If Jesus Went to College

By Karisa You

Summer wanted to speak to God but was afraid He wouldn't understand Mandarin. Yohan fiercly opposed God until He answered all of Yohan's prayers in a month. Mia desperately wanted to learn about God, as her mum prohibited the Bible in her childhood. Bailey was raised Mormon but decided to go on a quest to discover the "one true God."

 

In this collection of stories, university students share about their unique encounters with God. Their testimonies and advice show us that anyone can have a relationship with Him—and that spiritual conversations are happening all around us if we want to join in. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Karisa You
• Release date: Nov 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223591559

Book preview

SECTION I:

Looking for Jesus All My Life:

Stories from International

Students in the U.S.

CHAPTER 1

God Speaks Mandarin with Perfect Pronunciation

Yosemite Valley, California

Spring 2017

Does God speak Mandarin?

The spring of my junior year, an international student essentially asked me this question. While she desperately wanted to know God, she was concerned He wouldn’t understand her lack of fluency in English.

As a college student at UCLA, I was a part of Bridges International, a nationwide campus ministry which supports international university students in the U.S. For spring break, our UCLA Bridges group drove international students to Yosemite, where a local church in Mariposa Valley hosted us for the weekend.

For a person whose idea of a hike was her daily walk to class, I was exhausted by the end of the first day. As we drove down the mountain to our host families that evening, I was more than ready to sneak a quick nap in the car like everyone else. 

That’s when God tugged on my heart. Talk to the girl next to you.

I glanced around before leaning back in my seat again, closing my eyes. God, come on. Everyone else gets to sleep! Can’t I, too?

But God always wins, and He does awesome, breathtaking things when we trust Him.

As we stopped at a seemingly broken traffic light for a full five minutes, I felt God urge me again. Talk to her.

I sighed. Fine.

I sat up. How was the hike today, Summer?

Summer, a Chinese international student at UCLA, turned to me with a smile. It was fun! 

We small-talked for a bit, and then to my surprise, she confessed something. "Actually, I met a woman today on the hike who said she talks to God, and He actually responds to her. I think that is amazing. Does that ever happen to you?

I wanted to laugh as I thought, Yeah, He literally just told me to talk to you!

Though I could barely keep my eyes open, I began word-vomiting simple truths that I had taken for granted all my life.

Jesus loves you. He knows how many hairs are on your head. We messed up and created a rift between us and God, but Jesus mends that rift.

At each statement I shared, Summer gasped, exclaiming, This is incredible—so beautiful! Her eyes glistened with tears as she listened, eating up simple truths like her life depended on it. 

When I asked if she wanted a relationship with God, she suddenly hung her head.

God wouldn’t want to choose me, she confessed with genuine disappointment. I’m nothing special.

Oh, Summer. I smiled. God has already chosen you. You must choose Him.

She hesitated, still afraid of one thing. You see, she admitted, there’s a problem.

As Summer paused in embarrassment, I wondered what she would say. In Romans 8:38, Paul writes that neither life nor death, angels nor demons, the present nor the future, height nor depth, nor anything else in all of creation can separate us from God’s love in Jesus Christ.

But Summer’s confession was far from anything I expected.

My English isn’t very good, she admitted. I’m afraid God won’t understand me.

I smiled. "Summer, God created your language. He can definitely speak Mandarin."

She gasped, and tears filled her amazed brown eyes. Up until that moment, Summer never knew there was a God who loved her, let alone one who could communicate freely with her. "God speaks Mandarin?"

There in that twenty-minute backseat car ride in which I had planned to sleep, Summer prayed to receive Christ into her life.

But perhaps the best part of Summer’s story was our final morning in Mariposa, Yosemite. That Sunday, we went to Mariposa Church’s morning service. Every cushioned chair they set out was green except for one random, red chair. The church wanted to give a Bible to whoever happened to sit in that red chair as a tangible symbol of salvation given by grace.

Of course, it was Summer who happened to sit in that red chair. A week later, Summer shared with me over the phone, Karisa, I keep that gift on my windowsill, and every day I look at it and remember that God chose me. I read the Bible every night and pray to God and feel Him in my heart. I feel God opened a door to my heart, and the light entered my life, and I have so much joy and talk to God all the time.

I could almost hear her smile through the phone as her words gushed out. And Karisa? I know Him now. God chose me. 

