Week 5 - Sardis
Task: Find time to declare the gospel over yourself, and note down why you need the grace of God for each day of this week.
Daniel Lee
Recently, the yeast of wrath and pride have been the most prevalent in my life. They have made me feel like I have stagnated and started to rot as a human and as a believer. Despite surrounding myself with amazing people and trying the “best” self-help methods out there, I always end up falling back down to where I was before. It has become clear that I need God’s grace to be able to have actually meaningful self-dialogue and self-introspection. I get too caught up trying to achieve self-improvement through purely my own efforts due to pride and misplaced confidence from random spurts of motivation.
While writing this, I was reminded of something my Sergeant told me towards the end of March. Following a brief discussion about our faith, he told me, “The best joke you can tell Jesus is telling him you have a plan. The longer you try, the more he laughs.” I don’t know if it’s an overused or well-known saying, but it definitely stuck with me. Even though I am not a thorough planner when it comes to life, the minuscule amount of planning I have done has rarely ever succeeded. Even though the current got turbulent at times as I resigned myself to just follow the flow of things, I know I have always felt the hands of Jesus keeping me afloat and steady. I am also blessed to have so many incredible people around me. To me, this is one of the clearest ways God’s grace has manifested itself in my daily life.
This past week was full of ups and downs, but I found solace in spending time with others. Doing as little as dragging myself out of the house and putting myself in an environment where the yeast is less likely to propagate was a great help. Moving forward, I need to stop neglecting building blocks such as daily Bible reading and prayer. Beyond that, not much is clear to me. Maybe trying to have regular conversations with God can help, even outside of prayer. Despite the uncertainty, I know that I must always ask God for guidance and strength to never let pride and wrath undermine the relationships I am blessed to have. In the words of an amazing member of our welcoming team: “You need to remember that you don’t got yourself; God got you.”
ANDY CHUNG
For this Lent task, I relied on Scripture. I started my day by reading a passage from the New Testament letters that exposits the gospel and noting what it says. This has helped me enormously. Often (maybe most of the time?), more than thinking to myself about the gospel, I need to be told about it.
A passage that heavily impacted me was Ephesians 2:1-10. Here, we see the famous lines “by grace you have been saved” and “he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace” (Eph. 2:5, 7). These words brought a deeper sense of joy and assurance. By reading God’s Word and allowing Him to preach the gospel to me, His grace also renewed my heart to live for Him each day.