Michael Brandon Lee is striving to live a life of interruption.
Making reference to Jesus’ life being full of interruptions, Lee explained his desire to live a life full of interruptions as Jesus did. The 24-year-old junior from Illinois is walking through this semester seeking to make an impact on Biola’s campus. After taking some time off from school, Lee is back at Biola and awaiting auditions for the music in worship program and also hopes to attend seminary to pursue a Master of Divinity and later plant a church. But for now, Lee is seeking to limit himself so that he would be available for God to use in any way he sees fit.
After a stressful fall semester, Lee decided to lighten his class load.
“This semester is definitely a time of loving the people I live with and the people I encounter and allowing me to be interrupted,” said Lee.
Lee is offering prayer to anyone who needs it and specifically invites those who need healing both physically and emotionally. In order to attract attention, Lee has placed his invitation in the classifieds section of Biola’s e-mail system. Lee has encountered several people, both students and others, who have responded for prayer.
“So what I’m doing is putting myself out there and taking the risk, and listening to the Holy Spirit,” he said. “It doesn’t really involve much of me other than me just being there and speaking audibly and being a catalyst to get people to slow down and to receive.”
Alyssa Elendt is a high school student who visited the campus on a Biola Bound trip.
“Coming into the weekend, I was facing the effects of emotional abuse and was very distant from God,” Elendt said. Feeling abandoned by God and those around her, she prepared herself for the preview of Biola.
As part of a routine Biola bound, Elendt joined a group of students along with Biola ambassadors for a trip to Disneyland. At Disneyland several people shared their testimony, but she did not. Despite feeling the weight of her decision not to share as well as her personal problems, Elendt found herself back at Biola sharing her testimony. Lee then offered her prayer and the group laid their hands upon her and prayed for her.
Elendt described her experience through the prayer as a weight being lifted off her chest that was replaced with peace.
“God’s peace has continued to be present in my everyday life,” Elendt said.
Biola undergraduate Shoh Ueno has also found Lee to be a great help since coming to know him this school year. Ueno is neighbors with Lee in Hope hall, and while procrastinating on an assignment one day, Ueno talked to Lee about Elendt and other Biola Bound students.
Later in the conversation, Lee suggested that he and some friends pray for Ueno, who realized that there were deeper issues he had been dealing with. Lee prayed for family issues that Ueno had been struggling with during that time period.
“He reminded me that my heavenly father was not like my earthly father — I do not have to be a certain way for him to love me,” Ueno explained. “They were the words that I have needed for so long.”
Ueno is now able to live his life knowing that God loves him more than anything. What began as a simple process of procrastination for him and a risky opportunity for Lee turned into what Lee would explain as a “break-through of the kingdom and a glimpse of the future glory”
Lee has taken this opportunity to reach out to his fellow Biolans by offering prayer and believes this ministry opportunity is much bigger than simply being proactive for the kingdom. Lee hopes to take this ministry of prayer and encouragement and pass it on to other people.
“I want to share God’s love with other people,” he said.