Years later, I would learn that God not only understands every language but embeds hidden messages to us through them. The Chinese language is made up of characters, which each mean something. The Chinese word for righteousness is composed of two characters: lamb and me.

For thousands of years, societies across the world have employed different systems and rituals for enacting justice. In Western civilizations, people who violate laws pay fines or serve sentences. In some Eastern cultures, innocent citizens can sacrifice their own lives by serving others’ sentences.

Ancient Israel used the symbolic ritual of animal sacrifice to enact justice and bring about innocence. Whenever the Israelites sinned, they would sacrifice an innocent lamb in their place. This animal metaphorically absorbed their wrongdoings, taking the human’s place for punishment.

Hebrews 9 explains how this animal sacrifice didn’t literally save people or make them innocent, as it was merely a ritual.

However, Israel engaged in this sacrifice for a greater reason. It foreshadowed the coming reality in which God would someday enact justice for all people.

Throughout the Bible, God prophesied that He would eventually step in the gap and absolve us from our wrongdoings before Him. John the Baptist called Jesus, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29).

Jesus was God’s rescue mission to Earth to absorb the justice which we deserve. He loves us and would give Himself to be with us. The Bible says that our righteousness comes from Jesus. In a sense, it’s His righteousness which covers us, absolving us from blame.

The Chinese language developed hundreds of years before Jesus’s sacrifice, but its word for righteousness is the symbol of a lamb covering me, aligning perfectly with this message that my righteousness is Jesus—the lamb of God—covering me.

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Why Is This News So Good?

Summer’s experience of wanting God but not realizing her ability to access Him is sadly one of many. Right in our backyards, thousands of students are seeking a God who wants to be found.

The truth that changed Summer’s world is that God loves her more than anyone ever could. He’s our ultimate parent because He created us. He thinks we’re delightful because He designed us as ourselves on purpose, including our personalities and passions, our hair colors and textures, body shapes, and skin tones. He made us just like Him. After creating us, He said not just good but very good.

We’re shaped in His image to partner with Him in building a flourishing world. To help others. To speak life. We’re capable of creating some of the most beautiful and redemptive work.

And we want to do good—it’s wired into our systems like inventions created for a particular purpose.

Yet we don’t always.

In fact, sometimes, we do the exact opposite.

God has a definition of justice that cannot be biased or bent by humans. When we challenge laws on the basis of inequality, we claim that people have misinterpreted justice—we’re appealing to an outside or greater standard of justice. We do this when we argue that slavery, rape, and racism have always been wrong, whether people recognized this or not.

Where do we get this standard of justice, which seems to transcend human institutions and eras and differs from human-made cultures?

Paul writes in Romans 2:12-16 that, whether people believe in God or not, unlike the rest of the created order, humans have a sense of justice—a recognition that certain behaviors aren’t just biologically unsound and disagreeable but immoral, wrong, and evil.

Ignoring injustice is injustice. When George Floyd was murdered, millions cried out for justice. Ignoring Floyd’s murder would be injustice in itself.

Because God is just, He never sweeps injustices under the rug but fairly addresses them all. When you are a victim of injustice, God is not like our human governments which allow oppression to foment unchecked. Someday, He will advance justice throughout the world, and He will advocate for you. He zealously wants to defend you and grieves with your pain.

But not all of us are as innocent as we hope. In light of God’s perfect justice, we have each perpetrated injustice, and justice for the world means justice for us too.

We degrade image bearers of God. We highlight their weaknesses to make ourselves feel better or to entertain ourselves. We profit from vulnerable people on individual and systemic levels. We go to wars to exert power and gain control, ignoring the devastation. We justify mistreating people by our own biased standards of human excellence. We refuse to share our resources and turn our heads when people request help. We take advantage of people in our minds without their consent for our own pleasure.

It’s as if sin is ingrained into the fabric of our human nature from childhood. We know according to our consciences that our behavior is wrong, but we’re raised in this world and taught to expect these things.

We justify our behavior with statements like, it’s no big deal, no one was hurt this time, no one knows, everyone does it which makes it ok, right? But we recognize there’s something wrong in our world. How could God have ever designed or dreamed up a world where rape, genocide, racism, murder, and hatred are just things we humans do?

Some blame criminals; others, the government. But in Matthew 5:21-28, we see that injustice isn’t this exclusive disease that only the worst people in society are afflicted with. If God is just, will He ignore my jealousy, pride, selfishness, lust, and lies and reward me with Heaven because they’re not as big of a deal as others’ actions?

