The Marvels of Christ: Roland Echols
I know it sounds cliché, but God has worked marvels in my life. This being my last quarter at Tech, I have found my days filled with less class time and a lot more free time. With the blessings of that free time, I have had time to see and ponder those marvels that Christ has created in my life. Let me share with you a little of how God has been busy throughout my college years. Starting with this, my last quarter, I have been able to put Him at the forefront of my time and thoughts and focus on Him more in my free time. My spiritual walk with Christ is every day, but ever since I found the Wesley Foundation this year, 3 of the 7 days of the week are intentionally reserved for comprehending, meditating, and personal study of His Word. By taking this time, I have learned to apply what I have received on those nights during my free time in my room. In that free time, I have found the opportunity to relax, reflect, and look forward in anticipation to the way God has worked and will continue to work in my life. The relaxation has been a blessing because God has brought me to my senior year, so close to graduation! The opportunity to reflect is a relatively new phenomenon because freshman through junior year was such an intense grind, especially during winter quarters when my hardest classes fell. Throughout those years of hard work, my stress levels were amplified and the present fear of failure always found a way to creep around my back. However, I kept reminding myself of the truth from 2 Tim. 1:7, that I was not given a spirit of fear, but a spirit of love. God always came through on test days. Another verse that I recently came across that has applied to me all throughout college is Ephesians 3:13; it says, “I ask you, therefore, not to be discouraged because of my sufferings for you, which are your glory.” This verse teaches me that any tribulations I go through on Earth are not as bad as the suffering that Christ endured during his death on the cross, and that even when I find myself in those trying times, it is Christ preparing me for my breakthrough.
On test days, I am always reminded of what my dad used tell me: “God may not give you what you want, but He gives you what you need,” meaning that even on the weeks that I studied nights on end for an A, I would still sometimes get a B or a C, but that it is ok and no reason to despair since it shows God’s provision for me in getting me to this point in my college career. Now, as the chapter of my life that is my undergrad is drawing to a close, I look forward to graduation and, Lord willing, my future studies in graduate school. I particularly feel God’s provision for me when I listen to the line from “Can’t Give Up Now,” a song by the band Mary Mary. It says, “I don’t believe He’s brought me this far to leave me.” Looking forward to the next part of my life brings emotions of both joy and apprehension. Joy because I have a clear direction for where my life is headed after college and apprehension because my studies are only going to get harder after my graduation from Tech. Yet even as classes grow more difficult, the gleaming silver lining of my spiritual journey here at Tech and at the Wesley is that it has prepared me to handle any challenge that life has to offer. After all, a challenge is only a chance to grow closer to God. In growing closer to God, I have met faithful people at the Wesley who have amplified my faith through plugging me into a small group here. People like Philip Matherne, Akin Bailey, Ian Bolger, Chase Lenard, Ja’Quel Whitaker, and so many more are the kind of smart and respectable people who show me how to see how God works in all of our lives differently. Every time I am around them, I am always reminded of Proverbs 27:17: “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.”
The brothers that Christ has brought into my life here at the Wesley Foundation go deep into biblical conversations covering topics like temptation, race, selflessness, how we are called to come out of the city of Babylon described in this year’s study of the Book of Revelation. In those talks, I have seen God really work through my small group leader, Philip, to lead each one of us to look within ourselves and to strive to be better men of God. For instance, in our last small group on April 15, we talked about how much harder it is for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven than a poor man. One passage from our small group discussion that got me thinking was Matthew 19:23 when it says, “Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven.’” In this talk, our small group discussed the topic of the danger of living in excess and the nature of how the rich getting richer means that the poor get poorer. This particular talk applied to me because I have always been so focused on getting rich because I believed that money was the fruit of my labor, a blessing for my hard work, and that what you do with that blessing determines if you are sinning. However, being a man of God, I shouldn’t desire the fruit of my labor to be money. The fruit of my labor should be making more disciples. In being a better man of God, I am called to go out into the community to save the lost and make change. By living a life that puts my treasure in heaven, the lessons I am learning in my small group will be applied to my future career path and I can pray that God would help me to be smarter academically and spiritually through the study of his Word. This reflection and studying would not have been possible without the Wesley Foundation coming into my life.
Like weights in a gym, the people in my small group at the Wesley have been the spiritual weights I need to grow stronger in my faith in God. Their insight and perspective encourage me to think about God’s Word in more depth and have taught me to apply God’s truth to my life after I leave the walls of the Wesley and even after I walk the graduation stage and leave Tech.
Roland, while a new member of our community here at the Wesley, is nothing less than a joy to be around. He has an infectious smile, speaks boldly of the truth in Christ’s gospel, and is an example of how to care for the people around you. He is graduating at the end of this quarter with a degree in pre-med biology and will be attending the University of Kansas in Kansas City for his masters degree.