Testimony – Junior Year 2009-2010
5/21/2010
Mark 10:45 “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."
I want to thank God for the Junior year, which was probably the most rewarding time during my college career. It began with a defeated Sophomore year and a low start, me coming back from Korea with an empty resume because my internship didn’t turn out. At that time, Dr. Sam was out of town in the European Conference and asked if I can take over some leadership over Friday and such. But I got in trouble literally for every decision that I made. It started again with a command to serve a spaghetti lunch for the church with Joe J. I find it interesting that I get to end the year with a Spaghetti dinner again. May God bless me and everyone here to learn from Jesus how to serve the world, starting from our neighbors with the bread but also with the word of God.
As I reviewed the past year, I tried to find patterns and see what God had taught me. And, I boiled it down to Mark 10:45. Jesus’ serving us shows His unfailing love and grace to undeserving sinners – this really is God’s faithfulness to us. So, I wanted to talk about faithfulness.
Spiritually, I was faithful to sin not to God. But despite all this, God was faithful to me with his unfailing love. My top struggles were really lust, laziness, and loser-mentality. Whenever I was stressed out, I did not come to God but went to gratify the cravings of my sinful nature and followed its desires and thoughts. Because I was lazy, I lacked faithfulness with responsibilities entrusted to me, making me a very unproductive person and a person that could not serve anyone. Because of my loser-mentality, I lacked confidence and was very pessimistic. Often, I was so disgusted looking at myself that I feared that all these investments mentors made in me would turn to nothing. I also feared that God might abandon me. But looking back, I can testify that God’s faithfulness has been most clear.
- God helped me to overcome my sinful nature and learn to be faithful, depending on his power and love.
- God enabled me to be faithful with weekly Bible meditation, which I can finally say that I stopped BSing (John 6 & Luke 11 most stood out to me. Jesus is the bread of life and God is our Father)
- He enabled me to be faithful with a small group, meeting weekly with JJ, Mike, DK, and Stephano to meditate on God’s word.
- He enabled me to work with Msn. Gloria and DK on church finances and finally receive money from school. (Thank God for the fact that now we are officially university-funded RSO with a cubicle out of the 1000 RSOs!)
- God taught me and trained me as well in the process
- Through moving from DK’s house to Joe J’s house to Msn. Mary C’s house, I learned to depend on God and practice the command to “Love thy neighbor.”
- Through the Russian report which I gave at the Easter Conference, I repented, learned more about Russia, and started to have a broken heart for the country.
For this, I thank God for Dr. Sam and Msn. Mary Cowen and the Jeongs for their love in Christ. Most importantly, I want to thank God for his unfailing love and faithfulness to a sinner like me.
Academically, I thank God for granting me wisdom and joy with school and letting me finish school faithfully. Although I took 20 and 21 credit hours, God blessed me to make many friends and learn about business. I thank God for granting me the opportunity to visit London over winter break, learning to compete and collaborate with excelling students from all over the world. Finally, I thank God for the consulting opportunity in which I worked in a team in conducting market research about Russia for a Fortune 500 company in Chicago.
Going to my senior year at the U of I, these are my current prayer topics:
- To continue growing in wisdom and stature by building foundations/framework in the word of God.
- To pray and share the gospel with the five people (Nick Banach, Akshay Ghalsasi, Emmanuel Topete, Dima, and Jo) so that they may experience true peace in knowing Christ Jesus.
- To search and decide my next step in life, whether to go to the professional world or graduate school. In a nutshell, being ready to do anything for Christ.
- To set an example, as a senior, in loving neighbors (both Christians & non-Christians) and articulating to them the good news of the gospel.
No comments:
Post a Comment