If God lets our sins slide, He is not just. So, He does what any loving parent would do without hesitation—He gave His life so we could live.

Our Father loves us enough to die for us in a heartbeat.

I’ve heard the gospel so many times that it sometimes falls upon desensitized ears. But when you pause to consider it, the essence of the gospel is really this—when you were fighting against God on enemy territory, God walked over and surrendered Himself to die to the enemy, despite the fact that we made Him our enemy in the first place. He didn’t pull out His wallet and offer to pay half the cost for your bail. He gave the most He possibly could for you to be the freest you could be at the greatest expense to Himself.

Why? Because He loves us. He crazy loves us—the kind of all-consuming love parents have when they throw themselves into danger if it means saving their kids.

And God didn’t die for the world generically because He loves all people generically. He freely gives all that He possibly could—His own life—for you personally because He loves you individually.

Romans 5:6-9 tells us:

When we were unable to help ourselves, at the right time, Christ died for us, although we were living against God. Very few people will die to save the life of someone else. Although perhaps for a good person someone might possibly die. But God shows His great love for us in this way: Christ died for us while we were still sinners.

The Message Version puts it this way:

Christ arrives right on time to make this happen. He didn’t, and doesn’t, wait for us to get ready, He presented Himself for this sacrificial death when we were far too weak and rebellious to do anything to get ourselves ready.

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Jesus Climbs Down into the Pit to Show Us the Way Out

But Jesus saves us in a second way—not only does He forgive our specific sins, but He enables us to experience a whole different kind of life, the abundant or life to the fullest life which He described in John 10:10.

Imagine a person trapped in a deep pit. People offer suggestions.

Why don’t you try jumping higher? Can you perhaps grow a little taller? You must not be working hard enough.

We grow weary as we try these useless methods. Then, we grow frustrated with ourselves, turning to self-hatred or bitterness.

Some of us give up in despair. Perhaps we’ll just stay here forever.

But, while others offer suggestions from a distance, Jesus got Himself involved with us.

By becoming human, God gently climbed down to our level. He knows we need Him as much as a little child desperately relies on a parent.

If our wrongdoings stem from broken hearts, we need more than behavior modification. C.S. Lewis writes in Mere Christianity[1] that God doesn’t just snip a few leaves off the sick tree or pull off rotting fruit or cut off branches. He wants to pull up the whole diseased tree and plant a new one that can live.

If we are willing, Jesus offers to root out our diseased hearts and heal us. God promised to give us His own Spirit, powerful enough to regenerate us. God doesn’t force His way into our lives without permission, but if we’re willing, Jesus is a dedicated counselor who loves us and will transform us into the individuals we were designed to be. The people God always knew we could be. He is deeply invested in healing the parts of us that are so broken that we don’t even know where to begin. Receiving eternal life doesn’t just mean going to Heaven when we die but experiencing joy here.

Bridgetown Church Pastor, Tyler Staton, preaches on this idea:

Many of us heard Jesus’s invitation, if you accept Jesus as Lord and Savior, you will receive his grace and go to heaven when you die. Beautiful. True but incomplete. The obvious oversight in this is [the rest of] your entire life. Jesus isn’t only teaching us how to die...he’s teaching us how to live. This [limited teaching] creates the possibility of receiving Jesus’s life without becoming his disciple, a dichotomy very difficult to square with scripture. It turns transformation into transaction and minimizes the full teaching of Jesus into a fraction of that invitation and reimagines heaven into a future location that I arrive at rather than a present and increasingly pervasive reality.

In other words, Jesus didn’t declare, I saved you for Heaven, but life won’t change much until then. Go on and keep living your life the way you were, and I’ll see you when you die.

In Jesus’s eyes, sin is like a disease that eats at us until we infect others. Greed. Pride. Lust. Anger. Jealous. Rage. Bitterness. These things have their roots wrapped around our hearts, and we need a deep healing. Who better equipped than the one who designed us originally and knows who we are intended to be? 

Jesus came to destroy the power of sin over our lives and then invite us into a whole new way of living. To walk with Him and learn a new lifestyle, free from condemnation or guilt. To learn to be generous by imitating Him. As we spend time with Him, He reveals issues, heals wounds, and naturally rubs off on us in character. We gain his courage. His peace  in the face of worries that eat up the rest of the world. His radical and gentle love for those who seek to hurt Him.

