spend a large amount of time with unbelieving friends and be slowly carried away into other things than the Lord.

During my first week of classes, I met some students from Christian Students and began meeting with them. The members of the group simply loved the Lord and wanted others to know how wonderful Jesus Christ is. Of course, I was already saved, so I did not need the gospel preached to me. But in the course of the next four years, my time with the other members of the club really enlarged my heart for God and gave me a deeper desire to pursue Christ and not be entangled so much with the affairs of this world.

I was helped mainly in two ways. The first was that I had a weekly appointment with one of the members of the club on campus reading the Word together. This time was really edifying because we would pray beforehand for the Lord to shine His light through our reading of the Bible. Through reading and studying together, I gained a higher appreciation of how wonderful the Lord Jesus is, and that He not only wants to stay in my heart, but wants to spread through my entire being and be involved with all the decisions of my daily life, whether big or small.

The second aspect related to the club that strengthened my walk with the Lord during college was the Friday night meetings arranged by the club in the neighboring area. A Christian family lived near the school and I went there almost every Friday night for some good food and good fellowship. The couple that lived there really loved the Lord and they were burdened for the gospel to out on the campus. Not only did we fellowship some of our experiences of the Lord during the past week, but most times we took the time to pray for our friends or coworkers, that they too would see the Lord and receive Him into their hearts. Those Friday night meetings kept me away from doing others things that just would have been a waste of time and empty. Instead, I was cared for with the love of Christ through the other members of His Body. I thank the Lord that I found this group as an undergraduate. My time with them increased my love for the Lord, my appetite for His Word, and my concern for the salvation of my friends.

– A.A.