Being one of the many 20 something year old college students in America who went on spring break this past week, I was yet again revealed the depth of our depravity as sinners.
I went on a cruise to the Bahamas from Charleston, SC on the Carnival Fantasy. The college i attend is Cedarville University, which is a small Christian university in the middle of no-where Ohio. There is partying that happens under the radar, but very little, and generally not too over the top. Having been here for 4 years, I never really experienced the type of partying that goes on at public universities. This cruise consisted of at least 75% college students on spring break from public universities. Everyone was almost constantly drinking and trying to hook up with other people. After dinner, almost everyone would hang out around the club area and bars and try to meet their partner for the night. When we had stops at Freeport and Nassau in the Bahamas and even on the islands, people would spend absurd amounts of money on alcohol and get scorched in the sun. I saw multiple people passed out drunk and also needing to be carried back onto the ship.
My group of guys that I went with definitely stood out on the ship. It was definitely not an easy task to resist the desires of the flesh that so plague males of this age, let alone on a spring break cruise ship, but overall we were able to stand strong and had awesome things happen because of it.
Our group did not isolate ourselves from those around us in fear of falling prey to our sinful desires, but instead we did hang out with other groups of girls throughout the week. We did not exactly go into the week expecting to try to share the gospel or stand out by not becoming drunk or spending time in the club or at the bars. But as we saw how undesirable it was to live every day in search of the next drunken fun or high, we did in fact desire to stand out. We did our best to respect the women on the ship and not treat them like they were individuals to be used and thrown to the side, but instead we strove to build relationships over the week and get to know some of the individuals beyond the surface, and boy did the mindset we had pay off in incredible ways.
By the end of the week, through no work of our own but by the timing of God, we were given opportunities to share the gospel and reveal the hope for the future that the love of Christ provides to us, to some of these individuals who were indeed hopeless. Certain individuals opened up to us because they claimed they saw that we were different. They could tell we truly cared about each other, and that we were definitely being respectful and that everything we did and said was done so differently than the other guys on the cruise. They needed encouragement and we were able to provide that to them, as well as prayer and an introduction to the saving grace of the gospel, regardless of their past. We also showed them that we could have a fantastic time without having the influences of alcohol or sex, and they noticed.
The fact that they noticed blew our minds. We wanted to live out our time there as Christ-like as we could, because we knew the alternative would be to fall into the sin that was so pervasive on the cruise. It was beyond encouraging to see how that God gave us opportunities to share the love of Christ to others in that environment. Being in an environment like at Cedarville University where everyone claims to be Christians, standing out in a good way is not very difficult. On the cruise, it was not easy to stand out, but holding to our convictions definitely made us visible to others as being different.
The cruise was soooo much fun. But what started as a simple break from school and the reality of the future, turned into a spiritual revival and encouragement to myself and my 7 brothers-in-Christ.