We will be made whole and renewed but not overnight and maybe not even in this lifetime. In a beautiful sense, as Jesus covers our inadequacies and sins with His very life every day, it’s okay. In his incredible masterpiece, Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis writes, As long as the will to walk is there, [God] is pleased even in their stumbles.[2]

My spiritual director, Rynelle Frow, summarizes 1 John 2:1 in her own words, Little children, no one born of God makes a practice of sinning. And so, we try not to sin, but sometimes, we do. And when we do, we have an advocate.

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God Knows My Name?

Summer wasn’t the only Chinese international student I had the privilege of meeting on our Bridge’s Yosemite hike.

As we scaled the side of a snowy mountain, I found myself talking to a kind girl with short, black hair. Her English name was Jennifer, and her Chinese name was Yahui, which us native English speakers pronounced Yah-you-ee.

Upon our introduction, Yahui asked me almost immediately to explain Christianity to her. Since I grew up in China, she told me, I never learned about it.

After returning from Yosemite, Yahui expressed continued interest in hanging out and even coming to ministry events at school.

Driving back from an outreach event together one night, I was surprised by Yahui’s direct question. How does one become a Christian?

She shared openly about how she considered Christianity amazing but still needed time to process everything before deciding to follow Jesus. I dropped her off at her apartment and lent her my Bible to read. 

As I drove home that night, I could feel my pride beginning to swell, believing I had brought Yahui (or Yah-you-ee as I pronounced it) so close to Christ.

In that moment, I felt God speak so clearly but softly to me through my own thoughts.

Karisa, her name is Ya-hway. I gave her that name. She is mine, and I love her.

I felt struck by the gentle power of the statement. Even in His correction, He felt compassionate and kind, and the words were not critical or arrogant but soft and intentional.

As I drove back to my apartment with this new wonder of hearing God accurately pronounce my friend’s name, I began to sense how beautiful Heaven would be with the God who calls us by name and knows us personally.

I did not share God’s words with Yahui, perhaps because I felt insecure for sounding crazy or simply because I forgot to.

A few weeks later, Yahui and I went to a movie screening of the Prince of Egypt, an animated retelling of the story of Exodus. I didn’t expect it, but Yahui was amazed by this God who fought for His people’s freedom like a powerful but loving King.

As the credits rolled and students meandered around us for snack refills, Yahui asked me about the significance of the plague of the firstborn. I explained how God’s firstborn, Jesus, died for our sins.

As I talked to her about God, I asked if she wanted to know God personally. She decided to pray and ask God to reveal Himself to her, as she yearned to know more. 

As Yahui expressed her heart, I smiled. God loves you, Yahui, and had a purpose for you to be here tonight.

To my surprise, Yahui gasped in shock, her hand flying to her mouth and eyes widening. 

Everything okay? I asked, puzzled.

She nodded, lowering her hand as she settled back. Yes, she laughed. Of course. I’m sorry—I was just surprised.

My brow furrowed. Why?

"My name. She replied simply, beaming. You knew how to pronounce my name. No one ever says it right, they usually say, Yah-you-ee."

I chuckled, remembering the night God gently corrected my pronunciation of her name in the car. Actually, it’s funny you say that...

As I told her the story of God’s words to me about her name, she listened intently. Then she looked up, deeply touched in gratitude.

Thank you, God! She exclaimed, seemingly to Heaven. He knows my name. 

I have redeemed you. I have called you by name—you are mine (Isaiah 43:1).

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The Fallacies We Believe

I’ve discovered two things from my spiritual conversations.

First, if God is nudging my heart to talk to someone about Jesus, I just have to say my part, and He will take care of the rest. We may not realize how many people are desperate to know God and to be loved by Him. He already knows their response and how the conversation will proceed.

Often, these conversations naturally arise as people ask about my life. Jesus pops up as I talk, the same way a person in-love finds a way to sneak his or her significant other’s name into every conversation. I try not to shove the Bible down anyone’s throat. Those interested in God ask more, and conversations flow as I share simple truths which I’ve taken for granted since my youth. God loves to take care of you. He knows you because He created you.

In her book, Tramp for the Lord,[3] world evangelist, Corrie Ten Boom, writes on an experience she faced while imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp.

