THE PHILIPPINES | Malaybalay
We have all heard the verse from Matthew 19:26 when Jesus is talking to the rich young man about selling all his possessions to enter the kingdom of heaven and he says the famous line “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” This verse was brought to new light when spoken from two scholar students at a University bible study I attended last Sunday night.
The night started off pretty much like your average American youth group. We all sang, had announcements, and played some pretty crazy games. But towards the end of the night they introduced to us “sharing time” in which we would break up into groups of three, one world racer to every two students, and just share our stories, cultures, and beliefs. I wasn’t too sure how I felt about this considering the language barrier but I agreed anyway and found two student, a boy and a girl, who had not yet been taken.
I began just telling them about my story and then asking about theirs. The boy was on his last year of University with a major or taking courses, as they call it, in Political Science and the girl was in her third year and taking courses in Business Administration with a concentration in finances. I began to ask them more about their home life and families, and they began to into the financial struggle it was for their family with having them in school. They both came from huge families that worked all the time. They also talked about the struggle it would be to even find jobs in the Philippines with it being a third world country. But, in all of these struggles whether their hard classes, financial problems, parental support, or even the difficulties of living in the Philippines that had an incredible hope and joy about the future. When I questioned this, they simply quoted Matthew 19:26, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” They had made that verse their life motto. It was not something that they just knew in the back of their heads, they experienced the reality of this verse day in and day out. It was their constant prayer and life at the same time.
In the thirty minutes that I was able to speak with those two University students, I learned the possibilities of truly relying on God every second of the day. I was challenged to make Matthew 19:26 my life motto, and stop thinking that I can do life on my own and start begging for God to take the lead every step of the way.
