Reflection

1-3. When I first entered college, I never would have expected to get involved in something as big, for me anyway, as IV CCF. Although I came from a Christian background at home, I had almost reached the point of not caring about God after my last year of high school. Or that is, although I was still able to talk about him at a superficial level with other people via discussions about religion and such, I had forgotten what it had felt like to be deeply committed to a personal relationship with him. I didn't pray. I attended church half-heartedly at home, and for much of my first semester at Berkeley, didn't feel the need to seek out a church any time in the immediate future. I felt in many ways like I was a hypocrite, saying that I was a Christian but not really doing anything about it. I felt stagnant.

This past year and a half, on the other hand, since I was introduced to IV and a church at Berkeley (Mosaic, then Living Water) in my second semester, has been perhaps the greatest push in the right direction that I have ever experienced in my life. Although I originally attended out of curiosity and a lingering sense of obligation, I began to see God working on aspects of my life in ways that I would not have imagined. This really surprised me because I had never truly experienced the feeling that comes with realizing God's presence in my life with this great a magnitude before. Just from meeting my dorm roommate, one of the most devout people I know, and Ryan Loong, who introduced me to IV, as well as IV itself, which showed me a community involved with God that I had longed for since my experiences with youth group in middle school; I felt like God had put each of these around me for a reason. My experiences in IV, church, and with the friends I have made at Berkeley thus far have helped me come to terms with a number of issues that have been consuming me - particularly at the spiritual level- for the longest time now.

Thus far, the largest issue has been my concern with the nature of my relationship with God. I have felt, time and time again since middle school, that I was either too flawed or too unprepared to move forward with my relationship with Jesus - I accepted that He had died for my sins, but I felt that I could not commit to actually keeping in touch with him on a regular basis, usually with the excuse that I needed more time to think about it, that I hadn't prepared myself enough and needed to read more Scripture, or that with how busy I was with my life in academics and such that I could just get to it later. I would keep telling myself that over the years until I finally felt so jaded at my inability to actually do something about it that I felt like just giving up and not caring.

But time and time again in this past year, I have discovered and been continually reminded that God never gave up on me- both by the his placement of the people in my life that have been there to talk about God when I needed it most (my old roommate, Jason; Ryan Loong and Olivia Lam; Tim Collier and Charley Kang, among others) as well as the messages that have brought up in IV, church, and just from reading Scripture. A couple of verses in particular stood out to me: 2 Corinthians 5:17-21 for speaking about our identity in Christ as a new creation, and that God reconciled himself to us through Christ while tasking us with the ministry of reconciliation, and John 15:13-15, in which Jesus states that he died out of love for us as his friends; that we are no longer servants, but friends of God. I felt touched, in a way, when I came to the realization that God actually treasured us before we even had a chance to prove anything about ourselves to him, and that he was willing to reconcile all of my shortcomings, my fears, and my grievances against him. Even when I was about ready to give up and lose faith in him, he never gave up. I was still a son of God. It was when I came to this last realization during one of the large groups this semester that I finally mustered the courage to get up and talk to a member of Prayer Team, who luckily happened to be Ryan, about everything that had been going on in my life spiritually up to that point. I felt so relieved afterwards- for having a renewed confidence in God's power in my life, and to have someone close who I could talk to about it. I finally felt like I was new again.

The other major issue that I have been concerned with for the past while now is the direction that God has been pushing me in my life. I have the problem of being interested in too many subjects for my own good and being obsessive about my schedule- and consequently feel the need to take a class in just about everything, which partly contributes to me having a fairly heavy workload. These past two semesters, however, I have been frustrated by a number of personal disappointments - mainly academically related - that have led me to question whether or not I am doing the right thing in the classes I choose. When I started contemplating leadership in IV next year, with some suggestion from Tim, I was brought back to the central issue of thinking about God's role in my life in my decisions. And I came to the realization that a lot of my previous motivation in my academic life had to do with my own self-fulfillment, because it made me feel better - but I had not really been gearing myself with the mentality of pursuing my interests for God's sake.

After praying and talking with some of my friends, I decided that if I wished to remain sane and be able to make room for God in my life in the future, I would have to give up some of my interests and focus on the skills that God really needed from me. It was tough for me because I liked having total control of the direction of my life, but lately I have begun to accept God's role in shaping that direction. Although I am not entirely certain of what exactly his plan entails for me and still feel at times stressed about grades and applications, I no longer feel so anxious about not knowing my future for sure. I'll accept that even if things don't go the way I intend them to, God will make good of what happens to help me grow. I found that Proverbs 3:5-6 helped here, which I had read a number of times but never really thought closely about before now. So long as I relate to God in what I do, he will make my paths straight - even if I can't fathom how that will happen.

