Above: Two tweets with #AdviceToLiveBy
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Recently while staying at a friends house, I was playing with my daughter and their two daughters and I witnessed an interesting dichotomy. As I lay on the floor, tired from moving out of our house, the girls started running around me. I reached out, pretending to grab one of them which began an hour long game. As you might imagine, the game was simple, try to run past Brian without getting caught. Every time they would run past, they would scream with delight. 
A lot is made about Christians managing to survive college and for good reason, depending on which statistics you read, 60%-80% of Christian students in High School leave their faith in college. That’s a lot! What happens? What are the problems that Christian students face when they head onto the college campus? There are a lot of problems that I see Christian students face when they get to college. I’m going to focus on two of the more common problems that I see. Then I want to talk about how to thrive in college so you’re not just surviving.
I am not a real big fan of coffee. In fact I don’t drink it and neither does my wife. Coffee has a smell that is unmistakable. It fills a room. When you leave a coffee shop everyone you meet for the rest of the day will know where you have been. Different coffee shops have different smells. My wife can even tell me which coffee shop I have been working at depending on the smell on my cloths. Folders had a whole series of commercials that finished with a little jingle. Why do I go to coffee shops? Primarily the wifi. Secondarily the tea. I love tea, but tea doesn’t have the same smell. It doesn’t stick with you the rest of the day. 
God is at work drawing people to himself. I am excited! Students are leaving their lives of sin and choosing to follow Jesus. Over the past two and a half years at Bemidji State we have seen 57 students make decisions to follow Jesus and I expect that we will see more. Nationally, InterVarsity is seeing one of the largest harvests in history. We are living in exciting times. What’s happening? I believe God is using a generational issue to raise up followers to fulfill his mission. The mission is to care about the world. Students care about injustice. The good news is that God does too! What’s going on?
