My suitemate saw God

This is a story my suitemate wrote. It's a beautiful story about how God has revealed himself to her lately. Oh, and the girl in her last story, her friend, yep, that's me! I'm glad that instance really blessed her. I had no idea she would post that for others to see. :)

Here it Ashton's story:
Recently...well, lets be honest...for quite some time I have been in a very huge "drought" stage in my faith. I've made some mistakes that have been seriously holding me back and I've been lacking in trust. In all truthfulness, I think I was waiting for God to make the first move. In the past few weeks I decided to attempt to move in that direction on my own. The first thing I decided to do was to purchase a book by my favorite author, Ted Dekker, called "the slumber of Christianity." The whole idea so far is that we have fallen asleep to the beauty and promise of our Christian faith. We have forgotten that the pleasures of this world are reminders of the complete and utter bliss that awaits us in the next life! New testament believers were completely focused on that ultimate prize and it allowed them to lose sight of the sin that hounded them on earth. It also allowed them to appreciate the beauty of the pleasures we can experience on this earth because we know those pleasures are only a faint shadow of what is to come!

Well, this whole concept got me rather excited and I decided that I wanted to think and experience life in that way, but I think I still was waiting for God to make the first move. Well, today in chapel, I saw a glimmer of that first move. An amazing speaker blessed us with his testimony. He told us the story of his transition from sin to grace to redeemed and it was beautiful. I think almost everyone in chapel was in tears, which is rather surprising since usually people sleep or do homework in chapel. He was completely unafraid to speak of his particular sin, which is almost completely taboo to speak of in churches today. His admission was utterly heart-wrenching, but along with it he provided this hope. He spoke of a love and a freedom from sin that only God can provide. He was living proof that people really can turn completely away from any sin and accept God's love and forgiveness. My favorite thing he said was that "we don't get to choose whether God loves us or not. He just does." But what was so awesome about it was that he kept saying that we need to seek the kingdom, and that the best way to do that is to seek the King. I knew right then that God was reassuring me and reinforcing this idea of living for the kingdom which is to come.

The next crazy thing that happened occurred right after chapel. I was walking around with my friend and she just completely randomly walked up to this guy sitting in a seat in chapel. She just went right over and asked if he wanted her to pray for him. He said sure and she just knelt down right there and spouted out this amazing prayer and by the time she was done im pretty sure the guy was in tears. But that's not even the best part. The most amazing thing about that was that the girl was already late for class when she asked if she could pray for the guy. By the time this was all over, she had missed nearly 15 minutes of class. But she didn't care. Afterwards I asked her what made her do that and she simply said, "I felt led to." She gave up her time completely and utterly ... for a complete stranger. After all of this, there was no doubt in my mind that God was showing himself to me in a way I had never even imagined possible and it was beautiful.

I saw God in the pages of a book filled with hope.

I saw God in a man with the courage and humility to bare his soul in front of thousands of students.

I saw God in a girl kneeling selflessly in prayer over a stranger.

Today I saw God, and He was beautiful.