| By Suraj,
on 06-01-2007 00:05
|
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." - John 3:16
We've heard it many times, and most Christians have it memorized. However, its often ignored during the Christmas season. The society going secular and saying "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas" isn't helping either. Too often Christ, God's gift of salvation and eternal life is forgotten, and the reason for the season is often ignored during Christmas. This is the very reason a few of us gamers set up a special Christmas event for gamers online on Dec 23rd. I emailed many of you about it as well.
The event was a huge success - we had about 79 visitors - including passersby, hackers and those who stayed for the entire duration of the event. The devil was scared, mighty scared. Firstly we had problems with how to execute the event as a prior plan of mine wouldn't work out. That one was easy to solve, however the next one wasn't as forgiving. In Isaiah 59:19, we are told that "the enemy shall come in like a flood", which was quite literally how the hackers came in - in the form of many users trying to flood our server. Then they tried to interrupt the message. But God was gracious, we were able to get through the whole message and event, after which the server was compromised - many stayed for an hour extra due to these problems. We celebrated the Reason for the Season, and shared the gospel through a collaborative effort with Christians and non Christians alike. Another victory for God. Oh, and those who tried to ruin the event got lots of prayers too :P . You can view the entire event online at www.teamjl.net by clicking the "Theater" menu link.
Online discipleship has been a great pleasure as well. We've had an average discipleship number of about 7 gamers. We began with basic Christian concepts - the assurance of salvation, God's love for us, and continued by talking about the Empowerment of the Holy Spirit, and his presence in our lives. I'm looking forward to more seasons of online discipleship in the upcoming year, with the possibility of branching more discipleship groups online.
There's been many stories of lives changed by Christians online. I know of at least one gamer after the Christmas event who asked me about the Bible, and said that he wanted to get into it. Another gamer told me that she is more interested in God, church and the bible after coming to the discipleship events. The most impacting of all the comments I received is one gamer who said that the only reason she's alive right now is due to Christian gamers online. She's now regularly attends prayer and discipleship, and has been a great inspiration to continue doing ministry online.
There's been many friendships and alliances formed online as well. Its like a glimpse of heaven to see online gamers from all corners of the world and all backgrounds - competitive and casual gaming - come together to praise god together, united in Christ. I hope to see more of this happen, and lives changed for God as a result.
Our channel on irc, #jesus has been having a stable userbase, and a slow but steady growth in number. Gamers (or anyone really) can hop onto the channel to talk about spiritual issues, use our bible bot to quickly access verses, and ask any questions that they might have about Christianity or the Bible in general. You can visit the channel without an irc client by going to our website, www.teamjl.net, and clicking the "Chat" link on the left.
I would like to thank you for all your prayers, encouragement and support. Many times when I felt like giving up God used one of you to encourage me with a word of inspiration and prayer to keep going on, and the results of that leave me with an eternal debt to pay. Thank You. Please continue to pray for the team and the requests outlined in the prayer card.
God Bless '_^
|
|
