College Retreat

What an amazing weekend. After I came back from the SD mission trip, I left to the college retreat with Gracepoint this past weekend. I don't know what to say other than to say that it was spiritually refreshing. We had total of 7 different session throughout the 3 days that we were there. Each session consisted of couple testimonies and a sermon dealing with the topics that were mentioned in the testimonies. One session was a break out session, where there were many different talks going on at the same time and we had to choose one to go to. I, along with many of the sophomore brothers, chose to go to Science and Faith. I wanted to go because the speaker was going to be Richard Tijhen, a freshmen staff at our church who is very intellectual in the science field. In the seminar, we addressed a central issue, are science and faith complementary or contradictory? Something interesting that he said was that science and faith are not contradictory, but the world views are contradictory. Science seeks to understand the physical world, and theology seeks to understand the spiritual world. However, Naturalism says that scientific truth is the ONLY truth....EVEN though this is a belief itself can't be proven with scientific truth. This also requires faith and doesn't give explanation. A lot of the evidences that he provided was the things I already studied before, but it was a good reminder and good teaching of the different strategies.

I loved the testimonies. Each of the testimony shared by our own staffs in Gracepoint talked about how they were immature in different ways. There were so many aspects that I never thought were immaturities before. Some of them include giving into your emotional anger, escaping from reality through running away and even watching disney movies, or lying about grades. As usual, some testimonies talked about the blessings of keeping boundaries in relationships and their views on the nuclear family. One testimony that I related to really well (not that I didn't relate to some of them) was the one on lordship decision that Jon Chou gave. Basically, if I were to cut out the first half of his testimony, I could put it into mine. The only thing different about it would have been that I didn't have that realization of my pride. He talked about how he understood God and Christianity intellectually, but never went further to examine his life and never went further than acknowledgement of the messages. Even though he was one of the very respected individual in his youth group and never did anything bad in his life, he threw away his pride and made his decision to follow Christ. Then, Pastor Ed talked about what it really means to make a Lordship decision and what it really means to follow Christ. One thing that really stuck out to me was the pie chart he created describing different aspects of our lives. The question he asked was, "Does he occupy every aspect of my life?" Is God who he is in my life? Another thing he did was that he drew an inner circle inside the pie chart and shaded the circle, and he said that this is where we are now. We will never be perfect in giving up everything in our lives because we are not perfect. It will take time to give everything to God. This is when the message became real to me, and I was contemplating more than usual. This is when I realized that I was like the Pharisees as Jon Chou said. I was relating to the messages in an intellectual way and not too much deeper.

Some background story I guess. I wasn't born in a Christian family, but I started to go to church regularly at the end of 8th grade. So there was a time when I wasn't a Christian. If I looked at my life before that retreat, I would have said I was living a Christian life. I had realized that I was a sinner in need of Jesus Christ and I had been wanting to serve God. However, what really confused me was that middle part. There wasn't a clear point in my life when I became a Christian and made my decision. In my freshmen year, there were many times that I pondered whether or not I was a christian because I never had a point in which I committed my life to Christ. What I had were many significant points in my life that I realized different aspects of God and christianity and had many signification dedications to follow Christ starting my senior year.

As I was saying, I had many doubts afterwards if I was even a christian. Can I even call myself a Christian? "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'" -Matthew 7:21-23. I wondered if that person would be me. I calmed my wandering mind by settling that I am living a life for God, but that thought came back again and again, multiple times in my freshmen year.

After the message and the testimony, I was talking to one of my leaders, and that thought came back to me. I told my leader that I didn't know if I was a Christian because there wasn't a clear point when I made that decision. When I shared what I thought about the message and the testimony, he told me some profound words. He said that if I were to die right now, he's pretty sure that I will go to heaven. This doubt that I had was the exact reason why people make decisions public and clearly mark the point when you make the decision. He shared about a passage in Joshua how God told Joshua to put stones after crossing the Jordan river in memorial so that when people ask what that stone is, they can remember all the things God provided for them. In the same way, it is important to make that spiritual marker so that when I look back, I can say, with certainty, that this is when I decided and this is when I made that commitment. It will help me grow in my faith. One more thing he said that struck me was that the only thing that is stopping me is pride.

That one statement pierced my heart. That one statement made me realize the pride that was in my heart. Although I knew that I was prideful, there was another side of my pride that I hadn't realized before. The pride that was stopping me. The pride that Jon Chou talked about in his testimony how he was keeping an image as a good christian and how he valued other people's opinions over his own being. I was just like that. I wanted to keep an image of being a christian and I wanted people to know that I was a christian. By submitting to these declaration of lordship decisions, I was afraid of what that would make me. I was constantly confused whether or not I was a Christian, but my pride stopped me from thinking harder and from making that decision public. After talking with my leader, I prayed that I can make that decision and I prayed before making that decision to ask for God's assistance in throwing away my pride. That night, I made my Lordship decision public. I have publicly announced that I am going to give up every aspect of my life to God and I wasn't ashamed about it.

After the message, we shared by our life groups. My other leader shared that this public announcement is very important. He gave an analogy to marriage. Imagine a couple that love each other and is going to get married. Why do they have a wedding ceremony and a ring ceremony? They know that they love each other and they want to live with each other. Why spend so much money and time to publicly announce that they are married? He said that it is to look back in memorial to say that this was when we finally devoted our lives to each other. In the same way, this public announcement and this spiritual marker is like a memorial to look back to say that this was when I finally devoted my life to Christ. This heavy burden of doubts and pride got lifted up that night, and I am so glad that I made my decision public. Many people were confused that night, but I was finally not confused. People came up to me to congratulate me, and at first I didn't know what to say because I thought people congratulate you for making a salvation decision for the first time, and that didn't apply to me. However, I soon realized that this is also another celebration, and this is also a big recommitment to God. So I said thank you.

Thank God for the great things that happened at the retreat. There were numerous salvation and lordship decisions and significant recommitment. Most sophomores made lordship decisions and made significant recommitments. I was really happy and excited about that. Also, one more thing I heard is that majority of the freshmen who went to retreat made their salvation decision! Praise the Lord!

I had some good sharing time with my sophomore brothers that night and it is a night that I can recall with great clarity. We definitely got even closer through this retreat.

The passage that I will remember forever.

Joshua 4:1-7
"When the whole nation had finished crossing the Jordan, the Lord said to Joshua, "Choose twelve men from among the people, one from each tribe, and tell them to take up twleve stones from the middle of the Jordan, from right where the priests are standing, and carry them over with you and put them down at the place where you stay tonight." So Joshua called together the twelve men he had appointed from the Israelites, one from each tribe, and said to them, "Go over before the ark of the Lord your God into the middle of the Jordan. Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, to serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you, 'What do these stones mean?' tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever"