"Salty Conversations"

The college campus presents a challenge for many young believers. Possibly for the first time, students may be presented with opinions and worldviews that do not line up with their own.

Missy Franklin experienced this as she pursued swimming at the collegiate level. She found that many of the spiritual truths she’d learned in her Christian high school were not held by her classmates and professors.

She had to make a decision. Would she pull away from relationships and conflicts to protect herself and her beliefs, forget about the spiritual truths she’d learned before college, or engage with her classmates and professors in a way that showed them love and respect?

Missy made the choice to be a part of a Christian community that would encourage and affirm her in her walk with the Lord but also to build relationships with those around her who didn’t hold those same beliefs.

“I love getting into hard conversations about God,” she says. “I love having people challenge me and tell me their different beliefs or what they think is true. For me, that’s just so exciting because I feel like I grow more in my relationship with God when I get into those conversations.”

Missy found that she could not only build friendships when she engaged in difficult discussions but also grow in her knowledge of and love for God. She began to take the questions she was encountering during her discussions with peers and ask them of herself. Instead of giving pat answers, Missy learned to take what she was experiencing and discovering in her personal relationship with God to inform her responses to her friends.

“Having those questions really makes you dig deeper, as opposed to just sitting at the surface level of your relationship with Him,” Missy says. “I feel like you lose a part of growth when you’re only surrounded by people who are just going to agree with you all the time.”

Questions: Are you engaging in conversations and relationships that challenge you to better understand what you believe? Do you respond graciously and with wisdom when you feel challenged by someone else’s beliefs? How can you engage with and love those around you who do not know Jesus?

Prayer: Lord, help me to respond well when I feel like my beliefs are being attacked or challenged. I want to value the person and the relationship more than I value “winning” the argument. I pray that You would give me Your wisdom and Your words when I interact with those who don’t know You, so I can show them Your amazing love for them.