My name is Liz Moran, and I am so grateful to share a Story of Grace. I love this church and this church family with my whole heart, and I am so happy to serve this community as a student ministries associate with Daniel. I’ve been working here ~officially~ since early June. And in this short time I could tell you many different stories of Jesus moving, but instead, I want to tell you about how Jesus and His work through Grace led me here to begin with.
First of all, I never thought I was going to go into vocational ministry. I was mainly a political science major throughout college, and my plan was to be a lawyer, a politician, or both. But one of my best friends at Baylor told me that I needed to do a summer internship at his church. So, I said “Okay Daniel, I will work for one summer at Grace if they will have me.” And that’s how I became an intern last summer.
As an intern, I got to know the middle schoolers and high schoolers here, and I could not believe what God was and still is doing. I don’t know about y’all, but before college, I never read my Bible on my own. I got annoyed when my youth minister would be serious and talk about Jesus for too long, and I was more focused on trying to be funny than trying to be faithful. Now, I’m in no way saying that our students don’t struggle with these things, but I am saying that over my time at Grace I’ve had students ask me about how to start reading the Bible and telling me what they’ve been learning from the Word recently. I’ve had a student come and ask me in the middle of a pool game, and this is a quote, “When are we going to start talking about Jesus?” And I’ve seen students actively fight against saying something funny so that they can be vulnerable and real with us instead.
Jesus is moving here. And when I left over the Spring to work in D.C., I would get to the end of each day and know that while God was using me in D.C. for a brief time, the place He wanted me was at Grace. Because there is something special happening here, and He, for some reason, has decided that I should be included.
That being said, I KNOW God has a plan for you and that He wants you to be included, too. I urge you to spend time in prayer and community to know what God intends for your next step to be. Without prayer and the people in my community, I would still be in D.C. right now, and I would be getting to the end of each day wondering why I felt so out of place and unincluded. The reason was because I was trying to ignore His call.
Please don’t do that. Lean into where Jesus wants you. For me, I know that Jesus wants me here at Grace, and out at my students’ swim meets and football games, and on the phone texting our graduating seniors to make sure they know they have a community of faith praying for them, and preparing our students to go out from this place knowing Jesus and able to share Him with others.
That’s my story of Grace, and I’d love to hear yours. Email me, come find me, I look forward to getting to know this family more and more.