LESSONS AT USD

As I look back, I realize God was teaching me some important lessons concerning the future.

---The Importance of Intercession - My senior year went really well day to day. One day near the end of the year things changed. I later learned that a chemistry professor, Dr. Coker, was praying for me every day.(I was president of University Christian Fellowship) When we elected a president for the following year, Dr. Coker switched his praying to that student. It made a marked difference in how my days went.

---Spiritual Regions - I often went home on weekends. I noticed every time I left the city limits of Vermilion, S.D., a cloud of darkness lifted. When I returned on Sunday evening, it seemed I came back under that cloud at the city limits. I didn't know much about spiritual warfare in those days, but I was beginning to learn that Satan had different works in different regions.

---MPD - Looking back, I realize now that God was showing me an example of a fragmented person. My German professor was antagonistic against me for sharing my testimony with him. He was a drinker and very crude in most classes. He was raised in Poland and was no doubt abused. Some days he would come to class in a totally different personality. Once he even shared the Gospel in class. From what I have see in later years, it now makes sense.

---God's Desire and Power to Restore - I had a very unusual time with the Lord on a Sunday evening after returning to the university. I thought I needed to study for a German test, but God had something else in mind. I finally gave into the Lord and got on my knees with my Bible. All day I had been pondering an illustration given to me how that our life was like a piece of land and if Satan had some area of that land he then had right to have access through the Lord's territory. My Bible opened to a passage in Joel 2:18 that I had previously underlined. "Then will the Lord be jealous for His land and pity His people." For most of the night, I was in the Lord's presence as He spoke to me out of the book of Joel. I saw how the Lord's people's sin had opened the land to the enemy and much destruction, God's desire for repentance and then spiritual cleansing. Joel 2:25 stood out in a great way. "And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten. . ." Little did I know that the Lord was giving me a message for the many years of spiritual cleansing ministry. God was building into my life a basis for helping people to rebuild their lives. God clearly showed me His power and desire to restore years of loss to Satan's power.
There was much that I missed that I had enjoyed at Wheaton, but my years at USD were great times of evangelism and preparation for future ministry.