By Whitney Knight
Every semester, MACU holds a four-day chapel series known as Spiritual Emphasis Week, a period in which the campus community specifically focuses on spiritual health and growth with a four-part series by a special guest speaker.
This fall, the campus welcomed Rev. Jaime Cervantes. Cervantes pastors the Benton Heights campus of First Church of God in Benton Harbor, Mich., and spoke at this year’s
commencement exercises.
“When MACU asked me to do this, my answer was an emphatic ‘yes,’” Cervantes recalled. “I didn’t even look at my calendar. I wasn’t going to pass up an opportunity to be here.”
Cervantes, who was born and raised in Los Angeles, was brought up in the church after his parents came to faith in Christ when he was eight years old. But somewhere along the way, he began to lose his way a little bit. He struggled with his self esteem and feelings of worthlessness — feelings he knows are familiar to many college students.
“College is a very important and crucial time in life,” he said. “As young adults, you are in a very exciting but very critical and even fragile time in your lives when the trajectory of your life will be decided by the decisions you make now.”
That pressure, Cervantes said, can lead many to doubt their worth or to find themselves led astray, just as he once experienced.
Across his four-day sermon, Cervantes challenged these crippling feelings by exploring topics of loving yourself and loving one another, as well as God’s unconditional love for all of His children.
“Be encouraged,” he said. “God values you. He is the one who minted you. He is the only one who can assign to you your value. He is the one who declares you worthy of an all-out search and rescue mission — and He will never give up on you.”
If you would like to experience Cervantes’ powerful sermon series, please visit www.macu.edu/watch to access our chapel archives. We hope you will join us March 1-4, 2022, for our spring Spiritual Emphasis Week. You can watch live at 10:15 a.m. by visiting www.macu.edu or www.facebook.com/MidAmericaChristianUniversity.