Read Judges 7:1-25

Ministry: Giving high school and college students and faculty opportunities to know God and grow in a relationship with Him in the U.S. and around the world.

Missionaries: Ben and Sandie Dyke

When the pandemic began to affect the U.S. in March of 2020, our ministry with Cru to students and faculty began to change rapidly. Conferences and mission trips were canceled. All of our in-person interaction with both other Cru staff and the students and faculty we were working with went all virtual. And we began to think, “OK, what is our plan B? What is our backup plan?” 

There are many places in the Bible that talk about plans and plans changing, plans being disrupted, or things not working out exactly how the people in the story thought they would or should. I mean, who would have thought that God’s plan to save the world from their sins was sending a baby born in a barn (Jesus) to earth through a virgin (Mary)?

However, as we can see throughout the entire Bible, God has a purpose for all He does, even if it doesn’t seem to make sense to us. In Judges 7, God uses Gideon and only 300 of the least qualified soldiers out of the possible 33,000 men to defeat the Midianites and bring glory to Himself. Gideon thought he needed the 33,000 men to win the battle, but God had a different plan.

Even in our ministry to students and faculty, our predominant way to connect with individuals and do ministry was in person. Now, I don’t think any of us want to only be doing things virtually the rest of our lives. However, God had a plan all along that even used something as terrible as a pandemic to accomplish His purposes. He knew that the pandemic would cause us to innovate other ways to do ministry virtually to bring people to Himself. God never has a Plan B. God’s plan is always Plan A. And even when we can’t see or completely understand why things are happening the way they are, we need to have faith in Him and trust in who He is as the all-knowing and all-powerful God who has a plan for us. God’s plan gives us a future, and it gives us hope (Jeremiah 29:11).

Pray: Pray for wisdom on how to continue leveraging new ways of doing ministry as the school year begins in August and that God would continue to use Cru on campus to bring people to Himself.