A Tangible Feeling. A Theological Inkling.

When I was very young, the doctors diagnosed my unborn sister with severe developmental issues in the womb. While the obstetrician recommended termination, my parents persisted in praying for Emily's healing. Father Rock, a family friend, laid hands on my mother's belly one day, and Emily was completely healed.

God's presence was always a tangible feeling in the home of my youth. While both of my parents came from non-charismatic traditions, somehow, ever since Emily's miracle, our prayers came naturally, expectantly, and in the conversational language of our family. Within that timeframe, the sense of God's presence seemed to follow me unexpectedly.

At my parent's divorce, I recall sorrowfully praying alone in my bedroom while God's overwhelming comfort came on in the physical embrace of a hand on my back. At a sandwich shop, when sensing that I should pray for the crippled man in front of me, I witnessed God straighten his back in a public setting. I was in the room when my mother was healed of her brain tumor. I was on the phone with my dad when he received feeling back into his hand after nearly severing it at a job site. Somehow, in these developmental stages, I didn’t need much explanation that God was present, interactive, loving, and wanted to bring his love into the world through moments of prayer. However, as I grew into young adulthood, I began to realize how relatively untrained I am in my grasp of what is happening. Furthermore, I found it extraordinarily difficult from a pastoral perspective to teach on nature of the news about Jesus while navigating the increasingly secular fabric of my very skeptical generation.

Having received an invitation to continue my journey as a scholar within the University of Oxford’s Master of Theology (MTh) Program, I have the opportunity of learning with others who are also processing honestly God’s magnificent reality among us and what it all means for the Church situated in a contemporary Western culture. I want to learn the theory behind Jesus’ disciples’ mode of preaching in order to purvey the Gospel skillfully and in secular settings. While training under some of the foremost Bible scholars, including world authority on the Apostle Paul, N. T. Wright, I want to grow in unique maturity as an expert on the story of Jesus. I want to bring a fresh, accessible, and yet historically orthodox illumination of Jesus to a generation that has yet to see him in a way that makes sense.

The feeling of God's presence continues to delight me in His serendipitous timing, tangible providence, and yes, miraculous moments though prayer. However, I believe there is much to uncover within the realms of classical and charismatic theology and the Word, especially for proclaimig it as good news in world that sees its ethic stifling. This why I am hopeful at the prospect of a season’s study at the University of Oxford:

“That they may have the full riches of complete understanding in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” —Paul’s Letter to the Church is Colossae (Col. 2v2-3)