4. Some of the people I have mentioned earlier - namely Ryan and Olivia- have been helpful for me to talk to when I find that I am having problems in my life, both with sin and struggles. I realize that I have a lot of faults that I don't like to admit out of pride, but after talking with them and spending some quiet time with God, I have been able confess these anxieties to God and accept that I am not the kind of perfect person that I would like to think I am. If other people point out my flaws, I may feel initially flustered or offended, but I eventually do come to terms with it and I still continue to ask God to help me change myself and forgive me of the sins I commit.

5. Time management has been an issue for me before, as I have had trouble trying to put aside time for God when I feel overwhelmed by academics and other activities. Generally, I try to focus on putting my schoolwork first, followed by extracurricular activities and social time, although I will tend to find myself distracted by other activities from time to time. I don't normally make large schedules of how to allot my time during the week, but rather focus on remembering classes and events (such as large group) and fit in time to do work and see people around them depending on what seems to be more urgent at the moment.

6. I don't mind taking risks and being challenged to do new things because I usually find them worthwhile in the long run (they make life more interesting). However, I do sometimes find it hard to make myself take the first initiative in taking on a risk. For me, a risk I struggled with earlier was openly talking about my faith with my friends at home, as a few of my best friends from home are not Christian, but recently I was able to talk to one of them for a while about Christianity and my personal feelings about it, which I felt was a big step as my friend and I hadn't really talked about religion at a personal level before. Another place where I have felt uncomfortable is trying to get to know other people within IV; I sometimes feel out of place because I was not involved in the dorm small groups during freshman year and I don't like to interrupt or get in the way of other people, but I have been starting to open up more over the year and gotten to know some really good people.

7. Although I have tried to set aside a set time for prayer, I tend to find myself praying the most at random times when I feel that I need to hear God the most, such as when I feel overwhelmed or uncertain about the day or really thankful for something that happened, or when I see other people such as my friends who are in need of help. One way in which I feel God has answered one of my prayers was during a time in which I felt frustrated with trying to find rest outside of work but not finding it in the places I looked, and I could not talk to anyone because they were busy. It had gotten to the point where I decided to lay down in front of Doe Library to look up at the clouds, only to find frustration in the flaws I noticed in my own eyesight. I prayed to God at that time to somehow bring me out of that mood, just to help me come to terms with the problems that had been plaguing me during the week. The sermon at Living Water the day after spoke about rest and how the only way we could find true rest was by being able to feel satisfied that it is good, the same way that God felt when he rested after the Creation. In other words, it was by knowing that we are good not because of our own means, but because God said so, which differed distinctly from the physical concept of rest that most people know of. I felt that God had really spoken to me that day through that message; even though I still felt the impending stress of the work coming that week, I wasn't so flustered about it anymore since I had finally found a peace of mind from knowing that God was content with me.

8. I find that I like to be able to relate to other people that I work with, sometimes simply by listening to them and their points of view if they need it. I also try to get along with the people I know even if I may feel uncomfortable with them at times, because I really dislike the feeling that comes with having discord with other people. If it is within my power, I will try to help resolve a conflict between my friends, because that tends to bother me the most. I do find, however, that I have difficulty trying to reach out to other people if the other person isn't willing to respond also; in that sense I can feel easily discouraged.

9. I am interested in leading Engineering Small Group in IV next year because I want to help make a difference in reaching out to the engineering community at Berkeley. I feel that in some ways the small group feels less involved together than some of the other MOCs in IV, partly because as engineering students we do tend to be busy with schoolwork and projects to the point that some people can't consistently make it to all of the events and meetings, and it's difficult to bring people together outside of small group. Also, I sometimes feel that the nature of Bible study and discussions can seem more abstract and less applicable to our focus as an Engineering Mission-Oriented-Community, and that we could be doing more to direct our discussion towards such issues as ethics in engineering and reaching out to our peers in the academic and industrial world. I would look forward to involving the small group more with these issues through discussion and and helping drive it towards an overall goal of seeking how God influences us and makes use of our skills to make a difference in the engineering community. I also would look forward to helping bring the small group closer together - whether it be through just communicating with each other, social events or even studying together.

10. The biggest concerns I might have with the selection criteria would be the time commitments. I will not be able to attend Chapter Camp because my parents have already arranged for me (tickets bought and nonrefundable) to go to Indonesia with them during that time period, and I am not sure if I will be able to attend Vision yet either for similar reasons. I also am worried about commitments during the regular year because my upper division EECS courses will have a larger workload than this year, although I will try to maintain my courseload enough so that I can manage IV commitments as well.