Ashley Barkley was sitting outside of the student center at the University of South Alabama when she felt impressed to silently pray.
“When I raised my head, a young guy was standing beside me,” she said. “He then asked if I was a Christian and if I was just praying.”
Barkley said yes.
And the young man — Sean — asked if he could ask her some questions.
“The questions contained who is God to me, is my God a good God, where is heaven, who goes to hell and why,” Barkley said. “I asked him why he was asking me these questions, and he told me he’s searched the world over but he just feels broken.”
So she began to share her testimony with him — that she had been broken and had also searched for something to fill the void in her life.
She said the only thing that can fill that void is Jesus. “He then simply asked, ‘How?’”
Barkley began to share the gospel with Sean, pulling out her Bible and walking him through Scripture.
“After a short conversation of those passages, Sean told me, ‘I want what you have. I want Who you have.’ And after that, he prayed for Christ to come and cleanse every part of him,” she said.
God works in amazing ways, Barkley said. “I didn’t do anything. It was Sean and Jesus the whole time. To me, this is a pure testimony that God is in control. Oftentimes we Christians just need to say ‘yes’ to the conversation God literally places right in front of us.”
Beth Gardner, Baptist campus minister at the University of South Alabama, asked for prayer for students like Barkley to have courage to reach out to their peers.
“Because a college campus is one of the greatest missions fields, students need others praying for boldness to step out in faith and share with students who desperately need to know and experience God’s love,” Gardner said. (Grace Thornton)
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