Small Steps leading to Big Blessings

Submitted by Sijii…

When I look back on the past four years of my life, three major life-transforming decisions come to mind.  The first was committing myself to my small group, second committing myself to God and third, committing myself to God’s work.

The first milestone in committing myself to my small group occurred during winter retreat of my sophomore year.  My boyfriend and I had just broken up and I was with my small group in our cabin.  I think as a sign of comfort to me, one of the girls started sharing what she was struggling with, and one by one each of us shared something in our past that deeply scarred us. Praying for each other, I began to see my small group as real people with real hurts, rather than just a group of random girls I was affiliated with through church.

The pain of the breakup also shook me up enough to make me think about what I was pursuing in life.  Suddenly, it didn’t make sense to me anymore to go through the façade of parties or attention seeking culture that is common to the college experience.  What is more, I saw a genuine community before me pursuing real questions in life and living with sincerity and generosity.  I remember multiple times in the following month that I would call Jessica crying and she would immediately come, meet me wherever I was on campus, and pray for me.

So as they committed to me, I committed to them.  Since I had pre-dental club meetings during our normal small group time, I decided to give up that club and just meet with the girls.  I also devoted a lot of time to getting to know them by studying with them and sleeping over at their places.  In a given week, I would probably sleep at Tina’s place for four nights, Ellen’s place for two nights and my own place one night.  Most of the time I would only stop by home to shower and get a change of clothes.  Teresa told me that someday I would make a great missionary because I was so used to packing up and sleeping wherever.

As our relationships deepened, I was also given the opportunity to stretch my heart and care for them.  I remember getting random phone calls, sometimes waking me up at 2AM and walking over to unit 1 with Bear Walk to talk to one of my small group girls.  Through these experiences, I saw the strength of true community and the satisfaction of engaging my time to care for these girls that I had committed to and were committed to me.  So even though my old friends tried to guilt trip me into joining them for parties, even to the extent of buying me new clubbing clothes just to entice me to come out with them, I knew inside that I was making the right choice.

Surrounding myself with people that also wanted to pursue God really helped me to take God seriously.  My ears opened and I was convicted bible study after bible study, Sunday sermon after Sunday sermon of the truth of the gospel.  Getting closer to my leader also helped me with the day to day questions I had about our church or living out Christian life.  Poor Hannah, I would almost weekly have two hour conversations with her, asking what probably seemed like unending questions.  But it was through those conversations that I began to understand the heart behind our church and trust its work.

My commitment to God occurred through many smaller steps.  First, it was structuring my life so that I had time for Him and His people.  This meant getting rid of the old stuff that was clearly immoral or just plainly a waste of time.  I stopped going to parties, drinking, clubbing, listening to my favorite R&B/hiphop artists like Usher, and I stopped watching Grey’s Anatomy, Heroes, and Korean dramas.  With all of this gone, I had a lot of free time on my hands.  I finally started going to the post-bible study activities and spent time with the community.  Furthermore, staying in Berkeley over the summers taking summer school helped me to solidify these relationships and utilize the less hectic schedule to pursue my relationship with God.

Secondly, I started reading Christian books and doing DTs with my small group girls regularly.  In light of my past, Psalm 51 and Psalm 23 were passages that comforted me.  I found peace in the descriptions of the Lord as my shepherd, leading me beside peaceful quiet waters, guiding me in paths of righteousness, restoring my soul.  I experienced daily how He provided for me to the point of my cup overflowing and I trusted that He would have mercy on me and cast out my sins making me whiter than snow.  And I saw that no matter what I was going through, the bible had an answer for me, a way to correct my posture so that I could endure and still have hope.

Thirdly, I committed myself to God’s work.  Being actively involved in ministry really solidified my conviction that the gospel is true because I saw it played out in the neediness of the different girls I was ministering to.  I no longer wanted to be tricked into pursuing the things of this world, so I made a commitment to take every opportunity to fill the needs that came up.  I wanted it to be clear to myself that my life’s priority was serving God and not pursuing my own ambitions.

God took my commitment seriously and challenged me on many different occasions.  While I did take the opportunity to serve in different ministries at our church, it was the little daily decisions that were hard to make.  It was particularly difficult when I would have multiple midterms the next day and a younger sister would text asking if I was free to talk.  I wanted to just text back that I had midterms, but on each occasion, I found that it was well worth it going to talk to them.  I learned that the struggle for me was always fighting past my initial selfishness, but once I was there talking to her, hearing her problem, it was so easy to see that she was much more important to me than some test.  After multiple experiences like this, the decisions to go and leave other things behind only became easier because I knew it was worth it in the end.

Also, choosing to go lead DT group at a particular time even though I knew that I had a midterm right after that I wasn’t prepared for was difficult.  But I wanted to make it clear in my own heart what I was living for, so I would choose to go.  There were many times like these, where I had to prioritize God’s work even when I felt like I had no time.  But God was always faithful to me and well worth my commitment.

Through being engaged in God’s work I was also challenged to develop useful practical skills to meet those needs.  I learned how to develop lesson plans for ImpACT, make flyers with photoshop, give worldview presentations for Interhigh, lead someone in Course 101, estimate in cooking for a larger crowd, and even learned how to sew!  But I can only say that learning to serve in these ways have only enriched my experience of the joy of God’s work.  Seeing the children’s shine in their eyes as they learn or discussing with my Interhigh mentees about how media affects them fills me with wonder for how God works in various peoples lives.  Remembering my own pursuit of meaninglessness in this world, I can testify that it’s truly by grace that God saves, plucking people out of their destructive lives and placing opportunities in their life to take small yet large steps toward a life spent with Him.

In reflecting over the past four years, I find that it was these three main commitments, and their smaller supporting commitments that shaped me.  I hardly realized all that God was doing in my life at the time, but at each step of the way I knew what was the right thing to do and I just followed.  In Mark 1, Jesus says, “Come follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”