Winter Conference Stories

We love Winter Conference so much. If you are new to our ministry, Winter Conference is our annual conference for Cru students in our region (tx, ok, ar, la) which begins on New Years Day. We wrote more about it in our most recent prayer letter.
The thing we love the most about the conference is that for whatever reason God chooses to use the conference to change lives. When we were students God used this conference to confirm in our lives his leading us to staff with Cru. I have learned countless Biblical principles, and have cultivated a heart for the world at Winter Conference.
This year we were excited for our students because they are a relativly young bunch who have never been before. The first night of the conference was excellent. The main speaker, Darryl Smith spoke on the Gospel. He shared that in our world we are taught that we have to earn things. Ex. If we work hard we get promoted. If we are nice and likable, then we are socially accepted. We gain entitlement for things we feel we deserve to have such as health, comfort, money, friend etc. But, this is the complete opposite of how our God views us. Darryl spoke on the fact that we are humans are sinful and because of the sin no matter how big or small, we are seperated from God. But God loves us, in fact He loves us so much that He sent Jesus Christ to be a perfect sacrifice for our sins, that ALL we have to do is place our faith in Christ, and in surrendering our lives to Him, we then gain eternal life.
The world tells us we have to be good to earn God's favor. God tells us that the path to hell is paved with good intentions and that He has given us access to Him freely through His loving Grace. The students were challenged with this idea, and we later learned that 6 students placed thier faith in Christ that night.
This encouraged one of our students to immediatly after the meeting, get on the phone with a close family and share the Gospel with him. Many of our students spoke about how they feel like they had been trying to earn God's love, but now realize that God loves them simply because they are His creations, and that they are in Christ. This is life changing stuff.