School's out and I finally got to go back home for a nice week of relaxing and resting. The week of Christmas break was a great time to once again meet up with my friends and go about my day without having to worry about studying or doing school assignments. Each day was well spent catching up with my friends as well as sharing my own adventures with them. Having dinner with my family for Christmas and New Years were very reminiscent moments. Ever since I started college, I had not spent much of my time back at home to eat dinner, and I had even taken the times that I did for granted. Now that I am living by myself, I have learned to really treasure each of these small moments that I get to spend with my family. God has given me a deeper love and care for my family that I would not have known until I have experienced life without them.
The most memorable thing that came out of this break was a realization that God was still working in the lives of my friends and family back at home. While having conversations with some of my friends, I was worried that they might be completely captured by the wave of school and retreats coming up, but instead, as I listened to them sharing, I saw that God was working in their lives. Perhaps it was partially my pride that made me think that if I wasn't there to talk with and walk with them through situations, that they would not really put too much thought into it, but in surrendering that to God I saw that even without me, God was doing amazing things in their lives. Another really joyous occasion was the opportunity to see some of my friends being baptized. It's always an exciting and joyous occasion when I hear of brothers or sisters being baptized, but some of these were close friends of mine who I knew had struggled through their faith. To see them make a stand for Christ and willingly dedicate their lives to him was another clear evidence that God was still working powerfully amongst my friends.
Right after Christmas break I headed off to Chinese Missions Convention (CMC). This was honestly something that I was really looking forward to. I was excited to go and serve the youths that would be coming and once again see God's work being done. The slight incentive that the trip for youth counselors is completely covered definitely gave another small push to going to this convention. Anyway, I initially came into this convention completely ready to lead small groups and to apply all that I had knew about leading small group. However, the one thing that I got out of this convention was a huge slap in the face by God. I came in thinking I knew what I was doing, thinking that since I had so much experience leading small groups, and so much knowledge that everything would just flow easily and things would go swimmingly. Don't get me wrong, I 100% started praying for God to be working in the hearts of my small group members and to take the wheel, but somewhere along the lines... I started to try and do things my way. What I did not realize was that the youths here were different than the regular groups of small groups that I was used to leading in college. For one, they were definitely younger and so the things that they were struggling with and thought about was somewhat different than what I had been so used to dealing with. Another factor was that I just did not go in very prepared. I had vague ideas of what I would want to do with my small group, but I did not really take the time to plan ice breakers or things like that. It was funny how I always told people that "if you fail to plan, then you plan to fail," and here I was learning a good lesson from God. The next factor was a confusion whether the small groups for the youth should have been mission focused or spiritually forming, like a gospel camp. I was stuck trying to maneuver between pushing them to have a heart for missions while also realizing that their hearts really needed some caring to. Each of the youths were going through similar yet different struggles, and were in vastly different stages of their walks with Christ. This is when God really struck me hard.
What I had been doing this whole time was trying to guide them in a way that I thought would be best for a general student, but each of them were different from your general/average student. Half of them were PK's (Pastor Kids) and the other half spent all their life in church. I didn't realize until the second night that I needed to not try and guide these kids in the same way that I would college students, but that each was unique and special in God's eyes, and needed to be loved and guided in their own way. This is when I realized that I was selfishly trying to have my way, and needed to give this completely over to God. Instead of trying to run through all the things I would have done with a college small group, instead I aimed to focus back on the gospel and to show each of the youths the love of Christ. I saw that God was really reaching out to each of them and wanting to pull them in for a deeper relationship and understanding of him, so that's the new direction that I went. I pointed back to god, and shared his love for them and the love that they could foster together as a community of Christians. God starting opening up their hearts to share, and they also starting to enjoy being in community with one another. We had many jokes and most of the time it seemed like we were just having fun, but I saw that God was building community through the laughter and smiles. They also asked many challenging questions, and by the end of the convention, I felt God pushing me to give each of them one final push of encouragement to continue seeking after God.
Another great moment was during the final worship night. As the youths traveled from station to station to reflect on their faith and later to share testimonies and worship God, I saw a courage and bravery that could only have come from God. When I was their age, I could not even imagine having to come in front of 400+ people to share what God was doing in my life, and yet with the power of the Holy Spirit, some of these youths boldly stood forth declaring God's hand in their lives. This was encouraging and inspiring to see youths ready to step out for the Lord. Once again I was reminded of just how amazing God was, and all the different lives he was working in and preparing for His ministry. The last bit that really shook my heart was the worship. I was always someone who was really touched by worship and really needed the time to give God praise on the top of my lungs. This wasn't something that I had much opportunity doing, maybe because I have been holding back or just never had the opportunity to, but during the worship night I finally could. There was something so different from completely giving my heart, soul, life, and voice over to God. I once again felt recharged and ready to tackle what God may bring for the new year.
Now here I am back in school for my J-Term. I am currently taking Christ in the Old Testament, and this class has been very interesting. This class forces us to take a deeper look into the Old Testament and understand its connection with the Christ of the New Testament. There is also a significant amount of work that comes with this class, but I am definitely ready to tackle this class!
First J-term of my Seminary life has now come and gone, where did time go? The longer I stay in Seminary, the faster it feels like time goes by. This semester has been filled with fun and work; because most of the students only took one class during this time, we were left with more free time than we knew how to deal with. We were able to spend more time just chilling and getting to know each other more. Our mornings and afternoons would be filled with class and studying, but afterwards on weekends, we would have the chance to hang out and catch a movie or play some board games. Some nights when we really wanted to splurge, we would go to apple-bees and get some appetizers that would be half off, and for them to enjoy a beer. I guess beer culture is a real thing up here, but for me... water is good. Anyway, this couldn't have happened during the normal school years from all the work that we usually had and so this time, during J-Term, was a real blessing and treat. We were given the opportunity to take a step back and restore our energy before jumping into another busy school semester in Spring. We also had the chance to enjoy a few New England snow storms in which me and my friends tried to take as much advantage of it as possible. We built snow forts and went sledding on off hours. This all gave us a chance to just share life with each other instead of just studying day in and day out. I also folded many wantons and shared a little taste of Asian culture with them!!
The class that I took during J-Term was Christ in the OT. The general gist of this was discovering and clarifying different passages in the Old Testament that might have made mentions to Jesus Christ as the coming Messiah. We started with a general overview of the number of times that the word Messiah shows up in the bible and it's meaning in Hebrew. Officially, the word "Messiah" appears 39 times in the Old Testament, and the official meaning is "anointed one." Now of those 39 times different people have different arguments to how many of those actually refer to the coming Christ and not instead of some earthly king or anointed person. My professor personally believes that there are only two cases where the word "Messiah" is actually indicative of a future eschatological Messiah, and these two instances are found in Daniel 9:25-26. This doesn't mean that other instances cannot allude to a coming Messiah, or that there aren't other passages that talk about the coming King-Priest-Prophet role that is Jesus, but that the word "Messiah" in the Old Testament used to talk about Jesus are only those two. The class goes on to talk about many different other instances where the Messiah is clearly talked about as a futuristic king-priest-prophet like in Psalm 110, or Zechariah 6. This class gave me a broader perspective on the many different prophecies and allusions to Christ within the Old Testament context. The most important thing seemed to be a Controlled Typology view where we kept in mind and found typologies that readers and the writer of the text at the time would have understood it to be. Even though I did not agree with every point my professor made, and sometimes he would make some pretty incredulous connections; they were all thoughts that I had not thought of before, and thus forced me to think deeper and take a greater joy in reading scripture.
