Well Batman movies are all well and good, you say, but what does this have to do with my being here in Austin serving on staff with the Navigators? Good question! To fully answer this question, allow me to share my testimony with you briefly.
As a kid in high school, I was what you'd call self-righteous. I never did anything wrong: I never drank, smoke, partied, stepped out of line, etc, but this was because I had outstanding parents, not outstanding moral judgement. I wasn't really tested or tempted in high school which resulted in a lot of terribly misplaced pride absolutely no humility. Cue freshman year.
I went to college full of myself: I focused on grades, although God allowed them to suffer, and relationships, although God would use the ones built on pride to humble me. Funny how every time I focus on something other than God, He uses that thing to bring me to my knees. I put God on the back shelf and set myself up for the humbling of a lifetime.
As a sophomore, I entered into relationship that could not have been farther from the will of God. Every kind of sin ran rampant in my life for three solid months as I fell out of community and into spiritual isolation. I saw no way out of the relationship: I listened to the enemy as he told me I was responsible for being in this sinful relationship as well as for how broken it was. I knew that God still existed, and I knew that I had received Christ as my Savior at a young age so I knew I would go to heaven when I would pass away, so I saw only one logical choice: I prayed to God for weeks that He would kill me. I saw now way for God to redeem me; I thought that my sinfulness was too great for His righteousness and that He wouldn't want to use me when there were others who were far more living and less sinful than myself. I didn't want to commit suicide because I figured if God let me live then I deserved the torture that was my daily life. After weeks when I continued to wake up day after day, I resigned to my fate of wasting away in a life full of self-hate and numbing pain until one day God provided a way out when He ended the relationship for me. I spent the following eight months growing back into community but still listening to the lies the enemy told me. I felt that God had shelved me - He wasn't done with me yet but He had more important things to take care of. Then August rolled around.
At Glorietta Collegiate Week, I remember listening to a story from the Bible I'd heard many times; Matt Chandler spoke about the story of the Prodigal Son. For those of you who don't know, the prodigal son ran away with his inheritance before the proper time and partied it away. He found himself feeding pigs and eating what they ate when he thought "My father's servants are treated better than this. I'm going home, begging for forgiveness, and asking him to hire me as a servant." When he was still a long way off, the son's father ran to him (men in Hebrew culture NEVER ran so this is outstanding). The son didn't even get to finish his apology as the father, sobbing with joy, commanded a huge party to be thrown. For the first time in my life, I realized that I was the sinful son and not the forgiving father in this instance. God had already forgiven me, He wanted to welcome me home and treat me as a son once again. This broke my heart with joy. I didn't understand why God loved me but I knew He did.
As a junior, with this redemption God so freely gave me, I jumped headfirst into ministry at Texas A&M. I began to disciple my dear friend, Travis Williamson, who I had the joy to walk with through life for my last two years. We learned together what it looked like to love like Christ even when it's tough to do so. Things progressed smoothly until I shifted my focus (once again) to a relationship with a girl in March. Even though this relationship was nothing like the previous one, I still was focused on someone other than God. She had the wisdom to wait until the after the summer to pursue anything. Over the summer, I attended a Summer Training Program with the Navigators in Branson, Missouri. The summer was tough (I'll cover this aspect of my testimony, as well as others, in later entries) but everything came crashing down on July 17th when one of the guys on my team (I was his team leader) passed away in a tragic swimming accident at the lake near Branson. That night on got on Facebook to message the girl I'd fallen in love with that March to pour out my heart's pain to her only to find that we were no longer "friends" on Facebook. Now I don't know why she did what she did, but this was God's way of saying "Are you going to cling to Me or to someone else?" Wham! It finally hit me. God was everything I'd ever need. He wasn't in addition to or after anything else. God broke my spiritual legs so that I would have no option but to lean on him.
My senior year rolls around after a brutal but irreplaceable summer. I have no idea what I'm doing after I graduate, but I know I want to continue to make disciples and to pursue God no matter what the cost. As I consider my options - seminary, internship with a church, or EDGE Corps with the Navigators - God revealed what He'd have me do through much prayer and consideration. I felt that, although seminary is in the cards for me, I need to continue to grow and mature as I learn and experience more and more who Christ is. Serving on EDGE Corps with the Navigators at the University of Texas will allow me a year or two to chase hard after Christ while I focus on being discipled and making disciples of Christ.
So here I am, sitting at my host-home having just returned from our Staff Retreat. I want to keep you guys in the loop and this is the main medium I'll use to do that. But what does this have in common with Batman? Why am I here at UT in Austin? Because I just want to see the world burn...for Christ.
In pursuit of His glory,
Micah Warren Stringer
P.S. I'll be updating this weekly, so I hope to share with you all soon the glorious work that God is doing in my life and the lives of others!
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