2016 Key Verse Testimony

“And He was saying to them all, ‘if anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it.’”
-Luke 9:23-24
     Hebrews 12:1-2 reads “therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” That was my key verse for the year 2015. I chose it because I knew that there were sins in my life that I needed to address. I also chose Hebrews 12:1-2 because I wanted to focus on Jesus, who is the pioneer and perfecter of faith. This verse has encouraged me in the past year to look at Jesus, who endured the cross for me. Overcoming temptation is much easier when I remembered that Jesus overcame all temptation, and even suffered and died on the cross. While this verse has been helpful to me, I am sad to say that I didn’t really grow in my relationship with God as much as I had wanted to.
     Last year went by extremely quickly. So much has happened so fast that I never really took time to appreciate what has happened in 2015. One of the things that I am grateful for is the vocal team, as we have grown together in serving the church through our music. I tend to be very demanding of people, especially when I am working together with someone on a project. The members of the vocal team were very willing to work at making the music sound good. We all pushed each other to learn our parts quickly, and to take care of the finer details that are often left untouched. Singing with the vocal team has been so much fun, and a very rewarding experience. Last year I also received an internship position at the United States Army Research Laboratory. I applied to many positions in the spring for a summer internship, but no one offered me a position. I felt that I was doomed to not have an internship, until my professor sent me and my class an email about an internship position. At the time, I had no idea what position it was, but I told him that I was a interested. By the grace of God I was able to get an interview with the people at the Army Research Lab, also known as ARL, and was offered a position as a researcher/intern. My mentor is hardworking but kind, and I learned (quite quickly I might add) that he was also a Christian. He offered to extend my internship throughout the fall semester, and now through the 2016 spring semester. I quickly accepted this extension, and I hope that I can be a blessing to those that I work with. At the end of the spring semester in 2015, I received an Honors college citation, stating that I had met all the requirements of the Honors college. The funny thing is that I didn’t realize that I had gotten this citation until my advisor mentioned it to me during my fall advising meeting. The requirements for this citation are that you take a certain number of Honors classes, and that you maintain a 3.2 GPA. I knew about the class requirements, but only discovered the GPA requirement late in the spring semester of 2015. As I looked back at my past college semesters, I noticed that my GPA was only just above a 3.2. In fact, there were a couple of semesters in which my GPA was well below a 3.2. Despite this, I managed to survive with barely a 3.2 GPA and to receive my Honors college citation. I thank God for His infinite mercy for a sinner like me. In the fall of 2015 semester, I received a new interest in learning. Often times in the past, people would ask me why I chose electrical engineering as my major in college. I always gave an answer like “it’s because I was good at physics/math in high school”, or that “I wanted to learn how computers work”. Now these are definitely true to some extent, but the honest answer to the question of why I chose electrical engineering is “I don’t know”. I honestly don’t know why I decided to chose electrical engineering as my major. Even during past semesters in college, I struggled to take interest in the material, since I was doing so much math without much application. I never reached a point where I wanted to quit electrical engineering, but I did sometimes question if this was the right major for me. Somehow, in the fall semester of last year, I took an interest in my classes. Perhaps this was in part due to the fact that at the senior level I got to choose my courses, or that I had an internship where I applied my knowledge in a practical way. Whatever the case was, I became more interested in my classes. This doesn’t mean I suddenly enjoyed every single thing that I was learning, but I did appreciate more of the material. Thanks to this renewed vigor, I got the highest GPA since my freshmen year. Praise be to God. Lastly, I must mention the good things that God has done in my church’s young adult group. As I have mentioned in the past, our previous leader left the country due to his job. He was in charge of much of the planning of the group, so we knew that he would be greatly missed. I found that a lot more responsibility of he group was placed on me and the other leaders, and at first we struggled to plan for the upcoming semesters. However, we learned to work together as the year went on, and we settled into our roles quite nicely. I took on leading praise every week, which I really enjoyed doing. I also was able to lead some praise nights, which was difficult to prepare but a joy to lead and serve. I can’t speak for everyone, but I felt that God was teaching us a lot in the past year in the young adult group. We studied the book of Ephesians in the spring, and we studied a series titled “Shadows” in the fall, both of which I have recapped on my blog. I was blessed to learn about the love of Jesus, and the person of Jesus through these semesters. I thank God for the great leaders He has placed with me to work for His glory.
