I'm Sorry

A glimpse of what today’s outreach entailed.

The “I’m Sorry” Outreach.

Today we were vulnerable. We met at the RMIT café at 9:30am for prayer with all of the staff, STINTers and students. We prayed for our own hearts to be humbled before the Lord and the entire campus today. The whole point of this outreach was to apologize for not fully living out what we say we live for…Jesus and His love. The staff had told us about this outreach about 2 weeks ago, to give us time to pray about what we’ve been most convicted of or what God has laid heavy on our hearts. We wrote our apologies on poster boards and stood on the main walkway through campus and held our signs in silence.

The main sign that was held between all of us said: "Jesus has nothing to be sorry for, but Christians do..."

It was hard. Watching people walk by laughing hurt the most. It wasn’t the fact that they were laughing at me or what my poster said, but the fact that they were laughing at Jesus, my Savior. Standing in front of a crowd of college students for two hours…all I could do was picture Jesus being mocked by the crowds and guards. He was spat on and was beaten to absolute humiliation. Having that displayed in my mind today brought me to complete humility. Knowing that what I did today wasn’t even a legitimate example of what Christ endured for us and it was a huge eye opener for me. I cry every time I watch the scenes in “Passion of the Christ” and I get an ache in my heart whenever I read through the gospels about how our Lord was treated, but today was a new experience for me. I felt the weight of the cross, heavily. I was able to vaguely experience what persecution and denial felt like.

[I wish I could include pictures, but because the internet here is not the best, it's taking too long to upload. I'm hoping to upload them tomorrow when I go to a STINTers house, so stay posted. I know it's hard to picture all of this, but bear with me and I'll be sure to show you tomorrow.]

I don’t want to make this outreach sound like all it produced was negativity, because that wouldn’t be accurate at all. In fact, we had many people come up to us in curiosity.

Some reactions we got today:

You are forgiven.

Why are you apologizing, didn’t Christ already do that for you?

You guys, of all people, shouldn’t be the ones apologizing.

This is awesome. It took a lot of boldness for you to do this, props.

I just want to give everyone up there a hug.

Those are just a few of the reactions we got today. We did get some pretty rude and hurtful comments as well, but the uplifting and encouraging comments are the ones that gave us our hope. Along with some pretty sweet comments, we had some guy taking our pictures and he told us that he works for some magazine in the city and he wanted to talk to his editor about making this outreach a part of the next issue. That was pretty exciting J At the end of our outreach, a student approached one of my teammates and asked if we were going to be doing this again. She was an art student who wanted to use our outreach as her photography project.

God, I believe, really worked in the hearts of all the students that read our signs today. If anything, I firmly believe the name Jesus was mentioned more at RMIT today that it ever has been, whether it be in the classrooms or over coffee. People had out their iphones and cameras and took pictures and videos of us today. I’m not sure of their purpose, but for me, as long as the thought of Jesus goes through their mind… it’s worth it. In God’s timing, He will route that thought down into their hearts and expose His Truth to them.

During prayer, we read one of my favorite Psalms as a reminder of how undeserving, but yet how blessed we are by what Christ did for us. It was needed and completely appropriate for preparing our hearts for what we experienced today.

“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions and my sin is always before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge. Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. Surely you desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place. Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me and I will be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot our all my iniquity. Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me. Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will turn back to you. Save me from bloodguilt, O God, the God who saves me, and my tongue will singe of your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.” –Psalm 51:1-15

Today was humbling and after talking to my team today, it was exactly what we all needed to experience.