One day, a group of prisoners approached Corrie, asking her to tell them Bible stories. It was illegal and punishable by death to possess a Bible or talk about God in Nazi concentration camps.

Upon pulling out her Bible, Corrie was aware of a figure behind her.

One of the prisoners formed the words with her lips, Hide your Bible. It’s Lony.

Lony was the cruelest of the women guards. However, Corrie felt God clearly guiding her to bring a Bible message that morning. Corrie finished her teaching and then invited her fellow prisoners to sing a hymn of praise.

When they finished, Corrie heard Lony say, Another song like that one.

Lony had enjoyed the singing and wanted to hear more. Afterwards, Corrie spoke to her about Jesus. Lony became a friend to Corrie and her fellow prisoners.

In sharing the gospel, we often fear the worst-case scenarios. But God has shown me that way more people desire a relationship with God than I assume.

At the same time, Jesus and the early church predicted resistance as an unavoidable part of partnering with God. In Matthew 10:25, Jesus declared that if the religious leaders called Him a demon, how much more would they oppose His disciples. Jesus promises blessing for those who are opposed for His name (Matthew 5:11).

But we don’t have to overthink it if people aren’t interested. Jesus commanded the disciples to shake the dust off their feet and move on to the next house if people weren’t interested in the gospel (Matthew 10:14).

Sometimes we mistakenly believe that we must carry out these overwhelmingly beautiful, grand plans. However, the reality is that He is the one who created humans and DNA and brains and neurons out of dust. Perhaps we can leave the bigger stuff to Him. Even if we feel like our conversations are a failure, we can be confident that God will find ways to show people who He is in personal, spectacular ways.

In her book, Tramp for the Lord, Corrie Ten Boom writes how her friend once told her:

You are not called to convince anyone. You are simply called to be an open channel for the Spirit of God to flow through. You can never be anything else, even though you may think so at times. Follow the pathway of obedience, let the Word of God do its own work, and you will be used by God far beyond your own powers.[4]

The second fallacy many of us believe is that, because God doesn’t need us, He doesn’t want us to partner with Him. But what a shame it would be to miss out on this experience of watching God garden. We may not have been able to witness God draw the universe together, but we are invited to an even greater privilege—to see Him raise people from spiritual death and reverse sin’s devastating work.

You and I have been invited not only to sit front row but to be cast in a very important role as nurses to the master surgeon. When He tells us to hand Him a tool or administer a medication, we can jump to obey. He knows what each person needs and to what degree, and He will tell us what to do or say when the time is right.

And if we let Him, these experiences can change our lives too. The gospel isn’t just meant for those out there but the family of Christ.

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Jesus Brings the Nations to Us

When Cheri, our UCLA Bridges director, asked me to drive to Yosemite for the spring break trip, I did not want to go.

Weeks before the Yosemite trip, I was at a Bridges dinner meeting shoveling orange chicken into my mouth when Cheri approached me.

Hi, Karisa. She smiled sweetly. Bridges’ annual spring break trip to Yosemite is in a few weeks, but sadly, we’re still short a few drivers. Would you be willing to drive some students to Yosemite? We’d really appreciate it.

No way, I thought to myself.

I tried to smile. Uh, I’ll think about it!

I did think about it, but truthfully, I felt no reason to go. It was my spring break and the only time I got to be around family without schoolwork or commitments. Still, Cheri was relentless in pursuing me, and her texts eventually wore me down.

Friday night of spring break, I shoved my duffle bag into the trunk, loaded up four international students, and started the long drive to Yosemite. When we reached the town of Mariposa, Yosemite, a local church opened their homes for us to stay in all weekend.

To call this church humble would be an understatement. Mariposa Church was really a collection of ten families in Mariposa Valley. What they lacked in stage lights and movie-theater chairs, they made up for in rambunctious toddlers and a beautiful prayer garden.

As I watched these little children hide and chase each other between college students, I marveled at this church’s level of generosity. Nearly every single weekend of the year, these families opened their homes for free to host international students from around the world. Each housed and fed 5-7 guests, driving us around the mountain, leading us on hikes, pulling out gloves and socks for us to wear, and packing us lunches.

Jesus hasn’t called us to the nations, one of the mothers expressed to me. Instead, He brings the nations to us!

During our first night, I received a peek behind one of God’s reasons for having me drive.

After being assigned to our hosts that first evening, we piled into their