     Of course, I cannot talk about my year without talking about praise. I have been serving on a praise team for a very long time. It has been at least 6 years that I have been serving on a praise team, whether it be on youth group or Sunday service. I have grown a lot in my musical ability, and my understanding of worship. At the same time however, I’ve grown a bit complacent in my worship to God. Inevitably when you do something for a long time, you begin to lose the importance of what that thing is. For me, that thing was serving praise. This past year, I’ve tried to maintain a heart of worship, but serving every week makes it hard for me to keep my eyes fixed on Jesus. There were many times where I focused too much on the music, even when the music was pretty good. I strived for perfection, when God calls us in our brokenness. Of course, as I’ve mentioned in the past, it is good to give God our best, but the whole point of Jesus coming to earth was to mend our brokenness. If we constantly strive to be perfect, we will never get there, and we will never have a need for Jesus. I’ve been trying to learn to be patient, and to accept that I can never be perfect, and the praise team can never be perfect. All we can do is to give God our best, and to let Him work in our weakness. One of my prayers for 2016 is to give my best to God, and not to stress on my imperfections or the worship team’s imperfections.
     While many good things did happen last year, it was not all good. I still struggled with many things that I had struggled with for a long time, including anger and laziness. In the past, I have had some serious anger issues, something which I have mentioned time and time again. I thank God that He has given me a better temper, but in 2015 I saw my anger start to flash. Every week, our church plays soccer after Sunday service. This is supposed to be a time for fun and fellowship, but I have taken it a bit too seriously at times. I am naturally a competitive person, which started to show a lot during soccer. When things happened in soccer that I didn’t like, sometimes I would become angry at others. This happened a couple times last year, which I am not proud of. Thankfully, this has only happened during soccer, and not during a time where I could seriously hurt someone. As I look back on these times, I realize that my anger is a result of a deeper issue- my constant need for perfection, which also showed itself during praise. I demand so much of other people, even though I know that we all fall short in some way or another, myself included. I want to rest in Jesus’ fullness and perfection in 2016, and to stop demanding perfection of myself and others. I will be graduating from college in May of 2016, so I have to look for a job. My laziness is not helping me in my job search, since I should have started already in 2015. I also struggled to maintain personal devotion with God on a daily basis, only reading the Bible on an irregular basis, without giving it much effort. I know this is not the life God wants for me, which is why I decided to choose Luke 9:23-24 as my key verse for 2016. It reads, “And He was saying to them all, ‘if anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it.’” This verse is repeated in both Matthew and Mark’s gospel, but I decided to chose Luke’s version because he includes the phrase “take up your cross daily”. Denying myself, taking up my cross daily, and following Jesus are not easy. I know this. However, this is Jesus’ will for my life, and I know that He only wants what is best for me. To know Jesus better and to become more like Him, I must deny the desires of my flesh. My sinful nature desires many things, but I must deny these things in order to come after Jesus. I can’t succumb to my laziness and unwillingness to read the Word daily. To take up my cross means to chose suffering over my own comfort. When Jesus took up His cross, He chose to suffer rather than to be comfortable. A life with Jesus will inevitably have suffering, but Jesus has already led the way through His cross. Luke’s gospel reminds me that I have to take up my cross daily, meaning I have to choose the cross before myself everyday. To follow Jesus requires that I leave everything else behind. I can choose to follow the world or to follow Jesus, but not both. Verse 24 is both a warning and an encouragement. It is a warning in the sense that we should not try to save our own life, by preserving what little we have on this earth. Compared to the riches that are in heaven, what we have on earth is so insignificant. Verse 24 is an encouragement because it promises that if we lose our life for Jesus and His gospel, we will truly be saved. I have many things that I want to preserve on this earth. I want to secure a good job after I graduate. I want to get good grades in school. I want to fit in with the world, so I am not ridiculed or mocked. However, Jesus is telling me that the gospel is greater than all these things, and I should freely lose them for the sake of Christ. My runner-up key verse for 2016 and honorable mention was chosen through the casting of lots, and reads “be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6-7). Letting go of the things of this world and losing them sounds a bit worrisome to me at times, but I know that living as a disciple of Jesus will bring me true peace. Nothing I do can ever compare to being a disciple of Jesus, even though I will have to deny myself, take up my cross, and follow Jesus. I know that I do not have to worry, because if I am true to Jesus, He will be true to me. I pray that in 2016 I can become a true disciple of Jesus.