Time flies and Nov has been the fourth month of the ISEED program. Every day I feel grateful for joining the discipleship program, as I have been able to experience God’s love at a richer level. This month, I got to experience the power of prayers and the feeling of working together with God.
Friday night is one of those time that I look forward to during the week. As I have mentioned in the previous blog, my consistent prayer is that God would use my experience to connect with people in my discussion group, that they would seek and find Father’s love through our time together. One Tuesday afternoon, Abby, an IFI staff, asked me if I want to do a walking prayer at OSU. I didn’t know clearly what that meant, but I said yes. While we were walking on campus, I saw students walking in a hurry, with worries and confusion on their face. My memories quickly went back to my first year in the US, the time I felt so hopeless that I filled myself with busy schedules. My heart ached. I started to pray for each of the people in my discussion group, talk to God about their struggles, and ask God to reveal love and truth to them. It was such a wonderful experience to be able to pray for other people out loud. God had highlighted some people’s name to me too, and after that, I had some great conversations with these people inside or outside group discussions. I felt God was really connecting me with one of the girls in the group, that we have talked about faith, life, and family relationships very deeply. Two weeks ago, she made the decision to follow Christ after the Friday night Bible discussion.
It was the greatest joy and highlight of this month. To me, I did not exactly know how God was working, but I felt the urge to not just listen to her, but pray for her along the journey. I learned how to work with God and surrender everything to Him through prayers. At first, I was praying that God could open opportunities for us to do bible studies one-on-one. Later God did open opportunities, but Bible study didn’t seem to be able to happen. Then I got to know much more about her personally, and she was open to the idea that I prayed for her at the end of our meetings.
My memory went back to Fall 2016, the time I first started to facilitate a Bible study. I remembered there was a girl who showed a lot of interest in Bible and asked so many good questions. I thought that was the person that God wanted me to care for, so I made efforts to build the relationship with her, but I did not pray for her. Later, she texted me that she decided not to come to Bible study anymore because she felt she learned enough and she didn’t have more interest. I was so sad and so shocked, and I felt like she was rejecting me. It was not until later I realized that I took her rejection to God personally, and I didn’t depend on God on this journey.
One of the lessons I learned is that no matter what we do, do with God, and do for honoring God. Prayer is the method to communicate with God and know His will. So many times, I would have the thought that how could I minister to others even when myself is so broken. But God remind me that I am not depending on my ability, but depending on Him. At the same time, what He care is my heart/faith, not my performance.