What would you do for God if you knew you couldn’t fail? What dream would you set sail toward?

In euFOCUS (the EU’s Fellowship of Overseas Christian University Students), we gather around a God-Sized Dream:

To be a loving, Jesus-centred community
who long and labour
to see every international student know Jesus’ gospel.

It’s our Dream—what we long to see happen under God. It’s God-Sized—with approximately 30,000 international students at Sydney Uni. Seeing every one of them know Jesus’ gospel would take nothing less than a gracious, reviving movement of God. It gives shape and direction to who we’re trying to be and what we’re trying to do; we labour to develop a loving community centred on Jesus, where international students feel welcome, increasingly belong, and come to know Jesus and his gospel.

This God-Sized Dream shapes and motivates our prayers. With the rest of our sisters and brothers in the EU, we’re committed to praying for revival. As we long for every international student to know Jesus, we ask our powerful, gracious God to send us out with the message of Jesus—to classmates and housemates, to new friends in Sydney and friends from home, and even to strangers whom we might go out to meet on campus. We gather for prayer on Thursday afternoons before our weekly Come Home Dinner and join others in the EU on weekday mornings to ask God to bring revival by his Word and Spirit—in our hearts and among the lost, from this nation and others. Many of you have been praying with us, as our precious gospel partners. This has been a marvellous encouragement.

And God has been answering many of our prayers.

Come Home Dinners in Welcome Week and the first two weeks of Semester 1 have seen around 100 people gathering each Thursday night, with still more than 80 in Week 3—coming together as a loving, Jesus-centred community. Relationships have deepened through mingling activities and questions about hometowns, family, and hobbies, sharing photos of summer adventures, and hearing God speak through a talk or Discovery Bible Study.

In Welcome Week, Maria, a computer science student from China, signed up at the EU Stall. Horatia, a Mandarin-speaking euFOCUS student, invited Maria to attend Come Home Dinner. Maria keenly accepted. She enjoyed meeting new friends over dinner, hearing something of Jesus from the Bible talk, and was particularly moved by the time toward the end of the night, singing together of God’s amazing grace. In Week 1, Maria’s Thursday night classes began, so we started a Friday lunchtime Discovery Bible Study. There, with friends from Hong Kong, Canberra, Brisbane, and Sydney, she’s getting to know Jesus and his gospel. After that first Friday, Maria stayed behind to ask more questions, leading to an opportunity to explain the good news of Jesus using ‘The 3 Circles‘ gospel summary. Maria was struck by Jesus’ love and goodness and left even more keen to know him better.

We know that success is not guaranteed for our God-Sized Dream. It will take many more than our twelve Discovery Bible Study groups to see Sydney Uni’s 30,000 international students know Jesus’ gospel. But we also know that, under God, Maria and more than 150 others have already heard something of Jesus’ gospel. And we know that God can work powerfully in and through all of us to show and share the boundless love of Christ with thousands more—to the glory of his name.

– Ben Lim, EU Senior Staff